Thomas H. Bradley

Graduate Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student

Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

801 Ferst Drive N.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0405

 

 

thomas.bradley@gtri.gatech.edu

www.fcbt.gatech.edu/fuelcellairplane

 

Education :

Doctor of Philosophy, Mechanical Engineering,

Georgia Institute of Technology, Expected August 2008

3.83 Cumulative GPA, Major Area: System Dynamics and Control.  Minor Area: Design.

Dissertation Title: Modeling, Design and Energy Management of Fuel Cell Systems for Aircraft

Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering,

University of California at Davis, March 2003

3.75 Cumulative GPA

Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering,

University of California at Davis, June 2000

3.58 Engineering GPA

 

Archival Publications:

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B. A., King, O., Parekh, D. E., and Mavris, D. “Hardware in the Loop Performance Simulation for a Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,” in preparation for submission to AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power.

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B. A., Parekh, D. E., and Mavris, D. “Fuel cells for aviation applications.” Invited article in Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Energy Conversion, Ed. Jürgen Garche, 2008. 

Bradley, T. H. and Frank, A. A. “Design, demonstrations and sustainability impact assessments for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.” Accepted to Sustainable and Renewable Energy Reviews, 2008.  doi:10.1016/j.rser.2007.05.003. 

Bradley, T. H., Danielson, J., Lawrence, J., and Singhose, W. “Command Shaping Under Non-Symmetrical Acceleration and Braking Dynamics.” Accepted to ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics.

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B., Parekh, D., and Mavris, D. “Development and experimental characterization of a fuel cell powered aircraft.” Journal of Power Sources, 171(2007) 793-801.

Bradley, T. H., Huff, B. R., Frank, A. A., 2005.  Energy Consumption Test Methods and Results for Servo-Pump Continuously Variable Transmission Control System. SAE Transactions Journal of Fuels and Lubricants, 2005-01-3782. 

 

Conference Publications:

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B. A., Parekh, D. E., and Mavris, D. “Design and Performance of a Fuel Cell Powered UAV,” Invited article in 26th AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Conference, August 18-21, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Bradley, T. H. and Parekh D. E. “Design, Applications and Commercialization of Fuel Cell Powered Aircraft,” Proceedings of the National Hydrogen Conference, March 30-April 3 2008, Sacramento, California. 

Moffitt, B. A., Bradley, T. H., Parekh, D. E., and Mavris, D. “Vortex Propeller Model Generation and Validation with Uncertainty Analysis for UAV Design.” in 46th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, January 7-10, 2008, Reno, Nevada. AIAA-2008-406.

B. Moffitt, T. Bradley, D. Mavris, and D. Parekh, Reducing Design Error of a Fuel Cell UAV through Variable Fidelity Optimization, 7th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO), September 2007, Belfast, N. Ireland, AIAA-2007-7793.

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B., Parekh, D. E. and Mavris, D., 2007 Flight Test Results for a Fuel Cell-Powered Demonstration Aircraft, AIAA 2007-0032.

Moffitt, B., Bradley, T. H., Mavris, D. and Parekh D. E., 2006. Design Space Exploration of Small- Scale PEM Fuel Cell Long Endurance Aircraft, in 6th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference, September 25-27, 2006, Witchita, Kansas. AIAA-2006-7701. 

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B., Thomas, R., Parekh, D. E. and Mavris, D., 2006. Test Results for a Fuel Cell-Powered Demonstration Aircraft, in Society of Automotive Engineers Power System Conference, November 7-9, 2006, New Orleans. 2006-01-3092. 

Bradley, T. H., Hall, T., Quilin, X., Singhose, W., and Lawrence, J., Input shaping for nonlinear drive systems, in ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, (Chicago, IL), 2006.

Bradley, T. H., Moffitt, B. A., Parekh, D. E., Mavris, D., 2006. Validated Modeling and Synthesis of Medium-scale PEM Fuel Cell Aircraft.  4th International ASME Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, June 18-21 2006, Irvine, California.

