Aerobook Mueller Nelson

Aeronautics to Aerospace at the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame Roth-Gibson Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Thomas J. Mueller
and
University of Notre Dame Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Robert C. Nelson
Copyright 2004. Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame.
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii 1. Before the Wright Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. The New Program (1935-1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3. After the War (1945-1963) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
4. Aerospace Engineering (1964-1969) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 5. Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (1970-1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 6. A New Era (1989-2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 7. The Hessert Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 8. The 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Preface
We are happy to present a short history of aeronautics at the University of Notre Dame, from Albert F. Zahm in the latter part of the 19th century through the 21st century. Because of Zahms extensive education and early wind tunnel research, he has been regarded as Americas first well-trained aeronautical engineer. Zahm experimented with gliders and wrote papers on stability and control before the Wright brothers successful flight in 1903. He was also one of the driving forces behind the establishment of a national aeronautical research laboratory in 1915, which was named the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and is the present day National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Zahms early activity in aeronautics paved the way for Notre Dame to establish a department of aeronautical engineering in 1935 with Professor F.N.M. Brown at its head. Brown and his colleagues pioneered the development of subsonic and supersonic smoke visualization in wind tunnels. In the 1950s these developments led to detailed smoke photographs of boundary layer transition and many other basic flow phenomena. From the 1960s to the present, the program has continued to evolve its undergraduate and graduate programs and add new faculty who have greatly expanded the research topics studied. In 1991, the new Hessert Center for Aerospace Research building was dedicated and new experimental facilities added. The Center for Flow Physics and Control was officially made a center in the College of Engineering in 2001. The history presented here first appeared as the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) paper No. 2002-0566, in January 2002. It was revised and shortened in 2003, and was published in The Evolution of Aerospace Engineering Education in America during the First Century Following the Wright Brothers Flight, edited and compiled by Barnes W. McCormick, Conrad F. Newberry, and Eric J. Jumper and published by the AIAA. The current version has been revised again and brought up to date as of May 2004. We have printed this book for prospective graduate students, research sponsors, alumni, and other interested persons, and we hope that this labor of love will be accepted in the spirit in which it was written.
Thomas J. Mueller Robert C. Nelson Notre Dame, Indiana 2004
ii
Chapter 1
Before the Wright Brothers

Humanitys interest in flying began many centuries before the Wright brothers successful flight on December 17, 1903. Emperors, kings, and novelists had dreamed of flying almost from the beginning of time, and with the Montgolfier brothers first balloon voyage in 1783 that dream came closer to becoming reality.1 The experimentation in the area of flight accelerated after that first balloon voyage. Sir George Cayley produced the first design for the modern airplane configuration in 1799 and flew his full-sized gliders in 1809. In 1849, Cayley tested a boy-carrying glider and in 1853 made an uncontrolled flight of a human-carrying glider. Because of his experiments and publications, he became known as the Father of Aeronautics.1 During this period of aeronautical experimentation, the University of Notre Dame was founded by Reverend Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., in 1842. Notre Dame was the first Catholic university in America to establish a formal course of study in engineering, when it created a program in civil engineering in 1873. The specialty of mechanical engineering was an outgrowth of this program in 1886. Albert F. Zahm was an important early figure in aeronautics. Born in 1862, the eighth of 14 children,2 Zahm entered the University of Notre Dame in 1879, enrolling in the classical course of studies. His experiments in aerodynamics began in 1880.3 He built model airplanes and full-size
Mural depicting one of Professor Albert F. Zahms glider experiments at Notre Dame
aircraft. In 1882, he tethered one of his aircraft to the ceiling of the old Science Hall with a 50-foot rope.3 This aircraft was powered by a bicycle pedal mechanism that rotated a tractor propeller. The purpose of these experiments was to test the efficiency of the propulsion system, the lift from the wings, and the action of the control system. Zahm also experimented with gliders. One of Zahms glider experiments is depicted in the mural above, which is in the LaFortune Student Center (previously the Science Hall). Zahm was an extremely bright student at the University and in 1883, while he was still an undergraduate, built a small, hand-powered wind tunnel in an attempt to study the lift of various-shaped wings. This tunnel was made by removing the vibrating screens from a farmers winnowing blower. Although Sir Francis H. Wenham invented and built the first wind tunnel in 1871, it was believed that Zahm built the first such tunnel for research purposes in the United States. As a result of his experiments, he was among the first to favor slender concave surfaces (i.e., bird-shaped) for aircraft wings and propellers.3 A member of the class of 1883, Zahm remained at Notre Dame to
complete an M.A. degree and to teach mathematics and mechanics. When the mechanical engineering program was established in 1886, Zahm was named a professor in this program. A few years later, Zahm left Notre Dame to attend graduate school at Cornell University, where he received an M.S. degree in 1892.3,4 There, he met Octave Chanute, who gave a seminar on Aerial Navigation.4,5 Zahm and Chanute began corresponding regarding the question of the physical and theoretical analysis of flight in the spring of 1891.4 In May 1892, while he was teaching at Notre Dame, Zahm suggested that a meeting be called to provide serious discussions between those scientists and engineers interested in flight. He convinced Chanute that such a meeting could be held at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. Interest in this idea grew, and during a meeting with Zahm on October 18, 1892, Chanute agreed to chair the conference and oversee the general arrangements while Zahm agreed to be the general secretary. Thus Americas first International Conference on Aerial Navigation was held during the Worlds Fair in Chicago (often, referred to as the Columbian Exposition of 1893).
Zahm delivered two papers of considerable significance at the conference: Atmospheric Gusts and Their Relation to Flight and Stability of Aeroplanes and Flying Machines.3,4,5 Dean Courtland D. Perkins of Princeton University, in his 1970 Wright brothers lecture, credited Zahm for his contributions to flight stability.6 Zahm, in the above cited paper, clearly defined the requirements for longitudinal static stability. Zahm went to Johns Hopkins University in 1893 to study physics, receiving his Ph.D. in 1898. He joined the faculty at the Catholic University of America in 1895, and in 1901 built and tested what was then the largest wind tunnel in the United States.7 This wind tunnel preceded the one built by the Wright brothers. He also developed instruments for the measurement of velocity and pressure in his wind tunnel. Zahm was interested in scientific research related to flight, whereas the Wright brothers were concerned with developmental problems.2 Between December 1885 and December 1903, Zahm published 15 papers on a variety of subjects
in aeronautics.5 When Catholic Universitys financial position became precarious in 1908, Zahm began lecturing at the Bureau of Standards. According to T.D. Crouch, In view of his superior methodology and the extent to which his studies, particularly in the area of skin friction, proved useful, Zahm deserved to be regarded as Americas first well-trained aeronautical engineer.4 Zahm had been aware of the fact that European countries, such as France, Italy, and Germany, were more interested in flight than the United States.2 Nine major wind tunnels had been built in those countries between 1903 and 1912. In January 1912, Zahm wrote an article, On the Need for an Aeronautical Laboratory in America.5 He wrote 15 other papers in 1912, including two that described European aeronautical laboratories.5 He was the leading author of scientific and popular articles and was the leading spokesman for American aviation. Zahm served as secretary to President William H. Tafts committee to investigate the need for a national aeronautical laboratory. In 1913, he was named secretary for the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory at the Smithsonian
Professor Zahm (right) with Glenn Curtiss (left) and Charles Manly (center). The flying machine is Langleys Aerodrome in an early stage of modification by Curtiss in 1914. 8, 9 4
Institution. The advisory committee of this laboratory commissioned Zahm and Jerome C. Hunsaker to visit England, France, and Germany to document the latest scientific developments in aeronautics. Hunsaker was a young naval First-day-of-issue commemorative envelope recognizing Zahms officer who later was asked to accomplishments at Notre Dame design a course in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The ZahmHunsaker final report presented to the Smithsonian on July 27, 1914, together with the start of World War I in August 1914, convinced Congress to establish a national aeronautical laboratory. Congress increased appropriations for military aviation and in 1915 created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In 1914, Zahm was named chief research engineer for the Curtiss Airplane Company and in 1916 became the director of the Aerodynamics Laboratory of the U.S. Navy. (The photograph on page 4 shows Zahm sitting on Langleys Aerodrome with Glenn Curtiss and Charles Manly in 1914.) In 1929, he retired from this position and in 1930 the Guggenheim Chair of Aeronautics was created for him at the Library of Congress. He held the Guggenheim Chair until 1946 when he retired. His work was
A Fokker Trimotor F.10 airplane
acknowledged by a commemorative envelope issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1938 for his glider experiments 50 years earlier in 1888. The football program at Notre Dame also played a role in the development of commercial aviation. Notre Dames legendary coach, Knute Rockne, died in a commercial airplane crash in Kansas on March 31, 1931. The accident investigation revealed that the wooden wing spars of the Fokker Trimotor F.10 failed due to dry rot. (See photo of a Fokker Trimotor F.10 on page 5.) Rocknes death caused a public outcry over the quality of passenger air service. TWA (then called Transcontinental & Western Air) responded by contracting with the Douglas company to build an all-metal transport that could take off fully loaded on one of its two engines and beat a Ford Trimotor (a clone of the Fokker Trimotor) from Santa Monica to Albuquerque. Douglas produced the experimental DC-1 in 1933, shown below, and then went into production with the 14-passenger DC-2 version which started service with TWA in 1934. The 21 passenger DC-3 followed in 1936.+
An all-metal DC-1 airplane produced by Douglas

