Air traffic control surveillance accuracy and update rate study

The results of an air traffic control surveillance accuracy and update rate study are presented. The objective of the study was to establish quantitative relationships between the surveillance accuracies, update rates, and the communication load associated with the tactical control of aircraft for conflict resolution. The relationships are established for typical types of aircraft, phases of flight, and types of airspace. Specific cases are analyzed to determine the surveillance accuracies and update rates required to prevent two aircraft from approaching each other too closely

NASA's Aircraft Icing Analysis Program

An overview of the NASA ongoing efforts to develop an aircraft icing analysis capability is presented. Discussions are included of the overall and long term objectives of the program as well as current capabilities and limitations of the various computer codes being developed. Descriptions are given of codes being developed to analyze two and three dimensional trajectories of water droplets, airfoil ice accretion, aerodynamic performance degradation of components and complete aircraft configurations, electrothermal deicer, fluid freezing point depressant antideicer and electro-impulse deicer. The need for bench mark and verification data to support the code development is also discussed, and selected results of experimental programs are presented

Experimental Droplet Impingement on Several Two-Dimensional Airfoils with Thickness Ratios of 6 to 16 Percent

The rate and area of cloud droplet impingement on several two-dimensional swept and unswept airfoils were obtained experimentally in the NACA Lewis icing tunnel with a dye-tracer technique. Airfoil thickness ratios of 6 to 16 percent; angles of attack from 0 deg to 12 deg, and chord sizes from 13 to 96 inches were included in the study. The data were obtained at 152 knots and are extended to other conditions by dimensionless impingement parameters. In general, the data show that the total and local collection efficiencies and impingement limits are primary functions of the modified inertia parameter (in which airspeed, droplet size, and body size are the most significant variables) and the airfoil thickness ratio. Local collection efficiencies and impingement limits also depend on angle of attack. Secondary factors affecting impingement characteristics are airfoil shape, camber, and sweep angle. The impingement characteristics obtained experimentally for the airfoils were within +/-10 percent on the average of the characteristics calculated from theoretical trajectories. Over the range of conditions studied, the experimental data demonstrate that a specific method can be used to predict the impingement characteristics of swept airfoils with large aspect ratios from the data for unswept airfoils of the same series

The NASA aircraft icing research program

The objective of the NASA aircraft icing research program is to develop and make available to industry icing technology to support the needs and requirements for all-weather aircraft designs. Research is being done for both fixed wing and rotary wing applications. The NASA program emphasizes technology development in two areas, advanced ice protection concepts and icing simulation. Reviewed here are the computer code development/validation, icing wind tunnel testing, and icing flight testing efforts

Grid generation for the solution of partial differential equations

A general survey of grid generators is presented with a concern for understanding why grids are necessary, how they are applied, and how they are generated. After an examination of the need for meshes, the overall applications setting is established with a categorization of the various connectivity patterns. This is split between structured grids and unstructured meshes. Altogether, the categorization establishes the foundation upon which grid generation techniques are developed. The two primary categories are algebraic techniques and partial differential equation techniques. These are each split into basic parts, and accordingly are individually examined in some detail. In the process, the interrelations between the various parts are accented. From the established background in the primary techniques, consideration is shifted to the topic of interactive grid generation and then to adaptive meshes. The setting for adaptivity is established with a suitable means to monitor severe solution behavior. Adaptive grids are considered first and are followed by adaptive triangular meshes. Then the consideration shifts to the temporal coupling between grid generators and PDE-solvers. To conclude, a reflection upon the discussion, herein, is given

Three-dimensional CFD simulations with large displacement of the geometries using a connectivity-change moving mesh approach

This paper deals with three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations involving 3D moving geometries with large displacements on unstructured meshes. Such simulations are of great value to industry, but remain very time-consuming. A robust moving mesh algorithm coupling an elasticity-like mesh deformation solution and mesh optimizations was proposed in previous works, which removes the need for global remeshing when performing large displacements. The optimizations, and in particular generalized edge/face swapping, preserve the initial quality of the mesh throughout the simulation. We propose to integrate an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian compressible flow solver into this process to demonstrate its capabilities in a full CFD computation context. This solver relies on a local enforcement of the discrete geometric conservation law to preserve the order of accuracy of the time integration. The displacement of the geometries is either imposed, or driven by fluid–structure interaction (FSI). In the latter case, the six degrees of freedom approach for rigid bodies is considered. Finally, several 3D imposed-motion and FSI examples are given to validate the proposed approach, both in academic and industrial configurations

Experimental measurements of heat transfer from an iced surface during artificial and natural cloud icing conditions

The heat transfer behavior of accreting ice surfaces in natural (flight test) and simulated (wind tunnel) cloud icing conditions were studied. Observations of wet and dry ice growth regimes as measured by ultrasonic pulse echo techniques were made. Observed wet and dry ice growth regimes at the stagnation point of a cylinder were compared with those predicted using a quasi steady state heat balance model. A series of heat transfer coefficients were employed by the model to infer the local heat transfer behavior of the actual ice surfaces. The heat transfer in the stagnation region was generally inferred to be higher in wind tunnel icing tests than in natural flight icing conditions

Optimal Trajectory Tracking for an Autonomous UAV

The aim of the present project is the design of optimal flight trajectories for an automomous aerial vehicle which is expected to reach the desired locations in the operational environment expressed in terms of planned waypoints. The navigation must be performed with the vehicle's best effort, i.e. with the lowest cost. Hence, we want to minimize the input energy, a function of the inputs for the mathematical model which describes the dynamics of the vehicle. The trajectory must satisfy all the constraints and pass through all the planned waypoints. Assuming the vehicle as a point mass model, the best solution has been investigated through a genetic algorithm search procedure. The optimisation problem has been solved by modifying a micro-genetic algorithm software which was initially developed by D.L. Carroll. Between all the possible trajectories we select the more "realistic" connections among the waypoints. First of all, we have left out the trajectories with discontinuity in the derivatives as these are not feasible by the real aircraft. The polynomial spline is a suitable candidate to solve our problem. The algorithm splits the trajectory in sub-trajectories which join a sequence of three waypoints. Starting from the first three waypoints, the following sub-trajectories are superimposed keeping the first waypoint coincident with the last of the previous sub-trajectory. The sequence of polynomials is initialized assuming that jumps in the direction of flight are avoided pointing the heading angle in the presumed direction of flight. The optimal trajectory is a trade-off amongst three factors: the required energy cost, the minimum distance from the required waypoint and the feasibility of the trajectory. Results obtained with this optimization procedure are presente