ABSTRACT: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), established in 1952, focuses on advancing national security through science and technology. While originally dedicated to nuclear weapons development and testing, LLNL has since broadened its scope to include cutting-edge research in energy, climate science, supercomputing, and biotechnology. LLNL’s Flight Performance Integration (FPI) program plays a key role in modeling and testing advanced hypersonic systems to address emerging threats and ensure sustainable deterrence. The program utilizes capabilities like the Sora Flight Modeling Suite, Energy Matter Interaction Tunnel (EMIT), and the LLNL Independent Diagnostic and Scoring System (LIDSS) for ground and flight testing. This briefing will cover LLNL’s mission, FPI, EMIT, LIDSS, and key research areas such as aerodynamic design space characterization, hypersonic shock-droplet interactions, atmospheric modeling, and Bayesian hierarchical uncertainty quantification. Opportunities for research collaboration, internships, and careers in hypersonics-related programs at LLNL will also be discussed.

BIOSKETCH: Carleton Knisely is the Flight Performance Integration Program Lead supporting Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s Strategic Deterrence mission. Carleton leads a multi-disciplinary team performing assessments and applied R&D to characterize the in-flight environments of high-speed vehicles with a particular emphasis on the implications for the payload. Carleton joined LLNL in 2019 as a post-doc studying hypersonic boundary layer transition before converting to a staff position in the Flight Performance Integration (FPI) Program supporting thermal protection system ablation modeling and code development of FPI’s Sora flight modeling suite. He has since taken on a sequence of leadership roles within that rapidly expanding project, growing the program from 5 to 30+ contributors over a 5 year period. Carleton holds an MS and PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied real-gas effects in hypersonic boundary layer transition. He also holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University.