Sharif Digital Repository

Matching diagram is a key part of the conceptual design process to determine the wing area and the required power. However, it requires drag polar estimation and the assumption of maximum lift coefficient. In case of conventional manned aircraft, early estimation techniques are based on statistical data that are not suitable for hand-launched aircraft. In this study, it has been attempted to present the performance calculations and a proper conceptual design model by acquiring sound values for the aerodynamic coefficients in low Reynolds number, using statistical wetted area as well as a raw design of fuselage, wing and tails. The process is applied to a sample scenario and the results are... 

In this paper, designing of the LQR controller and observer with intelligent tools for the triple inverted pendulum is investigated. Intelligent tools are considered as GA and GA-PSO optimization algorithms and fuzzy logic to qualify achieving LQR gains. The pendulum is swung up from the vertical position to the unstable position. The rules for the controlled swing up are heuristically achieved such that each swing results are controlled. The inverted pendulum and cart system are modeled and constructed their equation based on energy method. Also, the performances of the proposed fuzzy logic controller, GA and GA-PSO tuning LQR gains are investigated and compared. Simulation results show... 

This paper summarizes a research project in the field of design and manufacturing of a water brake dynamometer for power testing facilities. In the current study, the design process of a water brake with drilled rotor disks is presented. This process is examined against the development of a water brake for a 4MW gas turbine power measurement at 15,000 RPM speed. The proposed algorithm is based on vital assumptions such as; applying product designing issues and limited modular analysis that urges the disciplinary attitude and leads to the possibility of rapid development, easy maintenance and ease of access. The final scheme is divided into six disciplines with functional classification.... 

Variable speed wind turbines are widely used in the modern power industry. These turbines that are usually driven by doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs) contain two groups of controlling variables; mechanical variables like pitch angle and electrical variables like rotor voltage. During the turbine operation, with variable wind velocity, power must be managed in two regimes; power optimisation and power limitation. In the current research, initially a non-linear simulation, based on the general wind turbine dynamic model is presented. Then, the desired controllers for both pitch angle and generator voltage components are constructed. After designing the controller, in order to... 

This paper describes latest results obtained on modeling, simulation and controller design of an insect-like Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle (FWMAV). Because of the highly nonlinear and time varying nature of insect flight and the inability to find an equilibrium point, linearization of the model without compromising the accuracy is not possible. Therefore, to address the problem of designing a controller capable of stabilizing and controlling the FWMAV around a hovering point, a metaheuristic optimization approach is proposed, based on the time averaging theorem. The results show that a controller, designed using the proposed method, is capable of stabilizing the FWMAV effectively around... 

System Identification is a key technology for the development and integration of modern engineering systems including unconventional flying vehicles. These systems are highly parametric with complex dynamics and nonlinearities. Ducted fans are special class of these vehicles that can take off vertically, hover and cruise at very low speed. In this paper, an exact equivalent linear system is found from the non-linear dynamic model of a ducted fan by use of frequency response identification. Here, power spectral density analysis is performed, using CIFER software, to evaluate the input-output responses in hover and to derive the transfer functions based on the coherence criterion. Then,... 

The laser forming process is one of the last technologies on forming of sheet metals with laser beam heat distribution. In this process laser beam moves across the top surface of the sheet metal and the heated zone expands and causes a great moment that deforms the sheet metal. Subsequently, the heated zone gets cooled and provides a reverse strain and moment. The final bending angle is a combination of two phases. Due to the complexity of the process, it is studied with different approaches; FEM analysis and analytical as well as empirical methods. The laser forming is a sensible process regarding the material properties. Also, because of the temperature change during the process, it is... 

This paper presents an offline path planning method in 3D space for a surveillance aerial vehicle. In this method, the aerial vehicle is supposed to visit particular points on the path, and the collision between the vehicle and the fixed obstacles in the environment must be avoided. In order to accomplish the mission, first, the path is generated using B-splines. Then, the feasibility of tracking the designed path for the vehicle is considered by analyzing the vehicle's dynamic constraints, such as limitations on deflections of control surfaces. The analysis is supported by a simulation. Potential extension of the proposed analysis to multiple aerial vehicles has been also discussed at the... 

Ducted fan aerial vehicles have drawn many attentions in the world because of their successful involvement in non-traditional reconnaissance and surveillance missions. However, due to inherent dynamic uncertainties as well as inconsistent responses, significant control challenges are still to be addressed. In this study, a non-linear dynamic model for ducted fan is firstly proposed to be employed for control design. This model is then validated by performing a series of standard simulation scenarios. Afterwards, an adaptive control method, named as model reference is utilized to design perfect controllers in hover as well as vertical flight. The capability of the adaptive laws to update the... 

This paper presents a novel method fortuning the parameters of an sliding mode (SM) controller to obtain near-optimal performance. In order to do so the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) was implemented on a linearized system. The input history of the LQR was used as a reference to obtain an optimal space for sliding mode controller parameters. Afterwards, the optimal space boundaries were dedicated to Genetic Algorithm (GA) to search for the optimal parameter for the nonlinear model. Also, the center of the obtained optimal space was used as an initial guess to the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) Algorithm. The proposed algorithm was implemented to regulate SM controller for the attitude... 

