A novel method for estimating the space range of battery-powered vertical take-off and landing(VTOL) aircraft is presented. The method is based on flight parameter optimization and numerical iteration. Subsystem model...A novel method for estimating the space range of battery-powered vertical take-off and landing(VTOL) aircraft is presented. The method is based on flight parameter optimization and numerical iteration. Subsystem models including required thrust, required power and battery discharge models are presented. The problem to be optimized is formulated, and then case study simulation is conducted using the established method for quantitative analysis. Simulation results show that the space range of battery-powered VTOL aircraft in a vertical plane is an oblate curve, which appears horizontally long but vertically short, and the peak point is not located on the vertical climb path. The method and results are confirmed by parameter analysis and validations.展开更多
Nowadays, the success of the new technology development and deployment process depends not only on technical, technological solutions, but also on solving the non-technological problems and crossing the societal and p...Nowadays, the success of the new technology development and deployment process depends not only on technical, technological solutions, but also on solving the non-technological problems and crossing the societal and psychological barriers. A large international European projects, GABRIEL1 had developed a maglev assisted aircraft take-off and landing, that was applied to conceptual design of aircraft and required on-board and ground systems, had analysed all impacts (effects of concept deployment on effectiveness, safety, security, noise, emissions) and had demonstrated the safe applicability by concept validation. The applied methodology, used methods and the results of the Gabriel projects had been described and discussed by 55 project deliverables. This paper has a special goal: investigating the problems and barriers of possible implementing of the radically new technology, aircraft MagLev assisted take-off and landing. The study was started by identification and classification of the problems and barriers. After it, the problems were systematically analysed by use of special methodology containing the understanding (description) of the problems, investigation of the possible solutions and discussing their applicability (mainly by use of the Gabriel project results). The paper has three major sections: 1) description of the Gabriel concept and project results, 2) introducing some related thoughts on general aspects of new technology developments, and 3) discussion on the problems and their solutions. The major classes of the problems are the 1) technical, technological problems as developing a radically new solution, landing the undercarriage-less aircraft on the magnetic tracks, 2) stakeholders’ problems as decision makers kicking against supporting the developments of so radically new technologies and 3) society barriers like society worrying on and fear of future passengers on flying by aircraft have not conventional undercarriage systems. The paper will show that these problems have safe and cost-effective solutions.展开更多
Climate change (CC) and variability have been world widely reported to pose number of risks in aviation industry including accidents, astray, and other operational difficulties. The impact of weather on landing and ta...Climate change (CC) and variability have been world widely reported to pose number of risks in aviation industry including accidents, astray, and other operational difficulties. The impact of weather on landing and take-off performances has been several times experienced at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA);however, the influence of climate change and variability to the aircraft performance needs to be assessed. Thus, this study investigated the influence of climate change and variability on aircrafts take-off and landing performances. Specifically, the study investigated;i) the influence of climate change on Take-off Distance Required (TODR) and Maximum Take-off Mass (MTOM) for different types of aircraft;ii) the influence of climate variability to the aircraft landing performance on light, medium and heavy aircraft and lastly, iii) the study investigated the seasonal and annual variability on aircraft landing performance due to climate variability. The datasets used in this study include the eight years (2014-2021), aircraft operational records (diversion and missed approach events) and Aviation Routine Weather Reports (METAR) records which were utilized as the indicators for landing performance, the long-term (1990-2020) annual maximum temperatures (Tmax) which was used to determine the TODR and MTOM. Statistical tools including mean, percentage changes, correlations, regression, and the chi-square test were used for analysis and hypotheses testing. The results revealed that light and medium aircraft categories were significantly most affected on diversion events as compared to the heavy categories;however, for the missed approach events the impact was vice versa. Moreover, the seasonal and annual variability on diversion and missed approach events were significantly different (at p ≤ 0.001). As for the take-off performance, results show that the TODR and MTOM were significantly increasing and decreasing (at p ≤ 0.001), based on increasing air temperatures. Therefore, the study concludes that the changing climate has significantly affected aircraft by increasing the TODR and decreasing the MTOM, while the climate variability has significantly affected landing performance by influencing the diversion and missed approach events. Thus, the study recommends (i) further research works including the feasibility study on runway extension for the safety of future aircraft operations at the AAKIA and (ii) proper maintenance and improvement of the Instrumental Landing Systems (ILS) as an adaptation measures to the landing aircraft during bad weather events.展开更多
