News - Ray W. Herrick Laboratories - Purdue University

The oddly satisfying small domes that you press on your soda’s to-go cup lid may one day save a winged drone from a nosedive. Patterns of these invertible domes on a drone’s wings would give it a way to remember in microseconds what dangerous conditions feel like and react quickly. The study, conducted by Andres Arrieta, is among the first demonstrations of a neuromorphic metamaterial, which uses its shape to learn how to adapt to its surroundings on its own.

The Ray W. Herrick Laboratories have new leadership. Jeff Rhoads, who has held the position of Director of Herrick Labs since 2019, has stepped down to pursue another opportunity on campus. Effective Monday, October 24, Greg Shaver will become the new Director of Herrick Labs.

Tian Li and Fu Zhao are part of a team which has received a $958,000 grant from Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop a transformational “living” wood building material, with the strength of steel, self-healing capabilities, and combined carbon-sequestering benefits from wood and microbes.

With today’s “smart” homes, you can activate lights and air-conditioning with a simple verbal request. But are these systems really “smart” enough to know which room you’re in? Can they save energy by cooling just one specific corner of the room? That’s the idea behind the Human Building Interactions Laboratory (HBIL), a first-of-its-kind interactive facility at Purdue University that will enable HVAC systems to become truly reconfigurable, right down to the specific wall panels.

Andres Arrieta's team created a giant-sized interactive wall of bistable dots for Boiler Gold Rush, the orientation event for incoming freshmen. It's one of several interactive exhibits that used art to introduce students to engineering.

Did you know there’s a silent war going on inside your home? Alternating current (AC) electricity comes in from the grid, but many of your appliances and lighting run on direct current (DC). Every time you plug in a TV, computer or cell phone charger, power must be individually converted from AC to DC – a costly and inefficient process. Purdue University researchers have proposed a solution to the problem by retrofitting an entire house to run on its own efficient DC-powered nano-grid.

Werner Soedel, who served as a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue for 41 years, has passed away.

Leaders in defense research will assemble at Purdue University for the 2022 Breakthrough Energetics Conference as the invasion of Ukraine and the shadow of a wider conflict underscore the need for improved domestic supply chains for innovative energetic materials. Purdue University and its Purdue Energetics Research Center (PERC), a national leader in research and in educating domestic professionals in energetic materials — propellants, pyrotechnics and explosives – will host the conference Wednesday and Thursday (May 4-5). The conference is organized by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), in partnership with the NDIA Emerging Technologies Institute (ETI), the Energetics Technology Center (ETC) and Purdue.

Purdue was selected as the lead academic partner and headquarters for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Regional Research Hub – Midwest, and will be involved in the development of a science and technology ecosystem across a wide area of 15 states.

Most airplane wings use hydraulic motors to change their shape and control their flight. But associate professor Andres Arrieta is investigating a simpler kind of “morphing” wing, using bi-stable structures to switch a wing’s shape and stiffness with a minimum amount of energy.