The most cited articles published since 2009, extracted from Scopus
Volume 45, Issues 1-3, January 2009, Pages 50-79
Alexander I J Forrester | Andy J. Keane
The evaluation of aerospace designs is synonymous with the use of long running and computationally intensive simulations. This fuels the desire to harness the efficiency of surrogate-based methods in aerospace design optimization. Recent advances in surrogate-based design methodology bring the promise of efficient global optimization closer to reality. We review the present state of the art of constructing surrogate models and their use in optimization strategies. We make extensive use of pictorial examples and, since no method is truly universal, give guidance as to each method's strengths and weaknesses. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 7, October 2010, Pages 284-327
Wei Shyy | Hikaru Aono | Satish Kumar Chimakurthi | Pat C. Trizila | Changkwon Kang | Carlos E S Cesnik | Hao Liu
Micro air vehicles (MAVs) have the potential to revolutionize our sensing and information gathering capabilities in areas such as environmental monitoring and homeland security. Flapping wings with suitable wing kinematics, wing shapes, and flexible structures can enhance lift as well as thrust by exploiting large-scale vortical flow structures under various conditions. However, the scaling invariance of both fluid dynamics and structural dynamics as the size changes is fundamentally difficult. The focus of this review is to assess the recent progress in flapping wing aerodynamics and aeroelasticity. It is realized that a variation of the Reynolds number (wing sizing, flapping frequency, etc.) leads to a change in the leading edge vortex (LEV) and spanwise flow structures, which impacts the aerodynamic force generation. While in classical stationary wing theory, the tip vortices (TiVs) are seen as wasted energy, in flapping flight, they can interact with the LEV to enhance lift without increasing the power requirements. Surrogate modeling techniques can assess the aerodynamic outcomes between two-and three-dimensional wing. The combined effect of the TiVs, the LEV, and jet can improve the aerodynamics of a flapping wing. Regarding aeroelasticity, chordwise flexibility in the forward flight can substantially adjust the projected area normal to the flight trajectory via shape deformation, hence redistributing thrust and lift. Spanwise flexibility in the forward flight creates shape deformation from the wing root to the wing tip resulting in varied phase shift and effective angle of attack distribution along the wing span. Numerous open issues in flapping wing aerodynamics are highlighted. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 1-27
Thanasis K. Barlas | Gijs A M Van Kuik
This article presents a review of the state of the art and present status of active aeroelastic rotor control research for wind turbines. Using advanced control concepts to reduce loads on the rotor can offer great reduction to the total cost of wind turbines. With the increasing size of wind turbine blades, the need for more sophisticated load control techniques has induced the interest for locally distributed aerodynamic control systems with build-in intelligence on the blades. Such concepts are often named in popular terms 'smart structures' or 'smart rotor control'. The review covers the full span of the subject, starting from the need for more advanced control systems emerging from the operating conditions of modern wind turbines and current load reduction control capabilities. An overview of available knowledge and up-to date progress in application of active aerodynamic control is provided, starting from concepts, methods and achieved results in aerospace and helicopter research. Moreover, a thorough analysis on different concepts for smart rotor control applications for wind turbines is performed, evaluating available options for aerodynamic control surfaces, actuators (including smart materials), sensors and control techniques. Next, feasibility studies for wind turbine applications, preliminary performance evaluation and novel computational and experimental research approaches are reviewed. The potential of load reduction using smart rotor control concepts is shown and key issues are discussed. Finally, existing knowledge and future requirements on modeling issues of smart wind turbine rotors are discussed. This study provides an overview of smart rotor control for wind turbines, discusses feasibility of future implementation, quantifies key parameters and shows the challenges associated with such an approach. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 8, November 2010, Pages 342-352
Kalliopi Diamanti | Costas Soutis
In order for composite materials to be used more extensively in load carrying aircraft structures, they have to be maintained in a safe and economical manner. Critical flaws may be induced in the structure requiring repair before the next scheduled inspection. Continuous monitoring will significantly increase operational safety. The information acquired in real-time would also benefit the understanding on fracture mechanics of composites, improving the confidence in their use and broadening their applications. The cost of inspection is approximately one-third of acquiring and operating composite structures. In order to compete in the increasingly demanding area of aircraft structures cost effective techniques need to be developed. Large areas need to be scanned rapidly without removal of individual components, minimising the disruption of the structure's operation. In this paper a review of currently used inspection methods is presented and some examples are described where Lamb wave based scanning techniques have been used to identify internal damage in multi-layered composite structures. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 8, November 2010, Pages 388-400
