MS&E Seminar: Dr. Mahammad Modarres

Dr. Mohammad Modarres

Professor

Center for Risk and Reliability at the A.J. Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland.

Thermodynamics of Damage: A Reliability Engineering Perspective

To address and accurately assess risk and reliability challenges during design and operation, reliability engineering has gone through a number of transformations over the past few decades. For example, life estimation models have progressively become more realistic by incorporating both observed failure data and information about physical and environmental factors that affect degradation and eventual failure. As a result, we have witnessed evolution of life models from constant hazard rates to more sophisticated and empirically derived physics-of-failure (PoF) mechanistic models, addressing the underlying wear-out and aging failure mechanisms in engineering structures, systems and components. More recently, advances in risk and reliability have offered a more fundamental science-based perspective that relies on the second law of thermodynamics. This science-based approach has energized and originated exciting research and developments in reliability predicion and prognosis and health management (PHM), in contrast to the traditional statistical-based life models that rely on historical failure data. Additionally, the science-based approach provides component-specific reliability estimates by ac-counting for the effects of relevant physical, environmental and operational factors that influence reliability and risk. This talk presents a formal representation of reliability in terms of the entropy generated by the dissipated energy associated with the applicable degradation mechanisms that cause component damage and failure. Since all degradation mechanisms are associated with energy dissipation, the second law of thermodynamics and entropy provide the foundation for describing failure and survival.

Biography:

Dr. Modarres is the Nicole Y. Kim Eminent Professor of Engineering and Director, Center for Risk and Reliability at the A.J. Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park. His research areas are probabilistic risk assessment, uncertainty analysis and probabilistic physics of failure and fracture mechanics. He is a consultant to governmental agencies, private organizations and national laboratories in areas related to probabilistic risk as-assessment. His interests in risk, reliability, structural integrity and prognosis and health management include both experimental and probabilistic model development efforts. He has over 400 papers in archival journals and proceeding’s of conferences including multiple books and book chapters in various areas of risk and reliability engineering. He is a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. Dr. Modarres received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran Polytechnic, MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and MS and PhD in Nuclear Engineering also from MIT.

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Feb 17, 2017
10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Location:
2101 Engineering V
420 Westwood Plaza Los Angeles CA 90095