This award supports Professor Ahmed Shabana and a graduate student of the University of Illinois at Chicago to collaborate in engineering research with Dr. Richard Schwertassek and others of the Institute of Robotics and System Dynamics of the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR.) This German organization is widely recognized as one of the premier aerospace research institutions in Europe if not the world, and the participating institute is very highly regarded for its state-of-the-art research. The US and German partners in this project are interested in computational aspects of the mechanics, mechatronics and control of constrained deformable bodies such as large scale structures intended for orbit around the earth. The goal of their research is to develop more efficient and robust methods for the dynamic analysis and control of large scale flexible systems. More specifically, they plan to develop new computer and numerical algorithms for the efficient solution of constrained deformable body dynamic equations, by taking into account the effects of mechatronics and control parameters. They intend to evaluate the effects of different linearization schemes on control system performance and develop guidelines which can be applied to identify the most useful dynamics and control methodology for a particular application. This collaboration benefits from the complementary expertise of the US group in computational mechanics and the German group in the experimental control and mechatronics of flexible systems.
