RESEARCH NEWS
Embry-Riddle Goes Hypersonic with Two New Facilities Drs. Luke Hill, Andrew Bustard and Eric Matlis
travel to Oxford, England, to study a T6 tunnel, as well as to Germany’s Aerospace Center in Göttingen, where several advanced high-speed facilities operate. Future visits include Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to observe its reflected shock tube and tunnel systems. Once operational, Embry-Riddle’s new facilities will enable investigations of complex, unsteady and high-temperature phenomena in supersonic and hypersonic flows, including real-gas effects at temperatures approaching 10,000 Kelvin and Mach numbers between 5 and 20. The research aims to advance the understanding of nonthermal-equilibrium effects on laminar–turbulent transition, shock–boundary- layer interactions and combustion processes in shock- heated flows. The researchers will generate high-quality datasets to validate numerical methods, improve CFD fidelity and refine high-temperature flow models essential to the design of high-speed vehicles. Together, these laboratories will provide cutting-edge university capabilities in high-enthalpy flow physics.
With funding made possible by the state of Florida, three Aerospace Engineering faculty members are advancing groundbreaking work in hypersonics through the development of two new state-of-the-art facilities for testing and research. Drs. Luke Hill, Andrew Bustard and Eric Matlis are leading the university’s hypersonics research and facility development efforts. The first facility, a 3,000-square-foot expansion of the university’s Low-Speed Wind Tunnel Annex, is slated for groundbreaking in summer 2026 at the Research Park on Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus. The new space will house a world-class, high-enthalpy, free-piston reflected-shock tunnel designed for aerothermal research under conditions relevant to re-entry and high-Mach- number hypersonic flight. When completed, it will be only the second university-based facility of its kind in the United States (the other is at Caltech in Pasadena, California) and one of just three nationwide. The second facility, scheduled to begin construction in summer 2027, is a new 55,000-square-foot building that will accommodate additional wind tunnels and supporting hardware, including a Mach 6 Ludwieg-tube tunnel intended for aerodynamic testing and workforce development. To support the design of these facilities, the Aerospace Engineering faculty members are consulting with leading global experts in high-speed aerothermal tunnels. The team recently visited Caltech to meet with faculty operating the T5 shock tunnel and will
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