+These images and the history of TWA can be found at http://airlines.afriqonline.com, and more information about Rocknes role in aviation can be found at http://web.mit.edu/16.00/www/.
Chapter 2
1935-1944
The New Program

In the spring of 1935, President of the University Rev. John F. O Hara, C.S.C., organized a conference on aeronautics to which he invited many well-known pilots and aviation enthusiasts from around the country. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss an aviation program at the University of Notre Dame. Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker, World War I ace, vice president and later the president of Eastern Airlines; Major Alford G. Williams, U.S.M.C., manager of the aviation sales department of the Gulf Refining Company of Pittsburgh; Merrill C. Meigs, publisher of the Chicago Evening American; Ben Smith of New York; and Lloyd Maxwell, a Chicago advertising man, all were in attendance. (See photo on page 8.) When Notre Dame decided to establish an aeronautical engineering program, Father OHara went to one of the four best universities in this field, the University of Michigan, to look for someone to lead and develop it. There, he found Frank Newton Mithery Brown. Brown began his studies at the University of Michigan in aeronautical engineering in 1920 and studied there for two years. Then, in order to make enough money to continue his education, he went to work for the Ford Motor Company for two years, where he moved up from laborer to assistant foreman. Then, in 1924, he went back to the university for another year, followed by a year at the Ford Motor Company as an engineer. He returned to the University of Michigan and completed the bachelors degree in
Aeronautics conference at Notre Dame in 1935 (left to right) Major Alford G. Williams, U.S.M.C., manager of the aviation sales department of the Gulf Refining Company of Pittsburgh; Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker; Ben Smith of New York; Rev. John F. OHara, C.S.C. (standing); and Merrill C. Meigs of Chicago
aeronautical engineering in 1927. He then mixed the next few years between working and completing his masters degree in aeronautical engineering at Michigan. He worked as a consultant designing aircraft; he also worked as a flight test and research engineer at the U.S. Naval Air station at Mountain View, California, which is now the location of NASA Ames Research Center; and he taught at Michigan. In September 1935, Brown was named by Father OHara as professor and head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering. At that time he was the youngest person to be named a professor at the University. The coming of Brown to organize the aeronautical engineering department actually begins the story from aeronautics to aerospace at Notre Dame. What follows is an abbreviated description of the evolution of the undergraduate curriculum, the research activities in the department, as well as other historically relevant facts, such as the development of research facilities and a vision for the future.
Shortly after the program began, J.A. McClean joined the faculty. The first laboratory equipment installed was the wind tunnel, built in the summer of 1936. Since there was no internal combustion engine laboratory in the college, the department set up such a laboratory in the winter of 1936. In 1938, another University of Michigan graduate with his masters degree in aeronautical engineering, Robert S. Eikenberry, joined the staff. Eikenberry was a skilled designer and engineer who supervised the design and building of much of the equipment in the original aeronautical engineering laboratory. The curriculum in 1935-36 included a total of 159 credit hours (see curriculum list on page 10). The senior-year curriculum indicated a very strong orientation toward the practical engineering topics of the day: airplane design, internal combustion engines, airport design, meteorology, and of course something that has always been important, English for engineers. A student branch of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences was established in 1937.
Professor Frank Newton Mithery Brown, circa 1936
This period was the beginning of over six Professor Robert S. and a half decades of continuous research in Eikenberry aeronautics at Notre Dame. In the late 1930s, Brown began his research on the development of low-turbulence smoke visualization wind tunnels. He had experimented with different inlet contraction ratios, number of screens, and various other methods to reduce the turbulence intensity in the test section by using small tabletop wind tunnels. A two-dimensional smoke tunnel was operational in 1937, and a three-dimensional one was operational in 1940. By the end of the 1930s he
DEPARTMENT OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING 1935-1936 SENIOR YEAR CURRICULUM

