| source Caltech (X) |
level |
department Aeronautics (X) |
Open to suitably qualified undergraduates and first-year graduate students under the direction of the staff. Credit is based on the satisfactory completion of a substantive research report, which must be approved by the Ae 100 adviser and by the option representative.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Fundamentals of fluid mechanics. Microscopic and macroscopic properties of liquids and gases; the continuum hypothesis; review of thermodynamics; general equations of motion; kinematics; stresses; constitutive relations; vorticity, circulation; Bernoulli’s equation; potential flow; thin-airfoil theory; surface gravity waves; buoyancy-driven flows; rotating flows; viscous creeping flow; viscous boundary layers; introduction to stability and turbulence; quasi one-dimensional compressible flow; shock waves; unsteady compressible flow; acoustics. Instructors: Pullin, McKeon.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Static and dynamic stress analysis. Two- and three-dimensional theory of stressed elastic solids. Analysis of structural elements with applications in a variety of fields. Variational theorems and approximate solutions, finite elements. A variety of special topics will be discussed in the third term such as, but not limited to, elastic stability, wave propagation, and introductory fracture mechanics. Instructors: Daraio, Ravichandran.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
First term: elementary airfoil and wing theory, basic compressible flow, and performance evaluations (range, climb, turning). Second term: combustion and propulsion, with an emphasis on gas turbines, but also including propellers, ram/scramjets, PDEs, and rockets. Third term: aerodynamic stability derivatives, control surfaces, small amplitude dynamical motions, and application of classical and modern control theory to feedback control of rigid aircraft. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Lectures on experiment design and implementation. Measurement methods, transducer fundamentals, instrumentation, optical systems, signal processing, noise theory, analog and digital electronic fundamentals, with data acquisition and processing systems. Experiments (second and third terms) in solid and fluid mechanics with emphasis on current research methods. Instructor: Dabiri.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Part a: fundamentals of aerospace engineering and mechanics, launch vehicles and systems, rocket and space propulsion fundamentals, orbital mechanics and astrodynamics, trajectory and orbit design and maintenance, launch ascent and planetary reentry aerodynamics. Part b: spacecraft mechanical, structural, and thermal design; power in space; space environment and survivability; spacecraft and payload design; communications. Part c: space mission analysis and design, space logistics and reliability, mission and life-cycle cost analysis, and space systems integration. Student team projects focusing on a mission design study during third term. Instructors: Pellegrino, Davis, Quadrelli.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Civil Engineering.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
This course will survey all aspects of modern spacecraft navigation, including astrodynamics, tracking systems for both low-Earth and deep-space applications (including the Global Positioning System and the Deep Space Network observables), and the statistical orbit determination problem (in both the batch and sequential Kalman filter implementations). The course will describe some of the scientific applications directly derived from precision orbital knowledge, such as planetary gravity field and topography modeling. Numerous examples drawn from actual missions as navigated at JPL will be discussed. Instructor: Watkins.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
The course will cover thermodynamics of pure substances and mixtures, equations of state, chemical equilibrium, chemical kinetics, combustion chemistry, transport phenomena, and the governing equations for multicomponent gas mixtures. Topics will be chosen from non-premixed and premixed flames, the fluid mechanics of laminar flames, flame mechanisms of combustion-generated pollutants, and numerical simulations of multicomponent reacting flows. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Modern aspects of rocket, electrical, and nuclear propulsion systems and the principles of their application to lifting, ballistic, and spaceflight trajectories. Combustion and burning characteristics of solid and liquid propellants, liquid-propellant fuel systems, and combustion instability. Fundamentals of electric propulsion including ion thrusters, MHD, Hall effect, and arcjets. Introduction to spacecraft station-keeping, stability, and control. Instructor: Polk.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
This course presents the fundamentals of modern systems engineering, spacecraft design methods, and space trajectories and mission engineering. The theory and application of the following topics are addressed: systems engineering principles and methods, space trajectories and mission design, spacecraft attitude determination and control systems, rocket propulsion systems, avionics, spacecraft mechanical design, spacecraft thermal design, telecommunications theory and link analysis. Ae/CDS 125 a, b: spacecraft and mission design lectures and problems selected by the instructor. Ae/CDS 125 b, c: a collaborative, computer-assisted spacecraft and mission design project in which students assume the roles of cognizant engineers. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Speakers from campus and outside research and manufacturing organizations discuss current problems and advances in aerospace engineering. Graded pass/fail. Instructor: Ravichandran.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to optical system engineering for remote sensing from space will be presented. End-to-end optical systems are discussed within the framework of the 10 scientific/technical disciplines required to build a successful system: optical engineering, physical optics of materials, solid-state physics/detectors, mechanics and mechanisms engineering, wavefront sensing and control, structures and dynamics, thermal engineering, spacecraft engineering, psychology of vision and software processing of images, and end-to-end system validation and calibration. Emphasis will be on the development of optical engineering tools. Instructor: Breckinridge.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Elements of Cartesian tensors. Configurations and motions of a body. Kinematics—study of deformations, rotations and stretches, polar decomposition. Lagrangian and Eulerian strain velocity and spin tensor fields. Irrotational motions, rigid motions. Kinetics—balance laws. Linear and angular momentum, force, traction stress. Cauchy’s theorem, properties of Cauchy’s stress. Equations of motion, equilibrium equations. Power theorem, nominal (Piola-Kirchoff) stress. Thermodynamics of bodies. Internal energy, heat flux, heat supply. Laws of thermodynamics, notions of entropy, absolute temperature. Entropy inequality (Clausius-Duhem). Examples of special classes of constitutive laws for materials without memory. Objective rates, corotational, convected rates. Principles of materials frame indifference. Examples: the isotropic Navier-Stokes fluid, the isotropic thermoelastic solid. Basics of finite differences, finite elements, and boundary integral methods, and their applications to continuum mechanics problems illustrating a variety of classes of constitutive laws. Instructor: Ortiz.