Current Projects
Supersonic Inlet Bleed Experiments of Curved Surfaces for Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling
It is currently established that removing small amounts of flow through the inlet can substantially elevate off design performance of supersonic inlets. This project aims to substantially improve the CFD models to determine the optimal bleed at different operation Mach numbers. We bring together innovative approaches to make highly accurate flowfield measurements within the inlet at different magnitudes of mass bleed. These datasets will be collaboratively shared with our industry partner to help elevate the CFD model accuracy and make them applicable for various practical inlet designs.
Students: Opening available for 1 graduate student, 1 postdoc, and 1 undergraduate student (US citizenship required)
Project end date: 12/2024
Distortion generators to create tailored supersonic inflow
The objective of this project is to flow effectors that will generate a prescribed supersonic inflow. We work with our industry partner to combine experiments, CFD, and data mining ML/AI routines to generate optimized solutions for a given target inflow.
Students: Opening available for 1 graduate student and 1 undergraduate student (US citizenship required)
Project end date: 10/2024
Advanced laser diagnostics for future energy systems
We build on our success and legacy with developing spectroscopic approaches to make composition independent thermometry and pivot to making more advanced measurements of total pressure and temperature at practically relevant conditions.
Graduate students: Abinash Sahoo. Opening available for 1 graduate student and 1 undergraduate student (US citizenship required)
Project end date: 12/2024
Variable Engine for New Maneuver
We work towards the conceptualization and development of scramjet engines that can operate over a wide range of angles of attack and sideslip. As a part of a multi-institutional team that takes the academic investigations to industry and federal labs, we employ multiple flow diagnostics to learn the flow processes within scramjet inlets.
Graduate Students: Matt Schram, William Stramecky, Ethan Johnson
Project end date: 10/2025
Morphing solutions to advance hypersonic inlets
In this project we implement morphing surfaces within scramjet inlets to significantly increase their efficiency and manufacturing envelope. A complementary experiments and computations will help unlock the foundational physics that dictate the unstart margins of morphing hypersonic inlets.
Graduate Students: Emma Cavanaugh, Opening available for 1 undergraduate student (US citizenship required)
Project end date: 10/2025
Combustion processes in Solid Fuel Ramjet
With strong collaborations with the Naval Research Laboratory, we investigate the fundamental combustion processes that occur in solid fuel ramjets. The experiments probe the fundamentals of turbulent combustion at conditions relevant to ramjets. A critical thrust of this effort is to obtain validation quality experimental database of the aerothermochemical variables that will help advance the computational models of solid fuel ramjets.
Graduate Students: Ryan DeBoskey
Project end date: 07/2026
Non intrusive trajectory manipulations in supersonic vehicles
The vision of the proposed effort is to advance the current state of Fluid Structural Thermal Interactions (FSTI) that occur in hypersonic aerospace vehicles by finding comprehensive answers to the above questions. The objective of the proposed effort is to develop fundamental insights into the FSTI phenomena that occur when a shock wave is present on a structure with or without accompanying boundary layer separation at hypersonic Mach numbers.
Graduate Student: Jerod Schwandt. Opening for 1 graduate student or 1 postdoc and multiple UG students are available (no citizenship requirement).
Project end date: 09/2024
Fluid Structure Interactions within Supersonic Inlets
The objective of the proposed effort is to widen the peak efficiency envelope of supersonic inlets to sub-design Mach numbers. The important challenge of developing such strategies for supersonic inlets is the availability of very small acreage within the inlets, which necessitates developing small footprint effectors. The present work aims to leverage fluid structure interactions within supersonic inlets as an approach to address this challenge.
Graduate Student: Soumen Chakravarthy, Bailey Autry. Opening for 1 graduate student or 1 postdoc and multiple UG students are available (no citizenship requirement)
Project end date: 09/2024
Hypersonic fluid structure thermal interactions over flexible panels
There are two basic questions for FSTI at any Mach number including hypersonic Mach numbers. First, what is the impact of a flexible structure on the flowfield, and second what is the impact of the flowfield on the structure? If there is truly an interaction, i.e., FSTI, then the flow field creates motion in the structure and the structural motion creates changes in the flow field. Both always occur to some degree, so the question is when are such interactions significant? The vision of the proposed effort is to advance the current state of Fluid Structural Thermal Interactions (FSTI) that occur in hypersonic aerospace vehicles by finding comprehensive answers to the above questions. The objective of the proposed effort is to develop fundamental insights into the FSTI phenomena that occur when a shock wave is present on a structure with or without accompanying boundary layer separation at hypersonic Mach numbers.
Graduate Student: Vaibhav Varigonda, Anil Mohan. Opening for 1 graduate student or 1 postdoc and multiple UG students are available (no citizenship requirement)
Project end date: 07/2023