Philosopy 2c, 2d Civil Engr 4-4b Metallurgy 108 English 21-22 Elec. Engr. 17-18 Aero Engr. 7-8 Aero Engr. 9-10 Aero Engr. 11 Aero Engr. 13 Aero Engr. 15 The Philosophy of the Mind and Ethics Plane Surveying Non-ferrous Metallography English for Engineers Engineering Economics Internal Combustion Engines Airplane Design Meteorolgy Avigation Airport Design Credit Hours Total hours required for graduation 159 6 2 3 4 4 8 10 2 2 2 41
Senior year curriculum, 1935-36
had developed the ideas that would later come together to form the state-ofthe-art low-speed flow visualization wind tunnels. However, although the design for a large three-dimensional smoke tunnel was complete in 1940, the actual construction was delayed by World War II. During the Second World War, the faculty continued its research. Brown invented the space time recorder, a navigational aid which was used by pilots during the war. Eikenberry was very interested in sailplane design and aircraft structures. He designed and, with the help of his students, built a glider (shown on page 11). This glider was made with wood ribs covered with fabric and had a single-seat open cockpit. The glider club support vehicle is shown on page 12.
10
Glider built by Professor Eikenberry and his students 8
During World War II, the German Army attacked Fort Eber Emael in Belgium using troop gliders. The U.S. Army was surprised by this, because it had considered gliders more as a personal hazard than a potential weapon. In fact, the Army had an eight-year prohibition on flying or even being a passenger in a glider for Army personnel. In order to provide trainers in sufficient quantity, the Army required civilian gliders.12 One of these gliders was donated to the Army Air Corps by Notre Dame in July 1942.13 It was designated TG-21 (Training Glider #21) and was used to train pilots in California. This glider is listed in the Army Air Corps records as built by the students at Notre Dame.
11
The first flight of the glider took place at the South Bend, Indiana, airport July 2, 1941.11 Eikenberry piloted the glider at the National Soaring Meet in Elmira, New York, in the summer of 1941. It stayed aloft for six hours and took third place for endurance.
Glider Club vehicle
Brown spent much of World War II away from the University, working for the State Department, traveling to China, and consulting on dirigible problems. While he was gone, the Navy practically took over the University for its V-12 program. Many have said that if the Navy had not used Notre Dame for the V-12 program, the University would have been in financial trouble. From the beginning of the program to 1941, there were an average of seven students per year in the aeronautical engineering program. During World War II, the average number of students increased to 17.
12
Chapter 3
After the War
1945-1963
Eikenberry directed the program during World War II, and when Brown returned after the war, the two began to build the large three-dimensional smoke tunnel they had designed in 1940. The curriculum changed to reflect developments in the aviation industry. The number of credit hours decreased to 153, and the number of undergraduates increased to 31 per year from 1946 to 1949. During this period, Brown and others in the department developed an internal combustion laboratory. Although it was eventually turned over to the mechanical engineering program, internal combustion engines were as important to the aeronautical engineering program as they were to mechanical engineering. Proposed aeronautical engineering building The first design for an and airport, 19448 aeronautical engineering
13
Machine shop in aeronautical building
laboratory was made in March 1944. This design (see page 13) shows the football stadium in relation to the proposed aeronautical engineering building and two runways. The thinking at the time was that if the University intended to build an aeronautical engineering department, it needed to have an airport as well. This plan was not approved by the University. Many of the concerns the department has today with regard to research and teaching were also concerns of Brown and his contemporaries. Those faculty who are worried about summer support will appreciate the following quotation from Brown: I would like to know if you think there is any possibility of obtaining three months active duty pay in your department this summer? (taken from a letter to the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, January 15, 1936). Another relevant quotation of Browns comes from a letter dated April 30, 1947, to University President Rev. John J. Cavanaugh: It is recognized that graduate work in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering is desirable. It is further recognized that there must be no attempt to build the graduate division at the expense of the undergraduate
14
division. Not many of the problems seen today are really new. During this period, the number of faculty ranged from three to five. The first graduate degree, an M.S., was granted in 1949. The department moved from the engineering building (Cushing Hall) to a separate building in the summer of 1947. The aeronautical building was a World War II surplus building of frame construction with a usable floor area of 10,000 square feet, several offices, two Professor Vincent P. classrooms, a library and graduate student room, Goddard an instrument room, a darkroom, a senior drafting room, a junior drafting room, and a laboratory and shop. (The shop, including Clarence Smith (Smitty), a machinist and long-standing fixture who helped shape the character of the department, is shown on page 14.) In the 1950s, the department continued to expand. In 1949, Professor Vincent P. Goddard, who had received his degree at Holy Cross College in physics and a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to teach at Notre Dame. Goddard designed an indraft supersonic wind tunnel (see below) which allowed the department to perform research in the rapidly expanding area of supersonic aerodynamics.14 He left Notre Dame to work for the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1951 and returned to the University about 1957, where he continued to play a central role in the research of supersonic aerodynamics. The curriculum in 1956-57 still included 153 hours, with all of the basic
Professor Goddard (left) and students with supersonic wind tunnel
15
elements: airplane design, structures, laboratory, internal combustion engines, and some options. Fundamentals of economics was an important course for engineers, as well as ethics. The undergraduate enrollment averaged about 20 students per year in the 1950s.15 Research in that decade was dominated by the use of the flow visualization wind tunnels, both the subsonic and supersonic. Brown was very interested in the magnus force on spinning cylinders and spheres and flow around inclined bodies. He wrote research reports for the U.S. Navy and various companies, such as Boeing and Bendix. He was doing sponsored research long before most people at Notre Dame. One of the major developments in the 1950s was the building of the supersonic wind tunnel. Brown was quite an old horse trader from North Dakota, and he built an entire laboratory largely on war-surplus equipment at minimal cost to the University. In fact, the supersonic wind tunnels Simultaneous Smokeline-Schlieren photograph of the are still driven by three flow over a wedge at a Mach number of 1.38 sets of vacuum pumps and 125 horsepower motors that came from a World War II naval vessel. He originally obtained six of these units for $1,500 and sold three to Bendix Corporation for $6,600. With the money, he built the supersonic wind tunnel using the remaining three units.15 In those early days of supersonic aerodynamics, Goddard and his students conducted their research with a small wind tunnel. As the years passed, they expanded it to include a large inlet contraction, producing, in fact, the first and only supersonic smoke tunnel in the world (see above photo).16
16
Drawing of the three-dimensional subsonic smoke tunnel in the 1950s
17
Brown started experimenting in 1937 with inlets and screens to reduce turbulence in the test section, which was an absolute necessity for flow visualization. He also experimented with methods of delivering smoke into the wind tunnel at the first screen. Most researchers in Europe and England put the smoke rake inside the tunnel and the disturbance produced by the rake in the tunnel increased the turbulence level, so the system never worked. Browns ideas, not only in the injection of smoke but also in the generation of smoke, were unique and successful. The drawing above is of a three-dimensional smoke tunnel in about 1959.17 In the 1930s, smoke was generated by coking wheat straw. The smoke would then ascend through a pipe and into the smoke rake, producing a very dense smoke. Brown also used this method of generating smoke. The trouble with this method was that it also produced a lot of tar, which clogged up the system. The tars deposited on the wind tunnel models and made quite a mess. In the 1960s, Brown developed a smoke generator that vaporized kerosene thereby eliminating the problems of the coked straw method.
Eikenberry also played a hand in the technological innovations of the department. A great deal of work in those years involved an external, platform lift and drag balance to measure lift and drag forces, as well as magnus forces, on spinning bodies. Eikenberry designed and built this balance. In fact, the entire laboratory from wind Smoke visualization of the boundary layer tunnels to the smoke transition process on an ogive-nosed cylinder generator and rake, force balance, and so on was designed and built at Notre Dame. Some of the most significant early research in the department involved visualization of the boundary layer (one smoke visualization of Browns turned out to be of particular historical importance; see photo above).18 This occurred while Brown was working with an axisymmetric body. While he was doing this work, one of the smoke tubes impinged on the nose of the model and smoke was enveloped in the boundary layer. When he took this picture using a strobe light, he saw a wave pattern that eventually broke down. He was most likely the first person to ever visualize TollmienSchlichting waves in a wind tunnel. There were other people who were working on the same problem around that time, but it appears that he was the first one to photograph this phenomenon, around 1957. The University archives contain a file of letters from almost every person of that day who was well-known in fluid mechanics. Brown received a letter from Theodore von Karman from Paris. He had sent him some smoke photographs of a leading edge separation bubble with transition on an airfoil. Those who had seen his visual results showing the details of vortex shedding behind airfoils and sharp flat plates, and later boundary transition
