A University of Queensland graduate has reversed the brain drain by returning from NASA to work on air-breathing engines known as scramjets in Brisbane, Australia.
Associate Professor Michael Smart has returned to assist the UQ HyShot™ team in UQ’s Centre for Hypersonics in the lead up to the HyShot™ flight campaign at Woomera, South Australia in March, 2006.
The flight will test a scramjet configuration in flight at speeds of about Mach 8, or about 8000km/hr (2.4km/sec).
Four UQ postgraduate students are among the team involved in the launch, giving them a unique opportunity to learn from leading edge researchers and develop skills to lead Australia`s space efforts in the future.
Scramjets (supersonic combustion ramjets) are being touted as the next generation of cheap travel, allowing the possibility to launch communications satellites more cheaply or to travel between one side of the planet and the other in a few hours.
They inhale oxygen from the atmosphere to burn their fuel, rather than carrying oxidisers in their tanks.
UQ is an international leader in scramjet research, achieving combustion in these engines in flight for the first time anywhere in the world in 2002.
Associate Professor Smart has worked for many years in the Hypersonic Air-Breathing Propulsion Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.
“Their motto is ‘scramjets are us’,” he said.
“It is the premier group in the U.S. that do scramjet work. I undertook fundamental work on three-dimensional scramjet designs, ideas which we hope to test in future HyShot flights.
“Scramjet engines all have an inlet, where incoming air is compressed. They also have fuel injectors, a combustion chamber and a thrust nozzle.”
Associate Professor Smart has developed an inlet that can opererate efficiently from Mach 4 to Mach 8. He has also worked on fuel injection schemes that reduce the overall drag on the engine, enabling it to fly faster.
“UQ is working at higher speeds than in the U.S., as the HyShot group is concentrating on speeds of Mach 8 and above,” he said. “Engines must be very efficient to fly at these speeds.”
Associate Professor Smart graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) in 1985, completing his Master of Engineering Science degree in 1987, with Australia’s first Professor of Space Engineering, Emeritus Professor Ray Stalker, as an adviser for his thesis on scramjets thrust production.
At that time one of the world’s leading ground test facilities, The University of Queensland’s T4 tunnel, was being assembled in Brisbane.
UQ has the largest group of hypersonics researchers in the southern hemisphere.
“There was an active scramjet group at UQ even then, including Professor Allan Paull, Professor Richard Morgan, A/Prof. David Mee and Dr Peter Jacobs,” he said.
“After graduating I worked for WBM Stalker, a company which developed Professor Stalker’s ideas and provided the engineering design effort necessary to win overseas contracts such as the design of the T5 shock tunnel at Caltech, the RHYFL design for the Rocketdyne Hypersonic Flow Laboratory in Los Angeles and a design for a free piston driver to drive and expansion tube for General Applied Science Laboratory, New York.
“Like many Australians I went travelling in 1990, then landed a job as an engineer for two years with Associated Nuclear Services, an engineering consultant to the British Nuclear Industry, using skills I had developed at WBM in stress analysis, mechanical design and thermal design.”
He completed his PhD in the US at ”Brooklyn Polytechnic”, focusing on aerospace engineering, particularly shock wave-vortex interaction in high speed aerodynamics. This fundamental research was supported by the US Air Force.
Associate Professor Smart has developed networks with many of the key players in the hypersonics field.
He said the approach to funding scientific research was changing in organizations such as NASA.
“Gone are the days when NASA had enough money available to support a broad research program in aerodynamics. These days the main focus has moved to space research, with a smaller budget available to fund advances in earth sciences, physics, astronomy and aerodynamics,” he said.
“Scientists are looking at new challenges and a different environment with a smaller group where you have to be smart to survive.
“Australia has always been good at doing great science using ingenuity to survive. I find that invigorating and that’s part of the reason I wanted to return. It will be great to test my own scramjet designs at Woomera in the coming years. I also want my kids to grow up knowing about rugby and cricket as well as the Superbowl.”
Media: For further information, please contact Jan King 0413 601 248.
• For HyShot™ images and videos, please visit: www.uq.edu.au/news/press/press-gallery.php
• For more information about the Centre for Hypersonics at UQ and HyShot™ please visit www.uq.edu.au/hypersonics
• For more information about studying mechanical and space engineering at UQ, visit www.uq.edu.au/study
