Modeling, Analysis, and Optimization Issues for Large Space Structures

Topics concerning the modeling, analysis, and optimization of large space structures are discussed including structure-control interaction, structural and structural dynamics modeling, thermal analysis, testing, and design

Second order sliding mode observers for the ADDSAFE actuator benchmark problem

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Control Engineering Practice. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Control Engineering Practice Vol. 31 (2014), DOI: 10.1016/j.conengprac.2013.09.014This paper presents the evaluation process and results associated with two different fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) schemes applied to two different aircraft actuator fault benchmark problems. Although the schemes are different and bespoke for the problem being addressed, both are based on the concept of a second order sliding mode. Furthermore both designs are considered as ‘local’ in the sense that a localized actuator model is used together with local sensor measurements. The schemes do not involve the global aircraft equations of motion, and therefore have low order. The first FDD scheme is associated with the detection of oscillatory failure cases (OFC), while the second scheme is aimed at the detection of actuator jams/runaways. For the OFC benchmark problem, the idea is to estimate the OFC using a mathematical model of the actuator in which the rod speed is estimated using an adaptive second order exact differentiator. For the jam/runaway actuator benchmark problem, a more classical sliding mode observer based FDD scheme is considered in which the fault reconstruction is obtained from the equivalent output error injection signals associated with a second order sliding mode structure. The results presented in this paper summarize the design process from tuning, testing and finally industrial evaluation as part of the ADDSAFE project.EU (FP7-233815

Numerical Simulation of Subsonic and Transonic Propeller Flow

The numerical simulation of 3-D transonic flow about a system of propeller blades is investigated. In particular, it is shown that the use of helical coordinates significantly simplifies the form of the governing equation when the propeller system is assumed to be surrounded by an irrotational flow field of an inviscid fluid. The unsteady small disturbance equation, valid for lightly loaded blades and expressed in helical coordinates, is derived from the general blade-fixed potential equation, given for an arbitrary coordinate system. The use of a coordinate system which inherently adapts to the mean flow results in a disturbance equation requiring relatively few terms to accurately model the physics of the flow. Furthermore, the helical coordinate system presented here is novel in that it is periodic in the circumferential direction while, simultaneously, maintaining orthogonal properties at the mean blade locations. The periodic characteristic allows a complete cascade of blades to be treated, and the orthogonality property affords straightforward treatment of blade boundary conditions. An ADI numerical scheme is used to compute the solution of the steady flow as an asymptotic limit of an unsteady flow. As an example of the method, solutions are presented for subsonic and transonic flow about a 5 percent thick bicircular arc blade of an 8-bladed cascade. Both high and low advance ratio cases are computed and include a lifting as well as nonlifting cases. The nonlifting solutions obtained are compared to solutions from a Euler code

Application of parameter estimation to aircraft stability and control: The output-error approach

The practical application of parameter estimation methodology to the problem of estimating aircraft stability and control derivatives from flight test data is examined. The primary purpose of the document is to present a comprehensive and unified picture of the entire parameter estimation process and its integration into a flight test program. The document concentrates on the output-error method to provide a focus for detailed examination and to allow us to give specific examples of situations that have arisen. The document first derives the aircraft equations of motion in a form suitable for application to estimation of stability and control derivatives. It then discusses the issues that arise in adapting the equations to the limitations of analysis programs, using a specific program for an example. The roles and issues relating to mass distribution data, preflight predictions, maneuver design, flight scheduling, instrumentation sensors, data acquisition systems, and data processing are then addressed. Finally, the document discusses evaluation and the use of the analysis results

Event-Based Control and Estimation with Stochastic Disturbances

This thesis deals with event-based control and estimation strategies, motivated by certain bottlenecks in the control loop. Two kinds of implementation constraints are considered: closing one or several control loops over a data network, and sensors that report measurements only as intervals (e.g. with quantization). The proposed strategies depend critically on _events_, when a data packet is sent or when a change in the measurement signal is received. The value of events is that they communicate new information about stochastic process disturbances. A data network in the control loop imposes constraints on the event timing, modelled as a minimum time between packets. A thresholdbased control strategy is suggested and shown to be optimal for firstorder systems with impulse control. Different ways to find the optimal threshold are investigated for single and multiple control loops sharing one network. The major gain compared to linear time invariant (LTI) control is with a single loop a greatly reduced communication rate, which with multiple loops can be traded for a similarly reduced regulation error. With the bottleneck that sensors report only intervals, both the theoretical and practical control problems become more complex. We focus on the estimation problem, where the optimal solution is known but untractable. Two simplifications are explored to find a realistic state estimator: reformulation to a mixed stochastic/worst case scenario and joint maximum a posteriori estimation. The latter approach is simplified and evaluated experimentally on a moving cart with quantized position measurements controlled by a low-end microcontroller. The examples considered demonstrate that event-based control considerably outperforms LTI control, when the bottleneck addressed is a genuine performance constraint on the latter

Acoustical properties of solid-liquid composites and related computational problems

The thesis provides a study of acoustical performance and characterisation of solid-liquid composites. We address both experimental and numerical aspects of fluid-solid interaction problems. In the experimental part, we perform a comparative study of the sound damping properties of perforated plates with viscoelastic inclusions, such as polyurethane and soap emulsified with oil grease lubricant, as well as layered plates with isolated viscoelastic inclusions. One of the computational problems closely related to the experimantal study, is an acoustic fluid-solid interaction problem for plates with a rough surface. We propose an iterative algorithm for the numerical solution of acoustic fluid-solid interaction problems based on a partitioning method. Another fundamental task in acoustics is to model the sound pressure field under harmonic excitation. We apply a machine learning approach and present a feedforward dense neural network for computing the average sound pressure over a frequency range in polygonal cylinders. The sound waves propagation in fluid media is described by a wave equation with corresponding boundary and initial conditions. Given the parameters of the medium, one can determine the acoustic pressure, which is called a direct task. In the last part of the thesis, we solve a coefficient inverse problem: Given the acoustic pressure in some domain, we determine the wave speed function in the time-harmonic acoustic wave equation. For this purpose, the Lagrangian approach for the optimization of the Tikhonov functional is used