Research interests of Prof. Patil, students, and collaborators ...
The future of scientific exploration and engineering design depends on the linking of coupled physics over multiple scales within analysis tools that are amenable to sensitivity calculations needed for multilevel optimization schemes. Our group focuses on the exploration of scientific questions at the interface of physics, length and time scales, and phases using computational analysis tools and their application within multidisciplinary analysis and optimization environments.
Over the past two decades, I have had the opportunity to be a part of several multidisciplinary teams conducting research on structural mechanics, multifunctional materials, unsteady aerodynamics, aeroservoelasticity, flight dynamics-control-testing-identification-airworthiness, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty quantification. I have been lucky to learn computational mechanics as well as design optimization from within these disciplinary silos. As a multidisciplinary analyst, I see a clear need to work towards algorithms that can wrap all of these mechanics, analyses, and design methodologies into a reliable, relevant and efficient package. Design of an algorithm that comprehensively addresses a range of scientific computational challenges has to be carefully developed by understanding the coupled physics we want to simulate and by answering question about stability, accuracy, and structure preservation at the interface. This is what motivates our research.
We aim to develop algorithms that can handle multiple spatial-temporal scales, range of phases-materials, and coupled physics. Furthermore, we would like these algorithms to handle evolution of phases or physics and propagation of interfaces over solution iterations as well as physical time. Finally, it is vital that these analysis algorithms also enable calculation of analytic sensitivities of these evolving environments with respect to inputs of interest, so that the analysis may be seamlessly and efficiently integrated with optimization. The computational methods we are working on can be applied to broad range of future technology challenges including, (i) design, analysis, and optimization of multifunctional materials and associated manufacturing process based on unsteady multiphase fluid-thermal-solid simulation, (ii) development of high temperature material-thermal-fluid dynamics solvers for analysis, design, and technology assessment of hypersonic vehicles.
Recent News!
From our research group
- Dr. Ryan Seifert's paper on "Topology Optimization of Self-Sensing Nanocomposite Structures with Designed Boundary Conditions" has been accepted for publication in Smart Materials and Structures.
- Dr. Ryan Seifert's paper on "Multifunctional Topology Optimization of Strain-Sensing Nanocomposite Beam Structures" has been accepted for publication in Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.
- Harsh Sharma's paper on "Energy-preserving Variational Integrators for Forced Lagrangian Systems" has been accepted for publication in Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.