Adam Baker
(Advisor: Prof. Dimitri Mavris]

will propose a doctoral thesis entitled,

Characterization and Maturation of Structural Technologies Through Uncertainty Analysis

On

Friday, March 31 at 8 am EDT
Weber Space Science and Technology Building, Room 304

Click here to join the meeting

Abstract
One of the biggest challenges in the development of complex systems is the selection of technologies that will be incorporated into the system design. The technology selection process must occur early in the design process since the included technologies will enable many of the program or system goals. The development programs for these systems can span upwards of a decade, so less mature technologies are often selected that will be developed alongside the system and reach full maturity by product deployment.  This can maximize the system’s performance advantage over the state of the art once the system reaches production, but also creates risk in the program if the technology does not meet the projected performance or schedule. The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) is the common scale used across many industries to relate information about the status of a technology under development. The TRL definitions are currently founded on which specific benchmark demonstrations the technology has successfully completed. This scale has been criticized for its inability to capture the effort required to advance between TRLs and for its inability to specify what aspects of a technology are holding back its development.

The purpose of this research is to develop a methodology that will reframe the technology development process to be defined based on uncertainty instead of benchmark testing. The methodology created as a part of this research will outline the necessary steps for evaluating the readiness of a technology based on uncertainty, determining the critical sources of uncertainty in the technology, and designing potential experimental plans that can address these uncertainties and advance the readiness of a technology. This requires creating a baseline representation of uncertainty in a technology, identifying how these uncertainties impact the system of interest, and finally showing how these uncertainties can be addressed through testing. This common thread of uncertainty throughout the development process creates traceability within the process and generates actionable data at every step. 

Committee

• Prof. Dimitri Mavris – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
• Prof. Graeme J. Kennedy – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. Christos E. Athanasiou – School of Aerospace Engineering
• Prof. David Goldsman – School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Dr. Burak Bagdatli – School of Aerospace Engineering