April 11, 2006

Joint Student Chapter Night and
Trustee Night

5:30 Social Hour

6:30 - 7:30 Dinner

7:30 - Speaker : Dr. G. Song

Dr. G. Song is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and an NSF CAREER grant recipient of 2001. Dr. Song received his Ph.D. and MS degrees from the department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University in the City of New York in 1995 and 1991, respectively. Dr. Song received his B.S. degree in 1989 from Zhejing University, P.R.China. He has expertise in smart materials and structures. He has developed two new courses in smart materials and published more than 140 papers, including 48 peer reviewed journal articles. Dr. Song is also a co-inventor of a US patent. He has received research funding in smart materials from NSF, NASA, OSGC (Ohio Space Grant Consortium), OAI (Ohio Aerospace Institute), and ODoT (Ohio Department of Transportation).

April's Meeting at University of Houston

Hilton College - CHC—Building 590 for map and driving instructions.

Click here for Reservations

The State-of-the-Art of Smart Materials and Their Applications

Gangbing Song, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-4006

Tel: (713) 743-4525
Fax: (713) 743-4503
Email: gsong@uh.edu

The talk will give a state-of-the-art review of smart materials and structures and their applications. Smart materials and structures is an emerging technology that has been cited by Scientific American as one of the "key technologies for the 21st Century". Smart materials refer to the materials that are "responsive". Often the response is the conversion of one form of energy into another in useful quantities. For example, piezoelectric ceramic material will generate voltage when it is subjected to strains. Commonly used smart materials include piezoelectric ceramics, shape memory alloy, magneto-rheological or MR fluids, electro-rheological or ER fluids, and fiber Bragg Grating optics.

This talk will initially introduce the basic knowledge of piezoelectric ceramics, shape memory alloy, MR fluids, and fiber Bragg Grating optics. The talk will lastly review the state-of-the-art in the development and applications of smart materials and structures in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and bio-medical engineering. Results from the speaker’s group will also be included.