4,566 research outputs found
Application of the aerodynamic energy concept to flutter suppression and gust alleviation by use of active controls
The effects of active controls on flutter suppression and gust alleviation of the Arava twin turboprop STOL transport and the Westwind twinjet business transport are investigated. The active control surfaces are introduced in pairs which include, in any chosen wing strip, a 20-percent chord leading-edge control and a 20-percent chord trailing-edge control. Each control surface is driven by a combined linear-rotational sensor system located on the activated strip. The control law is based on the concept of aerodynamic energy and utilizes previously optimized control law parameters based on two-dimensional aerodynamic theory. The best locations of the activated system along the span of the wing are determined for bending-moment alleviation, reduction in fuselage accelerations, and flutter suppression. The effectiveness of the activated system over a wide range of maximum control deflections is also determined. Two control laws are investigated. The first control law utilizes both rigid-body and elastic contributions of the motion. The second control law employs primarily the elastic contribution of the wing and leads to large increases in the activated control effectiveness as compared with the basic control law. The results indicate that flutter speed can be significantly increased (over 70 percent increase) and that the bending moment due to gust loading can be almost totally eliminated by a control system of about 10 to 20 percent span with reasonable control-surface rotations
Mechanisms and Observations of Coronal Dimming for the 2010 August 7 Event
Coronal dimming of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission has the potential to be
a useful forecaster of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). As emitting material
leaves the corona, a temporary void is left behind which can be observed in
spectral images and irradiance measurements. The velocity and mass of the CMEs
should impact the character of those observations. However, other physical
processes can confuse the observations. We describe these processes and the
expected observational signature, with special emphasis placed on the
differences. We then apply this understanding to a coronal dimming event with
an associated CME that occurred on 2010 August 7. Data from the Solar Dynamics
Observatory's (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and EUV Variability
Experiment (EVE) are used for observations of the dimming, while the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph
(LASCO) and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory's (STEREO) COR1 and
COR2 are used to obtain velocity and mass estimates for the associated CME. We
develop a technique for mitigating temperature effects in coronal dimming from
full-disk irradiance measurements taken by EVE. We find that for this event,
nearly 100% of the dimming is due to mass loss in the corona
Thermal to Nonthermal Energy Partition at the Early Rise Phase of Solar Flares
In some flares the thermal component appears much earlier than the nonthermal
component in X-ray range. Using sensitive microwave observations we revisit
this finding made by Battaglia et al. (2009) based on RHESSI data analysis. We
have found that nonthermal microwave emission produced by accelerated electrons
with energy of at least several hundred keV, appears as early as the thermal
soft X-ray emission indicative that the electron acceleration takes place at
the very early flare phase. The non-detection of the hard X-rays at that early
stage of the flares is, thus, an artifact of a limited RHESSI sensitivity. In
all considered events, the microwave emission intensity increases at the early
flare phase. We found that either thermal or nonthermal gyrosynchrotron
emission can dominate the low-frequency part of the microwave spectrum below
the spectral peak occurring at 3-10 GHz. In contrast, the high-frequency
optically thin part of the spectrum is always formed by the nonthermal,
accelerated electron component, whose power-law energy spectrum can extend up
to a few MeV at this early flare stage. This means that even though the total
number of accelerated electrons is small at this stage, their nonthermal
spectrum is fully developed. This implies that an acceleration process of
available seed particles is fully operational. While, creation of this seed
population (the process commonly called `injection' of the particles from the
thermal pool into acceleration) has a rather low efficiency at this stage,
although, the plasma heating efficiency is high. This imbalance between the
heating and acceleration (in favor of the heating) is difficult to reconcile
within most of available flare energization models. Being reminiscent of the
tradeoff between the Joule heating and runaway electron acceleration, it puts
additional constraints on the electron injection into the acceleration process.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, accepted for Ap
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