Stanislav V. Gordeyev | Eric J. Jumper
A summary of research efforts for last several years on fluid-dynamics and aero-optics of hemisphere-on-cylinder turrets with flat and conformal windows is presented. The topology of flow behind turrets and both steady and unsteady sources of optical distortions are discussed. Scaling laws for levels of optical aberrations are proposed and results of several experimental studies are compared and discussed. Effects of passive and active flow control in mitigation of aero-optical environment around turrets, as well as current computational studies of aero-optics of turrets are summarized and discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 8, November 2010, Pages 329-341
Rapid increase in computing power has made a huge difference in scales and complexities of the problems in turbomachinery that we can tackle by use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). It is recognised, however, that there is always a need for developing efficient methods for applications to blade designs. In a design cycle, a large number of flow solutions are sought to interact iteratively or concurrently with various options, opportunities and constraints from other disciplines. This basic requirement for fast prediction methods in a multi-disciplinary design environment remains unchanged, regardless of computer speed. And it must be recognised that the multi-disciplinary nature of blading design increasingly influences outcomes of advanced gas turbine and aeroengine developments. Recently there has been considerable progress in the Fourier harmonic modelling method development for turbomachinery applications. The main driver is to develop efficient and accurate computational methodologies and working methods for prediction and analysis of unsteady effects on aerothermal performance (loading and efficiency) and aeroelasticity (blade vibration due to flutter and forced response) in turbomachinery. In this article, the developments and applications of this type of methods in the past 20 years or so are reviewed. The basic modelling assumptions and various forms of implementations for the temporal Fourier modelling approach are presented and discussed. Computational examples for realistic turbomachinery configurations/flow conditions are given to illustrate the validity and effectiveness of the approach. Although the major development has been in the temporal Fourier harmonic modelling, some recent progress in use of the spatial Fourier modelling is also described with demonstration examples. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 6, August 2011, Pages 450-479
Wen Yao | Xiaoqian Chen | WenCai Luo | Michel J L Van Tooren | Jian Guo
This paper presents a comprehensive review of Uncertainty-Based Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (UMDO) theory and the state of the art in UMDO methods for aerospace vehicles. UMDO has been widely acknowledged as an advanced methodology to address competing objectives of aerospace vehicle design, such as performance, cost, reliability and robustness. However the major challenges of UMDO, namely the computational complexity and organizational complexity caused by both time-consuming disciplinary analysis models and UMDO algorithms, still greatly hamper its application in aerospace engineering. In recent years there is a surge of research in this field aiming at solving these problems. The purpose of this paper is to review these existing approaches systematically, highlight research challenges and opportunities, and help guide future efforts. Firstly, the UMDO theory preliminaries are introduced to clarify the basic UMDO concepts and mathematical formulations, as well as provide a panoramic view of the general UMDO solving process. Then following the UMDO solving process, research progress of each key step is separately surveyed and discussed, specifically including uncertainty modeling, uncertainty propagation and analysis, optimization under uncertainty, and UMDO procedure. Finally some conclusions are given, and future research trends and prospects are discussed. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 46, Issue 7, October 2010, Pages 247-273
Israel Lopez | Nesrin Sarigul-Klijn
This paper presents a comprehensive review of uncertainties involved in flight vehicle structural damage monitoring, diagnosis, prognosis and control. Uncertainties can cause infeasibilities, false diagnosis and very imprecise prognosis if not correctly taken into account. The purpose of this paper is to review existing methods that have been developed to address the problem of uncertainty in the area of damage sensing, diagnosis, prognosis and control in flight vehicles. The mathematical and statistical methods in analyzing uncertainty are first presented and compared. Then, the different sources and perspectives of uncertainties in the damage assessment process are presented and classified. Following this, diagnosis and prognosis methods are reviewed. Final review section covers the control of damaged structure under uncertainty. In each section and in the concluding remarks section the research challenges in the field of flight vehicle structural damage sensing, diagnosis and prognosis methods as well as control under uncertainty are identified and promising new ideas are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 46, Issue 8, November 2010, Pages 353-387
