节拍合同网协议及其在作业车间AGV调度的应用

Agent技术为制造系统建模提供有了一种有效的方法，并在制造作业车间调度中得到广泛应用。Agent在基于合同网协议的作业车间AGV调度中，存在协商频繁和投标并发操作问题。为了提高合同网协议的工作效率，本文将协议进行简化，提出了一种基于节拍的改进合同网协议。该协议通过节拍有序地处理投标，并利用阈值策略，对竞标报价做出限定。最后，通过基于多Agent的作业车间AGV调度仿真实例验证了基于节拍的改进合同网协议的效果。     

Cascade-type guidance law design for multiple-UAV formation keeping

A procedure to compute guidance commands for controlling the relative geometry of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in formation flight is proposed. The concepts of branch, global leader, and local leader/follower are used to represent the whole formation geometry. A positive-definite function defined in terms of the formation error is then introduced and the Lyapunov stability theorem is used to obtain the cascade type guidance law. This scheme leads to the synchronized flight of all UAVs while maintaining formation geometry. The results of a high fidelity nonlinear simulation of a reconnaissance and surveillance mission example are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed guidance law.     

Long-term changes in indices of geomagnetic activity at the auroral station Sodankylä

Here we compare the traditional analog measure of geomagnetic activity, Ak, with the more recent digital indices of IHV and Ah based on hourly mean data, and their derivatives at the auroral station Sodankylä. By this selection of indices we study the effects of (i) analog vs. digital technique, and (ii) full local-time vs. local night-time coverage on quantifying local geomagnetic activity. We find that all other indices are stronger than Ak during the low-activity cycles 15–16 suggesting an excess of very low scalings in Ak at this time. The full-day indices consistently depict stronger correlation with the interplanetary magnetic field strength, while the night-time indices have higher correlation with solar wind speed. The Ak index correlates better with the digital indices of full-day coverage than with any night-time index. However, Ak depicts somewhat higher activity levels than the digital full-day indices in the declining phase of the solar cycle, indicating that, due to their different sampling rates, the latter indices are less sensitive to high-frequency variations driven by the Alfvén waves in high-speed streams. On the other hand, the night-time indices have an even stronger response to solar wind speed than Ak. The results strongly indicate that at auroral latitudes, geomagnetic indices with different local time coverage reflect different current systems, which, by an appropriate choice of indices, allows studying the century-scale dynamics of these currents separately.     

Effects of Hybrid Voltages on Oxide Formation on 6061 Al-alloys During Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation

Plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) is carried out on 6061 Al-alloys in a weak alkaline electrolyte containing NaOH, Na₂SiO₃ and NaCl. Centered on the correlation of composition and structure, analyses by means of X-ray diffration (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) are conducted on the specimens, which have been PEO-treated under hybrid voltages of different direct current (DC) values (140-280 V) with constant alternate current (AC) amplitude (200 V). Attention is paid to the composition, properties and growth mechanism of oxide layers formed with hybrid voltages. Moreover, the main effects of DC value are discussed. Ceramic layers with a double-layer structure which combines hard outer and soft inner layers are found to be consist of α-Al₂O₃, γ-Al₂O₃ and mullite. With the DC values increasing, the growth of the ceramic layers tends to have increasingly obvious three-stage feature.     

CREAM: 70 days of flight from 2 launches in Antarctica

The Cosmic-Ray Energetics And Mass balloon-borne experiment has been launched twice in Antarctica, first in December 2004 and again in December 2005. It circumnavigated the South Pole three times during the first flight, which set a flight duration record of 42 days. A cumulative duration of 70 days within 13 months was achieved when the second flight completed 28 days during two circumnavigations of the Pole on 13 January 2006. Both the science instrument and support systems functioned extremely well, and a total 117 GB of data including 67 million science events were collected during these two flights. Preliminary analysis indicates that the data extend well above 100 TeV and follow reasonable power laws. The payload recovered from the first flight has been refurbished for the third flight in 2007, whereas the payload from the second flight is being refurbished to be ready for the fourth flight in 2008. Each flight will extend the reach of precise cosmic-ray composition measurements to energies not previously possible.     

