Aerospace Science research areas include:
Fluid Dynamics/Aerodynamics
Research Areas: Experimental, Numerical, and Theoretical fluid mechanics; Advanced Aerodynamic Flow Control techniques, Passive and Active; Aerodynamics of low, moderate and high Reynolds number flows; Manned and unmanned aerial vehicle aerodynamics; Acoustics and vibrations; Compressible flows; Wind energy; Fly-by-feel aerial vehicles, bio-inspired systems.
Participating faculty: Michael Amitay, Farhan Gandhi, Jason Hicken, Amir Hirsa, Fotis Kopsaftopoulos, Onkar Sahni and Lucy Zhang.
Advanced Structures/Materials
Research Areas: Active Structures, Morphing Structures, Cellular Structures, Structures with integrated damping capability, Energy absorption capability; Advanced materials including piezoelectric materials, shape memory alloys and polymers, electrorheological and magnetrorheological fluids, nano-materials; Advanced composites, bio-composites; Advanced structural analysis methods, Nonlinear aeroelasticity, nonlinear multi-body dynamics; and Computational Structural Dynamics; Structural health monitoring, self-sensing self-diagnostic structures, multifunctional materials and structures.
Participating faculty: Farhan Gandhi, Fudong Han, Jason Hicken, Fotis Kopsaftopoulos, Nikhil Koratkar, Emily Liu, and Daniel Walczyk.
Optimization
Research Areas: Multidisciplinary design optimization; Aerodynamic shape optimization; trajectory optimization; Optimization under uncertainty; Inverse problems and model reduction
Participating faculty: Farhan Gandhi, Jason Hicken, and Onkar Sahni .
Space
Research Areas: Astrodynamics; Spacecraft navigation and orbit determination; Image-based planetary science; Space robotics; Large flexible spacecraft dynamics and control; Space vehicle control
Participating faculty: Kurt Anderson, Amir Hirsa and Shanbin Shi.
Combustion/Propulsion
Research Areas: Fuel chemistry; Optical diagnostics; Solid propellants; Spray combustion; Nano-energetics; Swirl-Stabilized combustion; Transonic combustion.
Participating faculty: Matthew Oehlschlaeger.