On October 14, 2022, Allen Davis concluded his Ph.D. journey by completing his doctoral degree in Aerospace Engineering under Dr. Darren Hartl. Allen joined the MAESTRO Laboratory after completing his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana State University, and first completed a Masters of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering with a focus on damage-sensing particles for various structural systems. He has accepted a position as a Aerospace Engineer at NAVAIR (Patuxent River).
The full text of Dr. Davis’s dissertation abstract is as follows:
“Mission-adaptive aerostructural design considers the alteration of structural geometries to improve multi-objective performance across multiple aerodynamic environments associated with flight conditions derived from specific mission profiles. To accomplish this, the design process requires evaluation of aerostructural responses for each possible geometry to determine the optimal configuration for each mission stage. However, the proper selection of both adaptive variables at particular times (e.g. mission stages) and fixed design variables which cannot change during a mission is a complex design problem rarely considered. This work develops a mission-driven design framework combining aerodynamic, structural, mission, and optimization computational tools to design and optimize aerostructures considering both adaptive and fixed design variables. The computational framework searches algorithmically for structural configurations that improve mission-driven objectives for each mission phase using a novel algorithm to consider both adaptive and fixed design variable selection to effectively solve this complex design problem. It will be shown in the context of rotorcraft operations that both the optimal placement of adaptive components and levels of morphing can be determined concurrently via a novel optimization and selection procedure, leading to mission-wide performance improvements (in this case, reduced required power) not possible with static structures.“