Enhancing the ATIC charge resolution

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) experiment is designed to investigate the charge composition and energy spectra of primary cosmic rays over the energy range from about 10¹¹ to 10¹⁴ eV during Long Duration Balloon (LDB) flights from McMurdo, Antarctica. Currently, analysis from the ATIC-1 test flight and ATIC-2 science flight is underway and preparation for a second science flight is in progress. Charge identification of the incident cosmic ray is accomplished, primarily, by a pixilated Silicon Matrix detector located at the very top of the instrument. While it has been shown that the Silicon Matrix detector provides good charge identification even in the presence of electromagnetic shower backscatter from the calorimeter, the detector only measures the charge once. In this paper, we examine use of the top scintillator hodoscope detector to provide a second measure of the cosmic ray charge and, thus, improve the ATIC charge identification.     

Control system design of the Korean lunar lander demonstrator

In preparation for the lunar exploration program scheduled to be launched during the early 2020s in Korea, a lunar lander demonstrator, which will be used for developing and demonstrating lunar landing technologies, is being developed. The control configuration of the lunar lander demonstrator is determined with the consideration of available technologies and flight requirements. It is suggested that altitude control be achieved by clustering five 200 N monopropellant thrusters and attitude control with eight 3 N thrusters. A control algorithm designed to follow a predefined trajectory is developed using quaternion feedback. Control system configuration and control logic are verified by using computer simulations. Simulation results show that a soft landing with a touchdown velocity of less than 3 m/s is achieved. Attitude control performance is also verified using computer simulations. The developed control configuration will be further tested by hardware in the loop simulations and ground based firing tests during the next phase of the study.     

Time variations of cosmic-ray helium isotopes with BESS-Polar I

The Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer (BESS) is configured with a solenoidal superconducting magnet and a suite of precision particle detectors, including time-of-flight hodoscopes based on plastic scintillators, a silica-aerogel Cherenkov detector, and a high resolution tracking system with a central jet-type drift chamber. The charges of incident particles are determined from energy losses in the scintillators. Their magnetic rigidities (momentum/charge) are measured by reconstructing each particle trajectory in the magnetic field, and their velocities are obtained by using the time-of-flight system. Together, these measurements can accurately identify helium isotopes among the incoming cosmic-ray helium nuclei up to energies in the GeV per nucleon region. The BESS-Polar I instrument flew for 8.5 days over Antarctica from December 13th to December 21st, 2004. Its long-duration flight and large geometric acceptance allow the time variations of isotopic fluxes to be studied for the first time. The time variations of helium isotope fluxes are presented here for rigidities from 1.2 to 2.5 GV and results are compared to previously reported proton data and neutron monitor data.     

Reentry survival analysis of tumbling metallic hollow cylinder

The survival of orbital debris reentering the Earth’s atmosphere is considered. The numerical approach of NASA’s Object Reentry Survival Analysis Tool (ORSAT) is reviewed, and a new equation accounting for reradiation heat loss of hollow cylindrical objects is presented. Based on these, a code called Survivability Analysis Program for Atmospheric Reentry (SAPAR) has been developed, and the new equation for reradiation heat loss is validated. Using this equation in conjunction with the formulation used in ORSAT, a comparative case study on the Delta-II second stage cylindrical tank is given, demonstrating that the analysis using the proposed equation is in good agreement with the actual recovered object when a practical value for thermal emissivity is used. A detailed explanation of the revised formulation is given, and additional simulation results are presented. Finally, discussions are made to address the applicability of the proposed equation to be incorporated in future survival analyses of orbital debris.     

A comparative study on acoustic damping induced by half-wave, quarter-wave, and Helmholtz resonators

The damping characteristics of three-type resonators, a half-wave, a quarter-wave, and a Helmholtz resonator are studied experimentally by adopting linear acoustic test. A quantitative acoustic property of sound absorption coefficient in a model enclosure with the resonators is measured and thereby, the acoustic-damping capacity of a resonator is characterized. For a comparative study on acoustic damping, the damping capacity of a half-wave resonator is compared with that of the other resonators. A half-wave and a quarter-wave resonators have the same damping mechanism, but a quarter-wave resonator has much larger damping capacity than a half-wave resonator with the same diameter of a single resonator. It is found that shorter length of a resonator has the advantage of longer one with respect to the damping capacity. The damping capacity of a Helmholtz resonator increases with cavity volume and does as the orifice length decreases. A Helmholtz resonator has the highest damping capacity of three-type resonators and a half-wave resonator has the lowest. Besides, a Helmholtz resonator requires the smallest number of resonators for optimal damping. The design criterion of each resonator on the optimal damping is provided by the normalized parameter of open-area ratio and the similarity behavior for the optimal damping is observed for various enclosure diameters.