General Aviation Aircraft Flight Operations Quality Assurance: Overcoming the Obstacles

This describes the initiative to introduce a capable yet affordable Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) program into the general aviation industry. A brief overview of the FOQA concept is given along with a historical perspective to the evolution of such programs. Initial development of a FOQA program for general aviation by the Center for Sensors and Sensor Systems at Saint Louis University is introduced herein. A brief discussion of the obstacles in developing such a system is presented, as well as strategies for overcoming these obstacles. The system consists mainly of a quick access recorder (QAR) that is conceived to be a stand-alone, non-intrusive system that collects parametric flight data, a preprocessor system to analyze initial data sets and validate their use, and post-processor software used in the analysis of available flight parameters. The program concepts are presented for initial determination of the needs and possibilities, and examples are presented along with flight data collected in the University's fleet of aircraft.     

Planetary protection issues for Mars sample acquisition flight projects.

The planned NASA sample acquisition flight missions to Mars pose several interesting planetary protection issues. In addition to the usual forward contamination procedures for the adequate protection of Mars for the sake of future missions, there are reasons to ensure that the sample is not contaminated by terrestrial microbes from the acquisition mission. Recent recommendations by the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Research Council (United States), would indicate that the scientific integrity of the sample is a planetary protection concern (SSB, 1997). Also, as a practical matter, a contaminated sample would interfere with the process for its release from quarantine after return for distribution to the interested scientists. These matters are discussed in terms of the first planned acquisition mission.     

Evaporation and ignition of droplets in combustion chambers modeling and simulation

Computer simulation of liquid fuel jet injection into heated atmosphere of combustion chamber, mixture formation, ignition and combustion need adequate modeling of evaporation, which is extremely important for the curved surfaces in the presence of strong heat and mass diffusion fluxes. Combustion of most widely spread hydrocarbon fuels takes place in a gas-phase regime. Thus, evaporation of fuel from the surface of droplets turns to be one of the limiting factors of the process as well. The problems of fuel droplets atomization, evaporation being the key factors for heterogeneous reacting mixtures, the non-equilibrium effects in droplets atomization and phase transitions will be taken into account in describing thermal and mechanical interaction of droplets with streaming flows. In the present paper processes of non-equilibrium evaporation of small droplets will be discussed. As it was shown before, accounting for non-equilibrium effects in evaporation for many types of widely used liquids is crucial for droplet diameters less than 100 μm, while the surface tension effects essentially manifest only for droplets below 0.1 μm. Investigating the behavior of individual droplets in a heated air flow allowed to distinguish two scenarios for droplet heating and evaporation. Small droplets undergo successively heating, then cooling due to heat losses for evaporation, and then rapid heating till the end of their lifetime. Larger droplets could directly be heated up to a critical temperature and then evaporate rapidly. Droplet atomization interferes the heating, evaporation and combustion scenario. The scenario of fuel spray injection and self-ignition in a heated air inside combustion chamber has three characteristic stages. At first stage of jet injection droplets evaporate very rapidly thus cooling the gas at injection point, the liquid jet is very short and changes for a vapor jet. At second stage liquid jet is becoming longer, because evaporation rate decreases due to decrease of temperature. But combustion of fuel vapor begins which brings to increase of heat flux to droplets and accelerates evaporation. The length of the liquid jet decreases again and remains constant slightly oscillating.     

Particulated growth media for optimal liquid and gaseous fluxes to plant roots in microgravity.

An important and yet relatively under researched area of plant growth in microgravity, deals with the rooting environment of plants. A comprehensive approach for selecting the physical characteristics of root growth media which optimizes the dynamic availability of water and dissolved nutrients, and gases to plant roots was developed and tested. Physically-based and parametric models describing the relationship between content and fluxes of liquids and gases were used to cast a multi-objective optimization problem. This methodology reveals that a medium's ability to supply liquid and gas fluxes optimally is dependent upon physiological target values, system operation limits and root module design which dictate the medium's range of soil water characteristic and particle size distribution. Optimized media parameters designate a particle size distribution from which a particulated growth media was constructed and matched to the optimized media parameters. This methodology should improve the selection of optimal media properties for plant growth in microgravity as well as other porous media applications.     

