The Illimited lab participated in IMAC 2024 and collaborated with LADISK Lab from the University of Ljubljana on a project aimed at improving access to high-speed camera testing for structural vibration. Our session, which attracted many attendees, demonstrated the use of high-speed cameras to observe the behavior of lightweight and flexible structures under high amplitude excitation. We look forward to the future developments of this work!

Bart Boom and Ed Habtour attended at the ASME-SMASIS 2024 Conference in Austin, Texas to present exciting findings showing how the mechanical design of gannet birds' necks enables high-velocity water impact and spider web architecture provides extended cognition. Journal publications are coming soon.

John Michael Racy and Carmen Escobedo presented their poster on stingray wing dynamics at the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium Poster Symposium in Summer 2023.

Thijs, a Boeing International Fellow, wants to turn spidey sense into reality at U of Ljubljana. We are very excited and honored to collaborate with Prof. Janko Slavič. Many thanks to the support of Boeing Int. Fellowship, U of Washington and U of Ljubljana.

Ojasvi Kamboj and John Michael Racy took first place in the 2023 IEEE Radio and Wireless Week (SHaRC 2023) for their presentation on the dynamics of stingray wings.

A snippet: “A&A’s Illimited Lab looks like it’s been misplaced by the UW Biology Department. Vertebrae models of sea birds and snakes fill shelves and cover workbenches.”

We are excited to share the completion of Micromachines Special Issue on 3D Printed Actuators. We created this Special Issue to highlight the impact of the 3D printer in bringing together scientists, engineers, technicians, entrepreneurs, and artists to create musculoskeletal-like actuation.

Thijs Masmeijer presented a novel modeling-testing coupled approach to detect precursors to fatigue damage in thermoplastic composite structures at IMAC 2023 conference.

The illimited LAB welcomed new students this quarter, including Min Jung and Wayne, designers pursuing their master’s degrees at the University of Washington, and Allan, a web developer pursuing his bachelor’s at UW and currently at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, through an exchange program.

Our findings show that the interactions between the rigid structures (bones) and soft nonlinear materials (tendons and muscles) in a vertebral provide a remarkable increase in elastic energy storage and release, which is key in snakes’ efficient and explosive undulation speed.

In collaboration with Sandia National Labs and New Mexico University, we applied the information impulse function (IIF) to detect undesirable but hidden dynamic events when aerospace structures exhibit random and chaotic behaviors due to turbulent and chaotic dynamics.

Bart Boom presented at EMI 2022 concept designs for Gannet-inspired aerial-aquatic transformer robot. The objective is to engineer small transformers that can plunge into the water at an incredibly high velocity (>60 mph).

A new approach for real-time tracking of precursors to damage in aerospace structures by feeling nonlinear vibrations. We can now extract hidden nonlinearities in stiffness, damping, and dynamic phase to identify and sense precursors to structural deterioration.

Identifying infinitesimal disturbances in complex systems and structures. The method is capable of quantifying small disturbances, even in systems experiencing chaos. Findings and code are published in Entropy.

The illimited LAB is now at the historic Guggenheim Hall, home to one of the first Aeronautical Engineering departments in the nation, as one of seven initially established in 1929 with the help of the Guggenheim Fund for the Advancement of Aeronautics.