Moffitt, B. A., Bradley, T. H., Parekh, D. E., Mavris, D., 2006. Design and Performance Validation of a Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. AIAA 2006-0823.

Graham, R., Bradley, T., Duvall, M., 2003. Development of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Light- and Medium-duty Commercial Vehicles. Electric Vehicle Symposium 20, Long Beach, California.

Bradley, T. H., Frank, A., 2002. CVT Servo-hydraulic Control System Performance and Evaluation. International Congress on Continuously Variable Power Transmission, Munich, Germany, Verein Deutscher Ingenieure Berichte 1709.

Alexander, M., Bradley, T. H., Huff, B., Hutchison, P., Kamisky, R., Loomis, G., McMahon, S., Meyr, N., Schurhoff, R. Vaughan, J., Duvall, M., Frank, A. 2001. Design and Development of the UC Davis FutureTruck. Warrendale, PA. SP-1617, Society of Automotive Engineers.

 

Corporate and Other Publications:

Description of a Basic Vehicle Control Strategy for a Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle, EPRI, Palo Alto, CA : 2007: 1012460.

Development and Modeling of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Architectures Based on the Ford U293 Platform, EPRI, Palo Alto, CA : 2003.

Test Profile Development for the Evaluation of Battery Cycle Life for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles, EPRI, Palo Alto, CA: 2003. 1002228.

Bradley, T. H., 2003. Simulation of Continuously Variable Transmission Chain Drives with Involute Inter-element Contact Surfaces. MS Thesis, University of California – Davis, Department of Mechanical Engineering. 

Battery Dominant Hybrid Electric Vehicle Systems Development and Evaluation, South Coast Air Quality Management District Grant 02011 : 2002.

Battery Dominant Hybrid Electric Vehicle Systems Development and Evaluation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grant MDA-972-95-1-0010 : 2001.

Bradley, T., Huff, B., Frank, A., 2002. Test and Evaluation of the UC Davis Servo-Hydraulic CVT Control System and the GCI CVT Chain in a Hybrid Electric Vehicle; Report to Nissan Motor Ltd., University of California – Davis.

Powertrain Testing and Evaluation System (PTES), University of California – Davis Hybrid Electric Vehicle Research Center : 2001.

 

Research Experience :

Doctoral Research, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech Research Institute (Academic Advisors: David E. Parekh (ME), Dimitri Mavris (AE), Thomas F. Fuller (ChBE))

·         Developed multidisciplinary tools for analysis, design and optimization of long-endurance fuel cell powered aircraft. 

·         Validated design methodology and tools through construction of the largest compressed hydrogen fuel cell aircraft developed to date. 

·         Designed, constructed and tested PEM fuel cells for aircraft application and published seminal results regarding fuel cell design tradeoffs for the aircraft powerplant application. 

·         Non-thesis research includes development of numerical optimization scheme for feed-forward control of flexible systems with non-linearities, modeling and control of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and physics-based propeller modeling with application to advanced design of unmanned aerial vehicles. 

Industry Research, Independent Contractor, (November 2002 to August 2004)

·         Performed engineering analysis and system design for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles under contract to the Electric Transportation Division of the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. 

·         Performed confidential dynamic simulation, control system design and fuel economy analysis for Ford Th!nk Research group regarding prototype Ford Escape hybrid vehicle. 

·         Worked with DaimlerChrysler KEN (Low Emissions Vehicle Group, Mannheim, Germany) to simulate, design, specify, and bring to production a proof-of-concept plug-in hybrid electric medium-duty truck.  Partnered with DC engineers in Mannheim and EPRI engineers to design vehicle control algorithms and specify powertrain and energy system components. 

Masters Research, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of California – Davis (Academic Advisor: Dr. Andrew Frank)

·         Mechanical group leader of DARPA funded project to design and evaluate a prototype medium-duty automotive chain Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT).  Performed mechanical and electrical design, construction, optimization, testing and evaluation of two design generations of a 240 Nm torque capacity custom servo-hydraulic controlled automotive CVT. 

