Solar-Powered Fixed-Wing Aircraft Design; Optimizing Surface Texturing for YSZ Thermal-Barrier-Coating on Inconel 718 Substrate to Mitigate High Stresses/Strains; Crashing Down: The Effect of Ppalli-Ppalli Culture in the Sampoong Department Store Collapse

While my capstone projects* and my STS research project are not technically connected, a thematic relationship exists between the Sampoong Department Store collapse and the development of new materials technology to improve the efficiency of jet engines. In my technical project, my team and I worked with human and non-human actors within a network to develop materials technology to increase aircraft engine efficiency. To gain more insight into how successful technology networks form and stabilize, and to become more aware of destabilizing rogue actors, my STS research examines how a hidden actor, ppalli-ppalli culture, in the Sampoong Department Store collapse acted as a rogue actor and facilitated the collapse.
            As part of the materials science and engineering capstone group, our team worked with industry partners including Rolls-Royce, The Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM), and PulseTex to develop a method to increase adhesion of a thermal-barrier-coating system for aircraft engine components. The team used ultra-short pulse lasering to create different topographical textures on the surface of the bond coat, the intermediate coating layer, in the materials system. The texturing showed promising results, indicating improved performance of the materials coating system at elevated temperatures. This increased performance at elevated temperatures allows for the aircraft engine to operate at higher temperatures, thus improving efficiency and leading to lower carbon emissions. The project consisted of working with multiple industry partners and physical materials, all of which contributed to the formation of the network to develop the technology.
            My STS research project pivoted from my niche technical expertise in the realm of aerospace materials and instead focused on how an underlying cultural actor in South Korea contributed to the Sampoong Department Store collapse. This building collapse led to the death of hundreds of people and was representative of other high-casualty man-made engineering catastrophes in South Korea. My research focuses on how South Korea’s rapidly growing economy in the post-Korean War period facilitated this obsession with speed and efficiency, described as ppalli-ppalli culture. This underlying cultural actor, instilled by the South Korean government allowed for the Sampoong Department Store network to fall apart as poor construction and negligence facilitated the collapse. The goal of this research was to develop an understanding of how culture, particularly speed-obsessed culture, can lead to the breakdown of networks and poor engineering decision making by human actors.
            Working on the technical project and the STS research project simultaneously allowed for me to understand complex networks which develop technology, and how an obsession for speed can lead to catastrophic decisions. One of the most difficult of the technical project was communicating with all the industry partners and making sure everyone understood the objectives. There were instances when some industry partners were not on the same page, leading to confusion and leading to a mix-up of certain parameters for manufacturing techniques. The pressure to complete this project before the end of the semester contributed to this hastiness, exemplifying an underlying rogue actor like the ppalli-ppalli culture during the Sampoong collapse.
Note: I completed two technical capstone projects: The development of a solar plane and the development of materials science technology for aircraft engines. The capstone project I will use for this analysis is the latter.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Technical Advisor I: Aldo Gargiulo

Technical Advisor II: James Fitz-Gerald

STS Advisor: Benjamin Laugelli

Technical Team Members I: Miles Beam, Victoria Camacho, Michael Chou, Larry Egalla, Graham Guerette, Declan Long, Nathan Ong, James Richard, Defne Savas, Adam Snyder, Muhammad Vasal

Technical Team Members II: Iris Boateng, Nicolas Fonseca Alva, Lara Ojha, Alice Pandaleon