Fractional Calculus has recently been applied in various areas of engineering, science, finance,
applied mathematics, and bio engineering. However, many researchers remain unaware of this
field. They often ask: What is a fractional derivative? Is this a new field or an old field? Are
there applications of fractional derivatives? What are those applications? In this talk, several
definitions of fractional derivatives will be introduced. Examples from different engineering
fields will be presented to demonstrate that fractional derivatives arise naturally in many
applications. A fractional derivative based formulation will be presented for thermal analysis of a
disk brake, and the analytical results will be compared with the experimental results. A fractional
variational problem will be introduced, and it will be demonstrated that the fractional Euler
Lagrange equation for this problem leads to a new class of fractional differential equations with
forward and backward fractional derivatives. A finite element formulation and numerical results
will be presented to solve a fractional variational problem. Finally, possible directions for future
research will be discussed.