College of Engineering

Aeronautics & Astronautics

Paolo Feraboli

Assistant Professor

feraboli@aa.washington.edu
Office: 311D Guggenheim
Phone: (206) 543-2170

University of Washington
BOX 352400
Seattle, WA 98195-2400

 

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Composites and Structures Laboratory

 

Associated Labs

• FAA Joint Advanced Materials and Structures Center of Excellence in Advanced Materials in Transport Aircraft Structures (AMTAS)

Research Fields

• Aircraft Certification
• Composite Structural Design
• Damage Resistance & Tolerance
• Crashworthiness & Energy Management

Courses

• AA331, Wi06 Aerospace Structures I – 4 credits
  Bending, torsion and shear of thin wall structures. Analysis and design of idealized box beams. Analysis and design modern aircraft wings. Elements of aircraft materials and their behavior.
  Prerequisite: ENGR 220 or CE 220.
  
  
• AA332, Sp06 Aerospace Structures II – 4 credits
  Mechanical behavior and damage mechanisms in advanced aerospace materials (metallic and composite). Elements of fracture mechanics and fatigue. Fatigue crack growth and residual strength. Regulatory agency certification approaches to damage tolerant structures. Durability and damage resistance. Advanced Bonded Joints. Damage Inspection and Repair.
  Prerequisite: AA 331
  
  
• AA499, 2006 – 3 credits (typ.)
  Undergraduate Research.
  
  
• AA540, Wi07 Finite Element Analysis I – 3 credits
  Graduate course in FEA. Formulation of the finite element method using variational and weighted residual methods. Element types and interpolation functions. Applications focus on structural analysis and fracture mechanics, and other problems of engineering and physics. Use of ANSYS commercial FE code.
  
  
• AA599, Sp06 – 3 credits (typ.)
  Special Projects (Graduate Research).

 
Background

Paolo Feraboli joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Washington in the summer of 2005, as Assistant Professor in Aerospace Structures and Materials. Since then he has been collaborating with The Boeing Co., Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA), and Automobili Lamborghini on various research projects related to the development of analytical and experimental techniques for composite materials. He is particularly interested in composites safety and certification initiatives, in particular in the area of damage resistance and tolerance, lightning strike protection, and crashworthiness. Since early 2006 he has been actively involved with the technology development of the composite-intensive Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

He has authored over 40 publications between peer-reviewed journals and internationally acclaimed conferences. He chairs the Composite Materials Handbook-17 Working Group on Crashworthiness (former MIL-HDBK-17), and is member of the AIAA Materials Technical Committee. He is the General Chair of the 22nd American Society for Composites (ASC) Technical Conference in Seattle, WA in September 2007. He is an active member of AIAA, ASC, SAMPE, and SPE.

Before joining the faculty at UW, Paolo was visiting researcher at NASA Langley Research Center, in the Mechanics and Durability Branch. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara under the supervision of Dr. Keith Kedward, and holds previous degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy. Prior to moving to the States, Dr. Feraboli worked for Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. in Sant'Agata Bolognese, where he was involved with the development of primary composite structures for the Murcièlago line-up.