2018 December - 31 articles
A compact synthetic aperture radar microsatellite antenna operating in the L-band is presented. To reduce size and weight of the small spaceborne SAR, we utilize a lightweight deployable parabolic mesh reflector and operate at low Earth orbital altit...
A practical approach for deriving the absolute density field based on the background-oriented schlieren method in a high-speed flowfield was implemented. The flowfield of interest was a two-dimensional compressible flowfield created by two supersonic...
In the design and analysis of morphing wings, several sciences need to be integrated. This article tries to answer the question, “What is the most appropriate actuation mechanism to morph the wing profile?” by introducing the synthesis, a...
Winglets are commonly used drag-reduction and fuel-saving technologies in today’s aviation. The primary purpose of the winglets is to reduce the lift-induced drag, therefore improving fuel efficiency and aircraft performance. Traditional wingle...
The influence of model deformation needs to be corrected before the aerodynamic force data measured in the wind tunnel is applied to aircraft design. In order to obtain the aerodynamic forces on rigid model shape, this paper presents a fast correctio...
Cooling of gas turbine blades is critical to long term durability. Accurate prediction of blade metal temperature is a key component in the design of the cooling system. In this design space, spatial distribution of heat transfer coefficients plays a...
Hybrid electric propulsion in the aviation field is becoming an effective alternative propulsion technology with potential advantages, including fuel savings, lower pollution, and reduced noise emission. On the one hand, the aeroengine manufacturers...
Modern transport aircraft wings have reached near-peak levels of energy-efficiency and there is still margin for further relevant improvements. A promising strategy for improving aircraft efficiency is to change the shape of the aircraft wing in flig...
Recycling carbon fibre is crucial in the reduction of waste from the increasing use of carbon fibre reinforced composites in industry. The reclaimed fibres, however, are usually short and discontinuous as opposed to the continuous virgin carbon fibre...
Besides large-scale space missions, the spread of CubeSats for a variety of applications is increasingly requiring the development of systematic approaches for risk management. Being these applications are based on components with low TRL (Technology...
In recent years, the maturation of small satellite technology has led to their adoption for a variety of space missions. The next generation of small satellite missions, however, will likely have the satellites operating in formations or “constellati...
The aerospace industry is now beginning to adopt Additive Manufacturing (AM), both for new aircraft design and to help improve aircraft availability (aircraft sustainment). However, MIL-STD 1530 highlights that to certify airworthiness, the operation...
In recent years, a growing emphasis on safety has driven various industries, both in manufacturing and service, to implement a Safety Management System (SMS) in their organisations. SMSs have also been widely implemented in aviation due to both regul...
The turbine tip geometry can significantly alter the performance of the turbine stage; its design represents a challenge for a variety of reasons. Multiple disciplines are involved in its design and their requirements limit the creativity of the desi...
When a laminar boundary layer is subjected to an adverse pressure gradient, laminar separation bubbles can occur. At low Reynolds numbers, the bubble size can be substantial, and the aerodynamic performance can be reduced considerably. At higher Reyn...
In this study, we develop a rigorous tracking control approach for quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with unknown dynamics, unknown physical parameters, and subject to unknown and unpredictable disturbances. In order to better estimate the un...
This paper investigates the design and flight test of two fixed wing aircraft connected at the wing tips. Connecting multiple aircraft introduces flexible modes into a typically rigid body system. These flexible modes make manual control of the entir...
Annually, thousands of birds collide with aircraft. The impact usually has lethal consequences for the bird, the involved aircraft can experience severe damage. The highest bird strike risk occurs at low altitudes. Therefore, aircraft within the airp...
Aerospace vehicles are demanded to withstand harsh conditions with a low weight impact. Composites have been increasingly adopted to meet such performances but they are affected by sudden and barely visible failures when subjected to low velocity imp...
Epoxy resins are one of the most widely used thermosets in different engineering fields, due to their chemical resistance and thermo-mechanical properties. Recently, bio-based thermoset resin systems have attracted significant attention given their e...
Weather events have a significant impact on airport performance and cause delayed operations if the airport capacity is constrained. We provide quantification of the individual airport performance with regards to an aggregated weather-performance met...
A number of mixed and displacement-based zig-zag theories are derived from the zig-zag adaptive theory (ZZA). As a consequence of their different assumptions on displacement, strain, and stress fields, and layerwise functions, these theories account...
Can a hybrid composite made of recycled carbon fibres and natural fibres improve the flexural mechanical properties of epoxy composites compared to pure natural fibre reinforced polymers (NFRP)? Growing environmental concerns have led to an increased...
This is the second of a two-paper series describing a multi-scale modeling approach developed to simulate crack sensing in polymer fibrous composites by exploiting interruption of electrically conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) networks. The approach i...
This paper describes a case study for applying a hybrid electric propulsion system for general aviation aircraft. The work was performed by a joint team from the Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali (CIRA) and the Department of Industrial Engineerin...
The development of a parametric model for the variable portion of the Cost Per Flying Hour (CPFH) of an ‘unknown’ aircraft platform and its application to diverse types of fixed and rotary wing aircraft development programs (F-35A, Su-57,...
Resurgent interest in artificial intelligence (AI) techniques focused research attention on their application in aviation systems including air traffic management (ATM), air traffic flow management (ATFM), and unmanned aerial systems traffic manageme...
In this paper we address the prediction of aircraft boarding using a machine learning approach. Reliable process predictions of aircraft turnaround are an important element to further increase the punctuality of airline operations. In this context, a...
In the current work a detailed investigation and a performance assessment of two eddy viscosity and two Reynolds stress turbulence models for modelling the transitional flow on a double circular arc (DCA) compressor blade is presented. The investigat...
The VisionCube is a 2-unit CubeSat developed in house, of which the primary mission is detecting the occurrence of transient luminous events (TLEs) in the upper atmosphere and obtaining corresponding images from a low Earth orbit. An onboard TLE obse...
Flow visualizations have been performed on a free flying, flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV), using a large-scale particle image velocimetry (PIV) approach. The PIV method involves the use of helium-filled soap bubbles (HFSB) as tracer particles....
