Douglas Cairns, a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Montana State University, will give a public lecture on Tuesday, March 24, as part of the Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Series. The event will be held at 7 p.m. in the Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies and is free to attend. A reception will follow.
Cairns, who also holds the Lysle A. Wood Distinguished Professorship in Mechanical Engineering, has spent almost fifty years researching and developing advanced composite materials and structures. Composite materials are engineered by combining two or more distinct substances.
In his talk titled “The Sum of the Parts: A Fireside Chat on Composite Materials and Structures,” Cairns plans to discuss both familiar and lesser-known applications of composite materials from his career. Some examples include work related to the Challenger space shuttle disaster and classified projects from the Cold War era.
“Composite materials are the go-to materials in the 21st century,” Cairns said. “They impact our lives in ground, water and air transportation; energy systems; recreational equipment and biomechanical systems – just about anything that requires maximum performance with tailorable, multifunctional material properties.”
He will also address topics such as aircraft structures like those used in the supersonic F/A 18 Hornet, solutions for issues like the spherical aberration in the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as technologies involving spy satellites and autonomous underwater vehicles for submarine detection. Cairns’ work extends to sporting goods such as Trek bicycle frames and biomechanical implants including composite fiber hip implants.
Cairns has worked for over twenty-five years on manufacturing and testing new materials for wind turbine blades. He continues to research new materials for aerospace, civil, and marine applications. His interests also include modeling manufacturing processes, computational structural mechanics, and design methodology research. He serves on Radius Engineering’s board of directors in Salt Lake City and consults with several industry partners to transfer research into production environments.
“The long-term goal of this research is to understand the material, manufacturing and structural performance hierarchical links for multifunctional composite materials,” Cairns said.
Cairns is involved with several professional organizations such as serving on the Composite Materials Subcommittee for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and chairing committees within the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He certifies MSU’s aerospace minor program students and manages a contract exceeding $39 million with the Army focused on future vertical lift advanced technologies intended to replace aging rotorcraft for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Before joining MSU in 1995, Cairns managed composites technology at Hercules Materials Co., where he researched primary structure applications using composite materials. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Wyoming and earned a doctorate from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics.
Montana State University operates four campuses along with Extension offices across all Montana counties https://www.montana.edu. The university places emphasis on hands-on research opportunities for students while ensuring educational access https://www.montana.edu. It functions as Montana’s land-grant institution with a main campus located in Bozeman https://www.montana.edu, providing opportunities for undergraduate research alongside its classification for very high research activity https://www.montana.edu.
More details about this series can be found at www.montana.edu/news/24752.
