By Rhiannon Potkey. Photography by Jessica Tezak.
As he prepared to select a senior design project before the 2023-24 academic year began, Joseph Motto noticed there weren’t any topics directly related to his passion of hypersonics. Motto wondered if something could be done to give students like him an option to work on a project in that field.
The aerospace engineering major reached out to Keith Stanfill, the Tickle College of Engineering’s director of integrated engineering design, to arrange a meeting. Once he informed Stanfill about his wish, Stanfill told Motto they would do everything possible to make it happen.
Motto’s inquiry coincided with Lockheed Martin’s (LM) interest in engaging more students and professors at the college level in hypersonics.
Barry Bauer, a principal program manager at LM, had already been conducting a monthly call with John Schmissuer, associate dean and executive director of the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI), to discuss collaboration opportunities between LM and UTSI. Schmisseur brought up the opportunity to Bauer for leveraging the UT Interdisciplinary Senior Design (ISD) Capstone as a workforce development opportunity for LM.
The support UT has provided for the project is just amazing and we could not have picked a better university to partner with on this.
“I asked, ‘How can we really leverage this as an opportunity?’” Bauer said. “Not only for advancing the state of technology by bringing students and professors in to solve really hard problems, but also to promote workforce development with the notion that we can identify and recruit the best and the brightest to come work for us.”
TCE alum Walker McCord (MS/AE ’21; PhD/AE ’22), who had recently joined LM Marietta, Georgia Skunkworks as a hypersonic thermal engineer, jumped at the opportunity to support his alma mater and continue novel research and development work on hypersonics in a meaningful way that would benefit the next generation of engineers.
Meeting Industry Standards
McCord and Bauer worked closely together and pulled in technical domain subject-matter-experts (SMEs) in hypersonics and materials across the LM enterprise to strategize on a concept that was technically suitable for the undergraduate engineering level, did not have security restrictions that would prohibit outside work, and would be impactful to a focus mission for LM.
The LM team developed a statement of work (SOW) focusing on relevant hypersonic material interactions for passive aperture cooling and structured the period of performance to be accomplished by undergraduate students over the course of a single academic year.
McCord and Bauer structured the SOW for the UT students very similar to how a standard defense program is run in industry. The intention was to teach the students about the importance of not only having a feasible design that can meet the requirements, but also closely track cost, schedule, and risk mitigation approaches.
Motto’s interdisciplinary team, named Hypersonic Solutions, launched the process by developing a cooling solution to lower temperature and limit optical distortion during high-speed flight through a novel ceramic lens material.
The inaugural team’s performance yielded a great business case for LM, which was able to utilize the manufactured prototype to benefit internal program questions.
The first team’s success paved the way for continued funding of projects by LM. The senior design partnership just concluded year three with the full intent of both parties to keep going for years to come.
“I think we can say we have been successful in showing industry and government offices that LM and UT have redefined what was previously thought possible to achieve through an undergraduate focused senior design project,’ McCord said, “The students at UT are tackling complex design problems head on and delivering operational excellence. The effort continues to win awards and get recognition from national agencies. The support UT has provided for the project is just amazing and we could not have picked a better university to partner with on this.”