A robust loop-shaping approach to fast and accurate nanopositioning

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Control of a magnetic microrobot navigating in microfluidic arterial bifurcations through pulsatile and viscous flow

International audienceNavigating in bodily fluids to perform targeted diagnosis and therapy has recently raised the problem of robust control of magnetic microrobots under real endovascular conditions. Various control approaches have been proposed in the literature but few of them have been experimentally validated. In this paper, we point out the problem of navigation controllability of magnetic microrobots in high viscous fluids and under pulsatile flow for endovascular applications. We consider the experimental navigation along a desired trajectory, in a simplified millimeter-sized arterial bifurcation, operating in fluids at the low-Reynolds-number regime where viscous drag significantly dominates over inertia. Different viscosity environments are tested (ranging from 100\% water-to-100\% glycerol) under a systolic pulsatile flow compatible with heart beating. The control performances in terms tracking, robustness and stability are then experimentally demonstrated

Isoneutral control of effective diapycnal mixing in numerical ocean models with neutral rotated diffusion tensors

It is well known that there are infinite number of ways of constructing a globally-defined density variable for the ocean, with each possible density variable having a priori its own distinct diapycnal diffusivity. Because no globally-defined density variable can be exactly neutral, numerical ocean models tend to use rotated diffusion tensors mixing separately in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the local neutral vector at rates defined by the isoneutral and dianeutral mixing coefficients respectively. To constrain these mixing coefficients from observations, one widely used tool are inverse methods based on Walin-type water masses analyses. Such methods, however, can only constrain the diapycnal diffusivity of the globally defined density variable $\gamma$ —such as $\sigma_2$ —that underlies the inverse method. To use such a method to constrain the dianeutral mixing coefficient therefore requires understanding the relations between the different diapycnal diffusivities. However, this is complicated by the fact that the effective diapycnal diffusivity experienced by is necessarily partly controlled by isoneutral diffusion owing to the unavoidable misalignment between iso- surfaces and the neutral directions. Here, this effect is quantified by evaluating the effective diapycnal diffusion coefficient pertaining to five widely used density variables: Jackett and McDougall (1997) $\gamma^n$, Lorenz reference state density $\rho_{ref}$ of Saenz et al. (2015), and three potential density variables $\sigma_0$, $\sigma_2$ and $\sigma_4$. Computations are based on the World Ocean Circulation Experiment climatology, assuming either a uniform value for the isoneutral mixing coefficient or spatially varying values inferred from an inverse calculation. Isopycnal mixing 15 contributions to the effective diapycnal mixing yield values consistently larger than 10^(-3) m^2/s in the deep ocean for all density variables, with $\gamma^n$ suffering the least from the isoneutral control of effective diapycnal mixing, and $\sigma_0$ the most. These high values are due to spatially localised large values of non-neutrality, mostly in the deep Southern Ocean. Removing only 5% of these high values on each density surface reduces the effective diapycnal diffusivities to less than 10^(-4) m^2/s. The main implication of this work is to highlight the conceptual and practical difficulties of relating the diapycnal mixing diffusivities inferred from global budgets or inverse methods relying on Walin-like water mass analyses to locally defined dianeutral diffusivities. Doing so requires the ability to separate the relative contribution of isoneutral mixing from the effective diapycnal mixing. Because it corresponds to a special case of Walin-type water mass analysis, the determination of spurious diapycnal mixing based on monitoring the evolution of the Lorenz reference state may also be affected by the above issues when using a realistic nonlinear equation of state. The present results thus suggest that part of previously published spurious diapycnal mixing estimates could be due to isoneutral mixing contamination

Nonlinear modeling and robust controller-observer for a magnetic microrobot in a fluidic environment using MRI gradients

International audienceThis paper reports the use of a MRI device to pull a magnetic microrobot inside a vessel and control its trajectory. The bead subjected to magnetic and hydrodynamic forces is first modeled as a nonlinear control system. Then, a backstepping approach is discussed in order to synthesize a feedback law ensuring the stability along the controlled trajectory. We show that this control law, combined with a high gain observer, provides good tracking performances and robustness to measurement noise as well as to some matched uncertainties

Fiber Orientation and Concentration in an Injection-Molded Ethylene-Propylene Copolymer Reinforced by Hemp

This paper characterizes and analyzes the microstructures of injection-molded polypropylene parts reinforced with 20 wt% of hemp fibers in order to understand the process induced variations in thermomechanical properties. In-thickness fiber orientation and fiber content were determined by X-ray tomography along the flow. The fiber content along the flow path was also determined by direct fiber content measurements after matrix dissolution, showing an increase of 2%/100 mm for a 2.2 mm-thick plate due to fiber migration during the filling stage. A typical shell/core structure for fiber orientation in injection molding was observed, but with a very clear transition between the layer solidified under high shear rates and the core in which the fiber content was reduced by more than 50%. The orientation of hemp fibers is lower than the one of glass fibers, especially in thickness direction. However, the overall fiber orientation in the injection direction induces significant anisotropic thermomechanical properties, which cannot be explained by simple micromechanical models that consider isotropic mechanical properties for hemp fibers. These phenomena must be taken into account in process simulation codes for injection molding to better predict thermomechanical properties as well as part shrinkage and warpage to design molds.This paper characterizes and analyzes the microstructures of injection-molded polypropylene parts reinforced with 20 wt% of hemp fibers in order to understand the process induced variations in thermomechanical properties. In-thickness fiber orientation and fiber content were determined by X-ray tomography along the flow. The fiber content along the flow path was also determined by direct fiber content measurements after matrix dissolution, showing an increase of 2%/100 mm for a 2.2 mm-thick plate due to fiber migration during the filling stage. A typical shell/core structure for fiber orientation in injection molding was observed, but with a very clear transition between the layer solidified under high shear rates and the core in which the fiber content was reduced by more than 50%. The orientation of hemp fibers is lower than the one of glass fibers, especially in thickness direction. However, the overall fiber orientation in the injection direction induces significant anisotropic thermomechanical properties, which cannot be explained by simple micromechanical models that consider isotropic mechanical properties for hemp fibers. These phenomena must be taken into account in process simulation codes for injection molding to better predict thermomechanical properties as well as part shrinkage and warpage to design molds.This research was funded by the Association Nationale Recherche Technologie, France, based on the decision number 2017/1103 and Faurecia company

The performance of spherical wavelets to detect non-Gaussianity in the CMB sky

We investigate the performance of spherical wavelets in discriminating between standard inflationary models (Gaussian) and non-Gaussian models. For the later we consider small perturbations of the Gaussian model in which an artificially specified skewness or kurtosis is introduced through the Edgeworth expansion. By combining all the information present in all the wavelet scales with the Fisher discriminant, we find that the spherical Mexican Hat wavelets are clearly superior to the spherical Haar wavelets. The former can detect levels of the skewness and kurtosis of ~1% for 33' resolution, an order of magnitude smaller than the later. Also, as expected, both wavelets are better for discriminating between the models than the direct consideration of moments of the temperature maps. The introduction of instrumental white noise in the maps, S/N=1, does not change the main results of this paper.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted by MNRAS with minor change