18
of axisymmetric bodies, were absolutely astounded, as was von Karman. At that time, most people didnt realize the value of flow visualization, but Brown was a very stubborn person and continued to improve his smoke tunnel system; thats what pioneers are all about! Schubauer and Klebanoff of the National Bureau of Standards were making point-by-point measurements with hot-wire anemometry in this region where transition was taking place on a flat plate. It sounds from the tone of their letter in response to Brown having sent them examples of his results that they were still a little skeptical of his visualization of transition. Brown, Eikenberry, and Goddard worked on several problems in the 1950s, and one of them was an early study of propellers. One of their smoke photographs of the wake of a rotating propeller (shown below) has been used in many textbooks.19 Its importance is generally acknowledged, though Brown is not always given credit. The vortex off the tip of the blades is very clear. The renewed interest in recent years in propeller design for efficient subsonic aircraft increases the current interest in Browns original work. The magnus force produced by a spinning cylinder was also of great interest to Brown. He really was studying very basic phenomena in fluid mechanics, trying to understand them using the techniques he had available at that time. For the spinning sphere problem, he found the best way to gain attention was by using a baseball.
Smoke visualization of the wake of a rotating propeller 19
His work on the spinning base-
19
ball was reported in articles in various magazines, for example, a smoke photograph of a spinning baseball appeared on the cover of the Saturday Review on April 5, 1958, and in a 1959 Popular Mechanics article in which he explained why the curve ball curves.17 The dedication to this research by Brown was noteworthy because most scientists, until the 1950s, told him he was wasting his time trying to visualize complex flow phenomena. By the 1970s, with researchers writing books and articles on flow visualization, everyone in the engineering community realized how valuable his work was, how much it could help explain basic phenomena, and how it could help formulate mathematical models and discover new phenomena. There have been numerous articles written on flow visualization and in these Brown is given credit for most of the early contributions to smoke visualization in wind tunnels. More than 100 laboratories have used his tunnel smoke generator.20,21,22 The smoke flow visualization equipment and techniques developed by Brown have had a major impact in helping students understand basic flow phenomena.
April 5, 1958, cover of Saturday Review showing Professor Browns spinning baseball
20
Chapter 4
1964-1969
Aerospace Engineering
In 1964, the program name was changed to Aero-Space Engineering (not to be confused with Aerospace Sciences, which was the Air Force ROTC) by John D. Nicolaides, who joined the faculty as chairman in 1964. Thomas J. Mueller from United Aircraft Research Laboratories and Chuen-Yen Chow from the University of Michigan both joined the faculty in 1965. The 1960s were a very exciting time in aerospace programs. The number of credit hours for the bachelors Aero-Space Laboratory degree decreased to 144, and topics related to space were added (e.g., rocket propulsion and orbital mechanics). The undergraduate enrollment averaged about 30 students per year, with a peak of about 50 in 1969. There were about six
21
masters students per year, and a Ph.D. program was established in 1965. The first Ph.D. was granted to Patrick J. Roache in 1967. The department continued some of the research that Brown had originated in boundary layer transition, vortex shedding at the trailing edge of airfoils, and the effects of sound on vortex shedding from flat plates and airfoils. Brown and Goddard worked together on the trailing edge vortices and the control of the frequency of shedding by acoustical means. Unfortunately, these studies were not widely published. New areas of research were introduced by the new faculty, such as the parafoil, computational fluid dynamics, altitude compensating rocket nozzle research, flight dynamics of missiles and aircraft, magneto-hydrodynamics, and separated flow research. In 1964, Nicolaides was approached by an inventor of the parafoil from Florida. The parafoil so captured his imagination that from that time on he spent much of his time with it. Though some people called it a kite, it actually developed lift like a wing and was a controllable parachute. It could be used to land packages and payloads, or as a flexible wing for a paraplane (see photo on page 23). Nicolaides was very publicity-minded, and on one occasion he attempted to drop a package into the football stadium from a small airplane. Rather than a package, he put a 20-pound weight on the end of the parafoil. The parafoil failed to deploy, and the 20-pound weight went through the roof of the newly renovated press box, ending any further tests near the football stadium. In 1967, the aerospace building was enlarged because enrollments had grown considerably. A metal addition was added to the north end of the aero building, at a cost of $40,000. In the late 1960s, the faculty had reached a peak of seven; the graduate program grew to 28 students. The first digital computer on campus, the IBM 1620, arrived in 1959. With this, Eikenberry began his lifelong affair with computers. He was responsible for many innovations in programming this machine and those that followed. He was the author of the NDFOR compiler, a FORTRAN compiler well suited for educational settings, which was eventually used in many schools. He also made major contributions to the area of missile flight dynamics in support of Nicolaides research.
22
Albin A. Szewczyk joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1962 and began research in computational fluid dynamics in 1963 when the Computer Center obtained a UNIVAC 1107. This research, which was supported by the Bendix Corporation, was published in 1966 as a department report and the dissertation of David C. Thoman, and produced some of the earliest solutions for the incompressible flow around a cylinder. They produced some of the earliest full field solutions for a viscous, incompressible flow over a cylinder at moderate to large Reynolds numbers.23 These results were in agreement with available experimental data at the time. The only computer in the aerospace building was a Merchant calculator which could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and take the square root. When Mueller joined the Department of Aero-Space Engineering in 1965, he brought research in compressible flow problems including basic separated flows and the complex flows in altitude compensating rocket nozzles, i.e., axisymmetric truncated plug nozzles and the planar aerospike type nozzle (shown on page 24). This nozzle was being considered for the Space Shuttle main rockA parafoil plane et engine, but development had not advanced far enough when the decision had to be made. His approach to the problem was both experimental and computational. His first
23
Ph.D. student, Patrick Roache, produced one of the first numerical solutions to the compressible separated flow problems produced by a backstep and a rectangular cavity. After his graduation in 1967, Roache continued to refine and extend his dissertation until, in 1972, he published the first book in Computational Fluid Dynamics,24 which has become a classic. The Department of AeroSpace Engineering merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1969. KwangSchlieren photograph of a planar Tzu Yang became the chairman truncated plug rocket nozzle flow field of the combined department. The two undergraduate programs, aerospace and mechanical engineering, maintained their separate curriculum, and that has continued to the present. After the merger and as a result of the significant decline in engineering enrollment throughout the entire country, a core curriculum was established in the college, and the department reduced the total credit hours for the B.S. degree to 128. The nationwide enrollment declined as a result of a downturn in the business cycle and the anti-technology and anti-military movements that were fueled by the Vietnam War. The successful Apollo mission landing men on the moon was unable to alter the mood in the country. Notre Dame had 49 senior aerospace engineering students in 1970 and only nine by 1978. Research funding from NASA and the Department of Defense all but disappeared during the early 1970s.
24
Chapter 5
1970-1989
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Notre Dame joined the Supersonic Tunnel Association (STA) in 1970. The first STA meeting at Notre Dame was held in September 1979, the second in April 1992, and a third in April 2002. In 1979, Notre Dame also joined the Subsonic Aerodynamic Testing Association (SATA) and hosted its annual meeting in 1991. The aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering graduate programs developed along discipline lines because of the common interest in aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, structures, and design. Hafiz M. Atassi, who joined the combined department in 1969, and Szewczyk were closely associated with the aerospace programs because of their teaching and research interests in fluid mechanics/aerodynamics. Because it was clear in 1969 that it would be very difficult to obtain research funds for rocket propulsion related projects, Mueller began to study separated flows with biomedical applications (e.g., arterial bifurcations). During the early 1970s, Mueller and Jack Lloyd developed a biomedical research program to study the hemolytic and thrombogenic potential of artificial heart valves. This research was supported by National Science Foundation and the Indiana Heart Association. Both numerical and experimental studies were made. It was found that the greatly altered flow fields
