Spring 2018 Seminar Series
Prof. Joseph C (Joe) Majdalani, PhD, PE
Prof. Joseph C (Joe) Majdalani, PhD, PE
Professor & Francis Chair
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Auburn University, Auburn, AL
ABSTRACT: This talk will touch upon different research and educational initiatives that have been shown to be effective at promoting faculty and student success and development. These include wisely investing in both traditional and short courses that help to attract students and professionals, engaging students and alumni in recruitment opportunities, increasing the department’s footprint through global outreach, and remaining on the outlook for emerging specializations.
It also includes enhancing classroom experiences, facilitating publications and award captures, widening revenue sources, extending internal reward incentives to faculty, students, and staff, bolstering the department’s presence at regional and national meetings, cultivating enduring relations with sponsors, embellishing the department’s online image, attracting competitive students, engaging alumni in departmental activities and ownership, promoting STEM outreach, supporting hands-on student-centered design experiences, and developing synergistic partnerships with industry and research organizations.
These strategies also entail celebrating both individual and group achievements, promoting camaraderie, and remaining adaptable and responsive to the needs of the faculty, students, and staff with the same level of objectivity and passion that is owed to the upper administration.
The research component of this talk will focus on the effective use of computational tools hand-in-hand with advanced mathematical concepts to enhance the performance and stability of several swirl-driven engine concepts.
Bio:Dr. Majdalani presently serves as Professor and Francis Chair in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University. He also served as Auburn Alumni Endowed Professor and Department Chair (2013-2016) as well as Arnold Chair of Excellence in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee (2003-2013). Between 1997 and 2003, he served as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Marquette University. Dr. Majdalani is known for his work on acoustic instability theory and vortex-driven rocket engine technology. He is presently a Fellow of ASME, Associate Fellow of AIAA, Chair of the Solid Rockets Technical Committee (2017-2019), Associate Editor of the International Journal of Energetic Materials and Chemical Propulsion, and AIAA Short Course Instructor. Dr. Majdalani’s research interests span rocket engine design and optimization, rocket internal ballistics, vorticity dynamics, computational mathematics, biological fluids, and singular perturbation theory. His research activities since 1997 have materialized in over 270 publications. His work on helical flow modeling has led to the discovery of new Trkalian and Beltramian families of solutions to describe cyclonic motions in self-cooled liquid and hybrid rocket engines. These have paved the way to understand and optimize a family of cyclonically-driven hybrid and liquid rocket engines. His work on wave propagation has resulted in the development of a generalized-scaling technique in perturbation theory, and of a consistently compressible framework for capturing both vorticoacoustic and biglobal stability waves in simulated combustors. These have led to a new framework for modeling combustion instability in rocket systems. Recently, his work on compressible gas motions has given rise to a systematic procedure for modeling high speed flow problems. In fact, a total of eighteen dimensionless parameters have been newly identified in the course of his research investigations. Dr. Majdalani holds B.E., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering.