Aerospace Science and Technology最新文献

{"title":"Design exploration of UAM vehicles","authors":"Sen Wang,&nbsp;Lourenço Tércio Lima Pereira,&nbsp;Daniele Ragni","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110058","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110058","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study describes a design exploration of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles, based on top-level aircraft requirements. The exploration focuses on a fully electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle that employs an architecture of conventional airframe coupled with tilted rotors, aimed to carry four passengers. Using a low-fidelity design framework, a variety of configurations are investigated by altering design variables such as wing area, number of propellers, operating speed, and range. The influence of these variables on the design is explored from the environmental, societal and, economical perspectives for a 2050 time horizon. The findings suggest that configurations with a small wing area and a large number of small propellers emerges as preferable for minimizing energy consumption (per pax-km) and operating expenses (per pax-km). However, in terms of noise emissions, configurations with fewer but larger propellers are favoured, marking a departure from the design choices that prioritize energy efficiency and cost. Additionally, the study underscores that operations prioritizing commercial viability require high-speed cruising and reduced flight hours, diverging from those that prioritize energy efficiency, thereby emphasizing the necessity of multidisciplinary optimization. Finally, a noise-estimation model is developed to enable quick assessment of the vehicle's sound power level. The model necessitates only fundamental powertrain information as inputs and provides insights into the impact of design choices on noise emission, which is beneficial at preliminary design stage.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110058"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143419235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Operation characteristics of miniature gas turbine with a pulse combustor","authors":"Takashi Sakurai,&nbsp;Takehiro Sekiguchi,&nbsp;Sora Inoue,&nbsp;Asuka Sato","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110046","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110046","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To clarify the operation characteristics of a gas turbine using pressure gain combustion, a miniature gas turbine with a pulse combustor was constructed, with an operation experiment conducted. The combustor has two combustion chambers, each operating in either a pulse or constant-pressure combustion state. In the normal combustion mode, wherein the two combustion chambers are in a constant-pressure combustion state, the gas turbine operates as a Brayton cycle. In addition, the gas turbine is operated in the pulse combustion mode, with one combustion chamber operated in the pulse combustion state and the other in the constant-pressure combustion state. In the pulse combustion state, the timing of hydrogen injection and ignition was actively controlled, with regular pulse combustion of 40 cycles per second achieved under gas-turbine operating conditions. The combustion chamber and turbine inlet pressures achieved peak pressures twice as high as the outlet pressure of the compressor. However, as the combustor was connected to the turbine and compressor without valves at the inlet and outlet, the flow pulsation generated by pulse combustion considerably fluctuated the turbine rotation and stagnated the air discharge from the compressor, making its operation unstable. The thermal efficiency of the pulse combustion mode did not show a clear advantage over that of the normal combustion mode, owing to the lower adiabatic efficiency of the turbine and compressor. However, owing to the large pressure fluctuations in the combustor, the hydrogen mass flow rates in both combustion modes were different, highlighting a future research direction to make the heat input the same for performance comparison.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110046"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143488539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Robust trajectory tracking control of a quadrotor under external disturbances and dynamic parameter uncertainties using a hybrid P-PID controller tuned with ant colony optimization","authors":"Sofiane Ben Abdi,&nbsp;Abderrazak Debilou,&nbsp;Lemya Guettal,&nbsp;Aicha Guergazi","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110053","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110053","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Controlling the dynamic model of a nonlinear quadrotor system is complex, and manually tuning the controller gains is challenging due to the intricate relationships between dynamic variables and the influence of external disturbances on performance. In this study, we propose designing an improved controller using the ant colony optimization (ACO) method, with the help of an objective function composed of output signal parameters. This method involves determining the optimal gains for the six controllers within the quadrotor model. The aim is to solve stability problems encountered during trajectory tracking under external