Professor Richard B. Miles, PhD

Aerospace Engineering Department, Texas A&M University and Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University

Laser Based Flow Measurements for Aerospace Applications

We breathe, live in and fly through air, but we know little about it since it is transparent. The motion of air around aircraft produces lift, but, at high speeds, turbulent air can cause excess heat loading and shock interactions can lead to component failure. The design of advanced aircraft and the development of validated computational fluid dynamic models require the knowledge of airflow properties. This is especially challenging for the development of safe, reliable and efficient hypersonic aircraft. I will present new laser based methods for the measurement of air flows that are of particular use for understanding hypersonic flow environments. Standard methods of measurement such as pitot tubes and hot wires perturb the flow and often do not survive in the harsh conditions that characterize hypersonic flight. New laser based methods are now enabling detailed measurements of turbulence and nonequilibrium phenomena and are providing new capabilities for the development of computational models and new insight into the performance and limitations of hypersonic ground test facilities.

Selected Publications

Dogariu, A, Goldberg, B, O’Byrne, S, and Miles, R.B. “Species-Independent Femtosecond Localized Electric

Field Measurement” Phys. Rev. Applied 7, 024024 – (2017)

Michael, M. R. Edwards, A. Dogariu, and R. B. Miles, “Femtosecond laser electronic excitation tagging for

quantitative velocity imaging in air,” Appl. Opt. 50, 5158 (2011)

Arthur Dogariu, James Michael, Marlan O. Scully, and Richard B. Miles, “High Gain Backward Lasing in

Air” Science, 331, p 442-445 (2011)

R.B. Miles, W. Lempert, and J. Forkey, "Laser Rayleigh Scattering," J. of Measurement Science &

Technology, Vol. 12, (2001) R33-R51

R.B. Miles, E. Udd and M. Zimmermann, "Quantitative Flow Visualization in Sodium Vapor Seeded

Hypersonic Helium," Appl. Phys. Letts. 32, 1978, page 317.

Professor Miles received his B.S. in 1966, M.S. and 1967, and Ph.D. in 1972 all from Stanford University. While at Stanford he was a Fannie and John Hertz Fellow. He joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering faculty at Princeton University in the Fall of 1972. From 1980 to 1996 he served as Chairman of Engineering Physics. He became Emeritus at Princeton in 2013 and joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University in February 2017. He is currently Distinguished University Professor and O’Donnell Foundation Chair V at Texas A&M and Robert Porter Patterson Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton. Prof. Miles is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fannie & John Hertz Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of Precision Optics Corporation, Inc., a Member of the Board of Trustees of Pacific University (Forest Grove, OR), an AIAA Representative to the Elmer A. Sperry Board of Award and a Fellow of the AIAA, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. He was the recipient of the AIAA Aerodynamics Measurement Award and Medal in 2000 and the AIAA Plasma Dynamics and Lasers Award and Medal in 2012.