Dr. Allan Paull

Dr. Allan Paull is an international program leader for HyShot scramjet test program at the Univ. of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Professor Allan Paull is the international program leader for the HyShot™ scramjet test program and has the unique distinction of being the first person in the world to achieve the first successful scramjet flights in both ground and flight test conditions. The HyShot™ II flight program which he led at Woomera in July, 2002 was the first in the world to obtain flight data from an experimental scramjet. Rich data was obtained from the experiment which reached flight speeds of approximately 2.3km/second or 8000km/hour (Mach 7.6). Professor Paull’s responsibilities included program manager, arranging funding, designing the ground test experiment, designing the flight experiment, assisting with designing supporting flight hardware, developing flight software, designing ground test equipment and assisting with flight safety applications. Professor Paull has an extensive international network of contacts which led to the formation of the HyShot™ international consortium which has involved partners including DARPA, JAXA, QinetiQ, NASA, and the DLR. In his hypersonic research career, the five most major research highlights have been: Successful completion of the HyShot™ Flight Program; Successfully finding the first HyShot™ payload (it was lost 100km down range) and analysis the results which lead to the successful second flight; Developing a new theoretical approach to describe the behavior (or misbehavior) of an expansion tube. This helped unlock many of the mysteries that had been unresolved for 30 years and opened the path for the development at UQ of the largest expansion tube in the world; the first to publish (with his colleagues) results which demonstrated that a scramjet could operate at hypersonic speeds. The demonstration was made in T4 and was considered a milestone in scramjet development; It also formed the corner stone for subsequent scramjet development in Australia Developing a simple instrument that would determine the end of the test time in a shock tunnel. It was subsequently used in the DLR and NAL Japan and the idea was used for a similar instrument developed for the T5 facility at CalTech. Professor Paull obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics from The University of Queensland 1987 and a Masters of Engineering Science in 1993. He worked in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Queensland 1985 to 2001 on the development of scramjets and expansion tubes. Periods of employment at GASL (NY,USA), NASA Langley Research Center, DLR Goettingen Germany. Professor Paull was Brisbane region finalist in the 2004 Queenslander of the Year and is a finalist in the 2005 Australian of the Year to be announced in January.