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CU 麻豆影院 awarded major Department of Defense research grant for hypersonics

Hypersonic vehicle rendering


Rendering of a hypersonic vehicle in flight. Iain Boyd is leading a five-year, $7.5 million Department of Defense MURI grant to advance the science of hypersonics.

The 麻豆影院 has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to advance the science of hypersonic flight.

Iain Boyd, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at CU 麻豆影院, is leading the

The grant will investigate plasma that forms around sub-orbital vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds, which can cause radio communication blackouts and impacts aerothermal heating.

鈥淭his is a major funding opportunity from the Department of Defense,鈥 Boyd said. 鈥淭his is fundamental research motivated by national security. We don鈥檛 understand how plasma forms at these specific speeds. Plasma also forms around vehicles coming back from space, and we know quite well how that happens, but there鈥檚 this new class of hypersonic vehicles. They鈥檙e fast, but not as fast as when you come back from space, and it turns out we don鈥檛 understand how plasma forms there.鈥

Hypersonics is an active area of research around the world for national defense purposes. Both China and Russia have successfully introduced hypersonic weapons. The U.S. has not. Boyd views the development of hypersonic weapons as necessary to ensuring parity with other national defense forces.

鈥淔or decades we led hypersonics research, but in the last 10 years, China and Russia have leapt ahead,鈥 Boyd said. 鈥淏oth say they have hypersonic weapons fielded, meaning somebody can push a button and fire one. We don鈥檛 have that in the U.S.鈥

During hypersonic flight, the temperature of air and other gases around a vehicle can reach thousands of degrees, triggering chemical reactions. The research at CU 麻豆影院 will investigate the breakdown and collisions of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon molecules in this environment using advanced computational modeling and experimental tests with molecular beams, shock tubes and hypersonic wind tunnels.

鈥淚t will probably take a year just to do experiments on nitrogen and oxygen atoms,鈥 Boyd said. 鈥淚t takes a lot of time to set these experiments up and do these computations. We want to know how, when and why this plasma forms to build up our ability to predict it.鈥

Joining in the research are aerospace faculty members Robyn Macdonald, whose efforts are concentrated on computational analysis, and Tim Minton, who is focused on molecular experiments to validate the computational research.

鈥淚 am excited about the opportunity to push the frontier and understand these collisional processes that have never before been studied and to contribute to the development of practical modeling tools in the field of hypersonics,鈥 Minton said.

The research grant includes multiple universities in the U.S. and around the world. University of New Mexico, Ohio State University, Stanford University and Oxford University in England are all part of the project.

鈥淭his work brings together a team of researchers with broad expertise in experiments and modeling at different scales to tackle an important problem of plasma generation in hypersonic flows,鈥 Minton said. 鈥淥ur interdisciplinary team is uniquely qualified to do this.鈥

Boyd notes the partnership with Oxford is a testament to the importance of the research to both the United States and our allies.

鈥淭he British government has agreed to fund the work at Oxford,鈥 Boyd said. 鈥淓ssentially, the U.S. government is leveraging British resources and the British government is leveraging U.S. resources. I think this is very unusual.鈥

The grant, titled Development of Validated Hypersonic Plasma Kinetics Models Including Atomic Excitation, is one of 28 MURI awards announced by the Department of Defense. They were chosen from 340 applications submitted for fiscal year 2022.