Navier–Stokes solvers in European aircraft design

The paper gives a broad perspective of the progress made during the last 10 years in solving the Navier–Stokes equations and traces how this simulation technique went from being a specialized research topic to a practical engineering tool that design engineers use on a routine basis.

The scope is limited to Navier–Stokes solvers applied to industrial design of airframes with attention focused particularly on developments in Europe. An overview of the different Navier–Stokes codes used in Europe is given, and on-going developments are outlined.

The current state of progress is illustrated by computed steady and unsteady solutions to industrial problems, ranging from airfoil characteristics, flow around an isolated wing, to full aircraft configurations.

A discussion on the future industrial design environment is given, and developments in Europe towards a more integrated design approach with underlying concepts like ‘concurrent engineering (CE)’ and the ‘virtual product (VP)’ are summarized. The paper concludes with a discussion on future challenging applications.     

How to evidence Primitive Life on an exo-Planet? — The DARWIN project

We report the concept of an IR observatory, with interferometric rejection, to search for Primitive Life on an extra-Solar Planet which has been proposed to the European Space Agency.     

Efficient solution and performance analysis of 3-D positionestimation by trilateration

A new exact, explicit, and computationally efficient solution for three-dimensional (3-D) position estimation based on range measurements from three stations is proposed. The simple polynomial-type form of the new algorithm facilitates the performance analysis. Formulae are provided for both the variance and the bias of the position estimates. The systematic error is a joint effect of both the measurement noise and the system nonlinearity and its magnitude cannot be ignored if highly accurate localization is required. Performance evaluation results are presented for various conditions     

The plasma Environment of Mars

Space Science Reviews -     

Managing Complexity in an Autonomous Vehicle

Team Tormenta fielded an autonomous vehicle in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005. Limiting the complexity of the autonomous system design, construction, and testing was crucial in rapidly designing a cost-effective working system. This approach allowed Team Tormenta to field a competitive vehicle on a low budget competing in the qualification trials.     

Software Techniques for Detecting False SSR Tracks

The problem of detecting false secondary surveillance radar (SSR) tracks due to electromagnetic reflections is discussed. An approach via software is considered and some algorithms for the SSR tracks detection are proposed. Some experimental results are reported.