MMAE Seminar Series: Matthew McCrink

The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering presents their spring 2024 seminar series featuring guest speaker Matthew McCrink, a research assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University, who will present, “From Fundamental to Flight Test.” This seminar is open to the public and will take place on Thursday, March 28, 2024, from 12:45–1:45 p.m. in room 104 of the Rettaliata Engineering Center.

Abstract

This seminar will present the latest developments for Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) at The Ohio State University’s Aerospace Research Center. This presentation will attempt to demonstrate bridging the gap between fundamental aerodynamic investigations, such as low-Reynolds number flow physics, and on-vehicle performance measurements for multirotor and fixed-wing vehicle designs. Specific emphasis will be placed on extracting physics-based models from flight test which provide insight into the aerodynamic performance of either individual components (such as rotor blades) or the full-scale vehicle. This will include recent developments in both time and frequency domain system identification techniques, and model-form extraction from flight test. Vignettes of several ongoing research projects which leverage these models will be presented. Building from vehicle-based programs, broader UAS integration challenges will be discussed in the context of developing a novel low-altitude Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) system providing autonomous deconfliction of UAS and crewed aircraft in complex urban environments.

Biography

Matthew H. McCrink is a research assistant professor at The Ohio State University. He received his doctorate in 2015 from The Ohio State University in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Boise State University in mechanical engineering in 2007 and 2002, respectively. McCrink’s research interests include uncrewed flight vehicle design and testing. This broad field includes a focus on embedded systems and sensor design and vehicle state estimation and control. Through the course of his work, McCrink has designed, built, and tested one full-scale aircraft and 47 unique unmanned aerial vehicles. He recently set the official world speed and distance record for an autonomous unmanned aircraft in 2018, using a turbojet powered UAS with custom avionics designed, fabricated, and flight-tested at The Ohio State University. In addition to this work, he has designed and built numerous small-scale inertial navigation and air-data systems used for unmanned, full-scale, and rocket vehicle analysis. He is currently serving as Ohio State’s program lead for the ASSURE FAA Center of Excellence focused on integration of UAS into the NAS.