University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics Seminar Series: Probing the Hypersonic Flight Environment with Ground-based Diagnostics

Abstract:

The Livermore Independent Diagnostic Scoring System (LIDSS), aka “The Livermore Navy,” is a deployable suite of rafts, UAV’s, cameras, hydrophones, and radar that is used to gather remote sensed data for flight tests. Originally founded to assess the accuracy of nuclear stockpile ICBM tests, the scope of LIDSS’ mission has grown over the last 25 years to encompass arena tests, sled tests, and hypersonic flight tests. Recent innovations have enabled LIDSS to capture stunning images of vehicles in hypersonic flight. These advancements have led to in-situ assessments for vehicles in the highest fidelity experiment possible: full scale flight tests. This seminar provides an overview of LIDSS, and the efforts that go into probing the hypersonic flight environments.

Brad Perfect is a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He leads the applied research team for the Flight Performance Integration project, a modeling and simulation effort for reentry vehicles. These efforts include high performance ablation calculations, the interaction of water droplets with hypersonic bow shocks, machine learning-driven aerodynamics databasing, hypersonic boundary layer transition, and hierarchical uncertainty quantification. Additionally, he is an analyst with LIDSS, the LLNL flight test group, which develops instrumentation to acquire critical downrange flight test data. Dr. Perfect holds a PhD from the University of Washington in Mechanical Engineering and a BS in Physics from Harvey Mudd College.

Register by December 5, 2022.