Maintenance in aeronautics in an Industry 4.0 context: The role of Augmented Reality and Additive Manufacturing

The paper broadly addresses how Industry 4.0 program drivers will impact maintenance in aviation. Specifically, Industry 4.0 practices most suitable to aeronautical maintenance are selected, and a detailed exposure is provided. Advantages and open issues are widely discussed and case studies dealing with realistic scenarios are illustrated to support what has been proposed by authors. The attention has been oriented towards Augmented Reality and Additive Manufacturing technologies, which can support maintenance tasks and spare parts production, respectively. The intention is to demonstrate that Augmented Reality and Additive Manufacturing are viable tools in aviation maintenance, and while a strong effort is necessary to develop an appropriate regulatory framework, mandatory before the wide-spread introduction of these technologies in the aerospace systems maintenance process, there has been a great interest and pull from the industry sector

Practical considerations for the design of an aeroelastic energy harvester

Achieving the optimal balance between weight and energy consumption during flight mission remains a challenge for the design of very efficient high altitude long endurance aircrafts (HALE). These aircraft are intended to have flight missions that can range from 30 to 90 days. Composite materials are used to provide the structural integrity of the aircraft while minimizing its weight. Typically composites are used in long and slender structural elements of the HALE and are the main drivers of dynamic aeroelastic instabilities, even at low speed. This is due to the higher structural flexibility they introduce. Therefore, in order to respond to the demand of HALE aircrafts of having a wider amount of energy on board, without any substantial weight penalization, an experimental piezoelectric wing have been designed with the aim of exploiting aeroelastic instabilities or any other type of induced vibrations to generate electric energy directly on board. The numerical model of the piezoelectric wing, presented in this paper, is built starting from the assumptions of the 3D Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and of the strip theory for the aerodynamic loads. A preliminary sensitivity study was carried out, over the flutter solutions, for the identification of a suitable experimental prototype, to be used for modal and wind tunnel tests. The test campaign showed a good agreement between numerical and experiments results, highlighting, above all, the encouraging results in terms of energy harvesting and in terms of the exploitation potential of the piezoelectric design in the dynamic of structures

Measurements and tests on FBK silicon sensors with an optimized electronic design for a CTA camera

In October 2013, the Italian Ministry approved the funding of a Research & Development (R&D) study, within the "Progetto Premiale TElescopi CHErenkov made in Italy (TECHE)", devoted to the development of a demonstrator for a camera for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) consortium. The demonstrator consists of a sensor plane based on the Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) technology and on an electronics designed for signal sampling. Preliminary tests on a matrix of sensors produced by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK-Trento, Italy) and on electronic prototypes produced by SITAEL S.p.A. will be presented. In particular, we used different designs of the electronics in order to optimize the output signals in terms of tail cancellation. This is crucial for applications where a high background is expected, as for the CTA experiment.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures; Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Science with the New Generation of High-Energy Gamma-ray experiments (SciNeGHE) - PoS(Scineghe2014)00

Particle nucleation in a forested environment

Peer reviewe

Results and applications of SiPM photodetectors from FBK-irst by the DASIPM Collaboration

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) and SiPM matrices optimized for the detection of blue light have been developed at FBK-irst. The first devices produced are composed of 625 microcells with 40 μm × 40 μm size, in a 1mm × 1mm active area. The devices have a breakdown voltage around 30 V, and a gain about 106. The DASIPM Collaboration is evaluating their performance and possible applications in high-energy physics, space physics and medical imaging. Dedicated front-end electronics are also being developed

FOLLOW UP IN LARGE BOWEL RESECTIONS: WERNICKE-KORSAKOFF'S SYNDROME

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