On September 22, 2026, it was announced that the Office of Naval Research (ONR) awarded Dr. Nicholaus Parziale approximately $1.13 million to conduct research on how water droplets break at hypersonic speeds. Dr. Parziale is the current George Meade Bond Endowed Professor at Stevens and has been with the institution since 2014. Before becoming a professor, he achieved his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2008, followed by an M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology in 2009 and 2013, respectively.
So, how do water droplets break at hypersonic speeds? Well, the speed that the water droplets would have to break has to reach a speed of Mach 5 and greater. Parziale stated there are challenges to encountering objects at this speed: “That’s a materials type problem or an aerodynamics problem. But, I would say that there’s aerodynamics, materials, propulsion, and control. So how do you make these things? How do you make an engine? How do you make it? How do you control it? Then how do you keep it cool, right?”
His research builds on his previous $1.2 million grant in 2020 and a $953K grant in 2023, both awarded by ONR, where he studied how particulate matter and precipitation affect high-speed flight and how to quantify turbulence at speeds that consistently exceed the speed of sound, respectively. To capture the moment these water droplets break, researchers developed specialized methods in the basement of Edwin A. Stevens Hall to record data. “We use laser diagnostics and very high-speed cameras to take pictures of these things,” Parziale explained. “So we try to do something really simple so that we can get a very nice time-resolved understanding of the physics that govern these flows.”
Even though his grant is heavily connected to research for the United States Navy, air breakup is a broad problem that affects many fields under the umbrella of aero breakup. “It’s when a liquid drop encounters a high-speed airstream, and that’s ubiquitous, right?” Parziale stated. “You could think about a fuel injector in a Formula One car, or a hurricane ripping the mist off of a wave. You could think about chemical processes. Any of these, any instance where, or like, you could think about dropping water over a brush fire, right? So any of these processes where there’s flow of drops in a high-speed airstream, like that’s what aero breakup.”
Now, the main question around all of this: Will the research succeed? Well, although the true results are still a long way off, Parziale is one of many professors, scientists, and researchers working to solve how projectiles in the air affect aircraft midair, studying various angles such as how these interactions can mitigate damage, speed up aircraft, and be applied outside the aerospace field.
For now, Parziale will focus on continuing his research on hypersonic speeds within the aerospace field, such as utilizing the X-ray capabilities at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to further the understanding of the field with the grant. “Not everything you do works. Lots of times we do stuff, and it doesn’t work,” Parziale stated, reflecting on what is considered a ‘good week’ in the lab. “Did we have a good week in the lab? […] Have we had fun that week? Yeah, that’s the, you know, the shortest answer.”
