Huston-Tillotson Students Reach Hypersonic Speeds in New Computational Engineering Course

Students at Huston-Tillotson University now have the option to take a new course in computational engineering. The course, Computation for Aerospace Engineering, is being offered for the first time this spring 2022 semester, and was developed in collaboration with faculty at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences and the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin to allow students to learn skills and applications in computational engineering. Engin Topkara, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Huston-Tillotson University, will be the instructor of the course.

In December 2020, a major project led by UT Austin in collaboration with the University of Michigan, UT San Antonio, Huston-Tillotson University and Sandia National Laboratories was launched. The three-year project, called FAST: Full-Airframe Sensing Technology for Hypersonic Vehicles, is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and NASA under the University Leadership Initiative and is led by Noel Clemens of UT Austin’s Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department, with the Oden Institute Director, Karen Willcox, and AE’s Jayant Sirohi as Co-PIs.

The goal of the project is to redefine sensing and analysis of hypersonic vehicles by treating the vehicles themselves as sensors, analyzing changes to the shape of the structure during flight tests, and using that information to infer where force is being applied. Having better information about forces over the vehicle surface means that design and operational decisions can better protect and control the vehicles.

As part of the FAST project, the Oden Institute is collaborating with Huston-Tillotson University (HT), a local HBCU (Historically Black College or University), to design a new computational engineering undergraduate course that will prepare students for research internships in the field. Over the past year, Oden Institute and Cockrell School faculty have assisted HT faculty in the development of this course by giving guidance on the curriculum. The spring 2022 semester marks the first cohort of students to take this new computational engineering class.

“This new course development has been exciting for us because we’ve been able to enrich our curriculum and enhance our faculty expertise in ways that will serve the FAST project over the next few years and allow us to sustain similar collaborations moving forward,” said Amanda Masino, Chair of Natural Science at HT and director of HT's STEM Research Scholars program, which provides science, technology, engineering and math majors with research experience and mentoring.
 

A Novel Approach To Hypersonic Sensing

The research underpinning this collaboration is rooted in a simple, yet novel approach to the sensing and analysis of hypersonic vehicles in flight. “Traveling over five times the speed of sound, sensors placed on the outside of hypersonic vehicles tend to burn up under the extreme conditions faced at this velocity,” said Noel Clemens, the lead PI of the FAST project. 

This gave Clemens and his team an idea: to use sensors internal to the vehicle to measure external aerodynamic forces that the sensors weren’t meant to measure. “This works because the aerodynamic forces deform the structure in a way that is predictable given an accurate structural response model,” he said. “In a sense the aerodynamic loads are ‘encoded’ in the shape of the vehicle.”

Computation for Aerospace Engineering

The computational engineering course at HT reviews ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations, with application to problems and concepts specific to aerospace engineering. “This is a challenging class because it blends mathematics skills with programing and computing skills, while the applications are drawn from engineering,” said Willcox. “I taught a similar class at MIT for many years, so I shared with HT faculty all of my notes, problem sets, projects and more.”

“Professor Topkara was able to adapt some of Willcox’s course resources for the HT offering while adding sections on Python-based problem solving specific to his training,” explained Masino.

Several students and postdocs from UT Austin involved in the FAST project are looking forward to volunteering as mentors to HT students. Because this new computational engineering course is so interdisciplinary, it requires a broad range of skills. The mentors would be able to help students with the unique challenges presented by this course and computational engineering in general.

In addition to this course, the research teams at UT Austin and the Oden Institute will offer internship and research opportunities for HT students to get hands-on research experience through the FAST project. “The idea is that students will take this class in spring in order to learn computational skills related to the FAST project so that in the summer they could then do an internship with groups working on different threads of the project,” Willcox explained.

The three threads of the project include developing computer-based structural models of hypersonic test pieces, developing scientific machine learning algorithms to infer the aerodynamic loads from strain measurements, and testing experimental models on the benchtop and in windtunnels at UT Austin and at UT San Antonio. These threads will then come together in order to form a complete and accurate picture of the aerodynamic forces on a hypersonic vehicle.

Students would be able to work on the project at UT through Willcox’s group, which is working on the simulation side of the project, as well as Noel Clemens’ group, which will be conducting the experimental tests.

Two HT students already completed internships on the FAST project during the summer of 2021. One student worked with Willcox’s group at the Oden Institute, while the other worked with Clemens’ group. Both internships were entirely remote due to COVID-19, but the intent is for students to work in-person in summer 2022.

While HT students gain exposure and training through these research opportunities, the FAST project also benefits from these students’ unique viewpoints and experiences. “If you think about all the threads of the FAST project, one person could not do the entire project on their own,” Willcox said. “Different technical perspectives come together to help innovation and the same is true for perspectives from different backgrounds.”

“This is why we are so excited to have the opportunity to work with students from Huston-Tillotson,” said Clemens. “One of the most effective methods for creating innovation is by drawing in ideas from people with fresh perspectives, unaffected by conventional wisdom.” 

A goal of the collaboration with Huston-Tillotson is to engage with institutions whose demographics are different from the pool which CSE graduate students have traditionally been drawn from. The student body at HT is made up of approximately 68% Black students and 30% Hispanic students.

This initiative not only encourages students from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue engineering or CSE, but also provides immersive research and internship experiences that equip students with a new set of skills and documented research experience that will benefit them when applying to jobs or graduate programs in the future.

“We hope that this program will provide a good foundation for continued research and internship partnerships that will support HT’s developing engineering program over the coming years,” said Masino.

Beyond Hypersonics

The Institute looks forward to a continued collaboration with Huston-Tillotson beyond the FAST project through student internships and research experiences, as well as building long-lasting relationships with HT faculty. Collaborations like this enable the development of a direct pipeline to attract students from diverse backgrounds, perspectives and ideas to come study at the Oden Institute. “We as educational institutions must lead the charge in eliminating barriers to representation in STEM. I am grateful for the collaboration through FAST that gives us a great mechanism to do just that,” Masino said.

“We are committed to a diverse and collaborative culture because this is the way we do the most challenging research that really will ultimately change the world,” said Willcox.