Professor Jonathan Cooper

Summary

Jonathan Cooper holds the Airbus Sir George White Chair in Aerospace Engineering and has an international reputation in the fields of aeroelasticity, structural dynamics, adaptive aircraft structures and aeroelastic optimization. 

His current research involves the following main research themes all focussed on the development of new efficient future aircraft designs:

1. Novel technologies for loads control
2. Improved measurement and modelling of structural / control system nonlinearities and more accurate and efficient prediction of aeroservoelastic behaviour
3. Use of aeroservoelastic designs for improved aircraft performance
4. Efficient and accurate prediction of uncertainties in aircraft performance
5. Improved multi-disciplinary design optimisation and certification for future wing structures

Biography

Upon obtaining a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of London, Jonathan Cooper worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Aerospace Establishment, Farnborough, for three years before joining the University of Manchester in October 1989 as a ‘new-blood’ lecturer.  During my 18 years there, he made a significant contribution in terms of teaching, research and administration, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in October 1997 and Professor in March 2001, becoming the last Head of School before the merger in October 2004 between the University of Manchester and UMIST.  In August 2007 he moved to the School of Engineering at the University of Liverpool as Professor of Aerostructures and Aeroelasticity.  In February 2012 Prof Cooper took up the Airbus Sir George White Chair at the University of Bristol.

Prof Cooper has published over 200 technical papers in journals and conferences, and is co-author of the textbook “An Introduction to Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads” published by Wiley in 2007. Several of the algorithms that he has developed are now used by industry throughout the world.  Prof Cooper has participated in / led several invited EU Framework projects and has been involved in research projects that have attracted funding of over £2.9m as lead investigator, over £6m as co-investigator.   He has supervised over 20 PhD students.  He spent a six month sabbatical as Visiting Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1995, and also five months on a Royal Academy of Engineering secondment at British Aerospace Military Aircraft in 1997.   From October 2005 to September 2006 Prof Cooper was a Royal Academy of Engineering / Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow working on Morphing Aircraft Structures.  

Teaching

Prof Cooper has had a wide range of roles relating to teaching and syllabi development for Engineering degree courses, which including liaison with industry and Learned Societies, in order to make the content more relevant for the needs of today’s engineering graduates.  He has developed and taught a number of modules in the areas of aeroelasticity, structures, structural dynamics, optimisation and aircraft design, including the development of Problem Based Learning and Enquiry Based Learning modes of teaching.    He has presented a number of short courses that have been run ‘in-house’ in several of the British Aerospace and Airbus sites across the country and also in Europe on Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads, along with other short course on Experimental and Analytical Modal Analysis. 

Keywords

• Aeroelasticity
• Structural Dynamics
• Optimisation
• adaptive structures
• flight flutter testing
• aircraft design.

Memberships

Organisations

Department of Aerospace Engineering

Other sites

• Aerospace

Research Groups

• Fluid and Aerodynamics
• Fluid and Aerodynamics - Core

Recent publications

• Bond, V, Canfield, R, Cooper, JE & Blair, M 2012, ‘Experimental Nonlinear Static Deflections of a Subscale Joined Wing.’. AIAA Journal of Aircraft, vol 49., pp. 329 - 333
• Gunnell, D, Bennewith, O, Simkin, S, Cooper, J, Klineberg, E, Rodway, C, Sutton, L, Steeg, S, Wells, C, Hawton, K & Kapur, N 2012, ‘Time trends in coroners' use of different verdicts for possible suicides and their impact on officially reported incidence of suicide in England: 1990-2005’. Irish J. of Psychological Medicine., pp. 1-8
• Georgiou, G, Manan, A & Cooper, JE 2012, ‘Modeling Composite Wing Aeroelastic Behavior with Uncertain Damage Severity and Material Properties’. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol 32., pp. 32-43
• Khodaparast, H, Georgiou, G, Cooper, JE, Riccobenne, L, Ricci, S, Vio, G & Denner, P 2012, ‘Rapid Prediction of Worst Case Gust Loads’. Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics, vol 2., pp. 33-54
• Abdelal, G, Cooper, JE & Robotham, A 2011, ‘Reliability Assessment of 3D Space Frame Structures Applying Stochastic Finite Element Analysis Expansion’. International Journal of Mechanics and Materials in Design.
• Harmin, Y & Cooper, JE 2011, ‘Aeroelastic Behaviour of a Wing Including Geometric Nonlinearities’. Aeronautical Journal, vol 115., pp. 767 - 788
• Manan, a, Vio, G, Harmin, Y & Cooper, JE 2010, ‘Optimization of Aeroelastic Composite Structures using Evolutionary Algorithms’. Engineering Optimization, vol 42., pp. 171 - 184
• Manan, A & Cooper, JE 2010, ‘Prediction of Uncertain Frequency Response Function Bounds using Polynomial Chaos Expansion’. J Sound & Vibration, vol 329., pp. 3348 - 3358
• Hickey, D, Worden, K, Platten, M, Wright, J & Cooper, JE 2009, ‘Higher-order spectra for identification of nonlinear modal coupling’. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol 23., pp. 1037 - 1061
• Platten, M, Wright, J, Dimitriadis, G & Cooper, JE 2009, ‘Identification of a Wing with Discrete Nonlinear Attachments using an Extended Modal Model’. AIAA Journal of Aircraft, vol 46., pp. 1614 - 1626

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system

Courses

Professor Cooper currently teaches 1 courses: