Vakakis visits Institute of Aircraft Propulsion

MechSE’s Donald Biggar Willett Professor Alex Vakakis visited Professor Malte Krack’s structural mechanics group at the Institute of Aircraft Propulsion at the University of Stuttgart again in May.

Vakakis had made a visit to the university in 2020 and 2021 as part of his renowned Humboldt Research Award. Since then, the close collaboration between Vakakis’ and Krack’s groups has resulted in four joint journal papers. As a Mercator Fellow, Vakakis is also supervising a project funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). As part of this project, a student from Stuttgart visited Vakakis at Illinois for six months last year to work on his master’s thesis.

Vakakis’ recent visit began with a presentation of the research topics of Krack’s structural mechanics group and a subsequent tour of the laboratories there. While Vakakis has spent his long career focusing on the formulation of fundamental theories and pioneering concepts, Krack’s group covers topics ranging from basic research on the development of numerical and experimental methods to application-oriented research in collaboration with industry. These areas complement each other and the collaboration of the research groups has the potential for transformative advances in nonlinear structural dynamics.

As a highlight of his visit, Vakakis gave a seminar presentation on “Engineering Intentional Nonlinearity in Dynamics, Vibrations and Acoustics.” Here he presented a broad selection of his own research topics, which he has worked on with his current and former doctoral students.

The mutual input led to a lively exchange of new ideas between Vakakis, Krack and colleagues. On the last day, Vakakis and Krack both emphasized how successful the visit was for the further planned collaboration between the research groups.