Morphing Aerospace Vehicles and Structures

Morphing Aerospace Vehicles and Structures provides a highly timely presentation of the state-of-the-art, future directions and technical requirements of morphing aircraft. Divided into three sections it addresses morphing aircraft, bio-inspiration, and smart structures with specific focus on the flight control, aerodynamics, bio-mechanics, materials, and structures of these vehicles as well as power requirements and the use of advanced piezo materials and smart actuators. The tutorial approach adopted by the contributors, including underlying concepts and mathematical formulations, unifies the methodologies and tools required to provide practicing engineers and applied researchers with the insight to synthesize morphing air vehicles and morphing structures, as well as offering direction for future research.

John Valasek, Texas A&M University, USA
John Valasek is Associate Professor and Director of the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory within the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University. He has been actively conducting flight mechanics and controls research of Manned and Unmanned Air Vehicles in both Industry and Academia for 25 years. He was previously a Flight Control Engineer for the Northrop Corporation, Aircraft Division. He has published over 100 peer reviewed articles, and is co-inventor on a patent for autonomous air refueling of unmanned air vehicles. His research is currently focused on bridging the gap between traditional computer science topics and aerospace engineering topics, encompassing machine learning and multi-agent systems, intelligent autonomous control, vision based navigation systems, fault tolerant adaptive control, and cockpit systems and displays.?He teaches courses in Atmospheric Flight Mechanics, Digital Flight Control Systems, Vehicle Management Systems, Cockpit Systems & Displays, and Aircraft Design.