Educational Background

B.S. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1997
M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1999
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2002

Professional Experience

Post Doctoral Scholar, Gas Turbine Laboratory, MIT, 2002-2003.

NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. Vehicle Dynamics Branch (Summer 1997), Hypersonic Air-Breathing Propulsion Branch (Summer 1996), Structural Dynamics Branch (Fall 1995).

Selected Publications

Walczyk, D.F., Lakshmikanthan, J., and Kirk, D., "A Reconfigurable Tool for Forming Aircraft Body Panels," Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1998, pp. 287-296.

Kirk, D.R., Creviston, D.O., and Waitz, I.A., Aeroacoustic Measurement of Transient Hot Nozzle Flows, Journal of Propulsion and Power, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2001, pp. 928-935.

Lukachko, S.P., Kirk, D.R., Waitz, I.A., Turbine Durability Impacts of High Fuel-Air Ratio Combustors, Part 1: Potential for Intra-Turbine Oxidation of Partially-Reacted Fuel, ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power. Vol. 125, Issue 3, 2003, pp. 742-750.

Kirk, D.R., Guenette, G.R., Lukachko, S.P., Waitz, I.A., Turbine Durability Impacts of High Fuel-Air Ratio Combustors, Part 2: Near Wall Reaction Effects on a Film-Cooled Flat Plate and Application to Gas Turbine Heat Transfer, ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power. Vol. 125, Issue 3, 2003, pp. 751-759.

Research

Development of a transient shock tunnel facility for high speed, compressible flow research.
Measurement of aerodynamic forces on MAGLEV launch vehicle configurations.

Research And Project Interests

Air-Breathing Propulsion for High Thrust-to-Weight Aircraft. Investigation and modeling of turbine combustion processes for the design of high specific thrust aircraft engines. Experimental and numerical investigation of the augmentation in surface heat flux due to interaction of residual freestream combustor fuel with film-cooled turbine surfaces. Reduced order analytical models and governing non-dimensional parameter framework for film-cooling prediction and design in the presence of near-wall reactions.

Analysis, design and testing of MEMS-scale, liquid bi-propellant micro-rocket systems. Fluid, thermodynamic and heat transfer analyses of various system components, including turbo-pump assemblies, valve control of propellants, cooling methods, thrust chamber and nozzle design. Development of transient models to predict governing time scales in rocket starting processes, including time scales for ignition, supercritical behavior of propellants, cooling performance, and thrust versus time dependence. Experimental performance investigation of micro-servo valve assemblies for design of fluidically-actuated micro-valves, with application to aerospace, mechanical and biological systems.