People
Current Graduate Students Advised
Jyotirmoy Mukherjee
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2025
Research Area: Terramechanics and adaptive control algorithms for off-road autonomous vehicles
Jyotirmoy is co-advised by Prof. Andrea L'Afflitto and his Ph.D. research is about motion planning of high speed autonomous off-road vehicles. The project investigates two areas of research in off road autonomous vehicles. The first part is developing terramechanics models to better estimate tire-terrain properties. The second part is developing algorithms for guidance, navigation and control.
Hannah White
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2025
Research Area: Terramechanics and parameter estimation for high speed autonomous vehicles
Hannah's research project focuses on accurate, real-time sensing and estimation of terrain and vehicle-terrain interaction parameters. Real-time estimation of these parameters is critical for enabling autonomous vehicles to properly maneuver in unstructured environments. Vehicle parameters analyzed in Hannah's research include characteristics such as tire sinkage, slip ratio, and slip angle.
Varsha Swamy
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2025
Research Area: Tire-Mud Interaction
Varsha is a graduate student working with Prof. Sandu and co-advised by Prof. Alba Yerro-Colom from the Geotechnical department. Her project is on numerical modeling of tire-mud interactions. Mobility on mud is a great challenge due to loss of traction, higher sinkage, and possibilities of getting immobilized all together. Her project will focus on modeling of mud using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method and coupling with FE tire model for assessing tractive performance. Testing for the project involves characterization of mud properties for material model and validation with tire traction tests on the Terramechanics Rig.
Yogesh Surkutwar
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2025
Research Area: Characterization and Modeling of Different Snow Attributes for Tire Performance Simulation
Yogesh is a Ph.D. student in the Engineering Mechanics department who is co-advised by Prof. Costin Untaroiu and Prof. Corina Sandu. His current research focuses on the modeling of snow for simulation of tire performance. He has 14 years of expertise in NVH & Durability Simulation of Vehicle & Powertrain using Finite Element Analysis.
Ekansh Chaturvedi
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2025
Research Area: Computational Multibody Dynamics with Contacts
Ekansh joined the TMVS Lab in the Fall of 2021. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, India in 2018. He has conducted extensive research on firearms design as an undergraduate student. He has 3 years of design and development experience with automotive transmissions. He is currently pursuing a Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research focuses on simulating multibody systems with contacts using nonlinear programming.
Chaitanya Sonalkar
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2026
Research Area: Terramechanics, Vehicle Dynamics, Analytical Tire Modeling
Chaitanya joined the lab in the Summer of 2022. His research interests are in tire modeling, the prediction of tire characteristics for sand and gravel and analytical model of tires for vehicle dynamics simulations.
Alexandru Vilsan
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2026
Research Area: Terramechanics
Alex is a Ph.D. student who joined the lab in Fall 2022. His main research area lies in Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Dynamics, focusing on improving the sensing capabilities of passenger car tires. His expertise is in experiment design (instrumentation and signal processing), tire testing, and vehicle dynamics (hard pavement and deformable terrain).
Sadegh Yarmohammadisatri
Exp. Degree/Date: Ph.D., May 2026
Research Area: Vehicle Dynamics, Autonomous Vehicles, Multi-body dynamics
Sadegh joined the TMVS lab in Fall 2023 for his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. His research interest are in the area of Vehicle dynamics, Autonomous vehicles, Multi-body dynamics, Tire-road interaction and design optimization. He has 5 years of experience in design and development of automotive suspensions and automotive fuel systems, mainly CNG fuel systems.
Destiny Mason
Exp. Degree/Date: M.S., May 2025
Research Area: Terramechanics
Destiny joined the lab in Fall 2023 for her graduate studies in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interest is in the field of finite-element modeling of tire for tire-mud interaction simulation.
Christian Herrera
Exp. Degree/Date: M.S., May 2025
Research Area: Terramechanics
Christian is a first-year graduate student working on his MS in mechanical engineering. He is interested in researching tire-terrain interactions and tire performance. He is particularly interested in race track applications of this research.