The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has reached out to two major universities for help with hypersonic flight system designs (see figure). Texas A&M University (TAMU) and the University of Notre Dame were presented with one-year, $500,000 applied research awards for hypersonic flight system research and development (R&D).
TAMU is tasked with developing analytical and empirical procedures to quantify high-altitude and near-space atmospheric weather events. Their research is sponsored by the Joint Hypersonic Transition Office (JHTO) through the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH). It will include support from Wichita State University and the University of Texas at El Paso as well as industrial-level help from Lockheed Martin Corp.
Notre Dame’s R&D, also sponsored by the JHTO, aims at improving the control of a flight system moving at hypersonic speeds. Their studies will involve additive-manufacturing techniques to construct a hypersonic-vehicle control array module. The control system will employ machine learning and artificial intelligence for potentially improved performance of a hypersonic vehicle. Work will be performed at Notre Dame and at the University of Arizona and TAMU. General Electric Global Research will serve as industrial partner. Flow field experiments will be conducted in the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Mach-6 Ludwieg Tube Facility.