2023 AIAA von Kármán Lecture in Astronautics

2023 AIAA von Kármán Lecture in Astronautics: “Celebrating a Century of Kármán’s Momentum-Integral and Space-Reductive Approaches: Applications in Rocketry and Beyond” The 2023 AIAA von Kármán Lectureship in Astronautics has been awarded to Joseph Majdalani, Francis Chair of Excellence and Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Auburn University. Named in honor of Theodore von Kármán, a world-famous authority on aerospace sciences, the lectureship honors an individual who has performed notably and distinguished themselves technically in the field of astronautics. This lecture will be delivered in person at 2023 ASCEND in Las Vegas, as well as recorded and available on demand. Majdalani’s lecture celebrates the centennial of the momentum-integral approach, one of the most significant theoretical contributions of Theodore von Kármán, taught widely in the fields of aerodynamics. He will discuss the broad impact of this approach, which was introduced in 1921, and often used in conjunction with Pohlhausen’s polynomial approximations. As a well-recognized authority in the field, Majdalani has recently coauthored a textbook on the subject of viscous boundary layers. He also has developed several new formulations based on Kármán’s approach: these lead to an essentially exact solution to the celebrated Blasius equation, whose analytical treatment has remained intractable for over 100 years. Majdalani’s technical research focus is on advancing acoustic instability and rotating flow theories in the context of solid, liquid, and hybrid rocket engines, especially those driven by tangential injection. He has developed new effective methodologies that have been successfully applied to various rocket systems including the class of cyclonic VORTEX engines pioneered by ORBITEC and Sierra Space Corporation. “It is an extraordinary privilege to share and revisit the widely used method developed by von Kármán with our expanding aerospace community, even a century after its inception. Through this lecture, I not only aim at celebrating von Kármán’s remarkable contributions, I also hope to inspire further explorations of his captivating techniques in the continually evolving fields of aerospace engineering,” Majdalani remarked. Besides his interests in advancing boundary-layer theory, Majdalani has been a pioneering researcher in aerodynamics and rocket propulsion for more than 30 years. He has been a prolific scholar and exemplary mentor who has been invited to present more than 97 seminars and plenaries worldwide. He has over 300 publications and 18,000 citations. An AIAA Associate Fellow, Majdalani is active in AIAA through technical committees and regional activities, and has received numerous AIAA awards. He earned his B.E. degree with distinction from the American University (AUB), and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Utah, all in Mechanical Engineering and a special focus on rocket propulsion. Learn More at https://www.ascend.events/livestream/