Teaching Activities: Prof. Nikhil A. Koratkar

 

Teaching

           

            A.  Courses

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                       

          Term  Number                                Course Title                                                        # Students     IDEA Rating (Max 5.0)     

                                                                                                                                                    

           Fall 08              MANE 4200       Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 15                 4.9            

           Spring 08          MANE 4920       Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           70                 4.2                           

           Spring 08          MANE 4860       Introduction to Helicopter Design                                    20                 4.4

       

           Fall 07              MANE 4200       Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 20                  4.3           

           Spring 07          MANE 4920       Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           65                  4.1           

           Spring 07          MANE 4860       Introduction to Helicopter Design                                    13                  4.6              

                       

          Fall 06             MANE 4200         Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 18                  4.6

          Spring 06         MANE 4920         Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           62                  4.4           

                       

          Spring 05         MANE 4920         Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           24                  4.5                           

          Spring 05         MANE 4860        Introduction to Helicopter Design                                    17                  4.7              

          Fall 04            MANE 4200         Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 10                  5.0           

          Fall 04               MANE 6060      Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 1                    5.0           

          Spring 04         MANE 4920       Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                            32                  3.9           

          Fall 03             MANE 4200         Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 5                    5.0

          Fall 03              MANE 6060        Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 2

          Spring 03         MANE 4920         Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           30                  3.5

          Spring 03         MANE 4860         Introduction to Helicopter Design                                    8                    5.0              

          Fall 02             MANE 4200         Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 5                    5.0              

          Fall 02           MANE 6060           Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 1                    4.0              

 

         Spring 02            MANE 4920       Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           16                  3.3              

         Spring 02            MANE 4230       Fixed Wing Aircraft Design                                              15                  3.0              

         Fall 01                MANE 4200       Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 4                    4.0                                   

         Fall 01                MANE 6060       Rotorcraft Performance, Stability and Control                 1

         Spring 01            MANE 4920       Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab                           14                  2.9             

                                                                                                                                                      

 

 

            B.  Student Thesis Supervision

 

1.      Thesis In Progress

 

 

(1)   Rahul Krishnan, “Nanocompliant silicon anodes for high performance Li-ion batteries”, Started August (2008).

 

(2)   Velibor Peric, “Damage tolerant hybrid nano-composites”, Started June (2008).

            

(3)     Iti Srivastava, “Gas and liquid chromatography using carbon nanotubes as the stationary phase”, Started December (2007).

 

(4)          Ranganath Teki, “Nanorod structures in energy conversion applications”, Started May (2005).

 

(5)          Keyan Raifee, “Fracture and Fatigue in Graphene/Polymer Composites”, Started Aug (2009).

 

 

 

 

2.      Thesis Completed

 

            a.  Masters (Graduated 5 Masters Students)

 

(1)   Andrew Proper, (2008), “Structural health monitoring in composites using carbon nanotube sensor networks”

 

(2)      Jeremy Nelson, (2004), “Flow control strategies for improvement of micro-air-vehicle performance”

 

(3)     Sameer Kulkarni, (2004), “Applications of carbon nanotubes in sensing”

 

(4)      Eric Lass, (2003) “Effect of temperature on the resistivity of aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube films”

 

(5)     Ashish Modi, (2003) “Miniaturized gas ionization sensors using carbon nanotubes”

 

b.  Doctoral (Graduated 6 Ph.D. Students)

 

(1)     Zuankai Wang (2008) “Wetting and interfacial phenomena at micro and nanoscales”, Zuankai is a post-doctoral scientist at   

         Columbia University.

 

                              (2)     Seongyul Kim, (2008) “Fundamental study of field-induced gas and water dissociation near nanostructured electrodes”,  Kim

                                       works for Samsung in Korea.

 

                              (3)      Wei Zhang, (2008) “Advanced multifunctional composites featuring carbon nanotube additives”. Wei has joined GE global

                                        research in Niskayuna, NY.

 

(4)     Li Chen, (2008) “Field induced adsorption/desorption of gas species to the surfaces of carbon nanotubes”. Li is applying for faculty positions.

 

(5)     Jonghwan Suhr, (2005) “Energy dissipation mechanisms in carbon nanotube polymer composites”. Jonghwan is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada at Reno.

 

(6)      Jongmin Kim, (2004) “Flow control strategies for improved aerodynamic efficiency of micro-rotorcraft”. Jongmin works for

                                      Samsung in Korea.

 

 

                  3.   Doctoral Thesis Committee Member

                              (1)     Hyungdae Lee (Advisor: Dr. C. James Li)                  

                              (2)     Shin Hyeongceol (Advisor: Dr. C. James Li)

                              (3)     Stanley Orr (Advisor: Dr. P. Hajela)

                              (4)     Varun Sakalkar (Advisor: P. Hajela)

                              (5)     Anoop Mullur (Advisor: Dr A. Messac)

                              (6)     Ritesh Khire (Advisor: Dr. A. Messac)

                              (7)     Su Zhao (Advisor: Dr. L. Schadler)

                              (8)     Renee Duncan (Dr. L. Schadler)

                              (9)     Amit Joshi (Dr. R. Kane)

                              (10)   Sumanjit Kaur (Dr. R. Kane)

                              (11)   Sandeep Razdan (Dr. P. Ajayan)

                              (12)   Claudiu Hapenciuc (Dr. T. Borca-Tasciuc)

                              (13)   Sunil Pal (Dr. T. Borca-Tasciuc)

                              (14)   Tom Parker (Dr. Toh-Ming Lu)

           

4.  Post doctoral students

 

(1)     Jonghwan Suhr, “Nanoscale ionization detector for bio-sensing”,  

         September (2005) to May (2006).