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around ball and disk artificial heart valves produced regions of large shear stresses that could destroy red blood cells as well as separated flow regions that allow for the deposition of particulate matter such as lipids and other fatty materials, causing thrombus formation. A significant effort was also made to design, fabricate, and test a tri-leaflet valve, similar to the natural aortic valve, made of silicone rubber. Although the valve performed just like the natural valve, further testing in animals was required, which could not be done at Notre Dame. Efforts to interest a biomedical company in taking over the further development of this valve were unsuccessful. The above photo shows Mueller and the tri-leaflet valve in a mock circulatory system used for endurance testing. From 1971 to 1979, six graduate students, two working on their Ph.D. and four pursuing their M.S. degrees, worked on this research. During this period, Goddard studied the drag reduction of deflectors on semi-truck cabs. He also completed his doctoral dissertation on the numerical solutions of the flow around an oscillating cylinder under the direction of Szewczyk in 1971.
Professor Thomas J. Mueller observes a mock circulatory system experiment with the tri-leaflet artificial heart valve developed at Notre Dame.
Szewczyk studied the wind forces on and flow patterns around building and was largely responsible for building the departments atmospheric wind tunnel (shown on page 27). Robert Betchov suggested the use of arrays of jets perpendicular to the main flow as active devices on four sides of the turbulent generating box. Atmospheric wind tunnel studies were promoted by architects who were encountering problems with strong downdrafts from tall buildings that caused structural damage and affected pedestrian movement.25
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Atassis early interests were in rarefied gas dynamics and application to the reentry problem. In 1973, he began his research in unsteady aerodynamics and aeroacoustics with application to aeroelastic stability and noise and vibration control. He developed the first analysis for the interaction of The atmospheric wind tunnel inlet with one a gust with a lifting airfoil. of the four turbulence generating boxes This work was extended by Atassi and his students to model noise from aircraft engine components. Their computational codes are currently used by engineers at NASA, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, and the Navys David Taylor Research and Development Center for turbomachines noise and vibration prediction.
The image below shows a computer visualization of how the unsteady pressure generated by the interaction of a gust with a cascade of blades results in sound radiation.26 His analytical and numerical work on the unsteady effects of nonuniform flows continues to the present with many seminal contributions, including developing algorithms for using the inverse acoustic problem as a nonintrusive detection device and the effects of swirl on flow Professor Albin A. Szewczyk (bottom) stability and noise generation in and graduate student Fred Hahn with the water tunnel in the Hessert Laboratory aircraft engine fans.27 Atassi,
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the Viola D. Hank Professor, is a recognized authority in this field, and his research has been supported by NASA, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and Pratt & Whitney. He is a fellow of both the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He Professor Hafiz received the AIAA Aeroacoustic Award in 2000 for M. Atassi outstanding and exceptional scientific achievement in theoretical and computational aeroacoustics. He was also named Chevalier des Palmes Academiques by the French government. Robert C. Nelson came from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Flight Dynamics Laboratory, and joined the faculty in 1975. His research interests included airplane wake turbulence, aerodynamics, and flight mechanics. Nelson and his students examined aerodynamic phenomena associated with high angle of attack flight of slender wings. Their work included fundamental studies of the flow structure of leading edge vortices before and Numerical simulation of nonuniform after vortex breakdown. (Shown on flow scattering and sound generation page 29 is a flow visualization photoand propagation by a row of graph of the leading edge vortices fan engine blades above a slender delta wing.) A laser light sheet was used to illuminate the cross flow at various locations along the wing. The vortex core region and the secondary structures in the shear layer are clearly shown in this photograph. The core region is noticeable by the void in the smoke pattern. The study of vortical flows above stationary wings led to an interest in how the structure and particularly vortex breakdown was affected by model motion. Large amplitude pitching motion studies revealed significant
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aerodynamic hysteresis in the measured aerodynamic loads. Visualization measurements showed that the hysteresis in the aerodynamic loads was related to the delay in vortex breakdown on the upstroke portion of the motion and in the reestablishment of the leading edge vortex after complete flow separation on the downstroke. From unsteady aerodynamics research Nelson became interested in the flight dynamics phenomenon called wing rock. Wing rock is an unwanted limit cycle rolling motion that affects many highly swept wing aircraft at high angles of attack. Nelson and Andrew Arena conducted a combined experimental and analytical investigation of the wing rock motion of slender flat plate wings.28,29 They developed a free-to-roll system incorporating an airbearing to measure the wing rock motion. The free-to-roll motions were recorded using a nonintrusive optical encoder. Details of the Smoke visualization of the vortical flow field and unsteady pressure structure over an 85 delta wing distributions were measured on a by Frank Payne and Professor model mounted on the roll motion Robert C. Nelson simulator. The simulator used a computer to control a servomotor to drive the model. The free-to-roll motion data was downloaded to the motion control system so that the model rolling motion was forced to duplicate the free-to-roll motion. These data are unique and have been used by numerous researchers studying wing rock. The data from these experiments, coupled with the computational study, provided an improved model of the flow mechanisms causing wing rock on slender delta wings. Nelson is a fellow of the AIAA. In 1976, Mueller became interested in low Reynolds number airfoil aerodynamics an interest that has lasted for 28 years. His first sponsor was NASA Langley in 1977, and in 1980 the Naval Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research helped him expand these studies. NASA
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supported this program for 12 years, and the Navy supported it for 12 years. This project produced 14 M.S. and two Ph.D. students from 1977 to 1989. Over 60 journal and conference papers have been published from this Professor Nelson (left) with Alain Pelletier and David Williams are near the wind tunnel while the wing rock research.30 It also led to experiment is inside. a series of conferences at Notre Dame on this subject. These conferences, organized by Mueller, were held in 1985, 1989, and 2000.31 Szewczyk became the department chair in 1978. Stephen M. Batill joined the faculty that year. He came from the faculty of the U.S. Air Force Academy, and his research interests included aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, and aerospace structures.32 Batills early research programs involved the development of design criteria for high-speed flow visualization in wind tunnels. This resulted in the development of a transonic test section for the Notre Dame facilities and eventually influenced the design of a major wind tunnel facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Subsonic Aerodynamic Research Labora-tory facility. His research interests broadened to include dynamic system modeling and parameter identification, and this multidisciplinary perspective eventually resulted in a number of research Batill was also efforts in systems design and automation.33 instrumental in the development of the aerospace engineering design program at Notre Dame, he introduced the concepts of team-based, design-build-fly projects for all students. Every Notre Dame aerospace student since spring 1986 has designed, built, and tested a flight vehicle ranging from dirigibles and helicopters to fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Many of these students participated in the Universities Space
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Research Association (USRA) Advanced Aeronautics Design program, and the Notre Dame efforts were in the forefront of this type of design project, which is now part of many programs and national competitions. In 1988, Batill led a team of students in the Race for Space Professor Stephen M. Batill (right), Software Chase sponsored by Mike Brendel, and Ken Visser work with the MacAirplane software. Apple Computer, Inc. The team developed airplane design software called MacAirplane, which has been on exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum since 1988. Presented annually by the American Society for Engineering Education and the AIAA, the John Leland Atwood Award recognizes the accomplishments of a superior aerospace engineer and his or her contributions to teaching, research, and the profession. This award was presented to Mueller in 1981, Nelson in 1991, and Batill in 2001. In 1979, Mueller and Nelson continued the transition studies on spinning and non-spinning axisymmetric bodies started by Brown in the 1950s and 1960s. On the spinning body at low Reynolds numbers, both the viscosity-controlled Tollmien-Schlichting waves and the crossflow instability were observed to be present at the same time. This appears to be the first time these two phenomena had been visualized simultaneously, as shown in the lower photo on page 31.34
