Acoustics + Manufacturing, and Finding Solutions

Working in the convergence between acoustics and manufacturing, Luz Sotelo leads a Purdue team that aims to find solutions that are accessible, fast to manufacture and characterize, and easily translated to applications of need — which may be in aerospace, transportation, energy, defense, and space exploration.

Transcript

00:00:00 My name is Luz Sotelo, I'm an assistant professor  at the school of mechanical engineering at Purdue   University, and I work in the convergence between  Acoustics and Manufacturing. Additive and hybrid   manufacturing have really enhanced the design  space for engineering. But we still have that   question of, how do we make sure that what we've  built, what we printed, what we've put together,   is actually going to perform as we designed it  to perform. So what we do is we take acoustics   and ultrasonic tools to be able to measure those  kind of properties in a non-destructive manner,   so without destroying the part. And this is  very powerful because that means that we can   then measure these properties for every part that  we build, both while we're building it and after   it is made, and while it's in service, without  having to destroy it. And we can answer in this   way questions like, what is the stiffness of the  part? What is the damping of that part? What is  

00:00:56 its microstructure? Are there any defects? That  means that we can then understand the mechanical   parts that are going on our trains, on our  airplanes, on our turbines. In a similar manner,   that is also very powerful for acoustics, because  it enables the creation of acoustic metamaterials   that we can then use to control our acoustic sound  beams, so use specific materials and geometries   for noise control. We use acoustics to help  manufacturing, and we use manufacturing to help   acoustics. So we have the advantage here at Purdue  that we have world-class facilities, such as the   machine behind me, that can do multiple materials,  multiple processes at the same time. So this is a   laser system that also has a milling center, and  enables hybrid processing of metal parts, enabling   rapid manufacturing and characterization at the  point of need, and making it accessible for all   of our users. Our team is a very hands-on team, in  terms of, we work a lot with experimentation, but  

00:01:55 we also need those strong fundamentals in terms  of your analytical modeling and your numerical   modeling as well. Another thing that is very  important for us is the ability to collaborate,   because we're working on very difficult  problems that require many types of expertise,   and that's something that is really cool here at  Purdue, because we're able to work with experts   on all kinds of different fields, to really be  able to tackle those big difficult problems.