MMAE Seminar Series: Girguis Sedky

The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering presents their spring 2024 seminar series featuring guest speaker Girguis Sedky, a postdoctoral research associate in the Bio-inspired Adaptive Morphology lab at Princeton University, who will present, “Go with the Flow: Flow Control Strategies for Unsteady and Uncertain Environments.” This seminar is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, from 3:30–4:30 p.m. in room 104 of the Rettaliata Engineering Center.

Abstract 

Unsteady and uncertain fluid environments are ubiquitous in many engineering applications. They are particularly prominent in conventional aerospace scenarios, such as aircraft navigating stormy conditions or encountering strong crosswinds and ship air wakes. They also play a central role in emerging sectors like advanced air mobility and offshore wind energy. These environments can have severe effects, including instability in flight, structural failure, and severe losses in wind energy yield. Despite their impact, existing engineering systems struggle to respond to these unsteady flows efficiently. This challenge arises because unsteady flows exhibit time-varying characteristics across various spatial and temporal scales. Therefore, efficient operation in unsteady flows necessitates a new multi-scale, multifunctional flow control approach tailored to reflect these environments. In this talk, I will discuss the utility of this approach by describing two contrasting flow control strategies. The first strategy employs closed-loop active pitch control to mitigate lift transients induced by extreme transverse gusts, showcasing a global active control mechanism adept at counteracting large-scale flow perturbations. In the second strategy, bioinspired spatially distributed flaps are utilized to prevent stall onset at high angles of attack, demonstrating a local passive flow control response to localized flow perturbations. Throughout both examples, I will discuss the role of high-fidelity experiments in discovering the physics of highly unsteady flows, the value of classical unsteady potential flow modeling in designing robust physics-based closed-loop control strategies, and how insights from biology serve as effective blueprints for innovative flow control techniques.

Bio 

Girguis Sedky is a postdoctoral research associate in the Bio-inspired Adaptive Morphology lab at Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2022 and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Louisiana State University in 2017. His research interests include experimental unsteady aerodynamics, flow control, and bioinspired Engineering. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, the Aerospace Distinguished Alumni Scholarship, and the Dean’s 2019 Master’s Research Award. In addition to his core research area, he has collaborated and published with labs from numerous institutions including the Air force Research Laboratory/the University of Dayton, the University of Cambridge, Universidad Carlos Ⅲ de Madrid, and Istanbul Technical University.