search

UMD    AGRC






Department of Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. student Sean Dungan received a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) award. The highly competitive NDSEG fellowships help promote science and engineering education by providing three-years of support to promising U.S. scientists to pursue doctoral degrees in designated research disciplines.  

Originally from Middletown, Rhode Island, Dungan completed his undergraduate studies in aerospace engineering at the Florida Institute of Technology, and it was there that his fascination with fluid mechanics and high-speed aerospace vehicles took hold.

From there, he received the opportunity to come to the University of Maryland and work with aerospace engineering faculty member Christoph Brehm.

“Working in Dr. Brehm's group, I focused my efforts on numerically investigating the complex, multi-physics problem of fluid-ablation interactions in high-speed boundary layer flows,” explained Dungan. “The results of these investigations aim to improve the fundamental understanding of boundary layer transition to turbulence in the presence of an ablative heat shield.”

Dungan’s NDSEG Fellowship will help support his research in this field, and in particular, his development of new computational methods for accurately and efficiently predicting boundary layer transition onset. Such capabilities are critical in developing sustained hypersonic flight where skin-friction drag and aerodynamic heating increase significantly as a result of the flow becoming turbulent over the vehicle's external surface.

Dungan hopes that his new computational approach skips the costly temporal transient portion of the calculation and strike the correct balance between simulation fidelity and turnaround time so that designers can use it to improve the design process currently used for hypersonic vehicles.

“Securing the NDSEG fellowship not only affords me greater freedom in the approach to solving this problem, but it will also help me gain important external perspectives via the fellowship's industry mentorship program,” said Dungan on receiving the award. “Such mentorship will help ensure the research is best suited to help meet the demands of the next generation in high-speed aerospace vehicles.”

 



Related Articles:
Aerospace Engineering Welcomes New Faculty Member Dr. Christoph Brehm
From Composites to Competition: Grad Student Wins at Dance Championship
Morcos Recognized with Graduate School Outstanding GA Award
Zimmerman Wins Clark School Dean’s Research Award
Colleen Murray Wins Award at Regional SAMPE Symposium
Garbulinski Receives USMSC GSG Outstanding Student Leader Award
Packy, Suriyarachchi, Thompson, Weerakoon, and Young are 2022-2023 MRC GRA Recipients
Brehm to Conduct First-of-Kind Flow Simulations
Shikha Redhal Receives Gustave J. Hokenson Aerospace Engineering Fellowship
Aerospace Engineering Grad Student Wins NDSEG Fellowship

April 10, 2023


«Previous Story  

 

 

Current Headlines

Search Open for Full-Time Faculty Positions in Space Exploration

Exploring the Future of AI and Addressing Trust Challenges

Undergrad Awarded AIAA’s Dr. James Rankin Digital Avionics Scholarship

Celebrating Hispanic Aerospace Engineers: Jean Luis Suazo Betancourt

Brick by Brick: The Clark School Celebrates LGBTQ+ Engineers

Maryland Engineering: #16 in the Country for Undergraduate Engineering

Celebrating Hispanic Aerospace Engineers: Ignacio Andreu Angulo

New Space Research Center Launched at UMD

Sueños Sin Fronteras: The Clark School Celebrates Latine Engineers

Undergrad Awarded AIAA David and Catherine Thompson Space Technology Scholarship

 
 
Back to top  
AGRC Home Clark School Home UMD Home