Congratulations to Ph.D. student Daning Huang, recipient of the Eleanor Towner Award and the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship.
Huang received his Bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2013. In the past year, he has been a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for Aircraft and Spacecraft Structures (Aerospace 315).
Huang’s research focuses on airbreathing hypersonic flight, for which he has employed high-performance computing and reduced-order modeling to develop a new computational framework: HYPersonic AeroThermoElasticity simulation environment (HYPATE). He explains the importance of advanced computational methods in hypersonic design:
“On top of the [HYPATE] framework, a novel approach is presented to achieve aerothermoelastic scaling laws that enable the extrapolation of experimental data obtained on scaled models to full-size vehicles, resulting in a potentially dramatic cost reduction in the hypersonic vehicle design cycle.”
After completing his Ph.D., Huang plans to continue his research in computational aeroelasticity and aerothermoelasticity. He also wishes to continue learning, exploring exciting fields like statistical learning, uncertainty quantification, and advanced methods for computational mechanics.
Daning Huang’s work has earned two honors, and he expresses gratitude to his advisor Professor Peretz P. Friedmann as well as Professors Carlos Cesnik and Karthik Duraisamy for their nominations and support. He also thanks Professor Joaquim Martins and Dr. Tomer Rokita for supporting his project. On receiving the Eleanor Towner Award and Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships, Huang reflects:
“These awards are strong stimulants for me to perfect my work and achieve excellence in my research. In particular, I hope I can finish my research project and complete my thesis with the financial aid from the fellowship.”
