
Katherine Johnson Scholar Sisters
Katherine Johnson Young Scholars is a group of females K-5th grade students learning algebra and ACT/SAT preparations that will track through graduation. The Katherine Johnson Scholars Sisters (KJSS) empowers girls to learn math through the S.T.E.M program. At MaDLab, we work directly with the Urban League of Kansas and KJSS to help provide the girls with exposure to a university environment, encourage participation in WSU summer camps, and provide any programmatic assistance necessary to ensure their success. You can keep up with their great work here!

USD259/MaDLab Internship Program
Under this program, MaDLab is collaborating with the Office of Equity, Diversity & Accountability at Wichita Public School (USD-259) to provide high- and middle-school minority students the opportunity to pursue engineering research in our lab. The students are trained during the semesters by involving them in current research projects and then recruited as paid summer interns to pursue their own research projects during the summer. During their time with us, the students are taught various transferable skills such as 3D printing, CAD modeling, and are expected to make direct and measurable contributions to our research efforts.

Airbus/WSU Aerospace Engineering Wingbox Contest
The Airbus/WSU Aerospace Engineering Wingbox Design Contest gives students and the public an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of structural analyses and design. The competition provides Airbus and WSU with access to next-generation engineers who can be groomed for the future workforce. Airbus is actively involved with faculty in developing competition guidelines each year and in interacting with students.
Most excitingly…. there is $6,500 of prize money available in three competition categories!
Teaching
Graduate Courses
AE 777 – Vibration Analysis
Offered spring semesters
The course covers fundamental concepts on the vibration of mechanical systems including, but not limited to, review of systems with one degree for freedom, Lagrange’s equations of motion for multiple degree of freedom systems, introduction to matrix methods, transfer functions for harmonic response, impulse response, and step response, convolution integrals for response to arbitrary inputs, principle frequencies and modes, applications to critical speeds, measuring instruments, isolation, torsional systems, introduction to nonlinear problems.
AE 731 – Theory of Elasticity
Offered every even fall semesters
This course focuses on the development of the linear theory of elasticity and using it to determine stress and displacement fields in linear elastic isotropic bodies. The idea of indicical notation and Cartesian tensors is introduced and utilized to develop the concepts of tensorial strains and stresses. The duality of Lagrangian and Eulerian formulations is maintained throughout. Work and strain energy concepts are used to develop the generalized Hooke’s law. Finally, the concept of Airy stress functions is used to solve plane elasticity problems.
AE 801 – Structural Dynamics
Offered fall semesters
The course focuses on the dynamic behavior of continuous structural systems subjected to external dynamic forcing functions. Introduces spectral analysis approach, discretizing methods such as Ritz’s method, motivates the use of Hamilton’s principle and Lagrangian concepts to derive equations of motion of continuous structures, and introduces higher-order structural models. Elastic wave propagation concepts are also covered.
AE 760AB – Structural Acoustics
Offered every even spring semesters
This course introduces the basic concepts of engineering acoustical analysis to study sound propagation in a medium, acoustic radiation from simple sources, absorption and transmission of acoustic wave through partitions, duct acoustics, and an introduction to aircraft noise sources and control techniques.
Undergraduate Courses
AAE 204 – Aeromechanics II. Spring and summer 2016
Taught at Purdue University
This course is to introduce aerospace engineering students to the mechanics of solids concepts of force/stress/equilibrium, deformation/strain/compatibility, and stress/strain material behaviors. These concepts, through examples, are applied to basic aerospace structural components of rods in tension and compression, shafts in torsion, beams in bending and shear, and thin walled vessels under pressure.
AE 525 – Flight Structures I
Offered every semester in collaboration with Prof. Raju
This course introduces the concepts of tensorial strains and stresses, principal stress and strain for general 3D states of loading, application of linear elasticity analysis to thin-walled semi-monocoque structures subjected to axial, bending, and twisting loads, introduces governing equations for unsymmetric bending and transverse shearing of thin walled beams from first principles. As part of the class, students compete in the Airbus Wingbox Design Competition.