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  MSE / Research / Projects / MURI: Revolutionary Materials for Hypersonic Flight

MURI: Revolutionary Materials for Hypersonic Flight
Collaborators: A.W. Evans, UC Santa Barbara
Materials: Metals
Application: Structural
Technique: Processing Computation

There are three planned approaches to provide a national forum for research on materials for hypersonic vehicles. (a) Provide direction for the basic materials research by using a test-bed protocol to ascertain performance requirements and property deficiencies. (b) Develop a modeling hierarchy applicable to a knowledge-based design system that allows comparison of different materials and different concepts competing for the same application. (c) Pursue discovery of materials having combinations of properties outside normal bounds, which are addressable by complementary combinatorial synthesis and first principles calculations.
Testing under conditions replicating hypersonic flight is extremely challenging. The levels of difficulty, cost and feasibility escalate with increasing Mach number. The practical recourse is to place reliance on a variety of test facilities, best suited to the problems at hand, and a hierarchy of models to fuse the data and theory and extrapolate to true flight conditions. The additional challenge will be to place the materials models in context by connecting them with other models that predict the aero-thermal loads, calculate ablation rates, temperatures and stresses and determine failure envelopes. The connections will be formed within the context of a knowledge-based design and optimization system.
Several test-beds are envisaged. The first involves the design and demonstration of shape-morphing structures that realize dynamic control of the inlet to suppress engine failure modes. The ideas will be tested in a high Mach number wind tunnel at Princeton and in larger facilities. A second comprises a multi-layer panel subject to high (transient and steady-state) heat flux. It consists of a structural constituent (ceramic matrix composite, intermetallic or refractory alloy), an insulating oxide layer and an intermediate (bond coat) layer. In some cases, active cooling will be used. The tests will be used to ascertain failure modes and to validate material designs. For effectiveness and synergy, all members of the MatHFli team have been involved in mutual multi-investigator research projects, and have experience in materials subject to high heat flux as well as in hypersonics.

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