Grant to finance engineering professors' wind tunnel project
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professors Garry Brown and Richard Miles have received a federal grant of $600,000 for research on their new concept for a facility capable of testing hypersonic flight vehicles and their propulsion systems."We've come up with a new concept," Brown said, explaining that most scientists believe it is not possible to test a hypersonic aircraft in a conventional wind tunnel because the temperature of the stored air could be as hot as the temperature of the sun."This research project has been going on for a number of years, and recently a lot of progress has been made," Brown said in an e-mail.Their results show that the concept may be a practical way to achieve such high speed flight conditions.




