Computational aerodynamic analysis on perimeter reinforced （PR）-compliant wing

Abstract Implementing the morphing technique on a micro air vehicle （MAV） wing is a very chal- lenging task, due to the MAWs wing size limitation and the complex morphing mechanism. As a result, understanding aerodynamic characteristics and flow configurations, subject to wing structure deformation of a morphing wing MAV has remained obstructed. Thus, this paper presents the investigation of structural deformation, aerodynamics performance and flow formation on a pro- posed twist morphing MAV wing design named perimeter reinforced （PR）-compliant wing. The numerical simulation of two-way fluid structure interaction （FSI） investigation consist of a quasi- static aeroelastic structural analysis coupled with 3D incompressible Reynolds-averaged Navier- Stokes and shear-stress-transport （RANS-SST） solver utilized throughout this study. Verification of numerical method on a rigid rectangular wing achieves a good correlation with available exper- imental results. A comparative aeroelastic study between PR-compliant to PR and rigid wing per- formance is organized to elucidate the morphing wing performances. Structural deformation results show that PR-compliant wing is able to alter the wing＇s geometric twist characteristic, which has directly influenced both the overall aerodynamic performance and flow structure behavior. Despite the superior lift performance result, PR-compliant wing also suffers from massive drag penalty, which has consequently affected the wing efficiency in general. Based on vortices investigation, the results reveal the connection between these aerodynamic performances with vortices formation on PR-comoliant wing.     

A study of reaction wheel configurations for a 3-axis satellite attitude control

The satellite reaction wheel’s configuration plays also an important role in providing the attitude control torques. Several configurations based on three or four reaction wheels are investigated in order to identify the most suitable orientation that consumes a minimum power. Such information in a coherent form is not summarized in any publication; and therefore, an extensive literature search is required to obtain these results. In addition, most of the available results are from different test conditions; hence, making them difficult for comparison purposes. In this work, the standard reaction wheel control and angular momentum unloading schemes are adopted for all the reaction wheel configurations. The schemes will be presented together with their governing equations, making them fully amenable to numerical treatments. Numerical simulations are then performed for all the possible reaction wheel configurations with respect to an identical reference mission. All the configurations are analyzed in terms of their torques, momentums and attitude control performances. Based on the simulations, the reaction wheel configuration that has a minimum total control torque level is identified, which also corresponds to the configuration with minimum power consumption.     

Ground validation of space-borne satellite rainfall products in Malaysia

Precipitation studies globally is not only important to hydrological cycling, but also very crucial to satellite and terrestrial communication system designs. This work presents the validation of ground based rainfall measurement with TRMM products and GPCC data. The result shows that an error bias of ±15 % exists between the ground and satellite rainfall measurements. The study also shows that the TRMM 3B43 V6 is in good agreement with the rain gauge rainfall measurement with highest and lowest correlation coefficient of 0.9721 and 0.7791 respectively. Therefore, TRMM 3B43 V6 is recommended for use in lieu of the ground measurement in Malaysia and its environs, most importantly for sea and remote areas where rain gauge cannot cover.     

Static Analysis of Functionally Graded Sandwich Plates Using an Efficient and Simple Refined Theory

In this paper, a new displacement based high-order shear deformation theory is introduced for the static response of function-ally graded sandwich plate. Unlike any other theory, the number of unknown functions involved is only four, as against five in case of other shear deformation theories. The theory presented is variationally consistent, has strong similarity with classical plate theory in many aspects, does not require shear correction factor, and gives rise to transverse shear stress variation such that the transverse shear stresses vary parabolically across the thickness satisfying shear stress free surface conditions. Two common types of functionally graded sandwich plates, namely, the sandwich with functionally graded facesheet and homogeneous core and the sandwich with homogeneous facesheet and functionally graded core, are considered. Governing equations are derived from the principle of virtual displacements. The closed-form solution of a simply supported rectangular plate subjected to sinu-soidal loading has been obtained by using the Navier method. The validity of the present theory is investigated by comparing some of the present results with those of the classical, the first-order and the other higher-order theories. It can be concluded that the proposed theory is accurate and simple in solving the static bending behavior of functionally graded sandwich plates.     

Optimization of aerodynamic efficiency for twist morphing MAV wing

Twist morphing(TM) is a practical control technique in micro air vehicle(MAV) flight.However, TM wing has a lower aerodynamic efficiency(CL/CD) compared to membrane and rigid wing. This is due to massive drag penalty created on TM wing, which had overwhelmed the successive increase in its lift generation. Therefore, further CL/CDmaxoptimization on TM wing is needed to obtain the optimal condition for the morphing wing configuration. In this paper, two-way fluid–structure interaction(FSI) simulation and wind tunnel testing method are used to solve and study the basic wing aerodynamic performance over(non-optimal) TM, membrane and rigid wings. Then,a multifidelity data metamodel based design optimization(MBDO) process is adopted based on the Ansys-DesignXplorer frameworks. In the adaptive MBDO process, Kriging metamodel is used to construct the final multifidelity CL/CDresponses by utilizing 23 multi-fidelity sample points from the FSI simulation and experimental data. The optimization results show that the optimal TM wing configuration is able to produce better CL/CDmaxmagnitude by at least 2% than the non-optimal TM wings. The flow structure formation reveals that low TV strength on the optimal TM wing induces low CDgeneration which in turn improves its overall CL/CDmaxperformance.