5,858 research outputs found
Coupled flight dynamics and CFD - demonstration for helicopters in shipborne environment
The development of high-performance computing and computational fluid dynamics methods have evolved to the point where it is possible to simulate complete helicopter configurations with good accuracy. Computational fluid dynamics methods have also been applied to problems such as rotor/fuselage and main/tail rotor interactions, performance studies in hover and forward flight, rotor design, and so on. The GOAHEAD project is a good example of a coordinated effort to validate computational fluid dynamics for complex helicopter configurations. Nevertheless, current efforts are limited to steady flight and focus mainly on expanding the edges of the flight envelope. The present work tackles the problem of simulating manoeuvring flight in a computational fluid dynamics environment by integrating a moving grid method and the helicopter flight mechanics solver with computational fluid dynamics. After a discussion of previous works carried out on the subject and a description of the methods used, validation of the computational fluid dynamics for ship airwake flow and rotorcraft flight at low advance ratio are presented. Finally, the results obtained for manoeuvring flight cases are presented and discussed
Are object detection assessment criteria ready for maritime computer vision?
Maritime vessels equipped with visible and infrared cameras can complement
other conventional sensors for object detection. However, application of
computer vision techniques in maritime domain received attention only recently.
The maritime environment offers its own unique requirements and challenges.
Assessment of the quality of detections is a fundamental need in computer
vision. However, the conventional assessment metrics suitable for usual object
detection are deficient in the maritime setting. Thus, a large body of related
work in computer vision appears inapplicable to the maritime setting at the
first sight. We discuss the problem of defining assessment metrics suitable for
maritime computer vision. We consider new bottom edge proximity metrics as
assessment metrics for maritime computer vision. These metrics indicate that
existing computer vision approaches are indeed promising for maritime computer
vision and can play a foundational role in the emerging field of maritime
computer vision
Sensor Management for Tracking in Sensor Networks
We study the problem of tracking an object moving through a network of
wireless sensors. In order to conserve energy, the sensors may be put into a
sleep mode with a timer that determines their sleep duration. It is assumed
that an asleep sensor cannot be communicated with or woken up, and hence the
sleep duration needs to be determined at the time the sensor goes to sleep
based on all the information available to the sensor. Having sleeping sensors
in the network could result in degraded tracking performance, therefore, there
is a tradeoff between energy usage and tracking performance. We design sleeping
policies that attempt to optimize this tradeoff and characterize their
performance. As an extension to our previous work in this area [1], we consider
generalized models for object movement, object sensing, and tracking cost. For
discrete state spaces and continuous Gaussian observations, we derive a lower
bound on the optimal energy-tracking tradeoff. It is shown that in the low
tracking error regime, the generated policies approach the derived lower bound
Aviation safety research and transportation/hazard avoidance and elimination
Data collected by the Scanning Laser Doppler Velocimeter System (SLDVS) was analyzed to determine the feasibility of the SLDVS for monitoring aircraft wake vortices in an airport environment. Data were collected on atmospheric vortices and analyzed. Over 1600 landings were monitored at Kennedy International Airport and by the end of the test period 95 percent of the runs with large aircraft were producing usable results in real time. The transport was determined in real time and post analysis using algorithms which performed centroids on the highest amplitude in the thresholded spectrum. Making use of other parameters of the spectrum, vortex flow fields were studied along with the time histories of peak velocities and amplitudes. The post analysis of the data was accomplished with a CDC-6700 computer using several programs developed for LDV data analysis
Pilot investigation of remote sensing for intertidal oyster mapping in coastal South Carolina: a methods comparison
South Carolina’s oyster reefs are a major component of the coastal landscape. Eastern oysters Crassostrea virginica are an important economic resource to the state and serve many essential functions in the environment, including water filtration, creek bank stabilization and habitat for
other plants and animals. Effective conservation and management of oyster reefs is dependent on an understanding of their abundance, distribution, condition, and change over time. In South Carolina, over 95% of the state’s oyster habitat is intertidal. The current intertidal oyster reef database for South Carolina was developed by field assessment over several years. This database was completed in the early 1980s and is in need of an update to assess resource/habitat status and trends across the state. Anthropogenic factors such as coastal development and
associated waterway usage (e.g., boat wakes) are suspected of significantly altering the extent and health of the state’s oyster resources.
In 2002 the NOAA Coastal Services Center’s (Center) Coastal Remote Sensing Program (CRS) worked with the Marine Resources Division of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) to develop methods for mapping intertidal oyster reefs along the South Carolina coast using remote sensing technology. The objective of this project was to provide SCDNR with potential methodologies and approaches for assessing oyster resources in a more
efficiently than could be accomplished through field digitizing. The project focused on the utility of high-resolution aerial imagery and on documenting the effectiveness of various analysis techniques for accomplishing the update. (PDF contains 32 pages
Microgravity experiments on the collisional behavior of Saturnian ring particles
In this paper we present results of two novel experimental methods to
investigate the collisional behavior of individual macroscopic icy bodies. The
experiments reported here were conducted in the microgravity environments of
parabolic flights and the Bremen drop tower facility. Using a cryogenic
parabolic-flight setup, we were able to capture 41 near-central collisions of
1.5-cm-sized ice spheres at relative velocities between 6 and . The analysis of the image sequences provides a uniform distribution
of coefficients of restitution with a mean value of and values ranging from to 0.84. Additionally, we
designed a prototype drop tower experiment for collisions within an ensemble of
up to one hundred cm-sized projectiles and performed the first experiments with
solid glass beads. We were able to statistically analyze the development of the
kinetic energy of the entire system, which can be well explained by assuming a
granular `fluid' following Haff's law with a constant coefficient of
restitution of . We could also show that the setup is
suitable for studying collisions at velocities of
appropriate for collisions between particles in Saturn's dense main rings.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Icarus Special Issue "Cassini at
Saturn
- …