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William Nollet is Chair and Associate Professor of physics and engineering at Fort Lewis College. He joined the college in 2013. Dr. Nollet’s areas of expertise are aerospace and nuclear engineering. As a nuclear engineer, Dr. Nollet specializes in experimental thermal hydraulics, working in support of cooling systems for a Sodium-cooled Fast Nuclear Reactor (SFR). Dr. Nollet has presented his work at conferences around the world, including the International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH) in Paris, and the American Nuclear Society annual meetings. Outside of Fort Lewis, he is a propulsion scientist with Advanced Mobile Propulsion Test (AMPT), a rocket engine test company in Durango, Colorado, where he directs research on instrumentation for rocket test support, as well as advanced propulsion concepts. Dr. Nollet proudly includes his Fort Lewis students in his AMPT research.
Dr. Nollet, was awarded $2,000 from Frontier Engineering, for “Frontier Engineering BLC Research 2016.”
Students of Dr. Nollet get unique opportunities to apply their classroom knowledge at Advanced Mobile Propulsion Test, a local aerospace rocket testing facility, Rocket testing in Durango?, The Durango Herald, October 2015
Outside of Fort Lewis College, Dr. Nollet is a propulsion scientist with Advanced Mobile Propulsion Test, a certified rocket engine test service company based in Durango. The company provides high fidelity validation test data for development and qualification test programs.
Undergraduate Research Projects
In 2014, Dr. Nollet received funding from AMPT that has supported the hiring of Fort Lewis students as undergraduate researchers on Dr. Nollet’s projects. Two students are researching an altitude system that can pull a vacuum on a rocket engine during hot fire testing to simulate a space-like environment. Five senior design students are building a rocket propellant feed system that can analyze a rocket engine’s injector system and characterize performance losses.
Dr. Nollet Explains the Project
“Rocket combustion instability is an umbrella term that describes rapid fluctuations in combustion chamber pressure, which can quickly lead to a disastrous event for the vehicle. The frequencies and rate at which an instability can occur make instability analysis and prevention one of the most challenging and important problems to overcome for rocket vehicles. My research is focused on improving our ability to detect and analyze these instabilities, which are of the highest importance to rocket performance.”
“Corrosion Experiments of Thermal Sprayed Coatings in Liquid Sodium for the development of an Electrochemical Oxygen Sensor," International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, May 2013
“Development of Electrochemical Oxygen Sensors for Liquid Sodium,” International Atomic Energy Agency Conference, March 2013