Experimental study on flow excursion instability of supercritical hydrocarbon fuel in scramjet regenerative cooling parallel channels

Flow instability of supercritical hydrocarbon fuel is a crucial issue in scramjet regenerative cooling structure. In this study, flow excursion instability and flow distribution in parallel tubes were experimentally studied for supercritical fluids. Two types of flow excursion occur in a single tube. Type I and Type II excursions, and they are corresponding to decreasing and increasing flow rate respectively. They can trigger flow maldistribution between parallel tubes and the hysteresis phenomenon of flow distribution. The effects of system parameters, including inlet temperature, system pressure, and heat flux, on flow distribution were analyzed. In addition, the relationship between flow excursion and the pseudo-critical interval proposed in the literature was established according to the heated tube outlet temperature at the onset of flow instability. Finally, the flow excursion instability boundary was obtained using two dimensionless parameters. These experimental results can provide helpful insight on the mechanism of Scramjet regenerative cooling.     

Derivation and validation of a similarity law for free-flight wind tunnel tests of parallel stage separation

Aiming at the safety problem of the stage separation of parallel reusable high-speed air vehicles, this paper studies the unsteady test method and focuses on deriving a similarity law of parallel stage separation free-flight wind tunnel tests. The new similarity law considers the influences of aerodynamic force and gravity on the motions of the two stages, as well as the influence of aerodynamic interference between the two stages on each other’s motion. From the perspective of multi-angle physical equations, the conditions to ensure that the two-stage separation trajectory of a wind tunnel test is similar to that of a real air vehicle are derived innovatively, so as to ensure the authenticity and credibility of wind tunnel test results. The similarity law is verified by an HIFiRE-5 air vehicle, and the separation trajectories of wind tunnel tests and the real air vehicle are obtained by numerical simulation. The research shows that the similarity law derived in this paper can ensure that wind tunnel free-flight tests have the ability to predict the two-stage separation characteristics of real parallel vehicles. By analyzing the separation trajectory curve of the typical state, it is found that the new method can ensure that the trajectory error of a wind tunnel test does not exceed 1%, which indicates that this method is credible. The establishment of the new method lays the foundation for subsequent wind tunnel tests and provides support for research on the safety of the stage separation of parallel reusable air vehicles.     

Conceptual design and analysis of legged landers with orientation capability

The lander with orientation capability is of fundamental importance for the “Returning” mission because its body can be the base with a suitable launching angle for the ascender lifting off. This paper proposes the conceptual design and verification of Landers with Orientation Capability (LOCs). Firstly, the topological composition of the lander is analyzed and expressed in the form of Lie group, which provides the fundamental principle for the type synthesis of LOCs. Then, the type synthesis approach for designing LOCs is proposed, which includes designing the Equivalent Parallel Mechanism (EPM) and the auxiliary limbs. Numerous mechanisms of LOCs with two-dimensional rotational motions are obtained based on the type synthesis approach by developing and combining the EPMs and auxiliary limbs. Afterward, kinematics and Jacobian matrix of a typical legged lander are developed, the workspace is analyzed, singularity configurations are analyzed based on the wrench graph method, and finally, the orientation capability is analyzed. The pitch and yaw angle reach 17.5°, considering the permissible range of joints. The proposed types of LOCs offer potential candidate for the “Returning” mission of the exploration mission.     

Enhancement on parallel unstructured overset grid method for complex aerospace engineering applications

In the present study, an efficient overset grid method by means of parallel implicit hole-cutting is proposed for the sake of simulating unsteady flows in aerospace engineering involving multiple bodies in relative movement. In view of the degraded computational efficiency and robustness for conventional overset grid assembly, several innovative techniques are developed within the overset grid assembly process, viz., a bookkeeping alternative digital tree method to speed up the donor-cell search...     

OGSRN: Optical-guided super-resolution network for SAR image

Although Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs) have significantly improved the development of image Super-Resolution(SR) technology in recent years, the existing SR methods for SAR image with large scale factors have rarely been studied due to technical difficulty. A more efficient method is to obtain comprehensive information to guide the SAR image reconstruction.Indeed, the co-registered High-Resolution(HR) optical image has been successfully applied to enhance the quality of SAR image due to it...     

Land use and cover change (LUCC) impacts on Earth’s eco-environments: Research progress and prospects

Land use and cover change (LUCC) is one of the key variables dominating land–atmosphere interactions and strongly affects the Earth’s eco-environments by altering surface properties. Numerous studies have been carried out to assess the impact of LUCC. However, the Earth is a large, open and complex system characterized by complex interactions between its eco-environments and drivers. This study aimed to summarize previous studies of the impact of LUCC on the Earth’s eco-environments and discuss the progress and limitations in suggesting future directions. Previous studies have confirmed that LUCC has a wide range of impacts on the Earth’s eco-environments, which are represented by the alternation of climate (temperature, precipitation, wind, and humidity), hydrology (soil moisture, runoff, and evapotranspiration), ecology and environmental (air, water, and soil) pollution. Physically, the impacts were mainly attributed to the disturbance of the surface radiation budget and matter conservation caused by LUCC. Although great achievements have been made, several challenges remain because of the unavoidable uncertainties in data sources and methodologies and the complexity of eco-environmental evolution. Therefore, data assimilation, physical-based investigations, contribution isolation, and full-process analysis are required to overcome these challenges in future research. The results of this study helped to capture the impact of LUCC and its physical mechanisms, which provide useful clues for future research and support the relative land use management for sustainable development.