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Hypersonics

& Aerosciences

missile moves across blue sky with white clouds

Ground Test Facilities

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Capturing critical ground test data to validate the reliability and operational capabilities of hypersonic flight vehicles prior to flight.

Computational Capabilities

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Providing an array of hypersonic computational capabilities, ranging from hypersonic flow physics to structural, thermal and dynamic analysis.

Hypersonic Flight Test Support

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Evaluating how well the nation’s ground test facilities are able to determine the boundary layer state prior to flight with BOLT II.

The CUBRC Aerosciences team executes hypersonic ground testing, hypersonic flight testing support, cutting-edge computational modeling and analysis, and unique capability development.

CUBRC provides the US Government and its contractors with critical test results and analysis for the defense of the nation, space exploration, and the advancement of the understanding and modeling of fundamental hypersonic flow physics.

We develop, operate and maintain a family of supersonic and hypersonic ground test facilities, diagnostics and instrumentation, and computational tools and models that has been designated by the US Government as critical test infrastructure.

This designation is due to the unique capabilities of the two families of hypersonic ground test facilities that serve the government and its contractors—the Large Energy National Shock (LENS) and the Hypersonic Wave Heated tunnel (HWF) facilities—to perform testing of large to full-scale flight systems at flight matching altitude and velocity conditions in clean air freestreams. This includes the matching of Mach number, Reynolds number and velocity (pressure, temperature and density) to conditions of interest that vehicles will experience in the sky during flight, as well as employing full-scale replicated flight geometries.

In order to provide results that can be used directly to compare to computational predictions and engineering tools, the Aerosciences team employs well-characterized, state-of-the-art sensors and diagnostics in everyday testing and will actively develop new sensors and diagnostics as the computational capabilities of the nation evolve.

Careers

The rapid growth and interest in hypersonics for space exploration and national defense has resulted in a number of employment opportunities in the CUBRC Aerosciences sector for a broad range of disciplines and experience levels.