Tom Shih
Professor of School of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Purdue University
Research Interest: CFD / HT, gas turbine cooling technology, aircraft icing and control technology of shock / boundary layer interaction.

Speech Title: Development of Reduced-Order Models for Preliminary Design

Abstract: Aerospace vehicles are complicated systems that operate in harsh environments and demand the highest level on reliability, safety, performance, and efficiency.  Today, sustainability is also a demand.  Thus, there is a constant need to deepen understanding of the fundamentals to enable improved designs. Though ab initio first-principle simulations could provide the understanding needed, they are not feasible even with the current exa-scale computational power.  In fact, even unsteady RANS is not yet feasible as a preliminary design tool to design the cooling for a single blade in the first-stage turbine of a gas-turbine engine.  Thus, computationally fast, physics-based, reduced-order models (ROMs) are needed.  Such models are not new.  The Bernoulli’s equation (1738) and the Lanchester-Prandtl lifting-line theory (1907, 1918-19), developed more than a century ago, are two examples and still widely used.  Methods such as dimensional analysis and similitude (Daviet, 1799) that could significantly reduce the design space for ROM development were developed centuries ago.  This talk examines the thinking process on how ROMs were developed before there were computers and how lessons learned there could be combined with machine learning, rooted in statistics and optimization, to develop reduced-order models nearly as accurate as first-principle simulation for design exploration.

Short-biography: 
Tom I-P. Shih is professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, where he served as the head of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 2009 to 2019. Prior to joining Purdue, he was a mechanical engineer at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center and served on the faculties of the University of Florida, Carnegie Mellon University, Michigan State University, and Iowa State University (chair of the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, 2003–2009).  Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the AIAA Journal and serves on the advisory boards of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Michigan; the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University; the Dept. of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology; and the Dept. of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Material Engineering at West Virginia University and on the review board of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Collaborative Center for Aeronautical Sciences.  Previously, he also served on the Aeronautics Committee of the NASA Advisory Council (2018-21) and chaired the AIAA Committee on Higher Education (2016-23) and the Aerospace Department Chair Association (2005-06).  Tom started his undergraduate education at West Virginia University, but completed his B.S. at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. His M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees are from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and received the 2010 Distinguished Engineering Educator Award from the Engineers’ Council of San Fernando Valley, the 2015 AIAA Energy Systems Award, and the 2020 AIAA Thermophysics Award.