The design of landing gear is complicated due to the numerous considered elements.And the initial elements related to each other can also be influenced by different factors.Landing gear design often involves a very la...The design of landing gear is complicated due to the numerous considered elements.And the initial elements related to each other can also be influenced by different factors.Landing gear design often involves a very large variety of configurations,especially in the conceptual design phase.However,traditional method costs more time to complete the whole procedure for suitable configurations of landing gears.Therefore,the parametric modeling of component library for landing gear based on computer aided three-dimensional interface application/component application architecutre(CATIA/CAA)is proposed.According to the analysis of the characteristics of landing gear components,a method is presented to extract the primary parameters of landing gear components so that a systematic classification can be established.Further,the related theories and methods,including receiving geometrical parameters of the components and updating the parametrical model,displaying the component parts,are also illustrated.Finally,the development technology for component library is explained.The proposed modeling method can improve the efficiency of the whole design cycle for landing gear.展开更多
Visual navigation is imperative for successful asteroid exploration missions.In this study,an integrated visual navigation system was proposed based on angles-only measurements to robustly and accurately determine the...Visual navigation is imperative for successful asteroid exploration missions.In this study,an integrated visual navigation system was proposed based on angles-only measurements to robustly and accurately determine the pose of the lander during the final landing phase.The system used the lander's global pose information provided by an orbiter,which was deployed in space in advance,and its relative motion information in adjacent images to jointly estimate its optimal state.First,the landmarks on the asteroid surface and markers on the lander were identified from the images acquired by the orbiter.Subsequently,an angles-only measurement model concerning the landmarks and markers was constructed to estimate the orbiter's position and lander's pose.Subsequently,a method based on the epipolar constraint was proposed to estimate the lander's inter-frame motion.Then,the absolute pose and relative motion of the lander were fused using an extended Kalman filter.Additionally,the observability criterion and covariance of the state error were provided.Finally,synthetic image sequences were generated to validate the proposed navigation system,and numerical results demonstrated its advance in terms of robustness and accuracy.展开更多
The health management of batteries is a key enabler for the adoption of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landingvehicles (eVTOLs). Currently, few studies consider the health management of eVTOL batteries. One distinctch...The health management of batteries is a key enabler for the adoption of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landingvehicles (eVTOLs). Currently, few studies consider the health management of eVTOL batteries. One distinctcharacteristic of batteries for eVTOLs is that the discharge rates are significantly larger during take-off andlanding, compared with the battery discharge rates needed for automotives. Such discharge protocols areexpected to impact the long-run health of batteries. This paper proposes a data-driven machine learningframework to estimate the state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifetime of eVTOL batteries under varying flightconditions and taking into account the entire flight profile of the eVTOLs. Three main features are consideredfor the assessment of the health of the batteries: charge, discharge and temperature. The importance of thesefeatures is also quantified. Considering battery charging before flight, a selection of missions for state-ofhealth and remaining-useful-lifetime prediction is performed. The results show that indeed, discharge-relatedfeatures have the highest importance when predicting battery state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifetime.Using several machine learning algorithms, it is shown that the battery state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifeare well estimated using Random Forest regression and Extreme Gradient Boosting, respectively.展开更多
飞机着陆阶段是各飞行阶段中风险最大的阶段之一,可能会遇到阵风、跑道入侵、硬着陆和跑道超限等不安全事件。较长的着陆距离会增加着不安全事件发生的风险。为了降低发生不安全事件的风险,利用长短期记忆(long short term memory,LSTM...飞机着陆阶段是各飞行阶段中风险最大的阶段之一,可能会遇到阵风、跑道入侵、硬着陆和跑道超限等不安全事件。较长的着陆距离会增加着不安全事件发生的风险。为了降低发生不安全事件的风险,利用长短期记忆(long short term memory,LSTM)神经网络捕获时间序列飞行数据对时间的依赖性,研究了一种多步滚动预测策略来预测飞机着陆距离以进行实时预警,飞机着陆预测模型用于预测着陆距离。结果表明:与单步预测相比,该方法可以更好地捕捉飞行参数的时间变化。通过多组仿真实验验证基于LSTM神经网络模型的多步滚动预测方法的准确性与有效性。展开更多
