Aerospace assistant professor awarded NSF grant to study high-speed impacts on materials

High speed impacts occur often in the aerospace and defense industries–from a bird striking an airplane to a micrometeorite colliding with a satellite. Understanding how materials such as plastics, metals and ceramics that make up airplanes and satellites respond to high-speed impacts can help engineers to design strong, lightweight and impact-resistant structures. Traditionally, high-speed impact behavior has been studied using one of two methodologies, and each is limiting in its own way. One tries to study the problem exclusively at the atomic scale. The other studies the problem at the meter scale.

An Auburn assistant professor of aerospace engineering is proposing to evaluate the problem looking at both the atomic scale and the meter scale. Vinamra Agrawal has been awarded a 3-year, $408,000 National Science Foundation grant for the project titled “Concurrent multiscale moving-window scheme for shock wave propagation and microstructural interaction.”

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