NTU-CEE Distinguished Speaker Series: Professor Ken Loh

About the Seminar

Topic: Preparing Students to Lead in an AI-Enabled Future

Structural resiliency is the ability of structural systems to maintain its functionality, withstand the effects of extreme events, and recover rapidly for continuing their use and service. The conventional approach to structural resiliency has treated structures as passive systems and have not explicitly treated the human-structure system as coupled. A prime example is a warship, where human-structural resiliency needs to be treated as an integrated, closely coupled system. This is because a warship is only resilient, particularly following an extreme event, when the platform can still survive and fight, while the crew can still decide and act effectively. The system is useless and lacks function without either the vessel or the crew. Although such an integrated human-structural resilient design approach has not been achieved, the goal of this presentation is to highlight ongoing efforts towards this goal.

First, new sensor technologies that could effectively and efficiently characterize damage in large, complex, structures, such as a warship, will be discussed. Nanocomposite stimuli-responsive materials coupled with an electrical impedance tomography algorithm to form sensing skins can detect, localize, and characterize damage features in different structural materials. However, even if the extent of damage in a warship is known, resiliency can only be ensured if the crew effectively responds to contain the threat. Second, wearable sensors integrated with firefighting equipment for assessing crew performance and safety will provide the ship’s Damage Control Organization with pertinent information on how to best respond to an incident and adapt accordingly.

Last, if the ship is unfortunately lost and a mass-casualty-at-sea scenario occurs, this presentation will showcase how batteryfree, low-profile, metamaterial uniform patches could facilitate search-and-rescue operations. The mechanical metamaterials with embedded stimuli-responsive materials could passively transmit the identification of the sailor, their ambient condition (e.g., seawater temperature), and how long they have been in the water. This rich sensing stream will enable prioritization of search-and-rescue for maximizing the survivability of the entire crew. The seminar closes with some directions for future research on human-structure resiliency as a coupled system.

About the Speaker

Professor Ken Loh, University of California San Diego

Dr. Ken Loh is a Professor in the Departments of Structural Engineering, Chemical & Nano Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. He is the Director of the Active, Responsive, Multifunctional, and Ordered-materials Research (ARMOR) Lab, as well as the Jacobs School of Engineering Center for Extreme Events Research (CEER). He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Wearable Sensors. Dr. Loh received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2004. His graduate studies were at the University of Michigan, where he completed two M.S. degrees in Structural Engineering (2005) and Materials Science & Engineering (2008), as well as a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering in 2008. He started his career in academia in December 2008 as an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at UC Davis, before joining UC San Diego in January 2016.

His research interests are in stimuli-responsive nanocomposites, wearable sensors, metamaterials, and sensors/actuators for solving problems in human performance, structural sustainment, and human-structure interactions. Dr. Loh is also an Engineering Duty Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, a co-founder of his start-up JAK Labs, and an active board member of the non-profit organization Built Well for Life.

Venue

Lecture Theatre 5 (NS2-02-07)