Guruswami (Ravi) Ravichandran: Engineering with Impact

Impact events have awesome power - they have shaped planets and wiped out dinosaurs. This talk will examine how we can use this power for engineering, and how we can engineer structures to mitigate against impact. At the heart of impact events is the propagation of stress/shock waves. Experimental techniques to study dynamic events resulting in high pressures (millions of atmospheres) and lasting millionths of a second will be discussed, along with our efforts to understand material properties under such extreme conditions and their utility in synthesizing unique new materials and designing protective structures.

Guruswami (Ravi) Ravichandran is the John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Director, Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at Caltech.

Learn More: http://ravi.caltech.edu/

Presented By: Caltech Committee on Institute Programs