Mechanical Engineering News

Research by Dr. William Engblom
William (Bill) Engblom,
Associate Professor, Ph.D. fromm University of Texas at Austin

Prior to joining Embry-Riddle, Dr. Engblom evaluated flight risks for the Air Force launch vehicle fleet, including Delta, Atlas, Titan, and EELV programs, for The Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. He also conducted research as a member of NASAs X-43B, Quiet Aircraft Technology, and Shuttle Return-to-Flight programs while on temporary assignment to NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Current areas of focus in research are numerical simulation of hypersonic flight vehicles and jet noise prediction. Dr. Engblom is currently serving as a subcommittee chair in the AIAA Air Breathing Propulsion Technical Committee.

Research Information

Dr. Engblom is currently participating in a four-year externally-funded research project to improve the state of the art in numerical simulation of hypersonic vehicles for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), with emphasis on scramjet applications.

The effort is funded by the DoD Test Resources Management Center (DoDTRMC). The research team consists of NASA Glenn Research Center, Arnold Engineering and Development Center, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The first-year of efforts at ERAU are underway and include an effort to simulate an actual ethylene-air scramjet engine flow path for comparison to experimental data (see below), development of conjugate heat transfer capability for simulating scramjet engine tests involving coolant flows, and development of improvements to the numerical algorithms to improve the rate of convergence for scramjet flows.

Fuel mass fraction contours for scramjet flow (only main combustor section shown). Two main injectors and three pilot injectors are visible. Flow is from left to right.

Temperature contours for scramjet flow (only main combustor section shown). Interestingly, hot gases manage to travel upstream along one of the corners, well into the isolator section via the subsonic boundary layer, intensifying the potential for unstart.

Dr. Engblom is also conducting research in the area of jet noise prediction. His turbulence model correction has recently been accepted for publication by AIAA Journal in an article which compares several turbulence model corrections for jet flow applications. Finally, Dr. Engblom is currently involved in unfunded research on microthruster performance and nose cavity effects for hypersonic vehicle applications.