Irvine, Calif., May 27, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science has awarded funding to two University of California, Irvine scientists under its DOE Early Career Research Program. Mohammad Abdolhosseini Qomi, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Penghui Cao, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, were among 83 researchers selected from university and national laboratory applicants to receive the research awards.
Tag: mechanical and aerospace engineering

UCI-led team creates new ultralightweight, crush-resistant tensegrity metamaterials
Irvine, Calif., March 11, 2021 – Catastrophic collapse of materials and structures is the inevitable consequence of a chain reaction of locally confined damage – from solid ceramics that snap after the development of a small crack to metal space trusses that give way after the warping of a single strut. In a study published this week in Advanced Materials, engineers at the University of California, Irvine and the Georgia Institute of Technology describe the creation of a new class of mechanical metamaterials that delocalize deformations to prevent failure.
Undulating flight saves Monarchs energy, says UAH study with drone implications
In a finding that could benefit drone design, award-winning research by a doctoral student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) shows that the undulating flight paths of Monarch butterflies are actually more energy efficient than a straight-line path.
UAH Space Hardware Club’s liquid fuel rocket readies for inaugural engine test
The new year brings new tests for an ambitious liquid propellant rocket being engineered by the Space Hardware Club (SHC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

UAH modeling the spacecraft for NASA’s nuclear thermal propulsion idea
NASA has a research grant with The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) to model how a spacecraft might be engineered to work with nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), en route to an eventual test flight.

These new soft actuators could make soft robots less bulky
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a way to build soft robots that are compact, portable and multifunctional. The advance was made possible by creating soft, tubular actuators whose movements are electrically controlled, which makes them easy to integrate with small electronic components. As a proof of concept, engineers used these new actuators to build a soft, untethered, battery-powered, walking robot and a soft gripper.