Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

Special attention is given to vertical takeoff and landing air vehicles due to their unique capabilities and versatile missions. The main problem here is control effectiveness at low flight speeds and transition maneuvers because of the inherent instability. 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. In the current study, a comprehensive nonlinear model is firstly developed for RMIT, followed by a validation process. This model consists of all parts including aerodynamic forces and moments, control surfaces term together with the gravity and driving fan forces.... 

This study presents a comprehensive control framework to ensure desired loading margin (LM) while minimising the corresponding control cost. The proposed framework is divided into corrective control (CC) and preventive control (PC) subproblems. The CC subproblem deals with the condition that a power system encounters voltage instability as a result of severe contingencies. This control is merely devised to restore system stability. The PC subproblem is brought up when the system operates in a stable region but its LM is insufficient. In this manner, the system-operating point is changed such that the desired LM is achieved. One of the features of the proposed methodology is to consider... 

In this paper, a novel decentralized adaptive control scheme for multiagent formation control is proposed based on an integration of artificial potential functions with robust control techniques. Fully actuated mobile agents with partially unknown models are considered, where an adaptive fuzzy logic system is used to approximate the unknown system dynamics. The robust performance criterion is used to attenuate the adaptive fuzzy approximation error and external disturbances to a prescribed level. The advantages of the proposed controller can be listed as robustness to input nonlinearity, external disturbances, and model uncertainties, and applicability on a large diversity of autonomous... 

A friction damper device (FDD) is used for vibration control of an existing steel jacket platform under seismic excitation. First, the damping is presented for vibration mitigation of structures located in seismically active zones. A new method for quick design of friction or yielding damping devices is presented. The effectiveness of the damping system employing such FDDs in a jacket platform is evaluated numerically. The influence of key parameters of the damping system on the vibration suppression of the offshore structure is studied in detail. To examine the vibration control effectiveness of the FDD for the jacket platform, performance of the controlled structure under the seismic... 

Thermal optimization of the vertical continuous casting process is considered in the present study. The goal is to find the optimal distribution of the temperature and interfacial heat transfer coefficients corresponding to the primary and secondary cooling systems, in addition to the pulling speed, such that the solidification along the main axis of strand approaches to the unidirectional solidification mode. Unlike many thermal optimization of phase change problems in which the desirable (target) temperature, temperature gradient, or interface position are assumed to be a priori known, a desirable shape feature of the freezing interface (not its explicit position) is assumed to be known in...