·         Mechanical group leader for design and construction of an inertial test stand designed to facilitate CVT controls development under contract to Visteon Corp.

·         Wrote proposal, designed and conducted experiments to experimentally verify dynamic system response of servo-hydraulic CVT under contract to Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. 

·         Developed a multi-body model of CVT chain and friction dynamics in partial satisfaction of the requirements for Master of Science degree. 

Undergraduate Research, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of California – Davis (Academic Advisor: Dr. Andrew Frank)

·         Managed and participated in powertrain and energy system design and construction for a 2000 Chevrolet Suburban converted to plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.  Vehicle achieved 25/27 city/hwy mpge and SULEV emissions while earning first place in 2001 national FutureTruck competition.

 

Teaching Experience :

Co-instructor, ME 4823 Renewable Energy Systems, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (S-07, with Dr. Comas L. Haynes)

·         Co-developed lectures, homework and exams for new undergraduate class. 

·         Developed renewable energy systems final projects.  Projects use NREL’s HOMER energy system design tool to allow students to design and analyze renewable energy projects for a variety of case studies in both the developing and developed world. 

Guest Lecturer, Variety of Programs and Instances

·         Guest lecturer to ISYE 8803F Energy Technology and Policy (S-08, with Dr. Valerie Thomas)

·         Guest lecturer to ME 4823 Fuel Cell Systems (S-08, with Dr. Comas L. Haynes)

·         Guest lecturer to ME 4813 Fuel Cell Systems (F-07, with Dr. Comas L. Haynes)

·         Guest lecturer to Advanced Placement and Remedial Chemistry at Atlanta area high-school as part of the Georgia Intern-Fellowships for Teachers program (S-06, with Dr. Comas L. Haynes)

·         Guest lecturer to numerous school groups as a component of informal Institute outreach efforts and the Georgia Tech Research Institute Foundations for the Future Program (S-06 to present, with Dr. Comas L. Haynes)

Research Advisor, California Alliance for Minority Participation in Math, Science & Engineering (June 2001 to June 2002)

·         Mentored two undergraduate students in research as part of the Mentorships and Opportunities for Research in Engineering program at UC Davis

Activities and Awards:

1st Prize SAIC Georgia Tech Student Paper Competition (2007)

Author and Investigator, University of California Energy Institute Grant: “Demonstration and analysis of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle technologies and their impact on transportation energy” $18,000 (2003)

Author and Investigator, Nissan Motor Company Grant: “Test and Evaluation of the UC Davis Servo-Hydraulic CVT Control System and the GCI CVT Chain in a Hybrid Electric Vehicle” $32,000 (2002)

Department of Energy Graduate Automotive Technology Education Fellowship Recipient (2001 to 2002)

College of Engineering Outstanding Senior, University of California at Davis (2000)

National Merit Scholar Semifinalist (1995)

ACADEMIC SERVICE:

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award Committee (2008)

Reviewer for Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice (2007)

Reviewer for the ASME 4th International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology (2006)

INVITED PRESENTATIONS:

“Fuel Cell Demonstrator Aircraft,” 26th AIAA Applied Aerodynamics Conference, August 18-21, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii.

“Fuel Cell Demonstrator Aircraft,” NASA Glenn Research Center, July 23, 2006, Cleveland, Ohio. 

“Powertrain Control Optimization Analyses for PHEVs,” Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Workshop - Electric Vehicle Symposium, November 15, 2003, Long Beach, California.

“Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Sprinter Project,” Electric Power Research Institute Hybrid Electric Vehicle Working Group - Infrastructure Working Council, July 29, 2003, Palo Alto, California.  .

“The Role of Plug-in HEVs as Precursors to FCHEVs and Full-function BEVs,” Public Testimony - California Air Resource Board, March 27, 2003, Sacramento, California.

“Continuously Variable Transmission Technologies for Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” Combustion Research Facility - Sandia National Laboratory, June 4, 2002, Livermore, California.

REFERENCES:

Available upon request.