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Motto | Per aspera ad astra |
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Motto in English | "through difficulties to the stars" |
Type | Public |
Established | 1964 |
Endowment | US$200 million+ |
Associate Executive Director | Dr. James Simonton |
Academic staff | 50+ |
Postgraduates | 100+ |
Location | , , U.S. |
Campus | Rural |
Website | UTSI.edu |
The University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI) is a satellite campus of the University of Tennessee located near Tullahoma, Tennessee.
UTSI was founded to allow students to take advantage of the aerospace facilities located in the Arnold Engineering Development Center on Arnold Air Force Base, including wind tunnels and other laboratory equipment. Currently, the research activities conducted at UTSI are largely through the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering department.
UTSI was founded in the aftermath of World War II and in the midst of the Cold War. The seeds that ultimately led to UTSI began in the 1930s. German aeronautical superiority resulted in German fielding of the first jet propelled aircraft and ballistic missiles, thus proving the need for research facilities devoted to the study of aeronautics and related sciences. Had the German manufacturing capability been equivalent to that of the United States, the outcome of World War II would no doubt have been different. [1]
President Harry Truman vowed in 1951 that, "Never again will the United States ride the coattails of other countries in the progress and development of the aeronautical art."
In the wake of World War II and in the following decades, the military expanded its research capabilities, creating laboratories across the country, including the construction of airplane and missile air frame and propulsion systems wind tunnels and laboratories at Tullahoma. Construction of this facility, which was to be known as Arnold Engineering Development Center, began in 1950.
It was recognized that there would be difficulties in attracting scientific personnel to conduct research, or to analyze the results of testing in wind tunnels and engine test facilities. Numerous efforts were conducted while AEDC was under construction to develop a viable concept for an education and research institute that would exist in a collaborative relationship with AEDC. In 1952, an Institute of Flight Sciences was strongly recommended to foster graduate programs, lecture and symposia programs, and student research in the aeronautical sciences.
General Jimmy Doolittle, Secretary of the Air Force Donald A. Quarles, Donald Douglas of Douglas Aircraft Company, along with NACA, MIT, and Caltech scientists supported the concept as sound and in the national interest. However, no consensus could be developed as to how to proceed and the concept was abandoned in 1959. In 1956, however, the Air Force decided it could not wait any longer and made contractual arrangements with the University of Tennessee to establish an AEDC graduate study program for center employees, using office and classroom space provided by the Air Force. Dr. Joel F. Bailey was the initial director of the UT effort, followed by Dr. Robert L. Young.
The year 1958 sent a new shock wave throughout the world when the Soviet Union orbited the Sputnik satellite. In the aftermath of this event, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was formed. NASA initially considered absorbing AEDC, but ultimately decided to leave it with the Air Force. However, the need for space education was severely felt at AEDC, just as throughout the rest of the military and at NASA.
Few academic institutions offered engineering or refresher courses in space technology at the time. Dr. B.H. Goethert seized upon this national need and proposed to the Air Force and the State of Tennessee that a "Tennessee Aerospace Institute" be located near AEDC. As a result of Dr. Goethert's proposal, the University of Tennessee Space Institute was finally established in 1964.
UTSI played a unique role of vital importance to the US Air Force. It was founded in the wake of two technological revolutions – the development of the airplane and the development of the rocket. In the years following 1964, UTSI's faculty, students, and alumni have played critical roles in the furthering of American technological superiority in aeronautics and space arenas. UTSI continues to collaborate with AEDC to support present day Air Force pursuits.
UTSI is currently supporting the development of modern hypersonic systems with multiple federally supported research activities in the area. This research primarily focuses on experimental and computational aspects of high-speed aerothermodynamics, and makes use of the proximity of UTSI to aerospace entities in Huntsville, AL and AEDC.
In 2022, UTSI employees celebrated service awards for 2019, 2020 and 2021. [2]
Since UTSI is part of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, students enrolled at the Space Institute are granted degrees from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Furthermore, the two campuses share courses via virtual connection. The majority of faculty at UTSI are in the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering department.
UTSI is also home to many of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville's experimental aerospace testing platforms, including the following:
Tullahoma is a city in Coffee and Franklin counties in southern Middle Tennessee, United States. The population was 20,339 at the 2020 census. In 2019, the population was estimated to be 19,555. It is the principal city of the Tullahoma micropolitan area, which consists of Coffee and Moore counties and is the second largest micropolitan area in Tennessee.
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel were transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA is an initialism, i.e., pronounced as individual letters, rather than as a whole word.
The UNIVAC 1102 or ERA 1102 was designed by Engineering Research Associates for the United States Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, Tennessee in response to a request for proposal issued in 1950. The Air Force needed three computers to do data reduction for two wind tunnels and an engine test facility.
The Langley Research Center, located in Hampton, Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay front of Langley Air Force Base, is the oldest of NASA's field centers. LaRC has focused primarily on aeronautical research but has also tested space hardware such as the Apollo Lunar Module. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site. Langley was also considered a potential site for NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center prior to the eventual selection of Houston, Texas.
The Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC), Arnold Engineering Development Center before July 2012, is an Air Force Materiel Command facility under the control of the Air Force Test Center (AFTC). Named for General Henry "Hap" Arnold, the father of the U.S. Air Force, AEDC is the most advanced and largest complex of flight simulation test facilities in the world.
