UCLA Extension Short Courses

Dateline: 05/19/97

The UCLA Extension runs several Engineering Short Courses during the year. The courses are offered during four semesters (winter, spring, summer, and fall). Courses are offered in four different subject areas. Each semester, there are five or six courses offered in Materials and Structural Engineering; most of these courses either deal directly with composites or have some composite content.

I recently attended one of the composites courses, and I found it to be well worth the time. In this week's column, I'll review that course and give some information on upcoming courses.

First, a few general details. Most courses are one week long (Monday through Friday) and run from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM daily. The Friday class is scheduled until 5:00, but the instructors try to finish early to accommodate travel plans. Course fees run between $1195 and $1495 and include lecture notes. Some courses also have a textbook. Coffee, juice, bagels, and danish are provided for breakfast; lunch is on your own, but there are plenty of small restaraunts within a few minutes of the Extension building (it's just off campus). And there are plenty of cookies and lemonade for your afternoon snack.

Participants have access to the UCLA recreational facilities (one of my classmates swam every day during lunch). The Extension provides hotel information; most people end up staying at the Hilgard House Hotel (on campus) or the Doubletree Hotel Westwood (about a 10 minute walk from the Extension building). If you don't plan on touring LA, you can easily get by without a car.

It's too late to take the Winter 1997 or the Spring 1997 courses, but you may want to look at them to begin planning for next year (most courses are offered every year). The Summer 1997 materials classes don't begin until August, so there's still plenty of time to enroll.

Five Materials and Structural Engineering courses are offered this Summer. They are:

• Smart Structures: Actuator and Sensory Materials (August 4-6)
• Sol-Gel and Chemical Processing of Advanced Materials (August 4-6)
• Composite Airframe Structures (August 11-15)
• Corrosion of Aging Aircraft (August 18-21)
• Airframe Design and Repairs (September 8-12)

All courses except Corrosion of Aging Aircraft have some composite content.

The course I took earlier this year was Advanced Analysis and Design of Composite Materials and Structures. I found this to be a very useful class. The major topics covered were:

• Fiber-Matrix Interactions
• Bonded and Bolted Joints
• Failure Criteria
• Design-to-Cost
• Review of Finite Element Software
• Nonlinear Analysis
• Fracture Mechanics
• Buckling and Post-Buckling
• Special Topics

Coverage of the topics ranged from very practical (Bonded and Bolted Joints, FE Software) to highly theoretical (Failure Criteria, Nonlinear Analysis, Buckling and Post-Buckling). Personally, I would have liked a bit more practical content in the theoretical sections, but they were still very good.

One of the things that made this course so good was the quality of the lecturers. All were top-ranked experts in their fields. Edward Wu (of Tsai-Wu fame) gave the lecture on failure criteria. John Hart-Smith, a senior engineer at McDonnell Douglas covered the joint topics. Edward Stanton, one of the original PATRAN developers, talked about finite element software. The coordinator, Longin Greszczuk, gave the opening and closing lectures. It was apparent to everyone (including the other lecturers), that he had been involved in just about every major area of composite research. The other topics were covered by Henry Fong, C.C. Poe, and George Simitses (I remember referencing many of their papers in my graduate thesis).

Finally, the classes were not simple lectures. There were many discussions, both during and between lectures, among the class members and the lecturers. Just about all of the class members were practicing engineers; a few were from academia. At the end of the course, everyone received a list of attendees and lecturers with contact information. All of the lecturers said they welcomed contact after the class; a couple said they still hear from students who took the class over ten years ago.

In a future column, I'll cover some of the courses offered by other organizations. Many of these offer hands-on training. In the meantime, drop me a line at composite.guide@about.com if you've taken any of the UCLA courses, and let me know what you thought of them.

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