In this paper.Active Disturbance Rejection Control(ADRC)is utilized in the pitch control of a vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)to address the problem of height fluctuation during th...In this paper.Active Disturbance Rejection Control(ADRC)is utilized in the pitch control of a vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)to address the problem of height fluctuation during the transition from hover to level flight.Considering the difficulty of parameter tuning of ADRC as well as the requirement of accuracy and rapidity of the controller,a Multi-Strategy Pigeon-Inspired Optimization(MSPIO)algorithm is employed.Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),Genetic Algorithm(GA),the basic Pigeon-Inspired Optimization(PIO),and an improved PIO algorithm CMPIO are compared.In addition,the optimized ADRC control system is compared with the pure Proportional-Integral-Derivative(PID)control system and the non-optimized ADRC control system.The effectiveness of the designed control strategy for forward transition is verified and the faster convergence speed and better exploitation ability of the proposed MSPIO algorithm are confirmed by simulation results.展开更多
The lack of autonomous take-off and landing capabilities of bird-like flapping-wing aerial vehicles(BFAVs)seriously restricts their further development and application.Thus,combined with the current research results o...The lack of autonomous take-off and landing capabilities of bird-like flapping-wing aerial vehicles(BFAVs)seriously restricts their further development and application.Thus,combined with the current research results on the autonomous take-off and landing technology of unmanned aerial vehicles,four types of technologies are studied,including jumping take-off and landing technology,taxiing take-off and landing technology,gliding take-off and landing technology,and vertical take-off and landing(VTOL)technology.Based on the analytic hierarchy process(AHP)-comprehensive evaluation method,a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for the autonomous take-off and landing scheme of a BFAV is established,and four schemes are evaluated concretely.The results show that under the existing technical conditions,the hybrid layout VTOL scheme is the best.Furthermore,the detailed design and development of the prototype of a BFAV with a four-rotor hybrid layout are carried out,and the vehicle performance is tested.The results prove that through the four-rotor hybrid layout design,the BFAV has good autonomous take-off and landing abilities.The power consumption analysis shows that for a fixed-point reconnaissance mission,when the mission radius is less than 3.38 km,the VTOL type exhibits longer mission duration than the hand-launched type.展开更多
This paper presents a new stabilizing control law for a planar vertical take-off and landing aircraft.The model is first transformed into an equivalent form,and then a control law consisting of a linear term and a sat...This paper presents a new stabilizing control law for a planar vertical take-off and landing aircraft.The model is first transformed into an equivalent form,and then a control law consisting of a linear term and a saturated term is given for a related subsystem,with the saturation levels being assigned as large as possible.Compared to the existing saturation scheme in which all states are restricted by saturations,the design brings about a relatively fast convergence.The effectiveness and advantage of the design are validated by numerical simulations.展开更多
文摘A novel method for estimating the space range of battery-powered vertical take-off and landing(VTOL) aircraft is presented. The method is based on flight parameter optimization and numerical iteration. Subsystem models including required thrust, required power and battery discharge models are presented. The problem to be optimized is formulated, and then case study simulation is conducted using the established method for quantitative analysis. Simulation results show that the space range of battery-powered VTOL aircraft in a vertical plane is an oblate curve, which appears horizontally long but vertically short, and the peak point is not located on the vertical climb path. The method and results are confirmed by parameter analysis and validations.
文摘Nowadays, the success of the new technology development and deployment process depends not only on technical, technological solutions, but also on solving the non-technological problems and crossing the societal and psychological barriers. A large international European projects, GABRIEL1 had developed a maglev assisted aircraft take-off and landing, that was applied to conceptual design of aircraft and required on-board and ground systems, had analysed all impacts (effects of concept deployment on effectiveness, safety, security, noise, emissions) and had demonstrated the safe applicability by concept validation. The applied methodology, used methods and the results of the Gabriel projects had been described and discussed by 55 project deliverables. This paper has a special goal: investigating the problems and barriers of possible implementing of the radically new technology, aircraft MagLev assisted take-off and landing. The study was started by identification and classification of the problems and barriers. After it, the problems were systematically analysed by use of special methodology containing the understanding (description) of the problems, investigation of the possible solutions and discussing their applicability (mainly by use of the Gabriel project results). The paper has three major sections: 1) description of the Gabriel concept and project results, 2) introducing some related thoughts on general aspects of new technology developments, and 3) discussion on the problems and their solutions. The major classes of the problems are the 1) technical, technological problems as developing a radically new solution, landing the undercarriage-less aircraft on the magnetic tracks, 2) stakeholders’ problems as decision makers kicking against supporting the developments of so radically new technologies and 3) society barriers like society worrying on and fear of future passengers on flying by aircraft have not conventional undercarriage systems. The paper will show that these problems have safe and cost-effective solutions.
