Massimo Ruzzene

Massimo Ruzzene - Georgia Institute os Technology, U.S.A.

Massimo Ruzzene is the Pratt and Whitney Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also holds a joint appointment in the School of Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Ruzzene received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 1999. He is author of 2 books, 145 journal papers and about 190 conference papers. He has participated as a PI or co-PI in various research projects funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Army Research Office (ARO), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), NASA, the US Army, US Navy, DARPA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as companies such as Boeing, Eurocopter, Raytheon, Corning and TRW. Most of his current and past research work has focused on solid mechanics, structural dynamics and wave propagation with application to structural health monitoring, metamaterials, and vibration and noise control. M. Ruzzene is a Fellow of ASME, an Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a member of AHS, and ASA. He served as the Program Director for the Dynamics, Conrtol and System Diagnostics Program of CMMI at the National Science Foundation from 2014 until July 2016.

Research stay at UC3M: DEPARTMENT OF CONTINUUM MECHANICS AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS (MAY 2017 - JUL 2017)

Project:

During his visit, Prof. Ruzzene will study elastic wave propagation phenomena in nonlinear 2D structured solids, and propose equivalent continuum models for their analysis. These will be derived from two approaches: axiomatic formulations in the frame of generalized continuum, and non-standard continualization of discrete systems. Graphene nanostructures, commonly used in a wide range of fields, would be a potential application of the outcomes of this research. The target system consists in a periodic arrangement of masses which interact through nonlinear potentials draws inspirations from solid state physics concepts to the engineering of mechanical systems that are characterized by unique wave propagation properties. Of interest is in particular the analysis of the existence of localized solutions that are stationary, or do not travel, also known as breathers, or of solutions that travel with well defined profiles, which are known as solitons. The applications that are envisioned for this study include the robust of signals or information in through wave propagating in mechanical systems, or the investigation of methods that prevent the propagation of high amplitude waves resulting from blunt impacts or blasts.