Wind Tunnel Characterization Engineer

The Test Facilities Operation, Maintenance and Engineering (TFOME) team at the NASA Glenn Research Center provides engineering and technical services in the areas of aeropropulsion and space propulsion and power test facilities.  TFOME management is dedicated to excellence in service and to providing outstanding technical opportunities for our employees. We specialize in providing unique products and services to NASA Glenn.  We are currently seeking a Wind Tunnel Characterization (WTC) Enginner to join our team that will be providing facility and characterization engineering support to our wind tunnels as part of the TFOME contract at the NASA Glenn Research Center.

HX5 Sierra, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer that recruits and hires qualified candidates without regard to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, disability, or veteran status.

FUNCTION OF POSITION

The Wind Tunnel Characterization (WTC) Engineer is responsible for understanding the overall operability of the wind tunnel in terms of the test section flow field. This includes developing and maintaining the wind tunnel calibration, documenting the flow quality over the entire operating range of the facility, and ensuring the stability and repeatability of the facility through health monitoring techniques such as statistical process control. The WTC Engineer is a key member of the facility and will work closely with facility and test engineers to ensure that customer needs in terms of tunnel conditions and flow quality are being met. The understanding of the wind tunnel operations and flow field that the WTC Engineer must possess are foundational to ensuring that quality data is being produced from each test project. The WTC Engineer is responsible for the overall planning and execution of characterization tasks (hardware and software development and testing) and for documenting the wind tunnel characterization details. As such, the WTC Engineer has duties that emulate both a Mechanical Test Engineer and a Data Engineer in addition to the specialized tasks focused on characterization.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

1. The primary task of the Wind Tunnel Characterization Engineer is to develop and execute the characterization procedures for a given wind tunnel or wind tunnels. As defined by the NASA Aeronautics Evaluation and Test Competency (AETC) Wind Tunnel Characterization Working Group (WTCWG), the overall characterization for a wind tunnel will consist of the following four key points: (1) Calibration, (2) Flow Quality, (3) Facility Evaluation, and (4) Quality Assurance. The WTC Engineer will develop the characterization plan for a given wind tunnel to address these four key points while taking into consideration the specifics of the tunnel such as operating regime and primary test types.

2. Leads efforts to understand and document the flow quality throughout the wind tunnel loop. This information is critical for identifying areas of improvement to the test section flow quality and/or tunnel operating efficiency.

3. Provides insight to the test customers on the test section flow quality and potential constraints and interactions between the customer test hardware and the facility flow field. This will require gaining an in-depth understanding of the facility operation, flow field, measurement system operation and calibration, the supporting input measurements and the interactions of subsystems in order to develop model systems for subsequent computer simulations that include all of the uncertainty contributions.

4. Provides test project management oversight for all characterization projects occurring in the test facility.

5. Conducts testing to develop the operational calibration relationships for the wind tunnel.

6. Conducts testing to thoroughly understand and document the flow quality in the wind tunnel test section.

7. Maintain detailed documentation on the characterization efforts, process and procedures, characterization data, and test results. This will include test project documentation files, in-house reporting of characterization testing and technical papers on characterization activities.

8. Maintain and update the standard procedures for the characterization of the NASA Glenn ground test facilities.

9. Triage all requests from ground test facility personnel and test customers for additional characterization information and aid management in establishing priorities for each request.

10. Prepare documentation supporting facility development efforts.

11. Provide input on instrumentation systems specifications to ensure data quality.

12. Provide support for training of other engineers and technicians, and lead the training efforts for both wind tunnel facility and test personnel on wind tunnel characterization, particularly information specific to the NASA Glenn wind tunnels.

13. Actively participate in the NASA/DoD Wind Tunnel Characterization Working Group (WTCWG).

14. Actively participate in characterization activities such as the development and sharing of best practices through professional technical societies or government-sponsored meetings.

15. Provide periodic status reports on each assigned task to contractor and customer management.

16. Work with the data engineers on areas of measurement uncertainty to improve facility calibration methodologies that will result in overall better data quality.