Daniel Kirk, Ph.D.
Professor | College of Engineering and Science
- Melbourne FL UNITED STATES
- F.W. Olin Engineering Complex 339
Dr. Kirk's research focuses on air-breathing propulsion and rocket propulsion, and additive manufacturing for aerospace applications.
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About
Dr. Daniel R. Kirk completed his Ph.D. and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics under a National Science Foundation Fellowship.
He joined Florida Tech in 2004 and is currently a professor in the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences.
Dr. Kirk’s research interests focus on air-breathing and rocket propulsion, experimental and computational fluid dynamics, and advanced and additive manufacturing for existing and new aerospace applications. He has obtained over $4 million dollars in external funding, produced over 80 conference and journal publications, served as a visiting scholar at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA Kennedy Space Center and managed research projects with NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the Office of Naval Research.
In collaboration with NASA and MIT, Dr. Kirk’s research group has directed experiments onboard the International Space Station to study how liquid propellant slosh behavior affects the dynamics of rocket motion.
Research Focus
Analysis, Design and Testing of MEMS-scale, Liquid Bi-propellant Micro-rocket Systems.
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.
Media Assets
Education
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
B.S.
Mechanical Engineering
1997Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D.
Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
2002Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.S.
Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
1999Links
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Selected Articles
Comparison of Propellant Settling Approaches for On-Orbit Propellant Depots During Propellant Transfer Maneuvers
AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum2019
Progress towards a Microgravity CFD Validation Study using the ISS SPHERES-SLOSH Experiment
AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum2020
Experimental Investigation of Spherical Tank Slosh Dynamics with Water and Liquid Nitrogen
Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets2020
Extraction of Pendulum Model Parameters from Steady-State Slosh Data in Diaphragm Tanks
Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets2022
Affiliations
- National Engineering Honor Society
- Tau Beta Pi
Accomplishments
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Ralph A. Teetor award
2008
