Welcome to the Hypersonics and Computational Aerodynamics Group

We are a research group in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. We are currently comprised of five graduate students and Professor Zhong. Our group primarily focuses on fundamental physics based research of hypersonic flows using advanced numerical tools and the application of discovered fundamental knowledge to real world aerospace systems, such as the development of hypersonic planes and space vehicles. We have student members in all stages of their research from studying for their qualifying exam to writing their dissertation. Former group members include Associate Professors, Assistant Professors, Research Scientists, post-docs, and CFD consultants.

Research Interests: Our main research areas are computational fluid dynamics (CFD), hypersonic flows, instability and transition of hypersonic boundary layers, and interaction of strong shocks and turbulence. Our research projects are currently supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Past research projects have also been supported by grants from the AFOSR/NASA National Hypersonic Science Center in Laminar Turbulent Transition, the Department of Energy, Lockheed Martin and the National Science Foundation.

current research group (October 2018)


From left-to-right: Anand Varma, Ryder Liu, Carleton Knisely, Zeyu Bai, Simon He, Christopher Haley, Prof. Xiaolin Zhong.