Upcoming Seminars
Golf Club R&D Process
April 23, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Todd Beach
Golf equipment research and development (R&D) has evolved into a sophisticated process which uses some of the best available materials and manufacturing methods to create products that enhance performance every year for both high level tour professionals and amateurs alike. The Physics of golf can be very challenging to model, test and optimize as the ball goes from 0 to 190 mph in 0.5 milliseconds for a top professional driver. The golf club engineer needs to deeply understand all the key parameters (both club and ball) during this violent collision to design them to have the proper speed, launch angle, spin, sound, feel, aesthetics, durability and cost/producibility. The golf equipment industry is a multi-billion dollar global industry, with millions of clubs and balls manufactured and sold every year. Golf companies need to have a specialized team and a development process that allows them to be competitive in this industry. The most successful companies manage to have their products validated by key influencers and top professionals (pyramid of influence), and must stand up against competition under camparison testing or fitting using readily available launch monitors. The products are sourced globally, produced in high volume and sold into a seasonal market. Marketing helps drive demand, and the process needs to be agile enough to react to market feedback, new technologies, intellectual property (IP) and any new rule changes (USGA) each year. This seminar will give an overview of these challenges and associated product development process that can be used to successfully develop products for this industry.
Past Seminars
6
Response of Seismically Isolated Structures Subjected to Beyond Design Basis Shaking
Speaker: Professor Gilberto Mosqueda
Seismic isolation has been proven as an effective strategy to protect critical facilities from the damaging effects of horizontal earthquake ground shaking. The increased flexibility and resulting elongation of the natural vibration period of the structure leads to significant reductions in acceleration and forces transmitted to the structure above the isolation level at the expense of large lateral displacements in the isolation system. These large lateral displacements need to be accommodated by the isolation bearings while sustaining the weight of the structure above.
7
Additively Manufactured Composites: Mechanics, Materials, and Manufacturing
Speaker: Professor Mehran Tehrani, University of Texas - Austin
Polymer additive manufacturing (AM) is mostly relegated to the space of rapid prototyping. New approaches for transitioning polymer AM to the production of end-use parts will be discussed and their processing-structure-failure relationships will be elucidated. Carbon fiber has been identified as a potential solution to overcome polymer AM shortcomings, where it improves polymer properties, reduces the time required to manufacture functional parts, and lower warping to lead to a larger build envelope.
23
Curved-Based Rocking Walls for Seismic Isolation
Speaker: Professor Richard Wiebe, University of Washington
Many novel lateral force resisting systems have been developed to improve the seismic performance and resilience of structures. One promising approach is the use post-tensioned rocking walls as lateral load resisting systems. Despite the many benefits of rocking systems (e.g. small residual drift and simplified repairs after extreme events), several additional opportunities for improved performance remain.
18
Engineering Ethics: Room for Improvement?
Speaker: Dr. Michael Kalichman, UC San Diego
It may seem obvious that success in engineering relies in part on ethics and that those who enter engineering value ethics. And yet, stories of missteps in academia and industry are well known. The goal of this talk will be to address factors that contribute to misconduct and, more importantly, strategies we can adopt to minimize that risk. The hope is that this session will be a catalyst for opportunities to promote a culture of ethics in Structural Engineering.
9
Structural Electronics: The Coming Convergence of Electronics and Structures
Speaker: Jeff Bergman, NextFlex
The field of electronics manufacturing is undergoing a significant shift that promises to change not only how we make electronics but also how we interact with the world around it. Rapid advances in microelectronics, material science, and manufacturing techniques have enabled a new world of advanced additively manufactured electronics that are lightweight, flexible, and low cost. By enabling novel electronics forms, and implementations flexible and additive electronics will change how we interact with the world around us by allowing for the easy and unobtrusive deployment of sensors to ke
2
Next Generation Structural Monitoring and Smart Cities
Speaker: Dr. Erol Kalkan, Quakelogic
Structural monitoring has gained importance for safety requirements of critical structures including hospitals, high-rise buildings, bridges, dams, tunnels, wind turbines etc. Although these structures are designed and built to operate safely under anticipated static and dynamic loading conditions, deterioration and damage can occur over their lifetime. Extreme events such as earthquakes are the most prevailing source of failure. If damage conditions are not identified rapidly, they may leave the dam vulnerable to further damage.
28
Structural Engineering in Golf Club Design
Speaker: Brandon Woolley, TaylorMade Golf
Structural engineering can be found all around us. In this presentation, I’ll talk about how we use engineering to create the best performance golf products in the world. I’ll cover some of the engineering challenges unique to golf equipment design and a little about how TaylorMade Golf overcomes them.
19
Naval Health Research Center: Engineering Human Performance in a Warfighter Population
Speaker: Dr. Pinata Sessoms and Dr. Amy Silder, Naval Health Research Center
Located aboard Naval Base Point Loma, Naval Health Research Center is the Department of Defense’s designated Deployment Health Research Center and the only military medical research center on the West Coast. Drs. Sessoms and Silder will discuss some of the research being done by the Physical and Cognitive Operational Research Environment (PhyCORE) Lab at NHRC. The lab’s mission is to enhance Warfighter readiness by improving rehabilitation of wounded warriors and resilience of healthy Warfighters through operationally relevant training and testing.
12
Numerical Simulations of Soil Structure Interaction (SSI)
Speaker: Professor Davide Forcellini, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Since the late 1970s numerical simulation methods have been developed in order to consider soil-structure-interaction (SSI) problems. In the beginning, such approaches performed linear analyses that are generally appropriate to describe low amplitude ground motions. In order to assess realistic non-linear responses of soil-foundation-structure systems under earthquakes, it is fundamental to apply SSI-based approaches by performing the state-of-the-art numerical methodologies that are the object of this webinar.
7
The Structural Innovations of Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Speaker: Brendan Walsh, Buro Happold Engineering
The multi-purpose Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the new home of the Atlanta Falcons (NFL) and Atlanta United (MLS) accommodates 80,000 fans and occupies almost two million square feet near downtown Atlanta. Costing approximately $1.5 billion to construct, the stadium contains many innovative design features including an unprecedented 8-panel cantilevered retractable roof, one of the largest scoreboards in sports, the longest two-way structure in the US, the first use of single skin ETFE in the US, and the first LEED Platinum credential for an NFL stadium.