USU MAE Seminar Series

Transportation electrification is expected to have broad societal impacts and provide a path to a sustainable and equitable transportation future with the potential to reduce the impact of climate change and poor air quality, which disproportionately affect marginalized communities. What a transportation electrification future looks like is not clear, but will likely consist of a hybrid of technologies that results in efficient, sustainable and equitable. The ASPIRE engineering research center, headquartered at Utah State University, is focused on technology development that will enable future high-power charging stations, electrified roadways, autonomous vehicles, and smart and integrated cities. These technologies are maturing at a steady rate, but many are currently limited by material performance or mechanical or thermal limits. This presentation will highlight some of these limitations and the applied and fundamental research that is ongoing within mechanical engineering at the ASPIRE engineering research center.