disturbances and uncertainties of dynamic parameters. First, a model of a nonlinear multi<em>-</em>input, multi<em>-</em>output (MIMO) quadrotor system consisting of four inputs and six outputs was studied. Then, a hybrid controller combining a proportional controller and a proportional-integral-derivative controller (P<em>-</em>PID) was developed to manage the six degrees of freedom (6–DOF) during trajectory tracking. The improved ACO method is employed to tune the controller gain values by minimizing an objective function, with the aim of reducing the error between output and input signals and optimizing the system parameters. Finally, the quadrotor model was simulated to assess the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed P-PID controller. The evaluation, conducted across three different trajectories, considered external disturbances and uncertainties in the dynamic parameters. The results demonstrate that the P-PID controller outperforms conventional PD and PID controllers, offering superior dynamic performance with reduced maximum overshoot, faster rise and settling time, minimized static error, and enhanced stability under challenging conditions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110053"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143453821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predicting uncertainty in vision-based satellite pose estimation using deep evidential regression","authors":"Thomas O. Dixon ,&nbsp;Stephen A. Giles ,&nbsp;Alex A. Gorodetsky","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110055","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110055","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this work, we demonstrate the use of evidential regression to quantify uncertainty in satellite pose estimation within vision-based deep-learning models trained on images of the Tango satellite. Our approach augments existing deep-learning models with uncertainty prediction capability using evidential regression. We show that the resulting uncertainty is well correlated with prediction errors, while maintaining comparable pointwise-prediction accuracies to existing models. Leveraging evidential regression to predict epistemic and aleatoric uncertainties, we demonstrate a median 0.996 correlation between network prediction error and these uncertainty estimates on keypoint coordinates within synthetic images. Additionally, we demonstrate that predicting on out-of-distribution images as well as increasing image noise directly amplifies uncertainty in pose estimation. By validating our framework's ability to quantify uncertainty, we enable robust decision-making in risky satellite operations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110055"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143437902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Use of Multi-Test Strategy to Obtain Heat Transfer Coefficient and Adiabatic Wall Temperature Simultaneously in Shock Tunnel for Transonic Flow over a Flat Plate","authors":"Wei Zeng (Doctoral student),&nbsp;Yizhi Fang (Doctoral student),&nbsp;Haiteng Ma (Associate Professor)","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110057","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110057","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Shock tunnel is a viable facility to produce high-temperature environment, but its heat transfer experimentation is in general challenged by the extremely short test duration (several milliseconds), and one particular problem is the determination of adiabatic wall temperature in such short time. Current technique of transient thermal measurement in shock tunnel (single-test method) prescribes adiabatic wall temperature to be a constant, which is calculated mostly from the analytical solution for high-speed boundary layer on a flat plate under several ideal assumptions, but fails to account for realistic effects in shock tunnel testing. To address this issue, this paper introduced a new method (multi-test strategy) to obtain adiabatic wall temperature and heat transfer coefficient simultaneously in shock tunnel, by linearly regressing data pairs of wall temperature and heat flux from runs with multiple initial wall temperatures. Transient thermal measurements were conducted at seven initial wall temperatures of the flat plate, over which a transonic flow is established in shock tunnel. Wall temperature history is recorded by coaxial thermocouple during each test, from which heat flux is reconstructed. Data pairs of wall temperature and heat flux from runs with all the seven initial wall temperatures are used in multi-test strategy, while those from the run at only one initial wall temperature are employed in single-test method. It is found that the streamwise distribution of heat transfer coefficient is qualitatively different between the two methods, due to the distinct principle to determine adiabatic wall temperature. Quantitatively, heat transfer coefficient from multi-test strategy is generally higher than that from single-test method owing to the lower adiabatic wall temperature than the prescribed value. A correction to multi-test strategy is proposed to align the heat transfer coefficient and adiabatic wall temperature more closely with the results from single-test method.