The main task of the laboratory is to provide fundamental knowledge in the fields of science that form the basis of modern and advanced space technologies. The laboratory allows to organize world-class research and provides an opportunity to train specialists for Russian space industry who will be able to put into practice the most advanced computational and experimental methods.
Main research areas are the following:
- aerothermodynamics of advanced spacecrafts;
- traditional and cutting-edge technology of jet thrust, including chemical and electrical rocket engines;
- gas and multiphase flows in microdevices and nozzles;
- development of instabilities and the laminar-turbulent transition in hypersonic flows;
- solving applied aerospace tasks.
The development of new generations of space equipment, such as high-efficiency boosters and reentry vehicles, small satellites, interplanetary spacecrafts, is impossible without a profound study of a number of major scientific problems. One of key problems in this area is to improve the understanding of non-equilibrium flows, drastic increase in engineers鈥� and scientists鈥� skills and understanding of how to describe and predict properties of such flows. This problem can only be solved through comprehensive theoretical, numerical and experimental studies that combine an essentially new level of theoretical description and mathematical modeling, the use of the power capacity of modern computers, the improvement of experimental techniques and the application of new diagnostic tools, allowing to receive a much larger body of information on the current under study as well as comprehensive research laboratories operating in close cooperation between theory, numerical simulation and experiment.
Project Manager - Sergei Gimelsheyn - Professor of Astronautics, University of Southern California (USA), a specialist in such areas as molecular gas dynamics and physics of nonequilibrium gas flows.
The laboratory has been established as a part of the project "Numerical and experimental study of non-equilibrium flows as applied to space technology" and is supported by a grant from the Government of the Russian Federation 鈩� 14.Z50.31.0019.
Head of Laboratory - Professor Sergei Gimelsheyn,
gimelshe@usc.edu
