W. Ethan Eagle🔴🟡

Project Mercury is an innovation education partnership between Air University and Innovatrium, aiming to develop leaders capable of accelerating change. The program focuses on building innovation readiness by combining academics with hands-on projects. Using the Competing Values Framework, it fosters collaboration, innovation, and adaptation among Air Force personnel. The initiative has credentialed Certified Professional Innovators since 2019 and supports various innovation cells and programs… Show more

Project Mercury is an innovation education partnership between Air University and Innovatrium, aiming to develop leaders capable of accelerating change. The program focuses on building innovation readiness by combining academics with hands-on projects. Using the Competing Values Framework, it fosters collaboration, innovation, and adaptation among Air Force personnel. The initiative has credentialed Certified Professional Innovators since 2019 and supports various innovation cells and programs within the Air Force and NATO. Show less

The interaction between two separated flow regions was studied for the fundamental problem of a shock wave–boundary layer interaction (SBLI) within a rectangular inlet. One motivation is that the inlet of an engine on a supersonic aircraft may contain separation zones on the sidewalls and the bottom wall; if one region separates first it can alter the flow on the other wall and lead to engine unstart. In our work an oblique shock wave was generated by a wedge suspended from the upper wall of a… Show more

The interaction between two separated flow regions was studied for the fundamental problem of a shock wave–boundary layer interaction (SBLI) within a rectangular inlet. One motivation is that the inlet of an engine on a supersonic aircraft may contain separation zones on the sidewalls and the bottom wall; if one region separates first it can alter the flow on the other wall and lead to engine unstart. In our work an oblique shock wave was generated by a wedge suspended from the upper wall of a Mach 2.75 wind tunnel. Stereo particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements were recorded in 25 planes that include all three possible orthogonal orientations. The lateral velocity and vorticity measurements help to explain the underlying flow structure and these quantities were not measured previously for this problem. It is concluded that the sidewall and bottom wall separation zones interact due to an underlying flow structure that is similar to the two types of 3-D separation patterns previously described by Tobak & Peake (Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech., vol. 14, 1982, pp. 61–85). Separation first occurs at an upstream location where the shock interacts with the sidewall. Lateral velocities direct flow toward the centreline to cause separation on the bottom wall. This causes significant curvature of the shock wave, so that even the region near the tunnel centreline cannot be explained by conventional 2-D concepts. A number of critical points (saddle points, nodes, focus points) were identified. Results are consistent with the general ideas of Burton & Babinsky (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 707, 2012, pp. 287–306) and help to provide details of how the sidewalls redistribute the adverse pressure gradient in space. Show less

This paper illustrates through a comparative case study how contemporary engineers working on a technological response to climate change—biofuel production—continue to be guided by traditional ethical and historical principles of efficiency and growth in spite of the uniqueness of climate change as a problem unbounded globally in space and time. The comparative study reveals that in the past environmental issues like water scarcity were viewed as deficiencies of nature. In contrast, the… Show more

This paper illustrates through a comparative case study how contemporary engineers working on a technological response to climate change—biofuel production—continue to be guided by traditional ethical and historical principles of efficiency and growth in spite of the uniqueness of climate change as a problem unbounded globally in space and time. The comparative study reveals that in the past environmental issues like water scarcity were viewed as deficiencies of nature. In contrast, the development of biofuels as an engineering response to climate change shows that environmental and ecological issues today are viewed as deficiencies of technologies. Yet, just like large dams on rivers had (and continue to have) negative socioecological outcomes, political economy and political ecology research shows that current biofuel development has socially unjust and ecologically degrading outcomes. Many engineers continue to separate the “technical” from the “political” aspects of engineering work, resulting in lost opportunities to reshape the technological development paradigm. While every technology has some negative impacts, engineers, as socioecological experimentalists, must account for these outcomes in their work to mitigate them. Encouragingly, the engineers interviewed for this paper (along with the authors of this paper, who are all engineers) believe that problems like climate change are too narrowly defined. The engineers interviewed claimed that the problem-solving capabilities of engineers would lead to more favorable outcomes if problems were more broadly defined—by engineers and others—to incorporate concerns of social justice and ecological holism, thereby creating legitimacy for engineers in proposing alternative, radical, and paradigm- changing solutions to problems like climate change. Show less

In a rectangular supersonic inlet the first oblique shock wave will interact with both the sidewall boundary layers and with the corner flows. This can create large, complex 3-D separation zones that reduce the effective flow area and can lead to the unstart of the inlet. Experiments were conducted in the Michigan Glass Wind Tunnel at Mach 2.75 and at Mach 2.0 to quantify these flow separation patterns. Video was recorded of the unsteady formation of separation zones as the inlet starts.… Show more

In a rectangular supersonic inlet the first oblique shock wave will interact with both the sidewall boundary layers and with the corner flows. This can create large, complex 3-D separation zones that reduce the effective flow area and can lead to the unstart of the inlet. Experiments were conducted in the Michigan Glass Wind Tunnel at Mach 2.75 and at Mach 2.0 to quantify these flow separation patterns. Video was recorded of the unsteady formation of separation zones as the inlet starts. Oil streak patterns and Schlieren images indicate that the downward flow caused by the oblique shock forces some of the flow near the corner to move upstream. This flow moving upstream in the corner creates a sidewall separation bubble, which significantly deflects the free stream upstream of the shock wave. Using a six-degree wedge, a small corner flow-shock boundary layer interaction (CF-SBLI) separated region was created which was found to be optimum for CFD simulation. Using a ten-degree wedge generated a stronger shock and a ―large CF-SBLI separated region, but the flow area was reduced so much that the inlet was too close to unstart to allow for stable experimental measurements or CFD simulation. Show less