Historical overview
An Old Chair - A New Face
Aerospace Structures and Computational Mechanics
Historical Perspective:
The name may have originally been different and may have been changed over the years (Structures, Structures Strength and Vibrations, Structures and Computational Mechanics) but the Aerospace Structures Chair is one of the two oldest Chairs of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.
The Faculty was founded in 1946 by Prof. dr. H.J. van der Maas, who was appointed as the Aerodynamics Chair holder. He was the first aeronautics professor at Delft University, initially appointed in 1940 under the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The second aeronautics professor Prof. dr. ir. A. van der Neut, who was appointed in 1945, formed the Structures Chair. In the early years of the Faculty, Prof. dr. ir. W.T. Koiter also had a co-appointment in the Faculty along with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and established his work on stability of thin-walled structures. Prof. dr. J. Arbocz followed Prof. van de Neut in 1976 as the Structures Chair holder.
After formation of the Faculty, aircraft structural design emerged as one of the areas of emphasis. Profs. Taub and van Beek were appointed successively as the Chair holders in Structural Design of Aircraft followed by Prof. dr. A. Rothwell who was appointed in 1980. After the merger of the two Chairs in 1997 Prof. Rothwell joined the Aerospace Structures Chair. Upon Prof. Arbocz's retirement in 2001, ir. T. van Baten, who is one of the early students of Prof. van der Neut, was appointed as the acting chair holder. In the mean time Profs. Arbocz and Rothwell have enjoyed, and are still enjoying, their retirement while actively participating in the Chair's activities in research and education, respectively.
Based on the early work of Prof. van der Neut on the theory of aircraft structures and the pioneering work of Prof. Koiter on stability, the Chair has acquired a worldwide recognition in the area of theory of thin-walled structures and design optimization of aircraft structures, largely due to the efforts of Prof. Arbocz and Rothwell in their respective fields. Together with the NASA Langley Research Center the Chair has pioneered the introduction of High Fidelity Anaysis in the design of thin-walled aerospace structures.
Current Direction:
Prof. dr. Z. Gurdal was appointed in December 2003 as the Chair holder Aerospace Structures. Prof. Gurdal's background in structural optimization, established during the past 20 years throught numerous NASA and Air Force funded research projects, on design and optimization of novel structural concepts for lightweight composite structures, development of numerical methods for fast and reliable structural design optimization, and development of courses in structural and composite optimization, are an excellent match to the Chair's core strengths. Together with the scientific staff, including the two retired professors, the group has decided to advance the core strengths through expansion of its work in new areas of application.
