Michael Greenlee

I’m a junior in Aerospace Engineering, Management, and Mathematics at Purdue. I conduct research in hypersonics at the Aerospace Sciences Laboratory with the BAM6QT wind tunnel as the only undergraduate, lead the airframe design for a UAV built around a pulsejet, and tutor undergraduates in subjects from partial differential equations to real analysis.

Research

At the Aerospace Sciences Laboratory, I am advised by Prof. Brandon Chynoweth, and I study hypersonic boundary-layer transition.

Determining where the boundary layer transitions from laminar to turbulent is critical in the design of a hypersonic vehicle. At the same location, heat transfer to the skin of the vehicle is roughly three to five times higher when the flow is turbulent than when it is laminar, so predicting where transition occurs is central to designing the vehicle’s thermal protection system. My first project studied how varying wall temperature affects boundary-layer transition on a sharp cone. I am now extending that work to a flared cone geometry to understand how wall temperature affects the boundary layer as a whole, and connecting the computations to physical experiments in the BAM6QT.

I run computational simulations in the Stability and Transition Analysis for Hypersonic Boundary Layers (STABL) software suite, which uses DPLR2D for mean-flow analysis and PSE-Chem for stability analysis. I analyze the results with MATLAB codes and Tecplot visualizations. I am also an assistant in the BAM6QT wind tunnel, working toward certification for future experiments. I presented the sharp cone results in my first research talk, Impact of Varying Wall Temperature on Hypersonic Boundary-Layer Transition, at the 2026 Purdue Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium.

I also partnered with Stratolaunch through The Data Mine at Purdue, where I analyzed complex research completed by Purdue professors. With two other undergraduates, I condensed several high-level research papers into technical deliverables for Stratolaunch employees.

Design Experience

I am a lead in a student club designing and building a UAV around a pulsejet engine. I lead the aerodynamics team, where I teach newer undergraduates how to design an aircraft from general aerodynamic principles, build a CAD model, and analyze that model with computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

I also spent a year designing a turbopump rocket engine with the Purdue Undergraduate Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (PURPL). I worked on the injector plate design and served as head of manufacturing for our subteam, making sure our design was feasible with the manufacturing capabilities at Purdue.

See all projects →

Independent Study

I supplement my coursework with rigorous independent study of hypersonics through textbooks and research papers. I have worked through Anderson’s Hypersonic and High-Temperature Gas Dynamics and Bertin’s Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, and I am currently working through Hirschel and Weiland’s Selected Aerothermodynamic Design Problems of Hypersonic Flight Vehicles.

There’s more about me as a person on the About Me page.