Seminar: Overview of the KREPE re-entry missions - Jan. 24
Alexandre Martin
Professor of Aerospace Engineering, University of Kentucky
Friday, Jan. 24 | 10:40 a.m. | AERO 114
Abstract: The Kentucky Re-entry Universal Payload System (KRUPS) provides a quick-turnaround, low-cost platform to conduct atmospheric entry experiments. KRUPS is designed to test multiple types of thermal protection systems (TPS) and scientific instrumentation. Five KRUPS capsules were sent to the International Space Station (ISS) via the NG-20 Cygnus resupply vehicle. These five capsules constitute the second Kentucky Re-entry Payload Experiment (KREPE-2) mission, each with a different heat shield TPS material. The data obtained during the mission will help with the reconstruction of the atmospheric entry environment and validation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and material response (MR) models developed at the University of Kentucky.
Bio: Alexandre Martin is the EJ Nutter Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kentucky, where he has been since 2010. He obtained a B.Sc. in Physics in 1998 from the University of Montréal (Québec, Canada), and an M.Sc.A. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from École Polytechnique, Montréal (Québec, Canada). He has worked in the field of fluid-solid interactions for the last 20 years, contributing to various scientific discipline ranging from hypersonic aerothermodynamics, plasma physics, and numerical algorithm. He is especially interested in ablation, the removal of solid material by energy exchanges. Over the years of his scientific career, he has developed and supervised computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer codes that were able to model various types of ablation. More specifically, he focuses his work on ablation of the heat shields of atmospheric entry vehicles, as part of NASA, DoD and industry funded projects.