Seminars

Abstract: Given my role as the Uhrig & Vournas Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue, the seminar will have two parts.

The first part will be a brief overview of the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue.  The School has become the largest aerospace engineering program in the United States by degrees granted.  I will introduce the School in terms of the themes we have adopted, describe the size of the School, highlight a few of our research facilities and capabilities, and present some of our larger student organizations and their activities.

The second part provides a look at an effort over the past several years in which a team of researchers at Purdue have developed the Fleet-Level Environmental Evaluation Tool (FLEET) to predict how introducing new technologies, aircraft concepts and alternate energy sources may result in a change in the carbon emissions from commercial aviation. This system dynamics inspired tool can capture issues like fleet evolution with the introduction of new aircraft and the retirement of old aircraft, changing travel demand including price elasticity resulting from decreased fuel burn and enhanced technologies that impact the cost of flying. Using fleet to assess numerous scenarios highlights that carbon emissions from commercial aviation may not increase as fast as demand for commercial aviation increases; however, scenarios evaluated by the Purdue team to date show that it will be difficult to reach net-zero commercial aviation in the near future.

Bio: William A. (Bill) Crossley is the Uhrig & Vournas Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue; he has been in that role since 2019 and has been a faculty member at Purdue since 1995.   He is also the director for the Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility and Sustainability (PEGASAS), the FAA’s Center of Excellence for General Aviation. 

Bill has received numerous teaching awards at the School, College and University level including the College of Engineering A.A. Potter Best of Engineering Teaching Award, induction into the Purdue University Book of Great Teachers, and the Charles B. Murphy Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Prof. Crossley is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has served as chair of the AIAA Aircraft Design Technical Committee.  He was an Executive Committee member for the Council of Engineering Systems Universities and served a term as Chair of CESUN.  Prof. Crossley led the formation of the System of Systems Signature Area in the College of Engineering at Purdue that provided the impetus for today’s Purdue Systems Collaboratory.