Aerospace dominance depends on propulsion systems, and heat transfer often limits the overall efficiency of those devices. Our group studies the coupled processes of heat transfer, fracture mechanics, and propulsion materials at gas–wall interfaces, with a particular focus on multilayered materials for extreme environments.
Rockets, gas turbines, and rotating detonation engines all push materials to the point where thermal performance and mechanical durability work against each other. We combine experiments, analytical heat-transfer theory, and materials characterization to understand that tradeoff and to design architectures that survive it. Our flagship effort is HADES (Hot and Durable Engine System), the world’s first academic Rotating Detonation Engine Materials Testbed, built at the University of New Mexico to evaluate coatings and wall architectures under realistic detonation environments.
Announcements
The lab will host a field trip of the Rotating Detonation Engine facility as part of UNM Research & Discovery Week on Friday, November 6 at 10:00 am.
The Rotating Detonation Engine Materials Testbed was featured in Safety Spotlight, a university-wide communication from the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research profiling the lab’s safety culture and hazard-review process.
The lab’s U.S. patent application Dynamic Heat Insulation Towards Pressure Gain Combustion (US 2026/0251307 A1) was published, assigned to UNM Rainforest Innovations.
Four papers from the group were accepted to AIAA SciTech 2027: Canonical Performance Parameters for Rotating Detonation Engine Materials (Vrocharis et al.), Conventional Thermal Barrier Coatings Tested Under Rotating Detonation Environments (Cestari et al.), Calorimetric Heat Flux Measurements in a Hydrogen–Air Rotating Detonation Engine (Samra et al.), and Semi-transparent Ceramic System Radiation Modeling Validation Against Experimental Data (Pascual et al.).
Brendan Canales received a New Mexico Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Scholarship and was invited to present his research at the New Mexico Research Symposium.
Sponsors
Our work is supported by
