From January 12–16, 2026, faculty and graduate students from the IDEAS² Center participated in the AIAA SciTech Forum 2026 in Orlando, Florida, one of the premier annual conferences in aerospace research and technology development.
During the forum, IDEAS² research was presented through several peer-reviewed student-led papers. The study Stiffness and Stability of Spiral-Wrapped Doubly Curved Shells developed analytical and computational frameworks to quantify stiffness, stability, and nonlinear load response in spiral-wrapped shell architectures. These results support the design of lightweight, deployable space structures with improved structural reliability.
Another paper, Design of a Lightweight Robotic Tensegrity Morphing Airfoil, introduced a tensegrity-based morphing airfoil concept that integrates robotic actuation and structural efficiency to enable controlled aerodynamic shape adaptation with minimal mass penalty.
Participation in SciTech 2026 strengthened the IDEAS² Center’s research visibility and highlighted its role in training graduate students to present and disseminate high-impact aerospace research within the international engineering community.