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110057"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143418960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Model incremental learning of flight dynamics enhanced by sample management","authors":"Tengjie Zheng,&nbsp;Lin Cheng,&nbsp;Shengping Gong,&nbsp;Xu Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110049","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110049","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this study, our focus is on investigating the utilization of real-time collected flight data to enhance the accuracy of dynamical models that are traditionally dominated by offline first-principles. The necessity and practicality of data-driven model correction/learning has been recognized in an increasing number of aerospace and industrial control scenarios. However, the issue of learning stability should be specifically emphasized. Thus, we propose an online incremental learning method for dynamical models that incorporates first-principle knowledge and data-driven correction mechanisms. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in which the convergence conditions of closed-loop learning systems involving Gaussian Process (GP) models are provided. Moreover, we propose an online sample management algorithm to optimize the spatial and temporal distribution of dataset samples for model training, thereby improving the model's ability to fit globally on the whole sample space. Finally, we provide three simulation examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, resulting in a data-driven model incremental learning algorithm with promising potential applications in adaptive control, optimal control, and model-based reinforcement learning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110049"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143430271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Adaptive actor-critic network-based appointed-time attitude stabilization under actuator faults and dual-state constraints","authors":"Zhongbo Chen ,&nbsp;Xuebo Yang ,&nbsp;Hanlin Dong","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110051","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110051","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this article, adaptive dynamic programming (ADP)-based attitude stabilization is achieved in the presence of external disturbances, actuator failures, and kinematic constraints. First, we design a new appointed-time convergence performance constraint function to constrain the transient and steady-state performance of attitude and angular velocity. Next, the attitude control system with state constraints is transformed into an unconstrained system through state mapping. Then, combining the extended state observer (ESO) and the integral sliding mode (ISM), an adaptive integral sliding mode controller is designed to eliminate disturbances and actuator failures to ensure that the system can move toward the nominal surface. Finally, the actor-critic network employs the adaptive weight update law to approximate the optimal value function and the optimal controller of the nominal system, respectively, without relying on the persistent excitation (PE) condition. The uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) stability of the nominal system is obtained via the Lyapunov method. Moreover, it can be found from the numerical simulation that under the proposed control scheme, the attitude control system's attitude angle and attitude angular velocity both meet the performance constraints, and the cost consumption is much lower than other control schemes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110051"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143437903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aerodynamics and ice tolerance of the large passenger aircraft advanced rear end forward swept horizontal tailplane with leading edge extension","authors":"James H. Page ,&nbsp;Isik Ozcer ,&nbsp;Alessandro Zanon ,&nbsp;Michele De Gennaro ,&nbsp;Raul C. Llamas-Sandin","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110018","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110018","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The advanced rear end (ARE) forward swept horizontal tailplane (FSHT) may allow a more compact empennage, reducing weight, drag, and, thus, fuel burn. Large passenger aircraft (LPA) empennages are typically sized up to satisfy performance and handling requirements under critical icing conditions. One such requirement is sufficient low speed (negative) lifting performance for the roundout manouevre following 45 min of flight in a holding pattern in icing conditions. The FSHT geometry has the possibility to include a leading edge extension (LEX) in the droplet shadow zone of the fuselage contraction where it could have some protection from icing, allowing tail size reduction. This paper addresses the topics of three-dimensional inflight icing simulation and CFD analysis of iced tails in the industrial environment, inflight icing of the FSHT with LEX, and lifting performance and aerodynamics of the iced FSHT with LEX. Full aircraft air flow and droplet calculations were carried out using the finite element method with solution error-based anisotropic mesh adaptation, on a single geometry, to calculate inlet and outlet condition profiles for an empennage-only icing simulation domain. Full aircraft-representative, three-dimensional, multishot icing simulations were then