Aerospace Centre of ExcellenceFuture Air-Space Transportation Technologies Laboratory
Vision of the laboratory is to transform and revolutionise the global air-space transportation systems and infrastructure to achieve superior performance, safety and sustainability.
The Future Air-Space Transportation Technology (FASTT) lab is a multidisciplinary research unit that aims to develop and integrate the range of technological disciplines that will be required for future high-speed airliners and access-to-space systems to become a reality.
Although the Centre's long-term vision is one of enabling a future generation of reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicles, hypersonic cruise vehicles and aerospace planes that will transform the global air-transport infrastructure, its philosophy is that its goals will be achieved through a sequence of technological stepping stones which in their own right will be of immediate application within the aerospace industry.
The lab was established in 2010 combining in-house expertise in flight and spaceflight dynamics. The lab has grown to presently include over 20 researchers and is led by Dr Marco Fossati and Dr Christie Maddock.
Our vision is structured around the following key areas: advanced aerodynamic design, system optimisation for aerospace transport, environmental impact of aerospace activities and planetary re-entry prediction and tracking.
Dr Marco Fossati
Senior Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Computational Aerodynamics
Director, Future Air-Space Transportation Technologies Laboratory
Research interests in computational aerodynamics, aerodynamic design, Reduced Basis Methods for unsteady transonic aerodynamics, high-Mach and nonequilibrium aerodynamics, PH mesh adaptivity and (re)generation
Dr Christie Maddock
Lecturer in Aerospace Transport Systems
Co-Director, Future Air-Space Transportation Technologies Laboratory
Research interests in dynamics and control, trajectory optimisation and system design optimisation for aerospace transport systems including space access systems, spaceplanes and long range airliners
Dr Marcello Lappa
Reader in fluid mechanics and heat transfer
Director of MSc in Mechanical Engineering
Research interests in fluid motion and stability behavior, incompressible and compressible fluid-dynamics, organic and inorganic materials sciences and crystal growth, multiphase flows, solidification, high-temperature gas-dynamics, particle dynamics, biotechnology and biomechanics, methods of numerical analysis in computational fluid dynamics and heat/mass transfer.
Dr Edmondo Minisci
Senior Lecturer in Multidisciplinary Design Optimisation
Director, Intelligent Computational Engineering Laboratory
Research interests in computational intelligence, global optimisation methods, robust multidisciplinary design optimisation, uncertainty treatment, machine learning.
Dr Mohammed Afsar
Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Aeroscience
Research interests in multiphysics computational aerodynamics, aircraft and rotorcraft aerodynamics, high-speed and non-equilibrium flows, modal-based Reduced Order Modeling for fluid dynamics and aeroicing, mesh optimisation and generation