GALCIT Colloquium

This talk will start with an overview of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M. The department's faculty, research areas, steady growth, and student trends will be covered.

Then, a recent area of my research will be discussed. In the last decade, there have been observations of center heat streaks on swept geometries like HiFIRE5. The observations have been numerical, experimental and in flight. The exact origin of the heat streaks has not been studied independently. It is likely that the heat streaks are a combination of factors like the geometry itself (swept), stationary cross flow, and shock curvature. In this study, my team has created a swept wedge and analyzed it numerically and experimentally. The team is aiming to measure and isolate the effects of shock curvature, swept geometry, and natural instability modes on the heat streaks. The preliminary results will be discussed.