Abstract
In this talk, I will present results on underwater vibrations of beam and plate-like structures. Underwater vibrations of flexible structures play an important role in many engineering settings, including bioinspired robotic locomotion, sensing and actuation, and energy harvesting. From a fundamental perspective, a common thread and fundamental challenge in these problems lies in the estimation, and possibly control, of the hydrodynamic loads exerted on the flexible structures. Depending on the envisioned application, additional goals may include extremizing energy dissipation or eliciting a particular dynamical response for the vibrating structure and/or the surrounding fluid. Due to the complexity of the problem in its generality, I will present a blend of experimental, numerical, and theoretical techniques to attack prototypical scenarios.
First, I will discuss, from an experimental and numerical perspective, results on the basic nonlinear problem of a rigid plate heaving in a viscous fluid and illustrate how findings can translate to the study of elastic systems. I will highlight sources of energy dissipation and possible strategies towards its mitigation via modulation of the hydrodynamic loads. I will then introduce the concept of unsteady shape-morphing strategies and present some of its applications in fluid-structure interactions (FSI). Finally, as shape-morphing demands nontrivial structural deformations, I will re-examine the FSI problem by developing a “semi-analytical” solution to the coupled problem of general, but linearized, vibrations of plates in viscous fluids based on the concept of nonlocal modal hydrodynamic operator.
About the Speaker
Matteo Aureli is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy in 2005 and 2008, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2012 from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He joined UNR in 2013 where he currently also serves as Associate Chair, Graduate Director of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are in fluid-structure interaction, vibration and dynamics, smart materials and systems, and multiphysics modeling. His research has been primarily supported by the National Science Foundation and he is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.
Host: Professor Leonardo Chamorro