Ramis Örlü | Jens H M Fransson | P. Henrik Alfredsson
The present review paper is an account on the experimental determination of the wall position relative to the probe in wall-bounded turbulent flow studies. A thorough review on common measurement techniques as well as correction methods reveals, that there are a number of pitfalls, thatwhen not accounted forcan lead to wrong conclusions about the wall position and thereby also on the near-wall behaviour of mean and turbulence quantities. Employing the state-of-the-art databases from direct numerical simulations of wall-bounded turbulent flows various indirect methods have been tested and assessed in terms of their robustness and accuracy. It is also demonstrated that accurate measurements reaching the viscous sublayer are necessary in order to ensure a correctly deduced wall position, and dependent quantities as for instance the near-wall scaling of mean (e.g. Reynolds number dependence of the buffer region or the log law constants) and turbulence (e.g. the near-wall peak location of Reynolds stresses) quantities. In experiments using hot-wires near the wall it is well known that heat conduction between the hot-wire and the wall gives errors and mean velocity data from the viscous sublayer can usually not be used to determine the wall position. In this paper we introduce a new method which takes advantage of the similarity of the probability density distributions (pdf) in the near wall region. By using the high velocity data of the pdf, which is shown not to be affected by heat conduction, the heat conduction problem can be circumvented. Extensive appendices are included, describing the history and present knowledge about the scaling of the mean velocity in the near wall and overlap regions in wall bounded turbulent flows. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 3, April 2011, Pages 186-216
Simon J. Lawson | George N. Barakos
High speed flows inside cavities are encountered in many aerospace applications including weapon bays of combat aircraft as well as landing gear. The flow field inside these cavities is associated with strong acoustic effects, unsteadiness and turbulence. With increasing emphasis on stealth operation of unmanned combat air vehicles and noise concerns near airports, cavity flows attracted the interest of many researchers in aerodynamics and aeroacoustics. Several attempts were made using wind tunnel experimentation and computational fluid dynamics analyses to understand the complex flow physics associated with cavity flows and alleviate their adverse effects via flow control. The problem proved to be complex, and current research revealed a very complex flow with several flow phenomena taking place. With the aid of experiments, CFD methods were validated and then used for simulations of several cavity configurations. The detached-eddy and large-eddy simulation methods proved invaluable for these studies and their application highlights the need for advanced turbulence simulation techniques in aerospace. The success of these methods and a summary of the current status of the experimental and computational progress over the past twenty years is summarised in this paper. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 15-52
Anuja Mahashabde | Philip J. Wolfe | Akshay Ashok | Christopher S. Dorbian | Qinxian He | Alice Fan | Stephen P. Lukachko | Aleksandra L. Mozdzanowska | Christoph Wollersheim | S. R. H. Barrett | Maryalice Locke | Ian A. Waitz
With the projected growth in demand for commercial aviation, many anticipate increased environmental impacts associated with noise, air quality, and climate change. Therefore, decision-makers and stakeholders are seeking policies, technologies, and operational procedures that balance environmental and economic interests. The main objective of this paper is to address shortcomings in current decision-making practices for aviation environmental policies. We review knowledge of the noise, air quality, and climate impacts of aviation, and demonstrate how including environmental impact assessment and quantifying uncertainties can enable a more comprehensive evaluation of aviation environmental policies. A comparison is presented between the cost-effectiveness analysis currently used for aviation environmental policy decision-making and an illustrative costbenefit analysis. We focus on assessing a subset of the engine NOX emissions certification stringency options considered at the eighth meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection. The FAA Aviation environmental Portfolio Management Tool (APMT) is employed to conduct the policy assessments. We show that different conclusions may be drawn about the same policy options depending on whether benefits and interdependencies are estimated in terms of health and welfare impacts versus changes in NOX emissions inventories as is the typical practice. We also show that these conclusions are sensitive to a variety of modeling uncertainties. While our more comprehensive analysis makes the best policy option less clear, it represents a more accurate characterization of the scientific and economic uncertainties underlying impacts and the policy choices.
