Alper Erturk (born April 3, 1982) is a

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations o ...

and the Woodruff Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

Research

Erturk leads the Smart Structures and Dynamical Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His publications are mostly in the areas of dynamics,

vibration Vibration () is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. Vibration may be deterministic if the oscillations can be characterised precisely (e.g. the periodic motion of a pendulum), or random if the os ...

, and

wave propagation In physics, mathematics, engineering, and related fields, a wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities. '' Periodic waves'' oscillate repeatedly about an equilibrium (resting) value at some f ...

involving

smart materials Smart materials, also called intelligent or responsive materials, are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnet ...

and

metamaterials A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά ''meta'', meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word ''materia'', meaning "matter" or "material") is a type of material engineered to have a property, typically rarely observed in naturally occur ...

. Erturk made fundamental contributions in the field of

energy harvesting Energy harvesting (EH) – also known as power harvesting, energy scavenging, or ambient power – is the process by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, Osmotic power, salinity gradients, ...

from dynamical systems. His distributed-parameter

piezoelectric Piezoelectricity (, ) is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied stress (mechanics), mechanical s ...

energy harvester models have been widely used by many research groups. He was one of the first researchers to explore

nonlinear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathe ...

dynamic phenomena for frequency bandwidth enhancement in energy harvesting, specifically by using a bistable

Duffing oscillator The Duffing equation (or Duffing oscillator), named after Georg Duffing (1861–1944), is a non-linear second-order differential equation used to model certain damped and driven oscillators. The equation is given by \ddot + \delta \dot + ...

with electromechanical coupling, namely the piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester. His early energy harvesting work also included the use of

aeroelastic flutter Aeroelasticity is the branch of physics and engineering studying the interactions between the inertial, elastic, and aerodynamic forces occurring while an elastic body is exposed to a fluid flow. The study of aeroelasticity may be broadly classi ...

to enable scalable airflow energy harvesting through piezoaeroelastic systems. His collaborative work on

flexoelectricity Flexoelectricity is a property of a dielectric material where there is coupling between electrical polarization and a strain gradient. This phenomenon is closely related to piezoelectricity, but while piezoelectricity refers to polarization due ...

established a framework to exploit strain gradient-induced polarization in elastic dielectrics for enhanced electricity generation at the

nanoscale Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

. Erturk's group also contributed to smart material-based bio-inspired aquatic locomotion by developing the first untethered piezoelectric swimmer and explored fluid-structure interaction via underwater actuation of piezoelectric cantilevers. Their recent efforts resulted in multifunctional piezoelectric concepts for bio-inspired swimming and energy harvesting. Another research topic explored by his group is wireless power and data transfer using ultrasound waves. More recently, Erturk and collaborators investigated the leveraging of guided waves in cranial and transcranial ultrasound. Erturk and collaborators also explored metamaterials and phononic crystals for elastic and acoustic wave phenomena. They developed and experimentally tested some of the first 2D elastic wave and 3D bulk acoustic wave lenses, locally resonant metamaterial-based structural theories and experiments, including programmable piezoelectric metamaterials and metastructures.

Awards

* Elected Fellow of

SPIE SPIE (formerly the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, later the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It ...

(2020) * SEM James W. Dally Young Investigator Award (2020) * Elected Fellow of

ASME The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing edu ...

(2017) * ASME C.D. Mote Jr. Early Career Award (2017) * TASSA Young Scholar Award - Junior Faculty Level (2016) * ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award (2015) * ASME Energy Harvesting Best Paper Award (2015, 2017) * National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2013) *

Liviu Librescu Liviu Librescu (; ; August 18, 1930 – April 16, 2007) was a Romanian–American scientist and engineer. A prominent academic in addition to being a survivor of the Holocaust, his major research fields were aeroelasticity and aerodynamics. Libr ...

Memorial Scholarship (2008) * METU Parlar Foundation Thesis of the Year Award (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erturk, Alper Living people Mechanical engineers Georgia Tech faculty Engineering academics Virginia Tech alumni Middle East Technical University alumni American academics of Turkish descent 1982 births METU Mustafa Parlar Foundation Science Award winners