Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

A novel adaptive model-based predictive controller for attitude and trajectory tracking of a vertical take-off and landing(VTOL) aircraft in the simultaneous presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances is introduced in this study. Animportant challenge of designing the model-based controllers is developing an accurate model, especially in the presence ofmodel uncertainties. In this study, first, the nominal model of a ducted-fan air vehicle, which is a multi-input multi-outputnonlinear system with non-minimum phase behaviour, is given as the test case of this research. After that, two modified robustand adaptive model predictive controllers are proposed for tracking a... 

The development of a multiple model-based identification algorithm is addressed in this paper for nonlinear modeling of a conventional aircraft in the entire flight envelope. The dynamic model of an aircraft varies significantly depending on changes in the flight condition of the air vehicle including the altitude and the equivalent air speed. Therefore, the conventional identification approaches for generating a single nonlinear model with time-invariant parameters cannot be used in the entire flight envelope of an aircraft. Accordingly, a multiple model-based approach using nonlinear autoregressive exogenous neural networks is introduced in this paper as a powerful tool in identifying... 

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,... 

With the exception of a few works, the current approaches to aerial manipulation control do not typically consider the system constraints in the control design process. Also, the issue of closed-loop stability in the presence of system constraints is not thoroughly analyzed. In this paper, a novel multi-stage model predictive control (MPC)-based approach for aerial manipulation is proposed to ensure the closed-loop stability in the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances, while satisfying the operational constraints. The detailed nonlinear model of a general aerial manipulator, consisting of a quadrotor equipped with a 3 degrees of freedom manipulator, is first developed... 

This paper presents the research works on the cyclic behavior of trapezoidally corrugated as well as unstiffened steel shear walls. A series of experimental studies were carried out on the half-scale, one-story, single-bay steel shear walls with unstiffened and trapezoidally corrugated panels. This experimental study was conducted to compare the stiffness, strength, ductility ratio and energy dissipation capacity of three different steel shear walls: unstiffened, trapezoidally vertical corrugated and trapezoidally horizontal corrugated. Gravity loads were not applied at the top of the walls and horizontal load was applied at the top of each specimen. Loading sequence was applied as... 

As the first review in this field, this paper presents an in-depth mathematical view of Intelligent Flight Control Systems (IFCSs), particularly those based on artificial neural networks. The rapid evolution of IFCSs in the last two decades in both the methodological and technical aspects necessitates a comprehensive view of them to better demonstrate the current stage and the crucial remaining steps towards developing a truly intelligent flight management unit. To this end, in this paper, we will provide a detailed mathematical view of Neural Network (NN)-based flight control systems and the challenging problems that still remain. The paper will cover both the model-based and model-free... 

An exact planar solution for the determination of electroelastic responses are presented for functionally graded piezoelectricmaterials (FGPMs). The electro-mechanical properties are assumed to vary exponentially. Exploiting the potential functions for stress and induction, the governing equations reduce to systems of fourth order inhomogeneous partial differential equations (PDEs), which are solved in a closed form manner. Validity of the obtained solution is checked by other existing results in the literatures. Several examples are provided under distinctive thermo-electro-mechanical loadings. Finally, the effect of the graded indices is examined upon the electroelastic response of the FGP... 

The corrosion process of two iron dagger handles decorated with bronze strips found from the Ziviyeh area, which is one of the important Iron Age sites in the northwest of Iran, is thoroughly investigated. X-ray radiography was used to obtain the damages and corrosion zones of the artifact. Optical and scanning electron microscopies were used to study the microstructure of cross sections and to achieve structural details about the metal matrix and corrosion layers. The X-ray diffraction method was used to study the chemical characterization of corrosion products. The results of studies have shown that severe stress on bronze strips is caused by the formation of goethite and lepidocrocite... 

This article presents a novel identification approach which can deal with nonlinear and time-varying characteristics of complex dynamic systems, especially an aerial vehicle in the entire flight envelope. A set of local sub-models are first developed at different operating points of the system, and subsequently a self-organizing multi-model ensemble is introduced to aggregate the outputs of the local models as a single model. The number of employed local models in the proposed multi-model ensemble is optimized using a novel self-organizing approach. Also, wavelet neural networks, which combine both the universal approximation property of neural networks and the wavelet decomposition... 

Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) powders were synthesized by a sol-gel auto-combustion method using cationic and anionic surfactants with different values and different calcination times and temperatures. The final products were characterized by DTA/TG, XRD, TEM and VSM techniques. The results showed a decrease in calcination temperature and crystallite size in the presence of a cationic surfactant, while no significant effect was observed using an anionic surfactant. Magnetic properties of YIG powders were improved as an optimum value of cationic surfactant was used  

Different ways have been presented to prevent elastic buckling of steel shear walls. One of these solutions is corrugated shear wall. In this type of wall, shear buckling strength increases without increasing the thickness of the panel. Numerical modeling results indicate that, always, shear buckling strength of corrugated panels is more than the flat panels and with the right choice of the geometric parameters of corrugated panels; without increasing the thickness of the panel, we can improve buckling strength significantly. In the trapezoidal corrugated panels, reducing the width of the subpanels do not always increase buckling strength of the panel, but it changes the panel buckling shape... 

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) encourage the use of various Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) strategies, which can help reduce onsite construction time, minimize traffic and environmental impacts, improve work zone safety, and deliver longer lasting and more durable bridges. ABC approaches include the application of technical innovations and management techniques. The decision to use ABC must be made on a project-by-project basis as each bridge location is unique, and factors constraining each project are different. Toward this end, FHWA developed a qualitative decision making framework called... 

In this work we present the effective field theory of primordial statistical anisotropies generated during anisotropic inflation involving a background U(1) gauge field. Besides the usual Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of time diffeomorphism we have two additional Goldstone bosons associated with the breaking of spatial diffeomorphisms. We further identify these two new Goldstone bosons with the expected two transverse degrees of the U(1) gauge field fluctuations. Upon defining the appropriate unitary gauge, we present the most general quadratic action which respects the remnant symmetry in the unitary gauge. The interactions between various Goldstone bosons leads to... 

An adaptive neural guidance and control system is proposed in this paper for a generic fixed-wing aerial robot. Unlike most of the existing low-level control systems, which utilize a non-adaptive guidance loop, in this work both the guidance and control loops are trained using an efficient adaptive neural algorithm. A feedforward neural network is employed in each loop to identify uncertain dynamics, while an adaptive disturbance observer allows to compensate for both the external disturbances and estimation error of the neural network. This would lead to a resilient flight control system, and thus, the asymptotic stability of both the guidance and control loops can be theoretically ensured... 

Holding yokes made of investment cast 17-4PH stainless steel were too soft (below 20. HRC). Optical microscopy of the parts showed that there is a high fraction of retained austenite after oil quench due to high amount of molybdenum found in parts as an impurity. Subzero treatment in liquid nitrogen after solution heat treating was used to convert retained austenite to martensite but parts became too brittle and fractured during post-heat treating machining. Double and triple aging at 538 °C (1000 °F) after subzero cooling was done on parts. Detailed fractography and tensile testing along with optical microscopy (OM) investigation proved that repeated aging at 538 °C (1000 °F) led to lower...