Events

The Inaugural Lecture of Prof. Vassili Toropov: 'Lose weight and go electric: planes, trains and automobiles'

Date: Thursday 22 March 2018 18:30 - 19:30

Location: Skeel Lecture Theatre
People's Palace
Queen Mary Mile End Campus

Vassili Toropov is Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Chair of the Division of Aerospace Engineering and Fluid Mechanics in the School of Engineering and Materials Science. He is a Chartered Aerospace Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS).

Structural design of a land or air vehicle is focused on providing sufficient strength at the minimum weight. An overweight aircraft needs more lift, resulting in larger wings, more thrust from the engines, more fuel, heavier landing gear, etc. that further increases structural weight - a trend known as a vicious circle. The opposite, weight reduction, results in a virtuous circle of economic benefits.

Structural optimisation, a scientific way of reducing structural weight, involves topology optimisation to find an ideal layout of a structure, shape optimisation to refine structural shapes, and structural sizing, e.g. skin thickness selection. New materials provide an additional opportunity for improving structural performance by finding the material’s optimal internal structure, e.g. fibre orientations in the stack of composite plies in a wing panel.

The lecture will summarise developments in structural and multidisciplinary optimisation, handling the problem’s uncertainties, and applications to land and air vehicles, also touching upon space exploration. Please register for a place.