A review of the highlights of some recent research by the speaker in developing mathematical models for thermal ablation in hypersonic flows will be presented.  We consider a particular case of aerodynamic ablation known as melting ablation where a melt layer of the indigenous ablative material is formed in the ablation process.  A simple mathematical model will be presented for the analysis and computation of the steady melting ablation in the neighborhood of the stagnation point of a blunt-nosed body in hypersonic flight.  The model consists of an invisicid flow downstream of the bow shock, a viscous boundary-layer of the hot gas, a melt layer and an ablating solid.  These regions are properly coupled through appropriate boundary conditions on the interfaces.  Analytical methods are used to construct solutions of the fully coupled problem with a particular emphasis on the aspects of fluid dynamics and heat transfer of the melting ablation.  The characteristic parameters of the physical phenomena appear naturally in the process, and the parametric dependence of the solution can be easily determined.  The computational labor required of solving the model problem is thus considerably reduced, and the analysis of the physical phenomena is also facilitated as a result.  Some representative solutions will be presented and discussed.  Extension of the model to include the effects of particles and droplets in the gas stream will be briefly mentioned next. We will also describe the on-going research in extending the melting ablation model to three-dimensional hypersonic waverider configurations along with some preliminary results.  Details of the research results have appeared in a series of publications in open literature, and a list of such references will be provided in the presentation.

学术及任职经历：美国加州大学博士，美国知名空气动力学研究专家，从事研究工作40余年，现为马里兰大学兼职教授，曾获华盛顿科学院杰出成就奖等。