Finger heat flux/temperature as an indicator of thermal imbalance with application for extravehicular activity

The designation of a simple, non-invasive, and highly precise method to monitor the thermal status of astronauts is important to enhance safety during extravehicular activities (EVA) and onboard emergencies. Finger temperature (Tfing), finger heat flux, and indices of core temperature (Tc) [rectal (Tre), ear canal (Tec)] were assessed in 3 studies involving different patterns of heat removal/insertion from/to the body by a multi-compartment liquid cooling/warming garment (LCWG). Under both uniform and nonuniform temperature conditions on the body surface, Tfing and finger heat flux were highly correlated with garment heat flux, and also highly correlated with each other. Tc responses did not adequately reflect changes in thermal balance during the ongoing process of heat insertion/removal from the body. Overall, Tfing/finger heat flux adequately reflected the initial destabilization of thermal balance, and therefore appears to have significant potential as a useful index for monitoring and maintaining thermal balance and comfort in extreme conditions in space as well as on Earth.     

Smooth free-cycle dynamic soaring in unspecified shear wind via quadratic programming

Harvesting wind energy is promising for extending long-endurance flights, which can be greatly facilitated by a flight technique called dynamic soaring. The presented study is concerned with generating model-based trajectories with smooth control histories for dynamic soaring maneuvers exploiting wind gradients. The desired smoothness is achieved by introducing a trigonometric series parameterization for the controls, which are formulated with respect to the normalized time.Specifically, the per...