Christopher Combs, Ph.D. - US grants

Hypersonic technology development is a key element of the re-emerging global space race, and has the potential to revolutionize commercial air transport, space access, and national defense. The U.S. space science and engineering industry faces a large fraction of its workforce eligible for retirement in the near future, a lack of younger workers with skills or experience to grow into those roles, and a possible shortage of graduates qualified to conduct relevant research and development. In the aerospace sector, improving diversity will be critical towards achieving civilization-changing goals like interplanetary travel, hypersonic flight, electric aircraft, and low-emission propulsion technology. This project will provide an opportunity for a diverse coalition of academic partners (including UTSA, Howard, & MIT) to address these current and future challenges in the aerospace workforce with a specific emphasis on hypersonic research and workforce development. UTSA is a minority serving institution, Howard is a historically black research university, and MIT is a world-recognized leader in engineering education and research. This partnership will leverage unique research infrastructure at these institutions (including a new hypersonic wind tunnel at UTSA) to provide life-changing experiences to a highly diverse group of students. This planning grant will enable the proposing team to foster and grow this collaboration, leading to considerable future research and development in hypersonics. Research activities will be tightly integrated with educational outreach at each partner institution, serving as a platform to engage a diverse group of students in aerospace research while diversifying the future aerospace workforce. <br/><br/>Velocities faster than five times the speed of sound or Mach 5—approximately 4,000 miles per hour—are generally considered to be hypersonic. Hypersonic system designs are currently limited by a lack of experimental data for high-speed flows, representing a critical need for validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. For example, several fundamental physical phenomena that can significantly impact hypersonic vehicle performance and structural integrity—including shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions, turbulent transition, and non-equilibrium chemistry effects—continue to pose problems for the development of predictive CFD models for hypersonic flow, requiring additional research efforts grounded in basic science. The assembled team has identified this unique opportunity to bring together a collection of scientists and researchers with expertise in both experimental and computational hypersonic aerodynamics. UTSA has also recently constructed a world-class Mach 7 wind tunnel for unique experimental measurements, while each of the partner institutions possess considerable computational resources. This technical capability, coupled with the engineering education background provided by Dr. Karina Vielma, positions this group to offer valuable research experiences to under-represented students in the in-demand field of hypersonics. With this planning grant, the PI team will explore the exciting potential of this collaboration and develop a concrete framework for fostering growth of hypersonics research at these institutions, including developing future submissions to NSF programs. The UTSA-Howard-MIT team will complete a number of activities to accomplish these objectives. Activities will include monthly meetings with the collaborating team, student and faculty exchanges & site visits, engagement with NSF program managers, joint seminars, preliminary data collection, collection of feedback and surveys from impacted student groups, and development of future NSF proposals. It is expected that this effort will lead to a long-lasting partnership that will mutually benefit all parties involved. In the short term, the planning grant to solidify this partnership, exchange ideas, visit respective campuses, and write proposals to NSF programs.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.