Volume 55, Issue , November 2012, Pages 46-72
Joseba Murua | Rafael Palacios | Justin Michael R Graham
The unsteady vortex-lattice method provides a medium-fidelity tool for the prediction of non-stationary aerodynamic loads in low-speed, but high-Reynolds-number, attached flow conditions. Despite a proven track record in applications where free-wake modelling is critical, other less-computationally expensive potential-flow models, such as the doublet-lattice method and strip theory, have long been favoured in fixed-wing aircraft aeroelasticity and flight dynamics. This paper presents how the unsteady vortex-lattice method can be implemented as an enhanced alternative to those techniques for diverse situations that arise in flexible-aircraft dynamics. A historical review of the methodology is included, with latest developments and practical applications. Different formulations of the aerodynamic equations are outlined, and they are integrated with a nonlinear beam model for the full description of the dynamics of a free-flying flexible vehicle. Nonlinear time-marching solutions capture large wing excursions and wake roll-up, and the linearisation of the equations lends itself to a seamless, monolithic state-space assembly, particularly convenient for stability analysis and flight control system design. The numerical studies emphasise scenarios where the unsteady vortex-lattice method can provide an advantage over other state-of-the-art approaches. Examples of this include unsteady aerodynamics in vehicles with coupled aeroelasticity and flight dynamics, and in lifting surfaces undergoing complex kinematics, large deformations, or in-plane motions. Geometric nonlinearities are shown to play an instrumental, and often counter-intuitive, role in the aircraft dynamics. The unsteady vortex-lattice method is unveiled as a remarkable tool that can successfully incorporate all those effects in the unsteady aerodynamics modelling. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 45, Issues 4-5, May 2009, Pages 83-96
Lin Liao | Igor Pasternak
The research and development of diverse types of airships are reviewed in this paper. The early history of non-rigid, semi-rigid, and rigid airships is first introduced. It is followed by a description of a wide variety of unconventional airships with distinct features due to unique shape design, lifting gas, operation mode, or payload capability. The current ongoing airship projects in the world are summarized and the characteristics of hybrid airships and heavy-lift air vehicles are analyzed in greater detail because of the increasing interest in their development. The techniques of modeling, structural analysis, and simulation used during airship development are reviewed. Also, the optimization of airship body shape is briefly discussed. The main emphasis of this review is on the consideration of the structural aspects. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 45, Issues 1-3, January 2009, Pages 1-29
Thong Dang | Peter R. Bushnell
Cross-flow fans offer unique opportunities for distributed propulsion and flow control due to their potential for spanwise integration in aircraft wings. The fan may be fully or partially embedded within the wing using a variety of possible configurations. Its inlet may be used to ingest the boundary-layer flow, and its high-energy exhaust flow may be injected into the wake at the wing trailing edge for drag reduction or vectored thrust. Cross-flow fans are high-pressure coefficient machines, so they can be diametrically compact. However, their efficiency is fundamentally limited by unavoidable recirculation flows within the impeller at all flight speeds, and by additional compressibility losses at high speeds. This article reviews the fundamental aerodynamics and flow regions of cross-flow fans using a simple mean-line analysis to examine the basic energy transfer and loss processes. Experimental data for fans intended for aircraft application are then reviewed and compared to calculations using unsteady Navier-Stokes methods, showing the state-of-the art in flow field and performance prediction capability. Alternative prediction methods where blade action is modeled in terms of body-force or vortex elements are discussed, including challenges in handling arbitrary non-uniform, unsteady blade flows for various design configurations. The article concludes with a review of cross-flow fan propulsion and flow control concepts that have been investigated by various researchers, and with discussions on future challenges in their application. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 5, July 2011, Pages 369-391
Amir S. Gohardani | Georgios Doulgeris | Riti Singh
This paper highlights the role of distributed propulsion technology for future commercial aircraft. After an initial historical perspective on the conceptual aspects of distributed propulsion technology and a glimpse at numerous aircraft that have taken distributed propulsion technology to flight, the focal point of the review is shifted towards a potential role this technology may entail for future commercial aircraft. Technological limitations and challenges of this specific technology are also considered in combination with an all electric aircraft concept, as means of predicting the challenges associated with the design process of a next generation commercial aircraft. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 47, Issue 7, October 2011, Pages 546-569
