The Queensland Defence Science Alliance’s Director, Professor Cara Wrigley, toured the University of Southern Queensland’s Hypersonic Facility along with Director of Designworks Alexander Wall.
This visit was carried out as part of our exploration of the advanced materials research facilities and capabilities available in Queensland Universities, which was integral to a defence aerospace project that QDSA helped facilitate for Project Jericho and the Royal Australian Air Force.
Our host for the day, Professor Peter Schubel, Executive Director, USQ Institute for Advanced Engineering and Space Sciences, showed us two of the university’s world-leading pieces of research infrastructure.
1. Australia’s only Hypersonic Wind Tunnel capable of testing up to Mach 8.
While the tunnel was not in use, we saw the testing setup configuration, mechanisms, internal workings and previous results achieved.
The tunnel aperture was compact so most vehicles are scaled down to be tested. The duration is considered long and free-flight testing can be achieved, among other tests.
2. Dual Ring Braider combined with a pultrusion machine and robotic arms capable of creating continuous lengths of woven, multi core composite material.
The ability to weave material like carbon, glass, Kevlar, thermoplastic and co-mingled yarns creates a possibility for complex and lightweight parts yet extremely strong in a controllable and configurable way.
“The main inspiration from the visit was the ability to create an extremely strong yet super lightweight pultrusion locally. This altered our thinking about the vehicle fuselage design possibilities.” Alexander Wall, Director of Designworks said.
“We may look to use the Hypersonic Wind Tunnel to do testing in future stages of the project. There is an element of high-speed flight that would be good to test and validate in a wind tunnel due to the costs, certification and time to do this outside a lab. We can then cross reference and correlate the results with simulation data before embarking on real world tests.”
The research activities which are carried out the University of Southern Queensland facility are so impressive that the USQ has received national recognition, including as a finalist in the 2021 Australian Space Awards for the category Research Organisation of the Year.
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The Queensland Defence Science Alliance (QDSA) is a university-led initiative to grow and connect an agile Defence innovation ecosystem, leveraging Queensland’s strengths, to deliver trusted solutions to meet Defence requirements.
