Dr. Manoj Dhadwal
Assistant Professor
Aerospace Engineering
San Diego State University
March 19, 2026
The rapid expansion of space exploration demands aerospace structures that are lightweight, highly flexible, deployable, and capable of operating in extreme environments. As structural scale and architectural complexity increase, rigorous modeling and high-fidelity experimental validation become critical. Important yet insufficiently explored challenges include elastic tailoring in deployable composite structures and the nonlinear dynamic phenomena that arise during and after deployment. This talk presents advances in computational structural mechanics and experimental characterization aimed at improving predictive modeling of slender, coupled aerospace structures. On the computational side, developments include mixed-variational anisotropic beam cross-sectional theories that rigorously capture elastic couplings and three-dimensional stress fields, as well as spectral element formulations for coupled beam systems that enable high-resolution analysis of structural dynamics and wave propagation. Experimentally, the work addresses the design and testing of deployable composite boom systems and the dynamic characterization of wind turbine blades, where modal interactions and localized couplings induced by geometric and material nonlinearities are quantified using advanced data analysis techniques. The talk concludes with a brief overview of ongoing efforts to understand the dynamical behavior of origami-inspired elastic foldable structures and elastic metamaterials.
Bio: Dr. Manoj Kumar Dhadwal is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at San Diego State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Konkuk University in 2016, specializing in composite structures analysis and optimization. His previous academic appointments include research faculty at Seoul National University (South Korea), postdoctoral positions at the Technical University of Denmark (Denmark) and Konkuk University (South Korea), and a research assistantship at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India). His research encompasses rotorcraft and wind turbine structures, as well as deployable space structures, with a primary focus on structural mechanics and dynamics. His work integrates theoretical, computational, and experimental advances in aerospace composite structures, focusing on elastic couplings, dynamics, and testing. His long-term goal is to unify computational models and experimental methods through efficient modeling and data processing for real-time monitoring. Dr. Dhadwal is a Senior Member of AIAA and a member of ASME, VFS, and USACM. More information is available at https://astroflexis.space.
Contact: Jayant Sirohi (sirohi@utexas.edu)