文摘Climate change (CC) and variability have been world widely reported to pose number of risks in aviation industry including accidents, astray, and other operational difficulties. The impact of weather on landing and take-off performances has been several times experienced at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA);however, the influence of climate change and variability to the aircraft performance needs to be assessed. Thus, this study investigated the influence of climate change and variability on aircrafts take-off and landing performances. Specifically, the study investigated;i) the influence of climate change on Take-off Distance Required (TODR) and Maximum Take-off Mass (MTOM) for different types of aircraft;ii) the influence of climate variability to the aircraft landing performance on light, medium and heavy aircraft and lastly, iii) the study investigated the seasonal and annual variability on aircraft landing performance due to climate variability. The datasets used in this study include the eight years (2014-2021), aircraft operational records (diversion and missed approach events) and Aviation Routine Weather Reports (METAR) records which were utilized as the indicators for landing performance, the long-term (1990-2020) annual maximum temperatures (Tmax) which was used to determine the TODR and MTOM. Statistical tools including mean, percentage changes, correlations, regression, and the chi-square test were used for analysis and hypotheses testing. The results revealed that light and medium aircraft categories were significantly most affected on diversion events as compared to the heavy categories;however, for the missed approach events the impact was vice versa. Moreover, the seasonal and annual variability on diversion and missed approach events were significantly different (at p ≤ 0.001). As for the take-off performance, results show that the TODR and MTOM were significantly increasing and decreasing (at p ≤ 0.001), based on increasing air temperatures. Therefore, the study concludes that the changing climate has significantly affected aircraft by increasing the TODR and decreasing the MTOM, while the climate variability has significantly affected landing performance by influencing the diversion and missed approach events. Thus, the study recommends (i) further research works including the feasibility study on runway extension for the safety of future aircraft operations at the AAKIA and (ii) proper maintenance and improvement of the Instrumental Landing Systems (ILS) as an adaptation measures to the landing aircraft during bad weather events.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(51075203,51105197)the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Research Funding(NS2010023)
文摘The design of landing gear is complicated due to the numerous considered elements.And the initial elements related to each other can also be influenced by different factors.Landing gear design often involves a very large variety of configurations,especially in the conceptual design phase.However,traditional method costs more time to complete the whole procedure for suitable configurations of landing gears.Therefore,the parametric modeling of component library for landing gear based on computer aided three-dimensional interface application/component application architecutre(CATIA/CAA)is proposed.According to the analysis of the characteristics of landing gear components,a method is presented to extract the primary parameters of landing gear components so that a systematic classification can be established.Further,the related theories and methods,including receiving geometrical parameters of the components and updating the parametrical model,displaying the component parts,are also illustrated.Finally,the development technology for component library is explained.The proposed modeling method can improve the efficiency of the whole design cycle for landing gear.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.61673057 and 61803028)。
文摘Visual navigation is imperative for successful asteroid exploration missions.In this study,an integrated visual navigation system was proposed based on angles-only measurements to robustly and accurately determine the pose of the lander during the final landing phase.The system used the lander's global pose information provided by an orbiter,which was deployed in space in advance,and its relative motion information in adjacent images to jointly estimate its optimal state.First,the landmarks on the asteroid surface and markers on the lander were identified from the images acquired by the orbiter.Subsequently,an angles-only measurement model concerning the landmarks and markers was constructed to estimate the orbiter's position and lander's pose.Subsequently,a method based on the epipolar constraint was proposed to estimate the lander's inter-frame motion.Then,the absolute pose and relative motion of the lander were fused using an extended Kalman filter.Additionally,the observability criterion and covariance of the state error were provided.Finally,synthetic image sequences were generated to validate the proposed navigation system,and numerical results demonstrated its advance in terms of robustness and accuracy.
