Alper Erturk

Alper Erturk
Born	3 April 1982 (1982-04-03) (age 34) Eskisehir
Residence	Atlanta, United States
Fields	Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Mechanics
Institutions	Georgia Institute of Technology, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Alma mater	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, METU

Alper Erturk is an Associate Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology,^[1] noted for his work on energy harvesting and dynamics of smart structures.^[2] He is an Associate Editor for the journal Smart Materials and Structures and for the Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures.

Background and Career

Prior to his current (tenured) appointment as an Associate Professor, Erturk was an Assistant Professor (2011–2016) of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and a Research Scientist (2009–2011) in the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures at Virginia Tech. He has published more than 150 articles in archival journals and conference proceedings, 4 book chapters, and 2 books. His scholarly works have received more than 6000 citations (h-index: 36) according to Google Scholar. His recent publications are in the fields of vibration energy harvesting, bio-inspired actuation using flexible piezoelectric composites, phononic crystal-based structure-borne wave tailoring and enhanced energy harvesting, low-frequency vibration attenuation using locally resonant metamaterials, modeling and identification of nonlinear nonconservative dynamics of piezoelectric structures, exploiting intentionally designed nonlinearities for frequency bandwidth enhancement, and wireless acoustic power transfer. He authored a book titled Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting^[3] (Wiley, 2011 & Chinese Edition, 2016) and co-edited a book on Advances in Energy Harvesting Methods^[4] (Springer, 2013). Erturk received his BS (high honors) and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from METU in 2004 and 2006, respectively, and PhD degree in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2009.

Academic Research

Erturk leads the Smart Structures and Dynamical Systems Laboratory^[5] at Georgia Tech. He has made fundamental theoretical and experimental contributions in the field of energy harvesting from dynamical systems. His experimentally validated distributed-parameter piezoelectric energy harvester models^[6][7] have been widely used by several research groups. He was one of the first researchers to explore nonlinear dynamic phenomena for frequency bandwidth enhancement in energy harvesting, specifically by using a bistable Duffing oscillator with electromechanical coupling, namely the piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester.^[8] His early energy harvesting work also opened new multiphysics avenues, such as the use of aeroelastic flutter to enable scalable airflow energy harvesting through piezoaeroelastic systems.^[9] More recently, his collaborative work^[10] that aims to exploit flexoelectricity (strain gradient-induced polarization) for the enhancement of energy harvesting at the nanoscale received the inaugural ASME Energy Harvesting Best Paper Award.

His group at Georgia Tech also contributed to smart material-based bio-inspired robotics area by developing the first untethered piezoelectric swimmer^[11] as a platform to explore multiphysics fluid-electroelastic structure interactions.^[12] Another multiphysics research topic recently explored by his group is acoustic-electroelastic structure interaction for wireless power transfer using ultrasound waves.^[13]

Erturk and collaborators have lately been conducting research at the intersection of metamaterials and smart structures. They developed the first Gradient-Index Phononic Crystal Lens-based piezoelectric energy harvester for spatial focusing and enhanced harvesting of structure-borne propagating waves.^[14] Low-frequency broadband vibration attenuation and bridging the wave propagation and modal analysis approaches in locally-resonant finite elastic metamaterials is another research area explored by Erturk and collaborators.^[15]

Professional Service

Erturk is an Elected Member of the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound under the Design Engineering Division and of the ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems Branch under the Aerospace Division. He was also the Founding Chair (2012–2014) of the ASME Energy Harvesting Technical Committee. He served on the organization, program, or technical committees of various ASME conferences (SMASIS: Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, IDETC: International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference), SPIE Smart Structures/Non-Destructive Evaluation conference, and more recently, PowerMEMS and IEEE Sensors conferences. Erturk established the Energy Harvesting Symposium of ASME SMASIS in 2012 and he is currently the co-chair for the topical area of Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems at SPIE Smart Structures/NDE.

Awards

• TASSA Young Scholar Award - Junior Faculty Level (2016)^[16]
• ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award (2015)^[17][18][19]
• ASME Energy Harvesting Best Paper Award (2015)^[20]
• National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2013)^[21]
• Sigma Xi Georgia Tech Chapter, Best M.S. Thesis Advisor (2013)
• Liviu Librescu Memorial Scholarship (2008)
• Parlar Foundation Thesis of the Year Award (2006)

References