Overview of the aerospace engineering department at Texas A&M and finding the origin of heat streaks on hypersonic canonical geometries

Abstract:  

This talk will start with an overview of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M. The department’s faculty, research areas, steady growth, and student trends will be covered. Then, a recent area of my research will be discussed. In the last decade, there have been observations of center heat streaks on swept geometries like HiFIRE5. The observations have been numerical, experimental, and in flight. The exact origin of the heat streaks has not been studied independently. It is likely that the heat streaks are a combination of factors like the geometry itself (swept), stationary cross flow, and shock curvature. In this study, my team has created a swept wedge and analyzed it numerically and experimentally. The team is aiming to measure and isolate the effects of shock curvature, swept geometry, and natural instability modes on the heat streaks. The preliminary results will be discussed.

Bio:
Ivett A. Leyva became the head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University in September 2021. Previously, she worked at the Air Force for 15 years. She was the program officer for Hypersonic Aerodynamics at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, AFRL and prior to that she was a researcher at the AFRL Rocket Lab working on liquid rocket instabilities. Her technical expertise is in hypersonic aerodynamics and liquid rocket engines. Ivett holds a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree from Caltech. Her Ph.D. was in Aeronautics. Ivett has six patents and has authored numerous papers and two book chapters. She is a fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Air Force Research Laboratory, a National Associate of the National Research Council of the National Academies, and a recipient of a Civilian Achievement Medal and two meritorious Civilian Service Awards and Medals from the Air Force.