A study of the effect of forcing function characteristics on human operator dynamics in manual control

The effect of the spectrum of the forcing function on the human pilot dynamics in manual control was investigated. A simple compensatory tracking experiment was conducted, where the controlled element was of a second-order dynamics and the forcing function was a random noise having a dominant frequency. The dominant frequency and the power of the forcing function were two variable parameters during the experiment. The results show that the human pilot describing functions are dependent not only on the dynamics of the controlled element, but also on the characteristics of the forcing function. This suggests that the human pilot behavior should be expressed by the transfer function taking into consideration his ability to sense and predict the forcing function

Motion cue effects on human pilot dynamics in manual control

Two experiments were conducted to study the motion cue effects on human pilots during tracking tasks. The moving-base simulator of National Aerospace Laboratory was employed as the motion cue device, and the attitude director indicator or the projected visual field was employed as the visual cue device. The chosen controlled elements were second-order unstable systems. It was confirmed that with the aid of motion cues the pilot workload was lessened and consequently the human controllability limits were enlarged. In order to clarify the mechanism of these effects, the describing functions of the human pilots were identified by making use of the spectral and the time domain analyses. The results of these analyses suggest that the sensory system of the motion cues can yield the differential informations of the signal effectively, which coincides with the existing knowledges in the physiological area

Wake structure and kinematics in the vortex ring state

High-resolution computational simulations of the vortical wake of a rotor operating both near to and within the vortex ring state have been conducted using Brown's vorticity transport model. The nonlinear vortex kinematics of the wake is exposed using three-dimensional visualizations of the simulated flow field. To reveal the vortex dynamics that underpin the highly unsteady flow within the vortex ring state, a rotor with just one blade was modeled. This blade was decoupled aerodynamically from the surrounding velocity field so that it acted merely as a source of trailed vorticity. The investigation identified a significant change in the dominant dynamics of the wake as it swapped fromthe tubular form that is characteristic of hover or very lowspeed descent into the toroidal geometry of the vortex ring state. Initial vortex 'pairing' leads to rotation of vortex filaments away from their original attitude. This phenomenon plays an important role in regulating the downwash that the rotor can produce and thus in precipitating the onset of the vortex ring state. The considerable and persistent coherence of the vortical structure of the wake when in the vortex ring state is revealed, despite these disturbances, as are themechanisms that lead to both small-scale and large-scale wake breakdown events. Simulations show the balance between the vortex pairing and short-wave instability modes to be different in the vortex ring state at high descent speed, where the wake lies above the rotor, compared to in the vortex ring state at low descent speed when the wake lies predominantly below the rotor. This yields subtle differences to the kinematics and structure of the wake in the two cases

Generic transport coefficients of a confined electrolyte solution

Physical parameters characterising electrokinetic transport in a confined electrolyte solution are reconstructed from the generic transport coefficients obtained within the classical non-equilibrium statistical thermodynamic framework. The electro-osmotic flow, the diffusio-osmotic flow, the osmotic current, as well as the pressure-driven Poiseuille-type flow, the electric conduction, and the ion diffusion, are described by this set of transport coefficients. The reconstruction is demonstrated for an aqueous NaCl solution between two parallel charged surfaces with a nanoscale gap, by using the molecular dynamic (MD) simulations. A Green-Kubo approach is employed to evaluate the transport coefficients in the linear-response regime, and the fluxes induced by the pressure, electric, and chemical potential fields are compared with the results of non-equilibrium MD simulations. Using this numerical scheme, the influence of the salt concentration on the transport coefficients is investigated. Anomalous reversal of diffusio-osmotic current, as well as that of electro-osmotic flow, is observed at high surface charge densities and high added-salt concentrations.Comment: 6 pages with 6 figure

Coarse-grained model for spring friction study of micron-scale iron by smoothed particle hydrodynamics

The paper constructs a coarse-grained model to investigate dry sliding friction of the body-centered-cubic Fe micron-scale system by smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations and examines influences of the spring force on the characters of friction. The N_atom = 864 \times 10^12 atoms Fe system is coarse-grained into the two different simple-cubic particle systems, one of 432000 and the other of 16000 particles. From the detection of stick-slip motion, friction coefficient, dependence of friction coefficient on isotropy or anisotropy of the spring force and externally applied normal load, we find that the coarse-grained model is a reasonable modeling process for study of friction of the Fe system and the anisotropic behavior presents better friction of the system than the isotropic one