文摘The health management of batteries is a key enabler for the adoption of Electric Vertical Take-off and Landingvehicles (eVTOLs). Currently, few studies consider the health management of eVTOL batteries. One distinctcharacteristic of batteries for eVTOLs is that the discharge rates are significantly larger during take-off andlanding, compared with the battery discharge rates needed for automotives. Such discharge protocols areexpected to impact the long-run health of batteries. This paper proposes a data-driven machine learningframework to estimate the state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifetime of eVTOL batteries under varying flightconditions and taking into account the entire flight profile of the eVTOLs. Three main features are consideredfor the assessment of the health of the batteries: charge, discharge and temperature. The importance of thesefeatures is also quantified. Considering battery charging before flight, a selection of missions for state-ofhealth and remaining-useful-lifetime prediction is performed. The results show that indeed, discharge-relatedfeatures have the highest importance when predicting battery state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifetime.Using several machine learning algorithms, it is shown that the battery state-of-health and remaining-useful-lifeare well estimated using Random Forest regression and Extreme Gradient Boosting, respectively.
文摘飞机着陆阶段是各飞行阶段中风险最大的阶段之一,可能会遇到阵风、跑道入侵、硬着陆和跑道超限等不安全事件。较长的着陆距离会增加着不安全事件发生的风险。为了降低发生不安全事件的风险,利用长短期记忆(long short term memory,LSTM)神经网络捕获时间序列飞行数据对时间的依赖性,研究了一种多步滚动预测策略来预测飞机着陆距离以进行实时预警,飞机着陆预测模型用于预测着陆距离。结果表明:与单步预测相比,该方法可以更好地捕捉飞行参数的时间变化。通过多组仿真实验验证基于LSTM神经网络模型的多步滚动预测方法的准确性与有效性。
基金supported by Science and Technology Innovation 2030-Key Project of"New Generation Artificial Intelli-gence",China(No.2018AAA0100803)National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.U20B2071,91948204,U1913602)Aeronautical Foundation of China(No.20185851022).
文摘In this paper.Active Disturbance Rejection Control(ADRC)is utilized in the pitch control of a vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)to address the problem of height fluctuation during the transition from hover to level flight.Considering the difficulty of parameter tuning of ADRC as well as the requirement of accuracy and rapidity of the controller,a Multi-Strategy Pigeon-Inspired Optimization(MSPIO)algorithm is employed.Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),Genetic Algorithm(GA),the basic Pigeon-Inspired Optimization(PIO),and an improved PIO algorithm CMPIO are compared.In addition,the optimized ADRC control system is compared with the pure Proportional-Integral-Derivative(PID)control system and the non-optimized ADRC control system.The effectiveness of the designed control strategy for forward transition is verified and the faster convergence speed and better exploitation ability of the proposed MSPIO algorithm are confirmed by simulation results.
基金supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No.2017YFB1300102)the Key R&D Program in Shaanxi Province of China(No.2020ZDLGY06-05,No 2021ZDLGY09-10)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.11902103,No.11872314).
文摘The lack of autonomous take-off and landing capabilities of bird-like flapping-wing aerial vehicles(BFAVs)seriously restricts their further development and application.Thus,combined with the current research results on the autonomous take-off and landing technology of unmanned aerial vehicles,four types of technologies are studied,including jumping take-off and landing technology,taxiing take-off and landing technology,gliding take-off and landing technology,and vertical take-off and landing(VTOL)technology.Based on the analytic hierarchy process(AHP)-comprehensive evaluation method,a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for the autonomous take-off and landing scheme of a BFAV is established,and four schemes are evaluated concretely.The results show that under the existing technical conditions,the hybrid layout VTOL scheme is the best.Furthermore,the detailed design and development of the prototype of a BFAV with a four-rotor hybrid layout are carried out,and the vehicle performance is tested.The results prove that through the four-rotor hybrid layout design,the BFAV has good autonomous take-off and landing abilities.The power consumption analysis shows that for a fixed-point reconnaissance mission,when the mission radius is less than 3.38 km,the VTOL type exhibits longer mission duration than the hand-launched type.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60874008)the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of High Education of China (No. 200805331102)
文摘This paper presents a new stabilizing control law for a planar vertical take-off and landing aircraft.The model is first transformed into an equivalent form,and then a control law consisting of a linear term and a saturated term is given for a related subsystem,with the saturation levels being assigned as large as possible.Compared to the existing saturation scheme in which all states are restricted by saturations,the design brings about a relatively fast convergence.The effectiveness and advantage of the design are validated by numerical simulations.
