Three University of Central Florida researchers are part of recently announced multi-million-dollar research projects aimed at facilitating the growth of newly emerging technologies for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The awards, which are part of the DOD’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, will support projects that range from advancing hypersonic propulsion to improving semiconductor performance and will fund the work for the next five years.
The awardees are:
Kareem Ahmed, UCF Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering associate professor
Project: Multiphase Detonation of Liquid Aeropropulsion Fuels
Amount: $7.5 million total project award, with UCF receiving $1.1 million
This research advances detonation-based propulsion for hypersonic and space rockets using jet and rocket propellant multiphase fuels for ultimate hypersonic and rocket propulsion performance.
The work is based on published research on detonation in Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This will lead to ultra-fast intercontinental travel, such as from New York to London in less than 5 minutes, and for commercial space activities and interplanetary travel that use a higher power and more efficient rocket propulsion technology in a smaller form, thus making space travel more economical,” Ahmed says.
Stanford University is the lead institution, and researchers with the University of Connecticut, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia are also part of the project. The work is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.
About the 2022 MURI Awards
For the competitive, 2022 DOD MURI Awards, the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research solicited proposals in more than 25 topic areas of strategic importance.
From a merit-based review of approximately 340 proposals received, a panel of experts narrowed the proposals to a subset, from which the 28 final awards were selected. The grants, which total $195 million, will be provided to teams located across 63 U.S. academic institutions for five years each, subject to satisfactory research progress and the availability of funds.
“By supporting teams whose members have diverse sets of expertise, the MURI program acknowledges that the complexities of modern science and engineering challenges often intersect more than one discipline and require creative and diverse approaches to tackle these problems. This cross-fertilization of ideas can accelerate research progress to enable more rapid R&D breakthroughs and hasten the transition of basic research findings to practical application,” says Dr. Bindu Nair, director, Basic Research Office, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in a release announcing the awards. “It is a program that signifies a legacy of scientific impact and remains a cornerstone of the DoD’s basic research portfolio.”
Since its inception in 1985, important technological advances from the the tri-Service MURI program have had a significant impact on current and future military capabilities as well as multiple applications in the commercial sector.
Researcher Backgrounds
Ahmed joined UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, part of UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 2014. He is also a faculty member of the Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research and the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion. He served more than three years as a senior aero/thermo engineer at Pratt & Whitney military engines working on advanced engine programs and technologies. He leads research in propulsion and energy with applications for power generation and gas-turbine engines, propulsion-jet engines, hypersonics and fire safety, as well as research related to supernova science and COVID-19 transmission control. He earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics associate fellow and a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research faculty fellow.