Paul G. Tucker
The choice of turbulence model can have a strong impact on results for many turbomachinery zones. Palliative corrections to them and also transition modeling can have a further profound solution impact. The spectral gaps necessary for theoretically valid URANS solutions are also lacking in certain turbomachinery zones. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) alleviates the serious area of turbulence modeling uncertainty but with an extreme increase in computational cost. However, there seems a lack of validation data to explore in depth the performance of LES and thus strategies to refine it. LES best practices are needed. Although LES is, obviously, much less model dependent than RANS, grids currently used for more practical simulations are clearly insufficiently fine for the LES model and numerical schemes not to be playing an excessively strong role. Very few turbomachinery simulations make use of properly constructed, correlated turbulence inflow. Even if this is attempted, most measurement sets are incomplete and lack an adequate basis for modeling this inflow. Gas turbines are highly complex coupled systems and hence inflow and outflow boundary condition specification needs to go beyond just synthesizing turbulent structures and preventing their reflection. Despite the strong limitations of the dissipative Smagorinsky model, it still sees the most wide spread use, generally, in excessively dissipative flow solvers. Monotone Integrated LES (MILES) related approaches, hybrid LESRANS and more advanced LES models seem to have an equal but subservient frequency of use in turbomachinery applications. Clearly the introduction of a RANS layer can have a substantial accuracy penalty. However, it does allow LES to be rationally used, albeit in a diluted sense for industrial applications. The Reynolds numbers found in turbomachinery are substantial. However, in certain areas evidence suggests they will not be enough to ensure a long inertial subrange and hence the use of standard LES modeling practices. Despite the excessively coarse grids used in much of the LES work reviewed, with essentially RANS based codes, meaningful results are often gained. This can perhaps be attributed to the choice of cases, these being ones for which RANS modeling gives extremely poor performance. It is a concern that for practical turbomachinery LES studies grid densities used tend to have an Reynolds number scaling to a strong negative power. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 45, Issues 1-3, January 2009, Pages 30-49
Eric M. Braun | Frank Lu | Donald R. Wilson
Fifty years ago, publications began to discuss the possibilities of electromagnetic flow control (EMFC) to improve aerodynamic performance. This led to an era of research that focused on coupling the fundamentals of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with propulsion, control, and power generation systems. Unfortunately, very few designs made it past an exploratory phase as, among other issues, power consumption was unreasonably high. Recent proposed advancements in technology like the MARIAH hypersonic wind tunnel and the AJAX scramjet engine concepts have led to a new phase of MHD research in the aerospace industry, with many interdisciplinary applications. Compared with propulsion systems and channel flow accelerators, EMFC concepts applied to control surface aerodynamics have not seen the same level of advancement that may eventually produce a device that can be integrated with an aircraft or missile. The purpose of this paper is to review the overall feasibility of the different electric and EMFC concepts. Emphasis is placed on EMFC with high voltage ionization sources and experimental work. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 45, Issues 4-5, May 2009, Pages 97-123
Ganesh Raman | K. Srinivasan
Hartmann discovered the resonance tube phenomenon in 1918. Although researchers have conducted extensive studies on this topic during the intervening 90 years, no single resource lists, analyzes, synthesizes and interprets the vast body of findings. This review offers a consolidated resource tracing development of the Hartmann tube from discovery to recent advances in understanding, prediction and application of the resonance tube. This review (a) serves as a literature resource for researchers from diverse areas, (b) provides a critical assessment of the state of the art, and (c) provides examples of the vast possibilities for applying this device. Controlled flow-induced resonance can produce high-amplitude dynamic pressures and acoustic emission over a range of frequencies. Studies on such acoustic generators interested researchers during the last half of the 20th century. Hartmann demonstrated the possibility of obtaining high acoustic efficiencies when a jet is aimed at the open end of a tube closed at the other end. His work led to numerous other studies-some that examined the physics and others that developed geometric variants and explored industrial applications. In the last decade there has been renewed interest in powered resonance tubes (PRT) because of their potential as active flow control actuators. This article also evaluates the success of flow-control strategies using PRTs, and attempts to identify promising PRT applications. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 5, July 2011, Pages 392-423
