Mature systems for small satellite missions

Over the past several years Satellites International has developed an integrated suite of satellite sub-systems and small satellite buses. The sub-systems include S-band communications, attitude sensing and control, power conversion and distribution, and on-board data handling. They are inherently modular and readily adaptable to different satellite configurations, a concept known as semi-standardisation. This concept has been adopted by two generic low-cost buses: MicroSIL for satellites in the mass range 40–80kg; and MiniSIL for satellites in the range 100–500kg. Their architecture is based on the semi-standard sub-systems, but easily modified to utilise sub-systems from other manufacturers. They can support all stabilisation methods including spinning, 3-axis control and gravity gradient and are adaptable to a wide variety of missions including Earth resources, scientific, communications and technology demonstration. The Company also manufactures a range of low cost ground support equipment and complete ground stations to complement the space-borne systems.     

Terminal Guidance for Impact Attitude Angle Constrained Flight Trajectories

The design of a suboptimal terminal guidance system for reentry vehicles with a constraint on the body attitude angle at impact is studied. Permissible range of the miss distance and the body attitude angle at impact is specified. The problem is formulated as a linear quadratic control problem. The Riccati equation is derived to provide time-varying feedback gains. The desired scheme is suboptimal. The region of initial states for which the system meets the specifications becomes smaller as the initial height of the reentry vehicle at initial time is decreased.     

预混气不稳定性对螺旋爆轰结构的影响研究

为了明确预混气的不稳定性对螺旋爆轰内部结构的影响,在内径63.5mm的爆轰管道内进行了C_2H_2+2.5O_2+85%Ar,2H_2+O_2+50%Ar,C_2H_2+2.5O_2+70%Ar,C_2H_2+5N_2O和CH_4+2O_2的爆轰实验,得到壁面烟膜和端面烟熏玻璃记录的三波点轨迹。分析了预混气单头、双头、多头螺旋的差别及原因,发现预混气越不稳定,端面结构越难形成规则图形。稳定预混气向内部延伸模式较规律,不稳定预混气向内部延伸规律由于横波间相互干渉较难寻找。对多头胞格进行数字化处理,获得了壁面的三波点轨迹间距和端面的胞格尺寸数据以及方差。发现端面胞格的尺寸与壁面数据发展趋势一致,但是低于壁面数据,其中,C_2H_2+2.5O_2+85%Ar,2H_2+O_2+50%Ar,C_2H_2+2.5O_2+70%Ar和C_2H_2+5N_2O壁面横波间距分别由45.7,72.7,47.1和24.9减小为10.2,17.4,13.2和12.1,端面胞格由19.6,19.9,8.5和18.2减小为6.8,7.1,4.1和5.0。胞格离散度与轨迹间距离散度一致,但是胞格离散度更高,其原因在于壁面处的活化分子因为碰撞到壁面而减少。     

Deposition of aluminide and chromium-modified aluminide coatings on TiAl alloys using the halide-activated pack cementation method

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A critical evaluation of two Reissner–Mindlin type models for composite laminated plates

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate two Reissner–Mindlin type theories developed recently for composite laminated plates, namely, VAPAS (Variational Asymptotic Plate And Shell analysis) and EFSDT (Enhanced First-Order Shear-Deformation Theory). The fundamentals of both models are briefly summarized along with their unique features in comparison to most other existing models. The similarities and differences between VAPAS and EFSDT are also examined. Exact solutions of three-dimensional elasticity theory for the cylindrical bending problems are used as the arbiter to assess the accuracy of both models. Such a systematic assessment demonstrates that both models have achieved an excellent compromise between the layer-wise theories, which are accurate but computationally demanding, and the first-order shear deformation theories, which are computationally cheap but not accurate.     

Statistical description of low-latitude plasma blobs as observed by DMSP F15 and KOMPSAT-1

The global distribution of low-latitude plasma blobs was investigated by in-situ plasma density measurements from the Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-1 (KOMPSAT-1) and Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F15. In the observations, blobs occurred in the longitude sector where the activity of the equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) was appreciable, and additional blobs were found at the lower (KOMPSAT-1) altitude as in the EPBs. However, several notable differences exist between the distributions of EPBs and blobs. First, KOMPSAT-1 found few blobs around 0°E in March and June, as did DMSP F15 from 30°W to 120°E for every season. Second, the overall occurrences in December and March at the DMSP F15 (840 km) altitude were somewhat lower than expected from those of the EBPs. Third, at the DMSP F15 altitude, the occurrence probability of plasma blobs was less controlled by yearly variations in the solar activity. These results imply that topside ionospheric conditions as well as the existence of EPBs control further development of blobs. Additionally, it was found that the blob latitudes became higher as the yearly solar activity increased. Moreover, most of the blobs were encountered in the winter hemisphere, possibly due to the low ambient density.     

STAP for GPS receiver synchronization

A space-time adaptive processing (STAP) algorithm for delay tracking and acquisition of the GPS signature sequence with interference rejection capability is developed. The interference can consist of both broadband and narrowband jammers, and is mitigated in two steps. The narrowband jammers are modelled as vector autoregressive (VAR) processes and rejected by temporal whitening. The spatial ing is implicitly achieved by estimating a sample covariance matrix and feeding its inverse into the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The EKF estimates of the code delay and the fading channel are used for a t-test for acquisition detection. Computer simulations demonstrate robust performance of the algorithm in severe jamming, and also show that the algorithm outperforms the conventional delay-locked loop (DLL).     

Process of establishing design requirements and selecting alternative configurations for conceptual design of a VLA

In this study, a process for establishing design requirements and selecting alternative con-figurations for the conceptual phase of aircraft design has been proposed. The proposed process uses system-engineering-based requirement-analysis techniques such as objective tree, analytic hier-archy process, and quality function deployment to establish logical and quantitative standards. Moreover, in order to perform a logical selection of alternative aircraft configurations, it uses advanced decision-making methods such as morphological matrix and technique for order prefer-ence by similarity to the ideal solution. In addition, a preliminary sizing tool has been developed to check the feasibility of the established performance requirements and to evaluate the flight perfor-mance of the selected configurations. The present process has been applied for a two-seater very light aircraft (VLA), resulting in a set of tentative design requirements and two families of VLA configurations: a high-wing configuration and a low-wing configuration. The resulting set of design requirements consists of three categories: customer requirements, certification requirements, and performance requirements. The performance requirements include two mission requirements for the flight range and the endurance by reflecting the customer requirements. The flight performances of the two configuration families were evaluated using the sizing tool developed and the low-wing configuration with conventional tails was selected as the best baseline configuration for the VLA.     

Issues in deep space radiation protection.

The exposures in deep space are largely from the Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) for which there is as yet little biological experience. Mounting evidence indicates that conventional linear energy transfer (LET) defined protection quantities (quality factors) may not be appropriate for GCR ions. The available biological data indicates that aluminum alloy structures may generate inherently unhealthy internal spacecraft environments in the thickness range for space applications. Methods for optimization of spacecraft shielding and the associated role of materials selection are discussed. One material which may prove to be an important radiation protection material is hydrogenated carbon nanofibers.