First visualization of simultaneous Tollmien-Schlichting waves and cross-flow vortices on a spinning axisymmetric body
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In 1985, Patrick F. Dunn joined the faculty, coming from Argonne National Laboratory. He established the Particle Dynamics Laboratory, focusing on multiphase flow research related to the dynamics of microparticles in various environProfessor Patrick F. Dunn in the ments.35,36 Initially, Particle Dynamics Laboratory he studied the electrostatic generation and dispersion of microdroplets and microparticles in a vacuum characteristic of low-Earth orbit (see photo below). In 1989, he began to collaborate with Raymond M. Brach in the department on the experimental and theoretical aspects of microparticle deposition onto surfaces. This joint effort led to seven years of funding from the Electric Power Research Institute and the Center for Indoor Air Research, resulting in over 40 journal publications and conference proceedings. Most recently, his research has focused on elucidating the mechanisms of This unique microdroplet spray pattern was generated microparticle resuspension from surfaces into in the Particle Dynamics turbulent flow. Laboratory using a tailored
electric field.
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Chapter 6
A New Era
1989-2000
Flint O. Thomas came to Notre Dame from Oklahoma State University in 1987. Upon arriving at Notre Dame, Thomas was named an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator, and this supported his experimental investigations of shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions. For this work Thomas developed new supersonic blow down wind tunnel facilities at Notre Dame. Thomas has subsequently modified and utilized these facilities on a continual basis for a wide range of projects in compressible transitional and turbulent flow. These include studies of supersonic jet screech (supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and McDonnell Douglas) and more recently for studies focused on understanding noise source mechanisms in compressible subsonic axisymmetric jets (with co-investigator Thomas C. Corke) under support from the aeroacoustics branch at NASA Langley. Thomas has also been involved in experiments involving free shear layer transition.37,38 A unique feature of this experimental work has been the application of both novel polyspectral signal processing techniques and a nonlinear system model approach in order to provide quantitative measures of the complex sequence of nonlinear wave interactions that ultimately lead to fluid turbulence. As such, this work has sought to clarify the complex sequence of events that lie between the realms of linear stability theory and fully developed turbulence.
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Professor Flint O. Thomas
More recently, research by Thomas has focused on utilization of the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) as a means to quantitatively characterize the large-scale energy containing motions of turbulent flow. This work has as its ultimate goal the development of low-order dynamical system-based models for these fluid motions. The description of turbulent flows within the framework of dynamical systems theory is attractive since it allows a range of well-developed mathematical methods to be used in describing the dynamics of the flows and in the development of flow control strategies. Recent work by Thomas has focused on application of the POD to both planar and axisymmetric turbulent jets.
In collaboration, Thomas and Nelson have been involved in a range of research projects with each focused on the flow physics of high-lift systems used for commercial transport aircraft. This work has been supported by NASA Ames, NASA Langley and NASA Dryden research centers. The approach taken has been to decompose the high-lift system into a series of generic high-lift building block flows. These include wake development in pressure gradient, wake/boundary layer interactions, boundary layer relaminarization, and separated flow. The work has focused upon understanding these building-block flows in isolation, which is considered prerequisite to understanding their integrated behavior in actual high-lift systems. This work continues to be very well received by the aerodynamics community. In fact, one aspect of the high-lift work dealing with the identification of leading edge noise sources and their control recently received a
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Professor Eric J. Jumper (left) with graduate students Ed Fitzgerald and Jim Cicchiello in the Aero-Optics Laboratory
Turning Goals Into Reality Award by NASA Langley Research Center. Mueller was appointed department chair in 1988 and the Roth-Gibson Professor in 1989. Eric J. Jumper joined the faculty in 1989 after 21 years as a Blue-Suit Scientist with the United States Air Force. During his Air Force career, at various times he was on the faculty of both the Air Force Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Just prior to joining the Notre Dame faculty, Jumper was chief of the Laser Devices Division of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory; this division contained all of the high-power laser research and development in the laboratory and worked on problems related to laser beams interacting with turbulent airflows. It is not surprising that one of the first research areas that Jumper developed since coming to Notre Dame is in the area of laser interactions with the turbulent body of air surrounding an airborne laser platform; this field of study is known as aero-optics.39 The crux of the aero-optics problem is that when an otherwise collimated laser beam, whose wavefront is initially planar, encounters a
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turbulent, variable-index-of-refraction flow, it emerges with a distorted or aberrated wavefront. This wavefront aberration, which is rapidly time varying, interferes with the laser beams ability to be focused. Jumpers aero-optics research group began its efforts with the development of the worlds first, truly-high-speed wavefront sensor, capable of capturing time series of wavefronts at greater than 100 KHz.40 The sensor, known as the Small-Aperture Beam Technique or SABT sensor, is based on the discovery by M. Malley, G.W. Sutton, and N. Knicheloe,40 that aberrations due to a convecting turbulent flow are themselves convecting. Up until that time, wavefront sensors were limited to bandwidths of about 1 KHz, which greatly limited the study of aero-optics, particularly for airborne-laser flow scenarios, which we have now learned require capturing wavefronts at 20 KHz. Notre Dames continued aero-optics research has progressed to the point where it is now possible to contemplate applying adaptive optics techniques to the mitigation of the aero-optics problem. Jumpers other area of research is in internal and external unsteady flows. Most recently, he and his students have been looking into the effect of upstream-propagating potential disturbances on turbine-engine components. This research contributes to a better understanding of High Cycle Fatigue (HCF). HCF is responsible for a large percentage of unexpected turbojet and turbofan failures on commercial and military aircraft.41 Jumper is a fellow of the AIAA. Joseph M. Powers joined the faculty in 1989. His work has focused on theoretical and computational problems in high-speed reactive flows and propulsion. His early work considered problems predicting the sensitivity Professor Joseph M. Powers to detonation of a solid rocket motor which has been subjected to damage. In the early and mid-1990s, he considered practical operating limits of detonation-driven, air-breathing propulsion engines. Simultaneously, he developed the first published computational model of a
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Commander James D. Wetherbee (U.S. Navy), aerospace engineering class of 1974, became Notre Dames Astronaut James D. Wetherbee first astronaut. On the first of several flights, he piloted the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-32, which was launched January 9, 1990. Two other Notre Dame aerospace engineering graduates have recently been named to the Astronaut Corps: Lieutenant Colonel Kevin A. Ford, class of 1982, and Major Michael T. Good, class of 1984, with a masters degree in 1986. Both of these astronauts are in the U.S. Air Force. Although the undergraduate program is oriented more toward aeronautics than space, a large number of Notre Dame graduates have gone into space-related activities either with NASA or NASA contractors.
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common pyrotechnic actuator, for which he was given a NASA Innovative Technology award. In recent years, his work has evolved more toward the development of fast and efficient numerical modeling methods appropriate for use in challenging multiscale and optimization problems. He has extended the method of intrinsic low-dimensional manifolds, a technique to reduce the complexity of detailed models of chemical reactions to account for compressibility effects as well as species diffusion.42 Recently, he has used a highly accurate pseudospectral method combined with a so-called Karhenen-Loeve decomposition to address a classical problem in aerodynamics: the shape optimization of a blunt body reentry vehicle.43 Lastly, over the past five years his work on solid rocket safety has been adapted in an ongoing study supported by Los Alamos National Laboratory to consider problems in the initiation of high explosives. This study considers both model development from a fundamental continuum mechanics perspective, as well as detailed numerical predictions of the resulting model equations.
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Chapter 7
The Hessert Laboratory

