the most well known issue of travelling at hypersonic speeds is surface heating for example a turbulent flow can produce six times the heating of a laminar flow and if unexpected could mean the loss of the vehicle said dr helen reed director of the computational stability and transition laboratory computational research coupled with data from tests with models studied in our quiet tunnel will lead to a better understanding of when and why the air flowing over a surface changes (transitions) from smooth to turbulent and we observe a strong increase in heating and drag predicting and controlling the transition process are recognized as critical enablers for future hypersonic systems and engineers need highly accurate predictive tools for confidence in their designs for example designs with extended regions of laminar flow would heat up less thus requiring less heat shielding and likely lighter-mass vehicles being able to build a computer model for this process is extremely complicated but reed is an internationally acclaimed computationalist and has developed state-of-the-art tools and theories to predict airflows to do a flight test is extremely expensive and with the harsh environment it is very challenging to take the right measurements to confirm that you got things right said reed but with our suite of ground test and computational facilities and by working as a team on these problems our goal is to predict the flow field and heating measure it figure out and model the right physics and then those models can be applied to design the flight articles well give our models to those that are building these vehicles and theyll be more reliable in helping them achieve successful missions building the right kind of lab facilities is crucial for any research but hypersonics offers many critical challenges for example most conventional wind tunnels inherently have disturbances and noise levels that are many times greater than the relatively undisturbed (or ‘quiet) atmosphere encountered by a flight vehicle even seemingly small effects can be highly amplified and can give results different than what is observed in flight for some technologies texas a&m has two signature facilities whose flowfields have been especially conditioned to mimic the ‘quiet flight environment: one is low-speed (klebanoff-saric wind tunnel) and one is hypersonic (mach 6 quiet tunnel) reed said the mach 6 quiet tunnel from nasa is one of only two in the united states and is now housed within the texas a&m nal creating and maintaining these types of tunnels is difficult so much so that the tunnels themselves are research projects bowersox along with dr simon north (professor and head of the department of chemistry at texas a&m) and their team have created additional complementary signature facilities and capabilities including a high-temperature shock driven facility capable of producing mach 15 flight conditions within the nal all of which are critical to advancing hypersonics bowersox is an internationally recognized experimentalist having established programs in next generation propulsion systems turbulent flow modeling high-temperature chemistry effects and diagnostics the extensive faculty expertise also includes dr richard miles who recently joined the texas a&m aerospace department as part of both the chancellors research initiative and governors university research initiative programs miles is a world-renowned leader in developing new advanced laser diagnostics and he is creating a new laboratory to be located next to the nal to pursue the study of aerospace applications of lasers and electromagnetics according to bowersox miles innovative measurement techniques are enabling new measurements in hypersonics at research facilities across the us in addition dr william saric an internationally renowned expert in boundary layer stability led a five-year air force and nasa-sponsored center in hypersonic transition the mach 6 quiet tunnel was an experimental centerpiece of this program miles said the challenge of hypersonics has been a recurring theme ever since his first experiments with hypersonic helium at princeton university in the 1970s and that it was clear even then that lasers could provide critical measurements that otherwise were not possible with conventional methods in hypersonic flows miles and bowersox met previously while working on the national aerospace plane project and then again when they were part of the defense advanced research project agency quiet supersonic platform which also included reed who was at arizona state university at the time since then it seems that all hypersonic roads now converge on texas a&m at least in the academic domain miles said rodney and helen have built a unique capability and assembled an outstanding team of researchers the commitment that texas a&m has made to hypersonics is remarkable the nal not only has unique wind tunnels it also leads in the development and application of advanced diagnostics once i became emeritus at princeton the opportunity to join the texas a&m team became a reality and it is proving to be a wonderful transition according to bowersox a key strength of the texas a&m program is the excellent cross-discipline faculty from aerospace engineering chemistry physics materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering