Air-Breathing Propulsion and Turbomachinery Aero-Heat Transfer
Modern air breathing propulsion systems benefit from novel developments in the fields of aerodynamics and heat transfer. All modes of heat transfer, analytical, computational and experimental fluid dynamics; steady and unsteady turbine and compressor aerodynamics; turbine cooling methods, novel aero-thermal component design innovations and non-intrusive research tool developments are the key supporters of this research area.
The turbomachinery areo-heat transfer laboratory at Penn State operates one of the unique large-scale turbine research rigs in the United States. A wind tunnel for convective heat transer applications, a linear cascade facility with an exit Mach number of 0.8, various ducted fan research set-ups, calibration jets, conventional aerodynamic probes, non-intrusive flow diagnostics systems and many data collection and processing systems are available in our laboratory.
The research studies benefit from an already operational infrared thermography system and liquid crystal based convective heat transfer mapping system. Our recent efforts in the high performance computing for turbomachinery aero-thermal investigations are performed in dedicated parallel computing environments.
Key Faculty:
Research Focus Areas
Most recent research:
- Tip leakage flow mitigation in axial flow turbomachinery
- Turbine 3D tip carving/shape design
- Turbine disk-cavity flows and rim-seal flow interactions near turbine endwalls
- HP turbine aerodynamic testing
- Non-axisymmetric turbine endwall contouring
- Ducted fan aerodynamics for VTOL UAV systems
- Sand particle trajectory determination near helicopter rotor tip sections
Past research efforts:
- Short duration and continuous heat transfer testing in hot/ warm cascades,rotating disks,channels and turbines
- Implementation of liquid crystal thermography in convective heat transfer research
- Heat transfer augmentation by oscillating jets, elliptical pin-fins and vortex tubes
- Solid-state diode-lasers in Doppler velocimetry, pressure sensitive paints and planar/3D particle Image velocimetry in turbomachinery flows
Research Areas
- Aeroacoustics
- Air-breathing Propulsion
- Astrodynamics
- Autonomous Flight and UAVs
- Computational and Experimental Fluid Dynamics
- Flight Science
- Multifunctional Structures and Nanomaterials
- Rotorcraft Engineering
- Space Propulsion and Plasmas
- Structural Dynamics and Adaptive Structures
- Vehicle Dynamics and Control
- Vehicle Systems Engineering
- Wind Energy