Variable speed wind turbines are widely used in the modern power industry. These turbines that are usually driven by doubly fed induction generators (DFIG) contain two groups of controlling variables; mechanical variables like pitch angle, and electrical variables like rotor voltage. During the turbine operation, with variable wind speed, power must be managed in two different regimes; power optimization and power limitation. In the current research, initially a non-linear simulation, based on the general wind turbine dynamic model is presented. Then, the desired controllers for both pitch angle and generator voltage components are constructed. To validate turbine behavior and controller... 

In This paper detailed frequency-domain system identification method is applied to identify steering dynamics of a naval coastal patrol vessel using a data analysis software tool, called CIFER. Advanced features such as Chirp-Z transform and composite windowing techniques are used to extract high quality frequency responses. An accurate, linear and robust transfer function models are derived for yaw and roll dynamics of the vessel. In addition, to evaluate the accuracy of the identified model, time-domain responses from a 45-45 zig-zag test are compared with the responses predicted by the identified model. The model shows excellent predictive capability that is well suited for simulation... 

A comparison of three common controllers for stabilising a vertical take-off and landing air vehicle is presented. RMIT is a small sized tail-sitter ducted fan air vehicle with a particular configuration layout, multiple control surfaces, low weight, and high-speed flight capability. The main problem here is control effectiveness at low flight speeds and transition manoeuvres because of the inherent instability. In the current study, a comprehensive nonlinear model is firstly developed for RMIT, followed by a validation process. Subsequently, linear, adaptive and model predictive controllers are designed in vertical flight. Based on the simulation results, it is shown that the linear... 

The performance of Co-flow fluidic thrust vectoring is a function of secondary flow characteristics and the fluidic nozzle geometry. In terms of nozzle geometry, wall shape and the secondary slot aspect ratio are the main parameters that control the vector angle. The present study aims to find a high quality wall shape to achieve the best thrust vectoring performance, which is characterized by the maximum thrust deflection angle with respect to the injected secondary air. A 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is employed to investigate the flow characteristics in thrust vectoring system. This model is validated using experimental data collected from the deflection of exhaust gases of... 

In this paper, a multiple model-based nonlinear identification approach is introduced for a conventional aircraft in the presence of different types of actuator faults. Occurrence of actuator faults can obviously reduce the validity of a predetermined dynamic model of nonlinear systems. In such cases, use of multi-model structures can be an effective choice. However, determining the optimal validity functions of the local models in a multi-model structure is still a challenging problem. This problem becomes even more challenging in case of unpredictable faults, which are not considered in training the local models. In this paper, two effective techniques are proposed for online determination... 

This research deals with developing an intelligent trajectory tracking control approach for an aircraft in the presence of internal and external disturbances. Internal disturbances including actuators faults, unmodeled dynamics, and model uncertainties as well as the external disturbances such as wind turbulence significantly affect the performance of the common trajectory tracking control approaches. There are several fault-tolerant control approaches in the literature to overcome the effects of specific actuator or sensor faults during the flight. However, trajectory tracking control of an air vehicle in the presence of unexpected faults and simultaneous presence of wind turbulence is... 

A novel fault-tolerant model predictive control (MPC)-based trajectory tracking approach for an aerial vehicle is presented in this study. A generalised online sequential extreme learning machine is introduced first to identify the corresponding coefficients of actuator faults. Subsequently, a robust trajectory tracking control is developed based on MPC, where the system constraints can be effectively considered in the designed control scheme. Trajectory tracking control is achieved by controlling only the acceleration of the aerial robot in the MPC structure. This leads to less computational burden and faster closed-loop dynamics. In addition, an effective disturbance observer is employed,... 

Three novel methods, named α, ζ and ϵ, are suggested in this paper to recover the performance loss during switching in the gas turbine control systems. The Minimum Command Selection (MCS) in the gas turbine control systems prompts this performance loss. Any step towards more productivity with less aging factors have a great impact on the gas turbine's lifetime profit and vice versa. Although many hardware upgrades have been studied and applied to accomplish this, in many cases a low-risk manipulation in the software may yield equivalent achievement. State of the art gas turbine control systems are supposed to handle various forms of disturbances, several operation modes and relatively high... 

The feasibility of integrating co-flow fluidic thrust-vectoring idea into the dynamics of a small flapless aerial tail-sitter is investigated in this article. The aircraft trimmability in different phases of flight and stability in take-off and level flight, are the main issues of concern for the study presented herein. In this respect, the vehicle's characteristic equations are derived by linearization of the general non-linear equations of motion. Since the vehicle was supposed to be merely controlled by fluidic thrust-vectoring, the concept was novel and some new derivatives are introduced. Margins of the required thrust-vector angle, to obtain a steady-state flight condition, are... 

This paper describes a feasibility study of using numerical analysis technique, coupled with a non-linear simulation model of a conceptual fluidic-thrust-vectored unmanned aerial tailsitter to obtain required thrust deflection angles for a transition manoeuvre in take-off. It also studies the aircraft behaviour in transition subjected to the changes in specified parameters like the thrust value and the engine distance from the centre of gravity. The focus of the research presented was to get the vehicle from zero speed on the ground, in vertical position, to a specified velocity at a specified attitude, in cruise position. It was also specified that, when the vehicle was considered to be...