NONLINEAR DYNAMICS OF COUPLED STRUCTURES AND INTERFACES 2018

The Nonlinear Dynamics of Coupled Structures and Interfaces (NDCSI) summer school 2018 is currently taking place in the Dynamics Group at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Imperial College London. It brings a group of 18 international PhD students from 13 different EU and US universities together to establish a collaborative research network and solve four challenging research questions in the field of nonlinear dynamics.

This year’s summer school is the 5th iteration of the event, and it is the first time that it is being held in Europe, after four previous occurrences in the US. The main aim of NDCSI is to “bring together students and scholars to spend focused collaborative time on non-linear dynamics and mechanics problems that are of general professional community interest to accelerate advancements in the field” and to “form enduring collaborations among the participants that will enable a foundation for broader sustained work in the relevant areas”. More than 70 research students have so far participated in the events, helping to establish new research collaborations, addressing challenging research questions, and leading to a range of publications.

This year’s summer school is collaboratively organised by Christoph Schwingshackl (Mechanical Engineering – Imperial College London) with the help of Matthew Brake (Rice University) and Malte Krack (Universität Stuttgart). A major financial contribution from Rolls-Royce Plc., support from Photron, Altair and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, and a close collaboration with the EU sponsored European Training Network EXPERTISE, enabled the participation of 18 PhD students. The international nature of the participants (10 nationalities) and the wide range of participating Universities (13 institutions from US and EU) make this year’s institute a truly global event, leading to an excellent opportunity for the participants to get in contact with different ideas, share their knowledge and work together on new research problems.

Over the period of six weeks four research teams will be formed to tackle challenging research issues such as the (i) impact of wear on the dynamic joint behaviour, (ii) a comparison of different numerical methods for fiction damping, (iii) the development of full-field measurement system to study dynamic joint motion, and (iv) the introduction of a realistic test case to predict joint dynamics.

The outcome of the research will be presented at a public “mini showcase” event on the 9th August in the Mechanical Engineering department. For further information please visit https://www.imperial.ac.uk/dynamics/nd-csi-2018/ or contact c.schwingshack@imperial.ac.uk