Abstract
My technical capstone and STS thesis are connected by their focus on hypersonics. My capstone project inspired questions and concerns that eventually led to the focus of my STS thesis. My capstone centers around a competition sponsored by the University Consortium of Applied Hypersonics to design a hypersonic projectile and get the opportunity to test your article if selected. Through working on this project it became clear to me that hypersonics research is shaped not only by design, modeling, and meeting performance requirements, but also the restrictions that control access and dissemination of work and findings. This distinction was really important to me as the findings my capstone group will receive from testing will be controlled unclassified information. Ultimately, my two projects are connected through that question of hypersonics, about not only how it is done, but rather how it is structured and governed.
My capstone project, the UVA Hypersonic Low-Altitude Research Projectile (Hyper-LARP), focuses on the design of an unpowered hypersonic projectile that optimizes lift-to-drag performance at low altitude. This capstone project as aforementioned is a competition through UCAH which is administered by Texas A&M university and additionally authored by the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO). The team selected the vehicle body type through trade studies and then refined the design through parameterized CAD modeling, CFD analysis, stability studies, thermal and structural FEA, and trajectory analysis. The final design remained stable across the Mach operating range, survived the thermal and structural loads imposed, and met the competition's manufacturing constraints. The design was selected as a finalist for shock tunnel testing at the CUBRC, utilizing their LENS facilities. Through these tests the capstone team and CUBRC team will gather experimental force and pressure data to refine the design and compare it to the data gathered through simulation. Export control plays a role in the research able to be accessed for the design of our vehicle, in addition to the control of testing data received from CUBRC which shows why I chose to focus on it in my thesis.
My STS thesis focuses on the analysis of public institutions and the role export controls and classification plays in academic hypersonics research. It looks at how hypersonics export control and classification systems, when seen as infrastructure, highlight concerns of participation eligibility, data handling, publication, and access. To study this issue, I use policy analysis supported through historical context in addition to a comparative document-based analysis of the University of Virginia(UVA) and Virginia State University(VSU). Instead of treating policy documents as neutral statements of rules, I look at them as sociotechnical artefacts that reveal how universities assign authority, define risks, and construct workflows that govern participation in and across institutions. This approach highlighted the role institutional capacity plays, and how it produces different research pathways across institutions. In my thesis, UVA plays the role of an institution with sufficient administrative resources to internalize the burden of controlled hypersonics research, while VSU shows the role of a smaller public institution that gets pushed into external partnerships, off-campus opportunities, and other narrower participation paths. Hypersonics is an especially important focus for this synthesis as it is a major area of concern for defense in America and sought after area of academic research.
The most meaningful connection between my technical capstone and STS work was seeing how they changed my understanding of one another. On one side, my capstone gave me an appreciation for why institutions and agencies treat hypersonics research as sensitive and controlled. While the work we did was not strictly defense related, it is a part of competition that is defense inspired. As mentioned, the testing of our design will require control in the handling and dissemination of results. This ties directly to my STS thesis as it is a lived experience that showed me even unclassified work can be controlled, which is a key point I bring up in my STS thesis. On the other hand, my STS thesis made me more aware of how participation in hypersonics research while a rewarding experience is not solely determined by technical skill or interest. It is also shaped by the university and whether it has the compliance structures and administrative capabilities to intake controlled projects. These two projects showed me how hypersonics is not only a technical field, but a managed research space. Ultimately, I leave this work with not only a stronger understanding of the design of hypersonic systems, but also how security infrastructure influences who gets to design, question, and learn from hypersonic research across campuses.
Notes
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering
Technical Advisor: Chris Goyne, Xinfeng Gao
STS Advisor: MC Forelle
Technical Team Members: Victoria Sun, Michael Della Santina, Michael Novak, Eric Voigt, Channing Reynolds, Genevieve Forrer, Soren Poole, Owen McGilberry, Joe McPhail, Joshua Stoner, Lukas Hange, Kayla Kadlubek, Ava Frodsham, Arwen Nicolau