Arnold Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in Coffee and Franklin counties, Tennessee, adjacent to the city of Tullahoma. It is named for General Henry "Hap" Arnold, the father of the U.S. Air Force.
Gary Arnold Flandro is an American aerospace engineer who is currently the professor for the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion (Emeritus) at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He is also the Vice President and Chief Engineer for Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories (GTL).
Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) is a defunct aerospace engineering company in the United States of America. It was the prime contractor of the US Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), in Tullahoma, Tennessee from 2003 until 2016.
A hypersonic wind tunnel is designed to generate a hypersonic flow field in the working section, thus simulating the typical flow features of this flow regime - including compression shocks and pronounced boundary layer effects, entropy layer and viscous interaction zones and most importantly high total temperatures of the flow. The speed of these tunnels vary from Mach 5 to 15. The power requirement of a wind tunnel increases linearly with its cross section and flow density, but cubically with the test velocity required. Hence installation of a continuous, closed circuit wind tunnel remains a costly affair. The first continuous Mach 7-10 wind tunnel with 1x1 m test section was planned at Kochel am See, Germany during WW II and finally put into operation as 'Tunnel A' in the late 1950s at AEDC Tullahoma, TN, USA for an installed power of 57 MW. In view of these high facility demands, also intermittently operated experimental facilities like blow-down wind tunnels are designed and installed to simulate the hypersonic flow. A hypersonic wind tunnel comprises in flow direction the main components: heater/cooler arrangements, dryer, convergent/divergent nozzle, test section, second throat and diffuser. A blow-down wind tunnel has a low vacuum reservoir at the back end, while a continuously operated, closed circuit wind tunnel has a high power compressor installation instead. Since the temperature drops with the expanding flow, the air inside the test section has the chance of becoming liquefied. For that reason, preheating is particularly critical.
Scramjet programs refers to research and testing programs for the development of supersonic combustion ramjets, known as scramjets. This list provides a short overview of national and international collaborations, and civilian and military programs. The USA, Russia, India, and China (2014), have succeeded at developing scramjet technologies.
The University of Texas at Arlington Aerodynamics Research Center (ARC) is a facility located in the southeast portion of the campus operated under the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. It was established in 1986 as part of an expansion of UTA's College of Engineering. The ARC contributes to the vision of UTA and the University of Texas System to transform the university into a full-fledged research institution. It showcases the aerodynamics research activities at UTA and, in its history, has established itself as a unique facility at a university level. The wind tunnels and equipment in the facility were mainly built by scouting for and upgrading decommissioned equipment from the government and industry. Currently, Masters and Ph.D. students perform research in the fields of high-speed gas dynamics, propulsion, and Computational fluid dynamics among other projects related to aerodynamics.
In aeronautics, expansion and shock tunnels are aerodynamic testing facilities with a specific interest in high speeds and high temperature testing. Shock tunnels use steady flow nozzle expansion whereas expansion tunnels use unsteady expansion with higher enthalpy, or thermal energy. In both cases the gases are compressed and heated until the gases are released, expanding rapidly down the expansion chamber. The tunnels reach speeds from Mach 3 to Mach 30 to create testing conditions that simulate hypersonic to re-entry flight. These tunnels are used by military and government agencies to test hypersonic vehicles that undergo a variety of natural phenomenon that occur during hypersonic flight.
Hans G. Hornung is an emeritus C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and Director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT). He received his bachelor (1960) and master (1962) degrees from the University of Melbourne and his Ph.D. degree (1965) in Aeronautics from Imperial College, London. He worked in the Aeronautical Research Laboratories, Melbourne, and in the Physics Department of the Australian National University (1967–1980), with a sabbatical year as a Humboldt Fellow in Darmstadt, Germany, 1974. In 1980 he accepted an offer to head the Institute for Experimental Fluid Mechanics of the DLR in Göttingen, Germany. He left Germany in 1987 to serve as the director of GALCIT. During his time at GALCIT he oversaw the construction of three large facilities: the T5 hypervelocity shock tunnel, the John Lucas Adaptive-Wall Wind Tunnel, and a supersonic Ludwieg tube.
The Aeronautical/Astronautical Research Laboratory (AARL) is an aerospace engineering research facility operated by Ohio State University. It is the principal research facility of the College of Engineering's Department of Aerospace and Astronautical Engineering. It is located on the grounds of Ohio State University Airport, in Columbus, Ohio.
George Milton Murray is an academic in Chemistry and Material Science. He specializes in chemical analysis, sensors and molecularly imprinted polymers.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, it is the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee system, with ten undergraduate colleges and eleven graduate colleges. It hosts more than 30,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".
AEDC Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit (APTU) is a blowdown hypersonic wind tunnel driven by a combustion air heater (CAH). The facility is owned by the United States Air Force and operated by Aerospace Testing Alliance.
AEDC Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 is a hypersonic wind tunnel owned by the United States Air Force and operated by National Aerospace Solutions The facility can generate high Mach numbers and high Reynolds for hypersonic ground testing and the validation of computational simulations for the Air Force and Department of Defense.
Joseph Majdalani is a Lebanese-American professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He began his career at Marquette University, before serving as both the Jack D. Whitfield Professor of High Speed Flows and Arnold Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He then served as the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council Endowed Professor and Chair, and is currently the Hugh and Loeda Francis Chair of Excellence in Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University.
Leon Stanislaw Jablecki was an American rocket scientist.