2020 September - 20 articles
Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have been widely used for measurements of strain and temperature in a host of different applications, including aerospace in composite wings, fuselage structures, and other critical components. Here, we report on a m...
Workload and fatigue of aircraft pilots represent an argument of great interest in the framework of human factors and a pivotal point to be considered in aviation safety. 75% of aircraft accidents are related to human errors that, in most cases, are...
Unless a segregated airspace and the corresponding clearances can be afforded, flight testing of remotely piloted aircraft is often done near the ground and within visual line-of-sight. In addition to the increased exposure to turbulence, this setup...
This paper describes a joint research campaign conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Research Council Canada (NRC) to explore methods and techniques to expose rotorcraft pilot-induced oscillations (PIOs) during flight testin...
A unified approach to aircraft mission performance assessment is presented in this work. It provides a detailed and flexible formulation to simulate a complete commercial aviation mission. Based on optimal control theory, with consistent injection of...
Constellations of satellites are being proposed in large numbers; most of them are expected to be in orbit within the next decade. They will provide communication to unserved and underserved communities, enable global monitoring of Earth and enhance...
Predicting Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of systems has played an important role in various fields of reliability engineering analysis, including in aircraft engines. RUL prediction is critically an important part of Prognostics and Health Management (...
Aircraft maintenance includes all the tasks needed to ensure an aircraft’s continuing airworthiness. Accidents that result from these maintenance activities can be used to assess safety. This research seeks to undertake a preliminary investigat...
This article aims to present and discuss a set of technical matters affecting the maintenance and sustainment cost of military transport aircraft (airlifters). An overview of the military aviation technical support system is provided, in conjunction...
The two dimensional gravity turn problem is addressed allowing for the effects of variable rocket mass due to propellant consumption, thrust and thrust vector angle, lift and drag forces at an angle-of-attack and atmospheric mass density varying with...
A safe integration of drones into the airspace is fundamental to unblock the potential of drone applications. U-space is the drone traffic management solution for Europe, intended to handle a large number of drones in the airspace, especially at very...
The capture of a target spacecraft by a chaser is an on-orbit docking operation that requires an accurate, reliable, and robust object recognition algorithm. Vision-based guided spacecraft relative motion during close-proximity maneuvers has been con...
This paper addresses the problem of leader–follower synchronization of uncertain Euler–Lagrange systems under input constraints. The problem is solved in a distributed model reference adaptive control framework that includes positive
This research group has recently used the new technology Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) for the monitoring and the measurement of airplane flutter. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first such use for this new technology. Traditionally, the...
This paper introduces a novel gimballed rotor mathematical model for real-time flight simulation of tilt-rotor aircraft and other vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) concepts, which improves the previous version of a multi-purpose rotor mathematical...
Ice accretion is a phenomenon whereby super-cooled water droplets impinge and accrete on wall surfaces. It is well known that the icing may cause severe accidents via the deformation of airfoil shape and the shedding of the growing adhered ice. To pr...
In view of the upcoming missions to obtain resources from the lunar surface, it is essential to have highly-accurate navigation systems to locate surface vehicles in shadowed regions. In response, we propose a dual-satellite lunar navigation system t...
Contrail cirrus introduce a short-lived but significant climate forcing that could be mitigated by small changes in aircraft cruising altitudes. This paper extends a recent study to evaluate the efficacy of several vertical flight diversion strategie...
The research challenges for electric propulsion technologies are examined in the context of s-curve development cycles. It is shown that the need for research is driven both by the application as well as relative maturity of the technology. For fligh...
This paper presents an experimental study into the analysis required for the durability assessment of 7075 and 6061 cold spray repairs to military aircraft. To this end, it is first shown that provided the bulk stress in a 7075 cold spray coating can...
