The ability to reliably order our groceries or takeout, enjoy rapid package delivery, check the weather forecast, and navigate with GPS is all a part of the United States’ ever-growing space economy. One promising breakthrough in propulsion technology that could enable more affordable and efficient access to space is the Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE), a revolutionary engine concept now under active development. An RDE generates power through sustaining a circulating detonation wave in an annular chamber at thousands of meters per second, achieving power levels orders of magnitude higher than conventional engines, while providing higher efficiencies, more compact designs, and higher thrust-to-weight ratios. While the RDE technology is advancing rapidly, the lack of established material solutions to contend with the extreme thermomechanical loadings associated with detonation remains a critical barrier to deployment. Current testing has reported material failures after only a few engine cycles, with no clear consensus on ideal materials. Metals, composites, and ceramics are all being explored.

This Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) project aims to tackle this materials barrier by establishing a synergistic platform informed by the Materials Genome Initiative. It will integrate industry collaboration and a partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory to accelerate the design of high-performance copper alloys and testing protocols for the kinds of extreme dynamic conditions found in RDEs. Through a strategic combination of (i) multidisciplinary research encompassing materials science, materials informatics, mechanics, aerodynamics and combustion, (ii) organization of workshops and conferences with academic, government and industrial participation, and (iii) educational and outreach initiatives to undergraduate students and the K-12 community, this project will establish a new hub of materials discovery and design for extreme aerospace environments and help train the next-generation workforce.