The Center for Aeromechanics Research conducts computational, analytical and experimental research in supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics, high temperature gas dynamics, turbulence, combustion, laser diagnostics. Research is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Naval Research, Army Futures Command, Department of Energy, the University Consortium on Applied Hypersonics, and some industrial grants. Funding from these sources provides support for 56 graduate students engaged in MS and PhD research programs, 5 undergraduate students, and 6 postdoctoral fellows. The Center’s goal is to produce work of the highest quality which advances the state of engineering, meets the sponsors’ needs, and is publishable in the most reputable national and international journals.
Computational work in fluid mechanics includes non-equilibrium flows downstream of shock waves in supersonic nozzles, adaptive algorithms for aircraft with turbulent flow, direct turbulence simulation and smart algorithms for parallel computations; The supersonic wind tunnel facilities include a Mach 5 blowdown wind tunnel. Recent investigations involve control and reduction of fluctuating pressure loads, flow in forward facing and parallel cavities, and unsteady interactions of shock waves with turbulent boundary layers. The Center houses a 50kW inductively coupled plasma torch that generates high enthalpy flows for testing of heat shield materials needed for atmospheric entry from space and hypersonic flight. In the Flowfield Imaging Lab, laser diagnostic techniques are applied to the study of turbulent combustion and compressible turbulence. The Underwoood Lab has experimental facilities to study a variety of reactive flows with application to space propulsion, catalysis, and photonics, The group has expertise in a variety of advanced optical diagnostic techniques including particle imaging velocimetry (PIV), planar Rayleigh scattering, spontaneous Raman scattering, laser absorption spectroscopy, quantitative emission spectroscopy, Teraherz spectroscopy, and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS).
The Adaptive Multi-level Substructuring (AMLS) software developed by Prof. Bennighof and his team is used by many major car companies to reduce noise.