Visiting professor will present on non-conventional composite laminates Visiting professor will present on non-conventional composite laminates

WSU's National Institute for Aviation Research will host Zafer Gurdal, professor and Ronald E. McNair endowed chair for the University of South Carolina's McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research. Gurdal will present for the public on "Design, Optimization, and Fabrication of Nonconventional Composite Laminates: Steered Fiber Laminates with Automated Fiber Placement" at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4, in 307 NIAR.

The presentation will include a brief introduction non-conventional laminates, and will demonstrate their advantages through analysis and test results. Gurdal will also introduce a new multi-step design methodology that allows design optimization of large scale composite parts with large number of discrete orientation angles. The new methodology makes use of lamination parameters, which provide a simple way of representing the stiffness properties of a multi-layered laminate with only a few variables.

While at WSU, Gurdal will meet with WSU administration and researchers, including Tony Vizzini, vice president for academic affairs; John Tomblin, interim vice president for research and technology transfer and executive director of NIAR, and Waruna Seneviratne, technical director and research scientist at NIAR. The group will discuss collaborative opportunities.

The University of South Carolina and WSU are both members of the National Science Foundations' Center for Friction Stir Processing.