The areas of study in aerospace engineering are aerothermodynamics and fluid mechanics; solids, structures, and materials; structural dynamics; guidance and control; and orbital mechanics. A brief description of each area and its experimental facilities is given below.

Aerothermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics

This area involves study and research in experimental, theoretical, and computational aerodynamics, gas dynamics, turbulence, plasma dynamics, heat transfer, and combustion. Research is presently being conducted in non-equilibrium and rarefied gas flows, turbulence control, shock-boundary layer interactions, thermal and glow-discharge plasmas, turbulent mixing/combustion, numerical methods for turbulent reacting flows, multiphase combustion, nanoparticle synthesis in flames, and advanced optical diagnostics and sensors. Facilities include Mach 2 and Mach 5 blowdown wind tunnels, 1.25-second low-gravity drop tower, 5' by 7' low-speed wind tunnel, 15" by 20" water channel, laser sensors laboratory, combustion facilities, plasma engineering laboratory and extensive laser and camera systems for advanced flow diagnostics. The excellent computational facilities include a variety of workstations, a 256-core Linux cluster, and access to very large scale, high-performance computers.

Solids, Structures, and Materials

This area involves study and research in mechanics of composite materials, fracture mechanics, micromechanics of materials, constitutive equations, mechanical behavior at high-strain-rates, structural analysis, and structural stability. Experimental facilities include equipment for static structural testing; digital data acquisition equipment; uniaxial and biaxial materials-testing machines; custom loading devices; environmental chambers; microscopes; photomechanics facilities, composites processing equipment, facilities for microstructural analysis, and high-speed imaging and high-strain-rate mechanical testing facilities. Computing facilities include workstations, supercomputers, and networks of workstations.

Structural Dynamics

This area involves study and research in theoretical, computational, and experimental structural dynamics. Included are aeroelasticity, linear and nonlinear structural system identification, structural acoustics, and computational techniques for very large scale vibration analysis. Computational facilities include numerous computer servers and workstations, and experimental facilities include actuators and sensors and several data-acquisition systems for structural system identification and control. Wind tunnel facilities are available for testing aeroelastic models.

Guidance and Control

This area involves study and research in dynamical system theory, control theory, optimal control theory, approximation theory, time-delay observers, estimation theory and stochastic control theory, and their application to the navigation, guidance, control, and flight mechanics of aerospace vehicles. Research is primarily analytical and numerical in nature. Excellent computational and experimental facilities are available for study of various guidance and control applications.

Orbital Mechanics

This area involves study and research in the applications of celestial mechanics, analytical dynamics, geophysics, numerical analysis, optimization theory, estimation theory, and computer technology to model the dynamic behavior of natural and artificial bodies in the solar system. Two specific areas of interest are satellite applications and spacecraft design.

Satellite applications involve the study of active and passive satellite remote sensing for research in earth, ocean, atmospheric, and planetary science; satellite positioning, primarily using the Global Positioning System (GPS) for earth science research; and satellite tracking and instrumentation, including altimeters, for a variety of geophysical and geodetic studies, including the study of Earth's gravity field and rotation. Research is supported by a large database of satellite remote sensing measurements, a variety of computer resources, GPS receivers, and image processing equipment.

Spacecraft design involves the application of all disciplines of aerospace engineering to the design of aerospace vehicles, missions, and related systems. Experimental facilities include a satellite laboratory containing high-gain antennas for satellite tracking and a clean room area for fabrication and testing of space flight hardware. Research is primarily applied in nature and involves the synthesis of information from all engineering disciplines, mathematics, the natural sciences, economics, project management, and public policy.