Ken J. Badcock | Sebastian Timme | Simao Marques | Hamed Haddad Khodaparast | Marco Prandina | John E. Mottershead | Andrew C. Swift | Andrea Da Ronch | Mark A. Woodgate
In this paper the use of eigenvalue stability analysis of very large dimension aeroelastic numerical models arising from the exploitation of computational fluid dynamics is reviewed. A formulation based on a block reduction of the system Jacobian proves powerful to allow various numerical algorithms to be exploited, including frequency domain solvers, reconstruction of a term describing the fluidstructure interaction from the sparse data which incurs the main computational cost, and sampling to place the expensive samples where they are most needed. The stability formulation also allows non-deterministic analysis to be carried out very efficiently through the use of an approximate Newton solver. Finally, the system eigenvectors are exploited to produce nonlinear and parameterised reduced order models for computing limit cycle responses. The performance of the methods is illustrated with results from a number of academic and large dimension aircraft test cases. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 47, Issue 7, October 2011, Pages 522-545
Paul G. Tucker
There are numerous unsteady flow influences in turbomachinery. These can potentially make a substantial total impact on efficiency, and hence the environment and operating costs over the life of a gas turbine engine. These unsteadiness sources are reviewed. Also, the turbomachinery zones where unsteady modeling is mandatory for meaningful solutions is outlined. The various unsteady modeling hierarchies are reviewed. These range from linear harmonic to Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). Unsteady reduced order modeling encompassing deterministic stresses and body forces are reviewed. Hierarchies are presented for different modeling lineages and fidelity levels. Mixed fidelity methods are proposed, where low and high fidelity treatments are combined. For example, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Simulations (URANS) being combined with body forces to provide appropriate system boundary conditions. A daunting array of modeling and numerical methods and strategies are found for the user to select. Each has their own theoretical limitations. Clearly a user must be aware of these. Reported performances of the different approaches are found to vary considerably between relatively similar applications. The reviewed work suggests that Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), as ever, is an activity that needs strong reviewing of processes, tools and overseeing of modeling practices. With regard to LES, grid densities used for typical complex geometry simulations currently appear to be too coarse. This reflects the lack of current computational performance and hence the need for reduced order models. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 8, November 2011, Pages 597-620
Andrea Da Ronch | Mehdi Ghoreyshi | Ken J. Badcock
An approach for the generation of aerodynamic tables using computational fluid dynamics is discussed. For aircraft flight dynamics, forces and moments are often tabulated in multi-dimensional look-up tables, requiring a large number of calculations to fill the tables. A method to efficiently reduce the number of high-fidelity analyses is reviewed. The method uses a kriging-based surrogate model. Low-fidelity (computationally cheap) estimates are augmented with higher fidelity data. Data fusion combines the two datasets into one single database. The approach can also handle changes in aircraft geometry. Once constructed, the look-up tables can be used in real-time to fly the aircraft through the database. To demonstrate the capabilities of the framework presented, five test cases are considered. These include a transonic cruiser concept design, an unconventional configuration, two passenger jet aircraft, and a jet trainer aircraft. Investigations into the areas of flight handling qualities, stability and control characteristics and manoeuvring aircraft are made. To assess the accuracy of the simulations, numerical results are also compared with wind tunnel and flight test data. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 47, Issue 6, August 2011, Pages 425-449
Maged Y M Ahmed | Ning Qin
