Labs and Facilities
The Aerospace Engineering Department is located in the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Building, a 100,000 square-foot complex that includes classrooms, teaching laboratories and research labs as well as faculty and staff offices. The department also partially occupies four other research buildings; the wind tunnel building (20,000 Sq ft), high-vacuum pumping station (4000 sq ft), power house (1000 sq ft) and the PEPL lab (5000 sq ft). Research facilities in the building(s) include:
- A collection of wind tunnels that can test from micro air vehicles to models generating hundreds of pounds of lift and from very low-speed flight to above Mach 4 (Supersonic tunnels are in the wind tunnel building)
- A laboratory for plasmadynamics and electric propulsion, where full-scale tests can be run at millionths of a Torr (PEPL lab on Green Road)
- A composites laboratory with facility for mechanical testing of materials, vacuum and heating chambers for testing in controlled environments, high speed imaging of cracks and instrumentation for non-destructive evaluation.
- A laboratory for autonomous aerospace systems
Explosion resistant high bay research labs - Aero Learning Center for students
- A laboratory for the design, development and deployment of small satellites, the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL)
To schedule a tour of our facility, see our visiting advice.
Below is a list of laboratories, facilities, and centers associated with each discipline. As research centers are often highly interdisciplinary, they are listed under each applicable area.
Gas Dynamics
Faculty Labs
- Computational Aerosciences Laboratory (CAS)
- Computational Fluid Dynamics Group (CFDG)
- Gas Dynamic Imaging Laboratory (GDI)
- Laboratory for Computational Fluid Dynamics (KECK CFD)
- Nonequilibrium Gas & Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (NGPDL)
- Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL)
- Propulsion and Combustion Engineering Laboratory (PACE)
Shared Facilities
Research Centers
- Center for Space Environment Modeling (CSEM)
- Constellation University Institutes Project (CUIP)
- François-Xavier Bagnoud Flight Vehicle Institute (FVI)
- Michigan/Air Force Center of Excellence in Electric Propulsion (MACEEP)
- Michigan/AFRL/Boeing Collaborative Center in Aeronautical Sciences (MAB-CCAS)
Dynamics and Controls
Faculty Labs
- Autonomous Aerospace Systems Laboratory (AASL)
- Aerospace, Robotics and Controls (ARC) Laboratory
- Attitude Dynamics and Control Laboratory (ADCL)
- Noise, Vibration and Motion Control Laboratory
- Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL)
Research centers
- Constellation University Institutes Project (CUIP)
- François-Xavier Bagnoud Flight Vehicle Institute (FVI)
- Michigan/AFRL Collaborative Center in Control Science (MACCCS)
Space Systems
Faculty Labs
- Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL)
- Non-Equilibrium Gas and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (NGPDL)
- Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL)
Shared Facilities
- Peach Mountain Observatory
Research Centers
- Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics (CRASH)
- Center for Space Environment Modeling (CSEM)
- Constellation University Institutes Project (CUIP)
- François-Xavier Bagnoud Flight Vehicle Institute (FVI)
- Michigan/Air Force Center of Excellence in Electric Propulsion (MACEEP)
Structures and Materials
Faculty Labs
- Active Aeroelasticity and Structures Research Laboratory (A2SRL)
- Adaptive Materials and Structures Laboratory
- Multi-Scale Structural Simulations Laboratory (MSSL)