By the late 1970s it was quite apparent that the original aerospace building was nearing the end of its service life. A plan for a new building was developed as part of a proposal to the United States Army Research Office (ARO). At that time the Army was looking to fund several University Centers for Rotary Aircraft Technology. As part of the cost sharing included in the proposal, the University agreed to renovate the heat and power building that, prior to 1980, housed many of the laboratories for the mechanical engineering program. However, with the opening of the new Fitzpatrick Hall of Thomas and Marilyn Hessert Engineering building, the mechanical engineering laboratories were relocated to Fitzpatrick Hall. Batill developed the first plan for how the facilities for the aerospace facilities could be included in the renovated heat and power building. The plan included a drawing showing the layout of the wind tunnels and specialized laboratories as well as details on electrical and water requirements. Although the proposal was unsuccessful in the competition, it did initiate thinking about the requirements for a new laboratory.
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Around 1987 the University administration recognized the need to relocate the laboratory. Most aerospace or aeronautical laboratories built in the 1940s were typically located some distance away from the main campus. This was true for the Notre Dame aerospace building as well. However, with the large building program in the 1960s and 1970s, the aerospace building was no longer in a remote location. The building was at this time somewhat of an eyesore on campus and was referred to by many as the Aero Shack. The ground and first-floor plans of the The administrations motivation Hessert laboratory. The ground floor for moving the building was contains laboratories while the first floor to help engineering but also to contains laboratories and offices. preserve the beauty of the Notre Dame campus. The plans developed for the ARO proposal were revisited and requirements for a new building were developed that would allow Notre Dame to continue building its research and graduate program. It became apparent that the critical requirement for the new building was to recreate the excellent collaborative research environment of the old Aero Shack. The excellent research environment that had existed in the old Aero Shack was due in large part to the layout of the laboratory facilities, and graduate student and faculty offices. The old laboratory was an ideal integration of people and facilities. It was decided that the new building had to keep the faculty and graduate student offices together and in close proximity to the research facilities. Unfortunately, the funding the University could provide at this time was only enough to renovate the heat and power building to
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accommodate the research facilities. The aerospace faculty made the difficult decision to turn down the administrations offer to relocate the aerospace laboratory. Many colleagues thought the department had just passed up its best chance to get a new facility. About a year later, Thomas Hessert of the Engineering Advisory Council decided to see what he could do to move building plans forward. A short time later Marilyn and Thomas Hessert (see page 39) gave the University a significant gift to create a world-class university aerospace laboratory. The architects used earlier plans and requirements to create the Hessert Center for Aerospace Research. The Hessert facility (shown at left and below) was dedicated in November 1991. In addition to the two lowturbulence subsonic wind tunnels and the atmospheric tunnel, three new facilities were included in the Hessert facility. An anechoic chamber was designed and built as part of the construction of the main laboratory, and the six sides of the chamber were treated by Eckel Industries, Inc., with fiberglass wedges that were paid for by the Office of Naval Research. Mueller designed a low-speed free-jet wind tunnel that was placed inside the anechoic chamber. Calibration of this facility indicated that the low frequency cutoff was about 100 Hz and the tunnel could produce speeds up to 100 ft./sec.44
Exterior view of the Hessert Center for Aerospace Research
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When this facility was finished, Mueller began an aeroacoustics research program concerned with basic experiments to determine the sources of noise in propeller and airfoil flowfields.45 This research, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, continues to the present. Mueller is a fellow of the ASME, the AIAA, and the Royal Aeronautical Society. In 2003, he received the Professor Mueller (right) and graduate student Denis A. Lynch III AIAA Aerodynamics Award for in the anechoic wind tunnel facility outstanding experimental contributions to the understanding of the flow physics of low Reynolds number airfoils and wings. The Hessert buildings main lab was configured to include a new blow-down supersonic facility. This facility has a 550 psi two stage compressor, twin tower dryers, a 2,000-gallon trace heated storage tank outside of the building, and a flow control system designed by Thomas. A free-surface water tunnel, purchased from Eidetics Corporation, was assembled in the main laboratory. This facility has a speed range from 0 to about 15 inches per second and has been very useful for flow visualization with colored dye and for very low Reynolds number airfoil aerodynamics. John E. Renaud joined the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 1992 after receiving his Ph.D. from Rochester Polytechnic Institute. Renauds research focused in the area of multidisciplinary design and optimization (MDO).46 This discipline emerged in the 1970s from efforts in the aeronautics community to integrate promising modeling and prediction procedures in structural analysis and aerodynamic prediction with numerical optimization algorithms so aerospace systems could integrate complex and competing technologies early in the design process. Renaud
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was responsible for a number of NASA- and Air Force-sponsored efforts that resulted in the development of analysis and design computer frameworks with applications to various aerospace systems and subsystems. In 2002, he spearheaded an effort with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to apply MDO concepts to a class of adaptive-reconfigurable flight vehicles referred to as morphing aircraft.47 This research was complemented by the actual fabrication and flight tests of unmanned flight vehicles by student design teams. These concepts exploit the capability to change the external shape of the aircraft in response to changing performance or mission requirements. The optimization tools developed by Professor John E. Renaud Renaud and his team allowed the designers to exploit these unique configurations in ways not available in the past. Renaud is a fellow of ASME.
In 1996, Nelson was appointed department chair. His efforts to find the resources to continue the development of the Hessert facility and to recruit additional faculty continued the tradition of excellence. Corke came to Notre Dame from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1999, and was named the Clark Professor. His initial research interests stemmed from his Ph.D. research, which was on turbulent boundary layers. That work dealt with the effects that suppressing the large-scale outer structure had on turbulence production near the wall (the so-called burst cycle), and on the viscous drag. This work became NASA/FED restricted from publication and presentation for three years. This led him in other research directions, in particular to the study of fluid instabilities and transition to turbulence. A particular approach that he has used in studying instabilities was to introduce controlled disturbances.44,45 Corke and his students were the first to introduce controlled 3-D disturbances to document subharmonic resonance in boundary layer transition. This has been applied in many other flows including 3-D and supersonic
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boundary layers, jets, and wakes. The techniques that were developed to control these instabilities resulted in a natural progression to general flow control. His present research interests involve various aspects of flow control as applied to a broad range of technologically relevant problems. These include: control of transition to turbulence in boundary layers on hypersonic lifting bodies; control of transonic jets to reduce noise; separation control related to retreating blade stall on helicopter rotors, and on blades in the low-pressure turbine (LPT) stage of turbo-jet engines; and control of cross-flow instability on highly swept wings. Central to these problems has been the development of flow actuators which are based on locally ionizing the air to create a plasma over arrays of electrodes. This approach has a number of advantages such as being fully electronic and having a high-frequency bandwidth that is necessary for highspeed applications. Another significant advantage of these actuators is that they can easily be incorporated into numerical simulations and therefore optimized and reverse-engineered for specific applications. Corke has received numerous awards for his research and teaching. These awards include the 1982 NASA Langley Achievement Award for contributions in the area of turbulence and viscous drag reduction and the 1996 NASA Langley Achievement Award for the development of basic fluid mechanics phenomena, which contributed to major advances in flow predictions and laminar flow control. He is an Illinois Institute of Technology research institute fellow and an associate fellow of the AIAA.
Professor Thomas C. Corke in the Flow Control Laboratory
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Chapter 8
The 21st Century

