Courses

Space debris represent a real threat to the Earth orbit access and utilization. In the development and management of a space mission, it is important to focus on evaluating impact risk, the protection of spacecraft from debris impact, and the modelling of impact-induced fragmentation.
This webinar will focus on the current status and the most promising advancements in this field, introducing the best practices suggested by the scientific community and focusing on specific case studies. Attendees will learn about recent advances in catastrophic fragmentation modelling due to hypervelocity impact, impact risk assessment, spacecraft protection.

Target audience: doctoral students, non-academic professionals, and undergraduate students.

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The global composite material and structure market is a multibillion sector with continuous growth, with the aerospace, automotive, construction, marine, and wind energy industries being the big players. The drivers of the expansion are the demand for high-performance and lightweight composites due to stringent regulations towards, e.g., less polluting vehicles or save weight. Emission targets are leading to develop lighter-weight, affordable composite structures and components at higher volumes. Conversely, the reduction of manufacturing costs and the increase in processing efficiency represent some of the next decade’s challenges.

The design of composites cannot use extensions of the methodologies adopted for metals. Such a strategy may lead to oversizing, let alone the risks arising from a wrong design. Composites are more complex material systems than metals due to their multiscale nature. Brittle orthotropic fibers, ductile isotropic matrices, and soft cores coexist.  Such complexity leads to challenging predictive models. E.g., composite structures’ damage and failure mechanism is still far from reliable predictions via virtual models and needs high computational costs, precluding structural engineering calculations. Uncertainties in the models lead to safety factors and tests. Therefore, currently, the full spectrum of composites’ advantages is not exploitable, and costly experimental tests are necessary.

Other challenges may arise during the manufacturing process; in fact, composite parts are commonly subjected to high pressure and temperature cycles during which thermal/curing-induced free-strains are formed. Mismatch of these free strains at various scales, coupled with mechanical properties’ evolution, leads to residual stresses and, consequently, dimensional changes in the cured composite part. The mismatch occurs at the micro-level between constituents (i.e., fiber and matrix), at the meso-level between plies with different orientations, and at the macro-level between the part and the tool via friction and other geometrical constraints. These manufacturing-induced dimensional changes may reduce mechanical performance and pose significant challenges during the assembling of large and complex parts.

Target audience: doctoral students, non-academic professionals, and undergraduate students.

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The webinar provides an overview of recent developments in a specialized research area on aircraftimpact dynamics.
The original contributions from the authors define the state of the art in the chosen thematic area byfocusing attention on cases of industrial interest addressed to development programmes.
They give an overview of the definition of both of the field of applicability and of how the research hasproduced innovations and improvements. Improvements concern certainly materials and structures, butthey also include the ways of energy absorbing involving a greater part of the structure during theimpact.
This webinar is addressed to PhD students, experienced researchers, regulatory agencies and industryspecialists. It discusses the latest aerospace crashworthiness regulations, certification by analysismethods for aircraft, bird strike, metallic & composite structures, impact dynamics up to computationaland experimental techniques. Finally, two case studies about the aircraft seat structures and an aircraftaccident will be discussed.
Target audience: doctoral students, non-academic professionals, and undergraduate students.

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The Space Tether consists of a complex structure where there are three main parts: 1) the primary satellite; 2) a secondary satellite; 3) a cable (of variable lengths) that is used to join the two spacecraft together. This cable allows the transfer of energy and momentum between the two spacecraft, and this transfer can be present in both directions and, in some cases, can switch direction.

The Space tethers can be classified in two different areas: Passive tethers, which are used simply for mechanical connection and mainly transfer momentum from one part to the other; and Electrodynamic tethers, conductive wires or tapes or more complex structures), in which an electric current can flow and pass from one end to the other.

The simplest application involves using the tether system as a de-orbit system; a drag Force is induced on the tether due to its relative motion with respect to the rotating plasma and the satellite.

An opposite application is the injection of electric current from one satellite and has an effect opposite to the de-orbiting; this effect can be used to increase the SMA of the system or produce movements in the orbital plane.

The Electrodynamic tether is a system that can act as an orbital control for small and relatively big structures (depending on the tether length and on the produced current).

Even if the tethers’ dynamics (passive or electrodynamic) are complex and not at all completely understood, the current knowledge in materials and technology is bridging the gap between theory and extensive application in current Space missions.

Learning objectives: dynamics of tethers; bare and electrodynamic differences; space mission possibilities.

Target audience: doctoral students, non-academic professionals, and undergraduate students.

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The main instruments for the development and attraction of talent to the European Union (EU) are the European Research Council (ERC) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Over the last decade, the ERC and the MSCA found wide and diverse areas of research of relevance to aerospace and gave many researchers the opportunity to develop their projects with highly competitive conditions. This short webinar is addressed to early-career and experienced researchers and is intended to promote successful proposals for the ERC and MSCA Individual Fellowship grants.

In the first part, EU scientific officers and experts will give an overview on the main characteristics and opportunities offered by the ERC and MSCA-IF funding schemes. Particular attention will be focused on mission, funding, and evaluation process.

In the remaining part of the course, authors of successful ERC and MSCA-IF grant proposals on arguments of aerospace relevance will present their own stories and projects and will give application advice. Details on lessons learnt, proposal writing, preparation of the curriculum vitae, and stage-2 interview will be discussed along with eventual opportunities to join an ERC team.

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