Preliminary work for the development of the Next Generation Storm Penetrating Aircraft

Project Summary

 

            This research is directed toward critical preliminary work that should be done now to shorten the timeline for development of the Next Generation Storm Penetrating Aircraft (A-10 aircraft) as a research platform once the aircraft is transferred from the US Air Force to the US Navy.  One such critical area needing attention is a comprehensive survey of the flight environment in which the aircraft will operate.  Extreme values of various quantities such as turbulence, updraft speed, and supercooled liquid water concentration encountered by a storm-penetrating aircraft (i.e., the T-28 research aircraft previously operated by SDSMT in cooperation with the NSF) can provide necessary data in order to determine the modifications to the A-10 airframe, its engines, and other aircraft systems, to allow it to be safely operated in convective storm environments. 

            In addition, we propose to broaden the effort to include the environments in  situations in which the T-28 was never utilized, including maritime “hot towers” in the tropics, tropical cyclones, continental and maritime wintertime “thundersnow” storms in mid-latitude and polar regions, “pyrocumulonimbus” storms over active wild fires, and other  environments not encountered using the T-28.  There are some in situ data available from other aircraft and balloon platforms in these other storm environments. Numerical simulations of these storm types made using sophisticated numerical models and inferences about cloud processes that can be made using radar and satellite remote-sensing data can also be used.  These data and numerical simulation products are widely dispersed and a dedicated effort is needed to collect the relevant information and organize it for use in SPA-10 development.

            The work represents continuation-of-effort for Dr. Donna Kliche, who has worked with the T-28 facility group since spring of 2000. This work also represents an important step in the collaboration between the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences at SDSM&T and the US Naval Postgraduate School in the process of developing the next generation storm penetrating aircraft.

 

 

Broader Impacts

 

            The broader impacts of the work will include training and mentoring a graduate student in the MS program in Atmospheric Sciences to work with data collected with research aircraft, to analyze the data and to learn the process involved in the making of a new storm penetrating aircraft. In addition, the results of this study will be used as class material for the cloud microphysics and dynamics and mesoscale meteorology courses.