Lt Col Robert B. MacDermott, PhD
Assistant Professor of Astronautical Engineering
Courses Taught
AERO 622 – Introductory Hypersonics: Explores the character of hypersonic flow and assumptions underlying inviscid hypersonic flow theories.
Similarity, small disturbance and surface inclination methods are covered. The equivalence principle, low density aerodynamics, high temperature aerodynamics, gas-surface interactions, and re-entry trajectories are also discussed.
AERO 640 – Hypersonic Computational Fluid Dynamics: Examines the use of commercial and government software for the simulation of hypersonic flows. Topics covered include mesh generation, simulation of chemically reacting and thermally nonequilibrium flowfields that occur at hypersonic velocities. and post-processing flow visualization and data reduction techniques. In addition, high performance computing and parallel programming will be studied.
AERO 699– Advanced Topics in Hypersonics: Review and analysis of limited distribution and classified activities related to hypersonics. Primary focus on historical flight test data at the limited distribution and classified levels.
AERO 740 – Nonequilibrium Hypersonic Flows: Analysis and study of the strong regions of thermodynamic, chemical, and mechanical nonequilibrium resulting from travel at hypersonic velocities. The resulting physical phenomena from the nonequilibrium – such as very high temperatures, high heat convection, chemical surface reactions, flowfield thermal radiation, and population inversions will discussed.