The development of aerodynamic uncertainties for the space shuttle orbiter

The Shuttle Program development schedule and the management decision to perform an orbital, manned mission on the first launch resulted in a requirement to develop realistic aerodynamic uncertainties for the preflight aerodynamic predictions. This paper addresses the methodology in developing two types of aerodynamic uncertainties. One involves the ability to reproduce aerodynamic results between various wind tunnel tests. The second addresses the difference between preflight aerodynamic predictions and flight results derived from analysis of past aircraft programs. Both types of uncertainties for pitching moment, lateral-directional stability, rudder power, and aileron power are presented. In addition, the application of uncertainties to flight control design and fight test planning is briefly reviewed

Matching Excluded Volume Hadron Resonance Gas Models and Perturbative QCD to Lattice Calculations

We match three hadronic equations of state at low energy densities to a perturbatively computed equation of state of quarks and gluons at high energy densities. One of them includes all known hadrons treated as point particles, which approximates attractive interactions among hadrons. The other two include, in addition, repulsive interactions in the form of excluded volumes occupied by the hadrons. A switching function is employed to make the crossover transition from one phase to another without introducing a thermodynamic phase transition. A chi-square fit to accurate lattice calculations with temperature $100 < T < 1000$ MeV determines the parameters. These parameters quantify the behavior of the QCD running gauge coupling and the hard core radius of protons and neutrons, which turns out to be $0.62 \pm 0.04$ fm. The most physically reasonable models include the excluded volume effect. Not only do they include the effects of attractive and repulsive interactions among hadrons, but they also achieve better agreement with lattice QCD calculations of the equation of state. The equations of state constructed in this paper do not result in a phase transition, at least not for the temperatures and baryon chemical potentials investigated. It remains to be seen how well these equations of state will represent experimental data on high energy heavy ion collisions when implemented in hydrodynamic simulations.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure

Net Baryon Fluctuations from a Crossover Equation of State

We have constructed an equation of state which smoothly interpolates between an excluded volume hadron resonance gas at low energy density to a plasma of quarks and gluons at high energy density. This crossover equation of state agrees very well with lattice calculations at both zero and nonzero baryon chemical potential. We use it to compute the variance, skewness, and kurtosis of fluctuations of baryon number, and compare to measurements of proton number fluctuations in central Au-Au collisions as measured by the STAR collaboration in a beam energy scan at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The crossover equation of state can reproduce the data if the fluctuations are frozen out at temperatures well below than the average chemical freeze-out.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0340

A comment on "Amplification of endpoint structure for new particle mass measurement at the LHC"

We present a comment on the kinematic variable $m_{CT2}$ recently proposed in "Amplification of endpoint structure for new particle mass measurement at the LHC". The variable is designed to be applied to models such as R-parity conserving Supersymmetry (SUSY) when there is pair production of new heavy particles each of which decays to a single massless visible and a massive invisible component. It was proposed in "Amplification of endpoint structure for new particle mass measurement at the LHC" that a measurement of the peak of the $m_{CT2}$ distribution could be used to precisely constrain the masses of the SUSY particles. We show that when Standard Model backgrounds are included in simulations, the sensitivity of the $m_{CT2}$ variable to the SUSY particle masses is more seriously impacted for $m_{CT2}$ than for other previously proposed variables.Comment: 5 page

Automobile ride quality experiments correlated to iso-weighted criteria

As part of an overall study to evaluate the usefulness of ride quality criteria for the design of improved ground transportation systems an experiment was conducted involving subjective and objective measurement of ride vibrations found in an automobile riding over roadways of various roughness. Correlation of the results led to some very significant relationships between passenger rating and ride accelerations. The latter were collapsed using a frequency-weighted root mean square measure of the random vibration. The results suggest the form of a design criterion giving the relationship between ride vibration and acceptable automobile ride quality. Further the ride criterion is expressed in terms that relate to rides with which most people are familiar. The design of the experiment, the ride vibration data acquisition, the concept of frequency weighting and the correlations found between subjective and objective measurements are presented

System identification, time series analysis and forecasting:The Captain Toolbox handbook.

CAPTAIN is a MATLAB compatible toolbox for non stationary time series analysis, system identification, signal processing and forecasting, using unobserved components models, time variable parameter models, state dependent parameter models and multiple input transfer function models. CAPTAIN also includes functions for true digital control

Proportional-integral-plus (PIP) control of time delay systems

The paper shows that the digital proportional-integral-plus (PIP) controller formulated within the context of non-minimum state space (NMSS) control system design methodology is directly equivalent, under certain non-restrictive pole assignment conditions, to the equivalent digital Smith predictor (SP) control system for time delay systems. This allows SP controllers to be considered within the context of NMSS state variable feedback control, so that optimal design methods can be exploited to enhance the performance of the SP controller. Alternatively, since the PIP design strategy provides a more flexible approach, which subsumes the SP controller as one option, it provides a superior basis for general control system design. The paper also discusses the robustness and disturbance response characteristics of the two PIP control structures that emerge from the analysis and demonstrates the efficacy of the design methods through simulation examples and the design of a climate control system for a large horticultural glasshouse system