Time-varying autoregressive modeling of HRR radar signatures

A time-varying autoregressive (TVAR) model is used for the modeling and classification of high range resolution (HRR) radar signatures. In this approach, the TVAR coefficients are expanded by a low-order discrete Fourier transform (DFT). A least-squares (LS) estimator of the TVAR model parameters is presented, and the maximum likelihood (ML) approach for determining the model order is also presented. The validity of the TVAR modeling approach is demonstrated by comparing with other approaches in estimating time-varying spectra of synthetic signals. The estimated TVAR model parameters are also used as features in classifying HRR radar signatures with a neural network. In the experiment with two sets of noncooperating target identification (NCTI) data, about 93% of samples are correctly classified     

Numerical simulation of formation of cyclone vortex flows in the intratropical zone of convergence and their early detection

Mechanisms of formation of cyclonic vortices in the tropical atmosphere of the Earth are investigated in the intratropical zone of convergence using numerical simulation made with the complete system of equations of gas dynamics taking into account transport of infrared radiation, phase transitions of water vapor into microdrops of water and ice particles, and sedimentation of these drops and ice particles in the field of gravity force. Observational data on the structure of dominant air streams, which are formed in the intratropical zone of convergence over the North Atlantic in the periods of its highest thermodynamic intensity and instability, are used in the initial and boundary conditions of the model. Formation of cyclonic vortex flows is obtained numerically at sufficiently strong bending of the intratropical zone of convergence. The results of numerical modeling are compared with the data of satellite microwave monitoring: global radio thermal fields of the Earth from the electronic collection GLOBAL-Field allowing one to study the structure of atmospheric motions in a wide range of space-time scales.     

Algebra and statistics of the solar wind

Statistical studies of properties of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field, based on an extended database for the period 1963–2007 including four solar cycles, show that the Gaussian approximation well suites for some parameters as the probability distribution of their numerical values, while for others the lognormal law is preferred. This paper gives an interpretation of these results as associated with predominance of linear or nonlinear processes in composition and interaction of various disturbances and irregularities propagating and originating in the interior of the Sun and its atmosphere, including the solar corona and the solar wind running away from it. Summation of independent random components of disturbances leads, according to the central limit theorem of the probability theory, to the normal (Gaussian) distributions of quantities proper, while their multiplication leads to the normal distributions of logarithms. Thus, one can discuss the algebra of events and associate observed statistical distinctions with one or another process of formation of irregularities in the solar wind. Among them there are impossible events (having null probability) and reliable events (occurring with 100% probability). For better understanding of the relationship between algebra and statistics of events in the solar wind further investigations are necessary.     

Statistics of Focused and Defocused Radar Maps

Coherent high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar systems achieve their range resolution by pulse compression and azimuth resolution by compression of naturally generated FM coding due to Doppler shifts as the aircraft flies by the target. If the data is left unprocessed, it is, in effect, a defocused map of the terrain. As such, it should exhibit less dynamic range than if the data is compressed. This paper describes an experimental study to verify the above conjecture. The results of this study indicate that if dynamic range of the data link is a problem, the radar data should be transmitted in its unprocessed form. This might very well be the case for planetary mapping by means of satellites.     

Motion of deformable planets and stability of their stationary rotations

A mechanical system consisting from N deformable spheres interacting according to the law of gravity is considered as a model of planetary system. Deformations of the viscoelastic spheres are described according to the model of the theory of elasticity of small deformations, the Kelvin-Voigt model of viscous forces, and occur under the action of gravitational fields and fields of centrifugal forces. Approximate equations describing motions of the centers of mass of the spheres and their rotations relative to the centers of mass are constructed by the method of separation of motions on the basis of solving quasistatic problems of the theory of viscoelasticity with allowance made for smallness of sphere deformations. Using the first integral of conservation of the angular momentum of the system relative to its center of mass, the expression for the changed potential energy is obtained with the use of the Routh method. An investigation of stationary rotations is carried out, and it is shown that all of them are unstable, if the number of planets is more than two.     

Target tracking with a network of Doppler radars

By observing a Doppler signal at several points in space, it is possible to determine the position, velocity, and acceleration of a moving target. Parameter identification for a constant-acceleration motion model is studied, and the Cramer-Rao bound on motion parameter uncertainty is obtained for phaseand frequency-based estimation strategies, with the result that the preferred strategy depends upon the sensor/target geometry and target motion. Direct identification of the constant-acceleration trajectory model from the Doppler signal requires a 9-dimensional nonlinear optimization. Exploiting symmetry in the sensing geometry, a novel trajectory representation is presented which reduces the nonlinear optimization to one in 3 dimensions, with additional parameters obtained by linear identification. Baseball tracking using a network of four Doppler radars is experimentally demonstrated