Partnership on cutting-edge ceramic composites helps Australian-made craft endure hypersonic flight
July 13 – A team from Hypersonix Launch Systems and The University of Queensland has beaten the extreme heat produced when travelling more than five times the speed of sound while also disproving the old proverb “if you want to go fast, go alone.”
The team made use of expertise at UQ’s Centre for Advanced Materials Processing and Manufacturing (AMPAM.) They developed improved high temperature ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), manufacturing processes to make parts from these, and designs addressing the differences in heat created throughout an aircraft colliding with air particles at incredible speeds.
The project between Hypersonix and UQ and supported by the Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC (then known as SOMAC) was announced in 2023, shortly after the startup was awarded a contract under the US Defense Innovation Unit’s Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airbourne Testing (HYCAT) program.
“We are hugely proud to have supported this two-year project early on in the CRC’s term,” said ACM CRC CEO Luke Preston (pictured above.) “It has developed important and valuable technology in service of an incredibly ambitious Australian company’s goals, and with commercial potential across space, energy and defence.
“It was also incredibly encouraging to see investors acknowledge the value of what Hypersonix is doing in the form of a $46 million Series A funding round announced in October last year.”
Sam Grieve, Head of Manufacturing at Hypersonix, added: “To my knowledge, the capability for these types of CMC parts doesn't exist beyond a lab level in Australia. There are no large-scale production facilities for CMCs in Australia.
“There's quite a developed CMC industry in Europe, particularly Germany, but Australia is very much developing. I would say the facilities that Dr Heitzmann has developed at UQ are really kind of forging a sovereign capability.”
Hypersonix's DART AE reached speeds greater than Mach 5 during its first flight on February 27 (local time) at Wallops Island, Virginia, USA. The mission was designated Cassowary Vex by the DIU (and flew as "That's Not A Knife" with Rocket Lab).
The autonomous, 3.5-metre aircraft (see main picture) was carried into the upper atmosphere by Rocket Lab's HASTE launch vehicle, before executing its hypersonic flight profile, gathering flight data and testing its propulsion, materials and control systems in real hypersonic conditions.”
Dr Michael Heitzmann, who served as Program Lead within the CRC during the project, said the work addresses a significant capability gap in Australia's high-temperature materials sector.
He noted that his research group began pursuing this challenge more than seven years ago, working closely with the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) and other partners.
Sustained investment and complementary capability development over more than seven years have helped establish one of Australia's leading concentrations of expertise in high-temperature materials and manufacturing.
“These are materials that perform at temperatures where most metals start to become soft or too heavy. We're talking here about temperatures somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 degrees Celsius,” Dr Heitzman explained.
Hypersonix was founded in 2019 by David Waterhouse and Dr Michael Smart, the latter an ex-UQ Chair of Hypersonic Propulsion and NASA researcher.
Main picture: Hypersonix's DART AE demonstrator vehicle (credit Hypersonix)
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