 

(2)    Juntaek Ryoo, “Modeling the mechanical properties of singlewalled carbon

        nanotubes using cellular automata”, January (2002) to May (2003).

 

 

C.     Course and Curriculum Development

 

MANE 4920 – Aerospace Structures and Controls Lab

Offered Spring 2001-2008.

          A new lab was developed by Koratkar in spring 2001. The primary emphasis of the lab was on experiments related to lightweight structures, structural dynamics, and control as it applies to aircraft, spacecraft and rotorcraft. Experiments include tensile testing of aerospace materials, elastic instability investigations of columns, bending and torsion response of thin walled box-beams and structural vibrations of cantilevered Euler-Bernoulli beams.                           

 

MANE 4200 – Rotorcraft Performance Stability & Control 

Offered Fall 2001-2008

MANE 6060 – Rotorcraft Performance Stability & Control 

Offered Fall 2001-2008

          The existing course content was upgraded with new materials. These included advanced topics such as: unsteady aerodynamics and dynamic stall, rotor wake structure modeling and rotorcraft vibration and acoustics. Student “seminars” were also incorporated into the curriculum to enhance student participation and involvement in the learning process.

         To bridge the gap between theory and hands-on experience and provide students with greater confidence in the capabilities as well as the limitations of conventional modeling and design tools a “laboratory experiment” was added to the curriculum. The students were asked to test a micro-rotor system at different rotor speeds and blade collective pitch settings. Both conventional untwisted, rectangular planform blades as well as advanced geometry rotor blades were tested. The rotor thrust, induced power, profile power and figure of merit were experimentally measured and compared with the predictions of blade-element momentum theory in hover. The experiments served to highlight the rationale behind several key design choices that are central to helicopter main rotor design: such as choice of number of blades, airfoil section, blade radius, aspect ratio, operating RPM, solidity, disk loading, as well as the optimal blade twist/taper distributions.

 

MANE 4860 – Introduction to Helicopter Design

Offered Spring 02, 03, 05, 07 and 08.

         The helicopter design class provides a system level capstone design experience for students specializing in vertical flight technology. As instructor for capstone design, Koratkar has served as faculty advisor to a series of RPI student design teams that have competed in the annual AHS/Industry/NASA helicopter design competition. In spring 2002 semester, four aerospace engineering seniors (Nate Gray, Sam Butler, Jason Anger and Joseph Gillman) taking this class competed in and won 1st place in the 19th Annual AHS/Industry/NASA student design condition in the undergraduate category. In 2003, an 8-member RPI team again participated in this competition and won 2nd place in the undergraduate category. In 2005, as part of MANE 4860 Koratkar advised two separate 5-member RPI teams (Wyver and Titan) that participated in the AHS design contest. Both RPI teams excelled in the competition. The Wyver team (Raisul Haque, Rafael Irizarry, Heather Maffei, Robin Chin and Trevor Tersmette) won 1st place (undergraduate category) while the Titan team came in third.

 

 

D.     Education and Outreach

       Koratkar has served as Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation sponsored Nanoscale Undergraduate Education project. This project was initiated in the Fall of 2003 and aims to introduce undergraduate students to nanoscale science and technology. Under this project, Koratkar has developed a series of interactive learning modules (or virtual labs) that allows students to construct simple devices using carbon nanotube electrodes and apply these devices for mechanical and chemical sensing.

         These virtual labs offer a multimedia-based dynamic tutorial unit that provides the background necessary to understand the key concepts along with an interactive simulation that gives the student an opportunity to set-up, perform, observe/monitor and control experiments and operations. The virtual labs were developed in collaboration with Dr. Don Millard (Director, Academy of Electronic Media) and were integrated into MANE 4920 (aerospace structures and controls lab) and one section of ENGR 1600 (chemistry of materials).

 

           At the completion of the Spring 2004 semester, the students were provided an evaluation form and asked to self-assess the impact of the new learning/educational materials. A total of 31 students taking MANE 4920 (structures and controls Lab) and 25 students taking ENGR 1600 (chemistry of materials) responded to the survey. The results of the survey were encouraging; an overwhelming 90.32% of the respondents for MANE 4920 felt that the nanotechnology module had a positive impact on learning and should be retained as part of the course. Similarly 80% of the respondents for ENGR 1600 felt that the new nanotechnology learning materials had a positive impact on learning.

         Koratkar is disseminating the interactive modules developed in the NSF project to high school students in collaboration with Ms. Tammie Borland, a teacher with the New Visions program. Every year Koratkar gives a detailed presentation of the interactive modules to New Visions students at the invitation of Ms. Borland. The collaboration between New Visions and Koratkar’s Lab also includes coordinated activities between high school students and graduate researchers.

 

 

 

 

Back