Notre Dame, proud of its rich tradition in aerospace research and education and optimistic about its future, has developed a new center of excellence. The Center for Flow Physics and Control was made an official center in the College of Engineering in the summer of 2001. The center builds on existing funded research and historical precedent of the original Aero-Space and Hessert laboratories, while consolidating common core interests and abilities to address larger focused efforts. It involves faculty in five departments. The overarching theme is flow diagnostics, prediction, and control, in a process loop that involves computation, experiment, and modeling. The center strongly emphasizes partnering with industry to identify flow control applications that can have an immediate impact, be technologically viable, and generate economic interest. Core areas consist of aeroacoustics, aero-optics, fluid-structure interactions, multiphase flows, and general flow control. An example of the type of research that the center is addressing is a Flow Control Designed Engine which is the theme of a recent NASA URETI (University Research, Engineering, and Technology Institutes) proposal. The concept is to focus on identifiable flow modules which are basic but important elements of the internal and external flow field of turbo-jet engines. The rationale for this approach is to break down a complex system into simpler elements that can be more completely understood, modeled, and controlled. Such an engine could be more efficient, smaller, lighter, with a
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reduced part count, be substantially quieter, have a larger operation envelope, and cost less than present engines. This represents our vision of the type of a large focused effort, with a significant technological impact, at which the center is aimed. Scott C. Morris joined the faculty in 2002. His research interests include turbulence, turbomachinery, and acoustics. 50,51 Fundamental turbulence studies are being conducted in the atmospheric boundary layer in the western Utah desert. The measurements obtained provide insight into the physics of many types of fluid flows near solid surfaces. As many as six universities participate in the measurement program for two weeks each summer. Under the direction of Morris, a new turbomachinery laboratory is currently under construction at the Hessert facility, which was renamed the Hessert Laboratory for Aerospace Research in 2003. The main feature of this effort will be a 400 horsepower transonic axial compressor. The rig will provide a new look into rotating machines, unlike any that has previously been attempted. Specifically, large optical access windows for flow visualization and measurements will be a central feature of the machine. The facility was designed for ease of measurements and for the application of new flow control technologies. Once completed, plasma actuators will be used to control tip clearance losses, which can lead to as much as 30 percent of the losses of the compressor.
Professor Scott C. Morris
Acoustics of advanced propulsion systems is also a focus area of Morris research. This research program will build upon the long-standing collaboration between Notre Dame and the U.S. Navy. The post-Cold War era has led to a number of design challenges for Naval platforms that present significant acoustic problems. The acoustics research group at Notre Dame is using the world-class facilities to build understanding of these systems through measurements of basic acoustic problems.
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Acknowledgements
The authors recognize that there were other faculty who were at Notre Dame for less than 10 years. Although these faculty are not mentioned specifically, they also contributed to the development of the program. The 1,550 B.S., 200 M.S., and 70 Ph.D. graduates also made significant contributions to this program. Special thanks go to Charles R. Lamb of the University Archives, for helping with the Zahm material, and Professor Batill, for his suggestions during the writing of this book. Professors Atassi, Corke, Dunn, Jumper, Morris, Szewczyk, and Thomas all contributed to this effort. We would also like to thank John D. Anderson Jr., for identifying Glenn Curtiss and Charles Manly in the photograph on page 4. The authors would also like to acknowledge the discretionary funds from the Roth-Gibson, Viola D. Hank, and Clark endowments, and from Eric J. Jumper, for supporting the printing of this book.
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References
1 Wragg, D.W., Flight before Flying, Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc., New York, 1974. Dethloff, H., and Snaples, L., Who Was Albert F. Zahm? AIAA Paper No. 20001049, presented at the 38th Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, Nevada, January 10-13, 2000. Hope, A.J., C.S.C., Notre Dame: One Hundred Years, Icarus Press, Inc., South Bend, Indiana, pp. 210-211, 1978. Crouch, T.D., A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane 1875-1905, Norton and Company, New York, pp. 78-83, 1981. Aeronautical Papers of Albert F. Zahm, Ph.D., 1885-1945, Volume I and Volume II, published by the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1950. Perkins, C.D., Development of Airplane Stability and Control Technology, AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1970. Anderson, John D., Jr., A History of Aerodynamics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1997. University of Notre Dame Archives. Anderson, John D., Jr., private communication. 2
8 9
10 South Bend, Indiana, News Times, May 17, 1935. 11 News release, University of Notre Dame, undated, but additional information points to 1941. 12 Blacksten, Raul, private communication, 2001. 13 Newspaper clipping, Catholic Herald Citizen, July 18, 1942. 14 The South Bend Tribune, February 21, 1951. 15 Annual Report of F.N.M. Brown, 1955-1956. 16 Goddard, V.P., McLaughlin, J.A., and Brown, F.N.M., Visual Supersonic Flow Patterns by Means of Smoke Lines, Journal of the Aero/Space Sciences, November 1959. 17 Hicks, C.B., The Strange Forces of the Air, Popular Mechanics, pp. 124-127, June 1959.
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18 Brown, F.N.M, The Organized Boundary Layer, Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference on Fluid Mechanics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, pp. 331-349, September 1959. 19 Brown, F.N.M., The Visible Wind, Proceedings of the Second Midwestern Conference on Fluid Mechanics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, pp. 119-130, 1952. 20 Mueller, T.J., Smoke Visualization of Subsonic and Supersonic Flows (The Legacy of F.N.M. Brown), University of Notre Dame, UNDAS TN-3412-1, a Final Report for Contract AFOSR-77-3412, June 1978. 21 Mueller, T.J., On the Historical Development of Apparatus and Techniques for Smoke Visualization of Subsonic and Supersonic Flows, AIAA Paper No. 80-0420, presented at the AIAA 11th Aerodynamic Testing Conference, Colorado Springs, Colorado, March 18-20, 1980. 22 Mueller, T.J., History of Smoke Visualization in Wind Tunnels, Astronautics and Aeronautics, Vol. 1, pp. 50-54, 1983. 23 Thomas, D.C., and Szewczyk, A. Time-Dependent Viscous Flow over a Circular Cylinder, The Physics of Fluids, Supplement II, II-76 II-86, 1969. 24 Roache, P.J., Computational Fluid Dynamics, Hermosa Publishers, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1972.
25 Owen, J.C., Szewczyk, A.A., and Bearman, P.W., Suppression of Karman Vortex Shedding. Gallery of Fluid Motion, The Physics of Fluids, 12, 9, pp. 1-13, 2000. 26 Atassi, H.M., Unsteady Aerodynamics of Vortical Flows: Early and Recent Development, Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics, Ed. K.Y. Fung, Ch. IV, pp. 119-169, World Scientific, 1994. 27 Golubev, V., and Atassi, H.M., Interaction of Unsteady Swirling Flows in Annular Cascades; Part I: Evolution of Vortical Disturbances, AIAA Journal, 38 (7), pp. 11421149, 2000. 28 Arena, A.S., Jr., and Nelson, R.C., Measurement of Unsteady Surface Pressure on a Slender Wing Undergoing a Self-Induced Oscillation, Experiments in Fluids, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 414-416, 1994. 29 Nelson, R.C., and Pelletier, A., Unsteady Aerodynamics of Slender Wings on Aircraft Undergoing Large Amplitude Maneuvers, under revision for Progress in Aerospace Sciences, Elsevier Science Limited. 30 Pelletier, A., and Mueller, T.J., Low Reynolds Number Aerodynamics of LowAspect-Ratio, Thin/Flat/Cambered Plate Wings, AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 37, No. 5, pp. 825-832, October 2000.
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31 Mueller, T.J. (ed), Fixed and Flapping Wing Aerodynamics for Micro Air Vehicle Applications, Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, AIAA, Reston, Virginia, 2001. 32 Batill, S.M., and Nelson, R.C., Low Speed, Indraft Wind Tunnels, in Frontiers in Experimental Fluid Mechanics: Lecture Notes in Engineering, No. 46, SpringerVerlag, Berlin, pp. 25-94, 1989. 33 Batill, S.M., Sellar, R.S., and Stelmack, M., A Framework for Multidisciplinary Design Based upon Response-Surface Approximations, AIAA Journal of Aircraft, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 287-297, 1999. 34 Mueller, T.J., Nelson, R.C., Kegelman, J.T., and Morkovin, M.V., Smoke Visualization of Boundary Layer Transition on a Spinning Axisymmetric Body, AIAA Journal, Vol. 19, No. 12, pp. 1607-1608, December 1981. 35 Grace, J.M., and Dunn, P.F., Droplet Motion in an Electrohydrodynamic Fine Spray, Experiments in Fluids, Vol. 20, pp. 153-164, 1996. 36 Brach, R.M., Dunn, P.F., and Li, X., Experiments and Engineering Models of Microparticle Impact and Deposition, Journal of Adhesion, Vol. 74, pp. 227-282, 2000. 37 Thomas, F.O., and Chu, H.C., Nonlinear Wave Coupling and Subharmonic Resonance in Planar Jet Shear Layer Transition, Physics of Fluids A, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 630-646, 1992. 38 Gordeyev, S.V., and Thomas, F.O., Coherent Structure in the Turbulent Planar Jet. Part 1. Extraction of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Eigenmodes and Their SelfSimilarity, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 414, pp. 145-194, 2000. 39 Jumper, E.J., and Fitzgerald, E.J., Recent Advances in Aero-Optics, Progress in Aerospace Sciences, 37 (3), pp. 299-339, 2001. 40 Malley, M.M., Sutton, G.W., and Kincheloe, N., Beam-Jitter Measurements of Turbulent Aero-Optical Path Differences, Applied Optics, 31:4440-3, 1992. 41 Falk, E.A., Jumper, E.J., Fabian, M.K., and Stermer, J., Upstream-Propagating Potential Disturbances in the F109 Turbofan Engine Inlet Flow, Journal of Propulsion and Power, 17(2), pp. 262-269, March-April 2001. 42 Singh, S., Powers, J.M., and Paolucci, S., On Slow Manifolds of Chemically Reactive Systems, Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 117, pp. 1482-1496. 43 Brooks, G.P., and Powers, J.M., A Karhenen-Loeve Least-Squares Technique for Optimizations of Geometry of a Blunt Body in Supersonic Flow, Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 195, pp. 387-412, 2004.
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44 Mueller, T.J., et al., The Design of a Subsonic Low-Noise, Low-Turbulence Wind Tunnel for Acoustic Measurements. AIAA Paper No. 92-3883, presented at the AIAA 17th Aerospace Ground Testing Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, July 6-8, 1992. 45 Mueller, T.J., and Lynch, D.A., III, An Anechoic Facility for Basic Aeroacoustic Research, Chapter 5 in Aeroacoustic. Measurements, Experimental Fluid Mechanics Series, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, 2002. 46 Tappeta, R.V., Renaud, J.E., and Rodriguez, J.F., An Interactive Multiobjective Optimization Design Strategy for Decision Based Multidisciplinary Design, Engineering Optimization, Vol. 34 (5), pp. 523-544, 2002. 47 Gano, S.E., and Renaud, J.E., Optimized Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Wing Morphing for Extended Range and Reliability, AIAA 2002-5505, Proceedings of the 9th AIAA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization, AIAA Meeting Papers on Disc, Vol. 7, No. 4, Atlanta, Georgia, September 4-6, 2002. 48 Erturk, E., and Corke, T.C., Boundary Layer Receptivity to Free-stream Sound on Elliptic Leading Edges of Flat Plates, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 429, pp. 1-21, 2000. 49 Erturk, E., and Corke, T.C., Boundary Layer Leading-edge Receptivity to Sound at Incident Angles, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 444, pp. 383-407, 2001. 50 Morris, S.C., and Foss, J.F., An Aerodynamic Shroud: An Automotive Application, Journal of Fluids Engineering, Vol. 123, No. 2, pp. 278-292, 2001. 51 Morris, S.C., and Foss, J.F., Boundary Layer to Shear Layer The Transition Region, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 494, pp. 187-221, 2003.
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Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 or visit: http://www.nd.edu/~ame (574) 631-5430 365 Fitzpatrick Hall
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Aeronautics to Aerospace at the University of Notre Dame

University of Notre Dame Roth-Gibson Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

University of Notre Dame Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Thomas J. Mueller Robert C. Nelson Notre Dame, Indiana 2004

Before the Wright Brothers

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

A Fokker Trimotor F.10 airplane

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

An all-metal DC-1 airplane produced by Douglas

The New Program

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Professor Frank Newton Mithery Brown, circa 1936

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

DEPARTMENT OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING 1935-1936 SENIOR YEAR CURRICULUM

Senior year curriculum, 1935-36

Glider built by Professor Eikenberry and his students 8

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Glider Club vehicle

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Machine shop in aeronautical building

Professor Goddard (left) and students with supersonic wind tunnel

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Drawing of the three-dimensional subsonic smoke tunnel in the 1950s

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

His work on the spinning base-

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Professor Flint O. Thomas

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

The Hessert Laboratory

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Exterior view of the Hessert Center for Aerospace Research

AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

The 21st Century

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AERONAUTICS TO AEROSPACE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

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