Sandia National Labs Academic Programs Collaboration Report

Racing toward game-changing hypersonic systems

Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are a part of the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH), an essential component for advancing modern hypersonic flight systems in support of national security. The UCAH network of universities collaborate with Sandia and other national laboratories, federally funded research centers, existing university affiliated research centers, plus government and industry to advance hypersonics in the U.S. Hypersonics systems are game-changing for national security, providing unprecedented speed and maneuverability. They operate at more than five times the speed of sound and are hard to intercept as they can alter course after takeoff. Hypersonic vehicles are capable of traveling at over a mile per second, and those speeds can heat up

vehicle surface temperatures to 2,200 degrees Celsius causing great engineering challenges for hypersonics materials and systems. The expertise of Georgia Tech and GTRI in advanced, high-temperature materials science and aerospace and mechanical engineering research plays a significant role in the UCAH hypersonics grants, which total $6M over the next three years. One of the awards will leverage Sandia’s expertise in hypersonics. Ani Mazumdar, assistant professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is serving as a co-PI with Jonathan Rogers, associate professor of avionics integration in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. Kyle Williams, co-PI from Sandia, is from the Autonomous Sensing and Controls organization. The team, with the help of researchers from Texas A&M, will build on the previous work of Katya Casper’s Autonomy for Hypersonics LDRD project (in partnership with Georgia Tech) by designing and experimentally validating new multimodal control systems. Hypersonic vehicles have little margin against heating or other aerodynamic loads since they fly on the border of where they are structurally sound so the control systems must be tailored specifically to those challenges. Rogers said, “It’s hard to design margin into the system when we don’t know a lot about what the system will experience.” To combat that uncertainty, the research team will design trajectory models so that vehicle operators can plan the path the vehicle will take in simulations.

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Academic Programs