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Chair's Distinguished Lecture Series - Air Platforms Needed by the United States Air Force in the 21st Century

Dr. Ravinder Chona, USAF Senior Scientist & Director, Structural Sciences Center
Thursday, March 14, 2019
4:00-5:30 PM
Boeing Lecture Hall Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Map
Dr. Ravi Chona
USAF Senior Scientist & Director, Structural Sciences Center
Air Force Research Laboratory, Aerospace Systems Directorate, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 45433

The geopolitical demands levied on today’s US Air Force call for radically new mission capabilities very different from those that have served our nation so well in projecting US airpower since the end of World War II. These range from platforms that can “go-high, go-far, go-fast” and do this on-demand, to platforms whose planned in-service life and design characteristics are more akin to commodity products like automobiles, flat-panel TVs, or domestic appliances like dishwashers or clothes dryers. This talk will enumerate some of the key technical challenges from an air platform designer’s perspective and will detail ongoing efforts within the US Air Force Research Laboratory, amongst its academic partners, and by the US aerospace industrial base, that are vectored towards making these very different capabilities a part of the US Air Force’s fleet in the decades ahead.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Ravi Chona, a member of the Senior Scientific & Professional Service of the United States of America, is the US Air Force Senior Scientist for Structures, a Department of Defense senior technical leadership position he was recruited to in 2003. In 2005 he established the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Structural Sciences Center and serves as its Director. He is charged with ensuring that the US Air Force possesses the cutting-edge aero-structural solutions essential to fielding revolutionary air and space platforms, that can, in turn, assure the air dominance required by the national security and strategic needs of the United States. Previously, he was a member of the Mechanical Engineering Faculty (1987-2003) and the Director of the Institute for Innovation and Design in Engineering (1999-2003) at Texas A&M University. He earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, and enjoyed the unique privilege of having as his graduate advisor and mentor, the late Professor George R. Irwin – the founding father of engineering fracture mechanics.

Dr. Chona’s professional contributions have been recognized via: NSF-Presidential Young Investigator Award (1991); Select Young Faculty Award (1992) and Teaching Awards at Texas A&M, Mechanical Engineering Department (1997) and College of Engineering (1998); Distinguished Alumnus Award, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland (2004); election as a Fellow of ASTM International (2000), Fellow of the ASME (2001) and Fellow of SEM (2002); the George R. Irwin Medal (2003), the Fracture Mechanics Medal (2014) and the Edward T Wessel Award (2016) from ASTM International; President, Society for Experimental Mechanics - SEM (1997-1998); Chair, ASTM International Technical Committee E08 on Fatigue & Fracture (2006-2011); Member, the National Academies’ US National Committee on Theoretical & Applied Mechanics (2001-2009); Member, Executive Board of ICF: The International Congress on Fracture (2009-present); multiple Editorial Board Memberships; and US National Delegate to the International Committee on Aeronautical Fatigue & Structural Integrity - ICAF (2005-present). He is one of a select few of the 7,500+ career senior civilian leaders in the Executive Branch of the US Government that has been honored through a Presidential Meritorious Senior Professional Award and has the extremely rare distinction of having received this recognition on two separate occasions (2010; 2016).
Building: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Event Type: Presentation
Tags: Engineering
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Aerospace Engineering