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Ae.E. or Ph.D. thesis level research under the direction of the staff. A written research report must be submitted during finals week each term.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Foundations of the mechanics of real fluids. Basic concepts will be emphasized. Subjects covered will include a selection from the following topics: physical properties of real gases; the equations of motion of viscous and inviscid fluids; the dynamical significance of vorticity; vortex dynamics; exact solutions; motion at high Reynolds numbers; hydrodynamic stability; boundary layers; flow past bodies; compressible flow; subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow; shock waves. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
External and internal flow problems encountered in engineering, for which only empirical methods exist. Turbulent shear flow, separation, transition, three-dimensional and nonsteady effects. Basis of engineering practice in the design of devices such as mixers, ejectors, diffusers, and control valves. Studies of flow-induced oscillations, wind effects on structures, vehicle aerodynamics. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
A seminar course in fluid, solid, space, and bio mechanics. Weekly lectures on current developments are presented by staff members, graduate students, and visiting scientists and engineers. Graded pass/fail. Instructors: Daraio, McKeon.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Analytical and experimental techniques in the study of fracture in metallic and nonmetallic solids. Mechanics of brittle and ductile fracture; connections between the continuum descriptions of fracture and micromechanisms. Discussion of elastic-plastic fracture analysis and fracture criteria. Special topics include fracture by cleavage, void growth, rate sensitivity, crack deflection and toughening mechanisms, as well as fracture of nontraditional materials. Fatigue crack growth and life prediction techniques will also be discussed. In addition, “dynamic” stress wave dominated, failure initiation growth and arrest phenomena will be covered. This will include traditional dynamic fracture considerations as well as discussions of failure by adiabatic shear localization. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to the use of numerical methods in the solution of solid mechanics and materials problems. First term: geometrical representation of solids. Automatic meshing. Approximation theory. Interpolation error estimation. Optimal and adaptive meshing. Second term: variational principles in linear elasticity. Finite element analysis. Error estimation. Convergence. Singularities. Adaptive strategies. Constrained problems. Mixed methods. Stability and convergence. Variational problems in nonlinear elasticity. Consistent linearization. The Newton-Rahpson method. Bifurcation analysis. Adaptive strategies in nonlinear elasticity. Constrained finite deformation problems. Contact and friction. Third term: time integration. Algorithm analysis. Accuracy, stability, and convergence. Operator splitting and product formulas. Coupled problems. Impact and friction. Subcycling. Space-time methods. Inelastic solids. Constitutive updates. Stability and convergence. Consistent linearization. Applications to finite deformation viscoplasticity, viscoelasticity, and Lagrangian modeling of fluid flows. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Fundamentals of theory of wave propagation; plane waves, wave guides, dispersion relations; dynamic plasticity, adiabatic shear banding; dynamic fracture; shock waves, equation of state. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Geometry of spatial curves; finite 3-D rotations; finite deformations of curved rods; dynamics of rods; strings and cables; theory of plastic rods; statistical mechanics of chains; applications including frames and cable structures, polymers, open-cell foams, DNA mechanics, cell mechanics; small strain and von Karman theory of plates; applications to thin films, layered structures, functionally graded thin films, delamination, plastic collapse; surface geometry; finite deformations of shells; dynamics of plates and shells; membranes; theory of plastic plates and shells; fracture of plates and shells; elastic and plastic stability; wrinkling and relaxation; applications including solar sails, space structures, closed-cell foams, biological membranes; numerical methods for structural analysis; discrete geometry; finite elements for rods, plates and shells; time-integration methods; thermal analysis. Instructor: Pellegrino.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
This course examines the links between form, geometric shape, and structural performance. It deals with different ways of breaking up a continuum, and how this affects global structural properties; structural concepts and preliminary design methods that are used in tension structures and deployable structures. Geometric foundations, polyhedra and tessellations, surfaces; space frames, examples of space frames, stiffness and structural efficiency of frames with different repeating units; sandwich plates; cable and membrane structures, form-finding, wrinkle-free pneumatic domes, balloons, tension-stabilized struts, tensegrity domes; deployable and adaptive structures, coiled rods and their applications, flexible shells, membranes, structural mechanisms, actuators, concepts for adaptive trusses and manipulators. Instructor: Pellegrino.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Theory of dislocations in crystalline media. Characteristics of dislocations and their influence on the mechanical behavior in various crystal structures. Application of dislocation theory to single and polycrystal plasticity. Theory of the inelastic behavior of materials with negligible time effects. Experimental background for metals and fundamental postulates for plastic stress-strain relations. Variational principles for incremental elastic-plastic problems, uniqueness. Upper and lower bound theorems of limit analysis and shakedown. Slip line theory and applications. Additional topics may include soils, creep and rate-sensitive effects in metals, the thermodynamics of plastic deformation, and experimental methods in plasticity. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page
Subject matter will change from term to term depending upon staff and student interest but may include such topics as structural dynamics; aeroelasticity; thermal stress; mechanics of inelastic and composite materials; and nonlinear problems. Instructor: Staff.
Score: 11.446765 Details | Listing | Web page