Tobias Hermann Dr.-Ing

Tobias attended the University of Stuttgart as an undergraduate and finished his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2012. He then worked as a post-graduate student within the High Enthalpy Flow Diagnostics Group at the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart obtaining his Dr.-Ing. degree in 2017. His thesis was focused on improving the understanding of the phenomena occurring during the re-entry of spacecaft into the Earth’s atmosphere. The main goal of the project was the identification and quantification of the aerothermochemistry leading to an interaction of the radiating gas with the ablating material. Tobias developed various optical diagnostic methods including Vacuum Ultraviolet spectroscopy systems, tomographic emission spectrographs, and radiometric measurement devices.

Since 2017, Tobias was working as a Post-Doc in the Oxford Hypersonics group of the Oxford Thermofluids Institute, where he mainly worked on the topic of transpiration cooling, an active cooling technique for spacecraft heat shields. He developed analytical methods for heat transfer in porous media, system engineering tools, and transpiration cooled wind-tunnel experiments. He also developed various diagnostic techniques such as heat flux measurements to porous media, total temperature measurements, pressure sensitive paint systems, high speed focused and regular optical Schlieren systems. Tobias started working as a Senior Research Associate in 2019 on transpiration cooling where he focused his research on the application of fundamental research to an applied system. Tobias has been teaching undergraduate Engineering Science at St. Catherine’s College from 2018 to 2019 and at St. Hilda’s College from 2019 to 2021.

Since 2021, Tobias is working as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow on high enthalpy experimental research which includes wind tunnel experiments with the multi-mode facility T6, and the development of optical diagnostic techniques. His research interests lie in the field of high enthalpy non-equilibrium flows and in the development of measurement and instrumentation techniques.

• High enthalpy flows
• Non-equilibrium thermochemistry
• Optical diagnostics
• Heat Transfer
• Hypersonic flows and aerothermodynamics
• Transpiration Cooling
• Porous flows

Next-Generation Ground Testing for Spacecraft Re-entry: The development of a novel pre-heating system for replication of ablation phenomena in hypersonic ground testing facilities.

Transpiration Cooling to Enable Sharp Leading Edge Technology: The development of a sharp leading edge for hypersonic flight vehicles, using an active cooling technique.

Fundamental Non-Equilibrium Experiments for Hypersonic Flight: The experimental analysis of the thermochemical state of radiating gas behind a high speed compression