Keerti Prakash (center), doctoral candidate in aerospace engineering, receives the Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award for the Aerospace Design and Structures Group at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Science and Technology Forum 2019 in San Diego.
Ph.D. candidate Prakash wins best paper award at SciTech 2019
1/29/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate Keerti Prakash recently received the Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award for the Aerospace Design and Structures Group at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Science and Technology Forum and Exposition 2019 in San Diego.
The Jefferson Goblet Award is given for the highest ranked Aerospace Design and Structures paper based on manuscript and presentation quality. The award was established more than twenty years ago and is named in honor of Thomas Jefferson. Award recipients receive a monetary award, a certificate and a goblet modeled after a 1788 design by Thomas Jefferson.
Prakash won for his paper titled "Modeling of Laminated Reinforced Composite with Carbon Nanotube Interlayers to Estimate Structural Damping in a Rotorcraft Blade."
His research, under the supervision of Edward Smith, professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Penn State Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence, and Charles Bakis, Distinguished Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, focuses on enhancing the material damping for rigid rotorcraft blades using carbon nanotube. In particular, he is working on the X2-type configuration, a high-speed compound rotorcraft with coaxial rotors. Prakash’s model, which captures the stick-slip phenomenon exhibited by carbon nanotube, shows promising results for damping augmentation for a rigid blade. He is also working on conducting his own experiments to further validate the model. If successful, the project may contribute to the design of future rotorcraft blades.
Prakash, who received his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State in 2017, is secretary of the Penn State chapter of the Vertical Flight Society and is a College of Engineering delegate of the Penn State Graduate and Professional Student Association.
He was also the recipient of several Penn State scholarships and fellowships for the 2017-2018 academic year, including the Graduate Scholarship for Excellence in Engineering, the Fred A. and Susan Breidenbach Graduate Fellowship in Engineering and the William L. and Barbara A. Keefauver Scholarship in Engineering.
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