The UW AA Department is an active participant in the process. The energy and power available for vehicles play a dominant role in the characteristics of the vehicles. Ground transportation, atmospheric and space flight vehicles depend on primary resources such as fuels for the accomplishment of their missions. The conversion processes to useful forms, such as jet power, must be efficient, low in detrimental impact, and economically viable for their purposes. The fundamentals of energy interactions with fluids are critical to the successful design of power and propulsion and analysis of flows with energy interaction including systems optimization, engines, turbo machinery, magneto hydrodynamics, power generation in space, nozzle flows, photovoltaics, and lasers to mention a few.
Heat transfer is a critical element on a wide variety of aerospace applications.
Key areas under study in the department include convective and radiative heat transfer to conical bodies at high Mach number flight, analysis and measurement of the effects of thermal boundary layers on the on the performance of gas dynamic chemical reactors, and the development of novel technologies for managing waste heat from thermal power systems in space. Examples are apparent all around the bending of a 777 airplane wing under wing loadings, the internal stresses in the booster rocket in a shuttle launch, the action of a piece of space debris impacting a space vehicle. To design such applications requires an underlying understanding of the theoretical mechanics of solids and effective means to apply that theory to predict the response of a structure to all conditions expected in this intended application. Through the years, the department has, and continues to have, a multifaceted research program in solid mechanics, including research on new composite materials and structures, research on the finite element computer methods that are used too obtain practical solutions, research into the mathematical theories to describe specific aeronautical and aerospace structures, research into impact and shock loadings, experiments on material behavior and many others. This is only a very brief overview of the ongoing research in the department.