carried out to calculate 45 min ice accretion in a holding pattern in Appendix C glaze icing conditions, for eight different FSHT geometries. Following that, three-dimensional CFD with the k-ω SST turbulence model was used to calculate the lifting performance and aerodynamics of each geometry, with and without ice, in a roundout flight condition from 0° to -15° angle of attack (AoA). The practice and feasibility of using three-dimensional multishot icing simulation in the LPA design environment are described. Analysis is then presented for three variations in FSHT forward sweep with a fixed gothic LEX, three variations in LEX chord with a 10° FSHT, and three variations in LEX span with a 10° FSHT. Iced lifting performance is found to correlate positively with forward sweep and exhibit a more nuanced relationship to LEX chord and span. In addition to the expected LEX vortex, a tip leading edge vortex is identified as a key ice tolerant FSHT lifting flow mechanism. Detailed flow field analysis provides insight into the complex interplay between the two flow mechanisms and the implications for iced lifting performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"161 ","pages":"Article 110018"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143593809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"6-D pose tracking within a quadplane swarm using particle filter with KAPAO network and 3D-error enhancement","authors":"Chujun Li ,&nbsp;Xiangpeng Xu ,&nbsp;Sheng Zhuge ,&nbsp;Bin Lin ,&nbsp;Xia Yang ,&nbsp;Xiaohu Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110048","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110048","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Accurately measuring the relative 6-D pose between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) within a formation is fundamental for UAV swarms to execute tasks effectively. Existing monocular 6-D pose estimation and tracking methods struggle with pose ambiguity when UAVs are widely spaced. This paper proposes an improved particle filtering method for quadplane 6-D pose tracking to eliminate ambiguity and enhance accuracy. Our method integrates a KAPAO network as an observation model to handle complex image backgrounds, combined with a constant velocity motion model to adapt to the diverse motion states of quadplanes. We utilize the 3D object-space collinearity errors for weight updating to enhance adaptability to the images captured by an airborne zoom camera and fully leverage quadplane motion information to prevent algorithm divergence. Both point and line errors in updating the weights for position and orientation separately help mitigate their mutual coupling effects, ultimately enhancing overall accuracy. Our approach performs exceptionally well on quadplane datasets by eliminating pose ambiguity and maintaining the upper bounds and medians of the 3D error box plots respectively below 3.19 and 0.96 meter for distances ranging from 31.6 to 100.0 meters between two quadplanes. Furthermore, the ADD and Rete accuracy indicators are also <span><math><mn>1</mn><mo>−</mo><mn>3</mn></math></span> times higher than some top-tier methods, with a runtime of just 35.2 milliseconds. This positions it as a promising solution for practical air-to-air quadplane missions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110048"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143419234","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Singularity-avoidance adaptive interval type-2 fuzzy predefined-time cooperative formation control for multiple QUAVs","authors":"Xiaona Song ,&nbsp;Chenglin Wu ,&nbsp;Choon Ki Ahn ,&nbsp;Shuai Song ,&nbsp;Binbin Yan","doi":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110041","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ast.2025.110041","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this work, the singularity-avoidance predefined-time cooperative formation control for multiple quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles with preassigned accuracy is investigated. First, an improved fixed-time performance function is introduced in the formation design framework to achieve the convergence constraint on the formation neighborhood tracking error at a specified time. Then, interval type-2 fuzzy logic systems are utilized to approximate the nonlinear function on the controlled vehicles, and a compensation function is presented to weaken the impact of approximation errors and unknown disturbances. In contrast to traditional dynamic surface control schemes, a predefined-time filter is devised to guarantee that the filter error converges within a predefined time. Furthermore, a singularity-avoidance interval type-2 fuzzy predefined-time formation control protocol is developed to achieve the predefined time convergence property of the formation tracking error and to eliminate the difficulty of adjusting the settling time existing in finite/fixed-time control strategies. The boundedness of all signals in the closed-loop system is assured by stability analysis. Finally, the practicality and superiority of the presented control protocol are verified by simulation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50955,"journal":{"name":"Aerospace Science and Technology","volume":"160 ","pages":"Article 110041"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143402512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}