Two Florida Colleges Partner on Air Force Research in Aircraft Morphing Technology

The Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research have awarded a $5 million joint research project to the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University-Florida State University College of Engineering and the University of Florida’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. 

According to FSU, the colleges’ collaboration involves establishing a new Air Force Office of Scientific Research Center of Excellence, which will probe aerospace vehicles prone to morphing their shapes in high-speed flight. The research will cover crucial areas for aerospace morphing technology, such as morphing structures, conventional distributed sensing and control systems, FSU said.

The FSU-based Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion will manage the research center, which was named AEROMORPH: Aerospace Morphing via Integrated Sense, Assess and Respond. 

According to FCAAP Director Rajan Kumar, the new research center will enable the interaction of students, faculty and post-doctoral researchers with AFRL engineers and scientists for the development of next-generation technologies on high-speed flight vehicles.

The center’s interdisciplinary work will offer combined insights from several disciplines including information theory, network science, fluid-structure interactions and experimental aerodynamics, FSU said. The resulting inputs will be pivotal in developing aerospace systems that can deliver hypersonic speeds vital to the U.S. Air Force’s air dominance and national security goals, FSU added.