Alper Erturk

Alper Erturk is the Woodruff Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Research.
Erturk leads the Smart Structures and Dynamical Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His publications are mostly in the areas of dynamics and vibration of smart structures and energy harvesting. Erturk made fundamental contributions in the field of energy harvesting from dynamical systems. His distributed-parameter piezoelectric energy harvester models have been widely used by several research groups. He was one of the first researchers to explore nonlinear dynamic phenomena for frequency bandwidth enhancement in energy harvesting, specifically by using a bistable Duffing oscillator with electromechanical coupling, namely the piezomagnetoelastic energy harvester. His early energy harvesting work also opened new multiphysics avenues, such as the use of aeroelastic flutter to enable scalable airflow energy harvesting through piezoaeroelastic systems. His recent collaborative work aims to exploit flexoelectricity (strain gradient-induced polarization) for the enhancement of energy harvesting at the nanoscale.
Erturk's group at Georgia Tech also contributed to smart material-based bio-inspired aquatic locomotion by developing the first untethered piezoelectric swimmer as a platform to explore multiphysics fluid-electroelastic structure interactions. Another multiphysics research topic recently explored by his group is acoustic-electroelastic structure interaction for wireless power transfer using ultrasound waves.
Erturk and collaborators have lately been conducting research at the intersection of metamaterials and smart structures. Recently they developed the first Gradient-Index Phononic Crystal Lens-based piezoelectric energy harvester. Low-frequency broadband vibration attenuation via locally-resonant finite elastic metamaterials is another research area explored by Erturk and collaborators.