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Office: Weber 211C
Phone: 894-3042
e-mail: james.craig@aerospace.gatech.edu
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Office: Weber 211C Phone: 894-3042 e-mail: james.craig@aerospace.gatech.edu |
| Ph.D., Stanford University M.S., Stanford University B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
1968 1966 1964 |
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Co-Director, Center for Aerospace Systems Analysis (CASA) |
1997-2004 |
Dr. Craig is professor emeritus of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech with broad interests in teaching and research. His areas of interest are generally in the field of structural mechanics and particularly experimental mechanics. He has been responsible for teaching undergraduate engineering courses in structures and experimental methods and graduate courses in vibration measurement and analysis and computer-aided engineering and design. He continues to teach selected undergraduate mechanics and structural analysis courses.
His earliest research in mechanics involved development of experimental techniques for nondestructive testing of structures under destabilizing loads (buckling), measurement and performance evaluation of solar energy systems, and wind load and local structural response measurements of highrise buildings. Later work involved earthquake engineering of buildings and the problems of structural dynamic measurements and identification of dynamic system models from experimental data. This work involved full scale dynamic response measurements of highrise buildings under transient forcing where the objective was to develop accurate models for the cladding-structure interaction effects, particularly as they would apply to earthquake engineering. Later work dealt with applications of robust linear and neural network adaptive active control and passive damping systems (often called “smart structures”) to attenuate building dynamic response to earthquakes. Dr. Craig also was an investigator in the NSF Mid America Earthquake Center for the first decade of operation where his work focused on formulating probabilistic methods for assessing the fragility of buildings in vulnerable areas of mid-America and on developing passive control and response modification methods for fragility improvement in both old and new construction. The most recent work examined the vulnerability of interacting infrastructure networks such as water, gas, power and telecommunications.
Current research involves neural network-based adaptive methods for structural control. Initial applications were to robotics and to spacecraft and gossamer space structures such as the NASA Solar Sailcraft. More recent applications are to attitude control of flexible launch vehicles similar to designs such as the Ares I.
Dr. Craig has also been involved in the application of computational systems to the problem of design in aerospace engineering. In 1985 he founded, and directed until its dissolution in 1997, the College of Engineering CAE/CAD Laboratory which was organized to acquire and provide state-of-the-art CAD research and instructional facilities for the College. The central role of this lab has now been replaced by distributed facilities within each School, and the lab organization has evolved into a college-wide support facility for engineering computing in general. Dr. Craig's research interests are in the general area of CAD, particularly in the problems of concurrent engineering, integrated product and process development (IPPD), complex systems design, design optimization, and computer infrastructure for IPPD. Several projects resulted in prototype software design frameworks that demonstrated innovative approaches and methods, some of which have been incorporated into recent commercially developed design frameworks.