Among a variety of design requirements, reducing the drag and aeroheating on hypersonic vehicles is the most crucial one. Unfortunately, these two objectives are often conflicting. On one hand, sharp slender forebodies design reduces the drag and ensures longer ranges and more economic flights. However, they are more vulnerable to aerodynamic heating. On the other hand, blunt forebodies produce more drag, however, they are preferred as far as aeroheating is concerned. In addition, in the context of hypersonic vehicles, blunt geometries are preferred over slender ones for practical implications such as higher volumetric efficiency, better accommodation of crew or on-board equipment. In principle, a blunt vehicle flying at hypersonic speeds generates a strong bow shock wave ahead of its nose, which is responsible for the high drag and aeroheating levels. There have been a number of efforts devoted towards reducing both the drag and the aeroheating by modifying the flowfield ahead of the vehicles nose. Of these techniques, using spikes is the simplest and the most reliable technique. A spike is simply a slender rod attached to the stagnation point of the vehicles nose. The spike replaces the strong bow shock with a system of weaker shocks along with creating a zone of recirculating flow ahead of the forebody thus reducing both drag and aeroheating. Since their introduction to the high-speed vehicles domain in the late 1940s, spikes have been extensively studied using both experimental facilities and numerical simulation techniques. The present paper is devoted to surveying these studies and illustrating the contributions of the authors in this field. The paper also raises some of the areas in the field that need further investigations. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 51, Issue , May 2012, Pages 18-30
Christopher T. Orlowski | Anouck Renée Girard
The paper presents an overview of the various analyses of flight dynamics, stability, and control of flapping wing micro-air vehicles available in the literature. The potential benefits of flapping wing micro-air vehicles for civil, military, and search and rescue operations are numerous. The majority of the flight dynamics research involves the standard aircraft (6DOF) equations of motion, although a growth is evident in examining the multibody flight dynamics models of flapping wing micro-air vehicles. The stability of flapping wing micro-air vehicles is largely studied in the vicinity of hover and forward flight. The majority of stability studies focus on linear, time-invariant stability in the vicinity of reference flight conditions, such as hover or forward flight. The consistent result is that flapping wing micro-air vehicles are unstable in an open loop setting. The unstable result is based on linear and nonlinear stability analyses. Control has been demonstrated for hovering and forward flight through various methods, both linear and nonlinear in nature. The entirety of reported research into the stability and control of flapping wing micro-air vehicles has neglected the mass effects of the wings on the position and orientation of the central body. Successful control of a flapping wing micro-air vehicle, with the wings mass effects included, is still an open research area. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 53, Issue , August 2012, Pages 18-29
This paper discusses some trends and recent advances in model-based Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) for aerospace systems. The FDIR challenges range from pre-design and design stages for upcoming and new programs, to improvement of the performance of in-service flying systems. For space missions, optimization of flight conditions and safe operation is intrinsically related to GNC (Guidance, Navigation & Control) system of the spacecraft and includes sensors and actuators monitoring. Many future space missions will require autonomous proximity operations including fault diagnosis and the subsequent control and guidance recovery actions. For upcoming and future aircraft, one of the main issues is how early and robust diagnosis of some small and subtle faults could contribute to the overall optimization of aircraft design. This issue would be an important factor for anticipating the more and more stringent requirements which would come in force for future environmentally-friendlier programs. The paper underlines the reasons for a widening gap between the advanced scientific FDIR methods being developed by the academic community and technological solutions demanded by the aerospace industry. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 46, Issues 5-6, July 2010, Pages 224-245
Antonio Filippone | Nicholas Bojdo
This contribution addresses air particle separation technologies (EAPS) used for helicopter turboshaft engines that operate around unprepared airfields. Three key technologies are discussed. These are: vortex tube separators, inertial particle separators and inlet barrier filters. Some of these technologies are retrofitted or designed around specified airframes; other ones are an integral part of the turboshaft inlet design. For the vortex tubes, a complete review of the current intellectual property is reviewed, and a first-order theoretical model is presented to corroborate the performance of this technology. The inertial particle separators are designed as part of the engine inlets. This technology is more amenable to computational fluid dynamic modelling, coupled with particle dynamics and rebound effects. The inlet barrier filters are part of a large category of filtration systems. A first-order filter theory is derived to predict filter performance as a function of key parameters and useful operation time. The integration of the various EAPS with the helicopter system are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.