Hypersonic Vehicles

Hypersonic vehicles travel much faster than the speed of sound, typically at Mach 5 or higher. They are being developed for applications from national security to space exploration. The term hypersonic implies that there are unique physical phenomena that are important for these vehicles that do not occur at lower speed. Such phenomena are generated by the very high-temperature gas that surrounds a hypersonic vehicle, and examples include air chemistry and material ablation. The design of a hypersonic vehicle involves very tight coupling between six areas in which our faculty are active in research: (1) aerodynamics; (2) propulsion; (3) materials; (4) structures; (5) guidance, navigational & control (GNC); and (6) integrated vehicle analysis. To learn more about the six areas of hypersonic vehicles click here.

The faculty members involved in research on hypersonic vehicles at Michigan are listed below along with their areas of interest:

Iain Boyd: aerodynamics, materials (NGPD Lab)
Carlos Cesnik: integrated vehicle analysis, GNC, structures
James Driscoll: propulsion, integrated vehicle analysis (PACE Lab)
Peretz Friedmann: structures, integrated vehicle analysis
Mirko Gamba: propulsion, aerodynamics (GDIL)
Ilya Kolmanovsky: GNC
Venkat Raman: propulsion, aerodynamics
Phil Roe: aerodynamics
Henry Soldano: materials
Veera Sundararaghavan: materials