The adaptive Gaussian mixtures unscented Kalman filter for attitude determination using light curves

The Adaptive Gaussian Mixtures Unscented Kalman Filter (AGMUKF) is introduced to estimate the attitude of a Resident Space Object using light curves. This filter models the state probability density function as a Gaussian Mixture. This enables to capture the non-linearities of the light-curve measurement model. A non-linearity index is used to refine the mixture when necessary, and individual Gaussian kernels are merged back together when their relative distance is below a certain threshold. A conventional attitude Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is used to propagate and update each kernel. The AGMUKF efficiently maintains the mixture population as low as possible, while still being able to represent non-symmetric, multimodal, arbitrarily complex distributions. Therefore, it is presented as a promising alternative to Particle-Filter-based implementations, the current state of the art used in sequential attitude estimation from light curves. The non-linearity index has been used to show that the measurement model is the main contributor to the system non-linearity. Results have demonstrated the superiority of the AGMUKF w.r.t. the UKF for attitude determination, and that it can converge for high initial state uncertainty cases, successfully capturing the non-Gaussian probability distribution of the state.     

Assessment of two quasi-static approaches to mimic repeated impact response and damage behaviour of CFRP laminates

Full impact damage tolerance assessment requires the ability to properly mimic the repeated impact response and damage behaviour of composite materials using quasi-static approximations. To this aim, this paper reports an experimental investigation evaluating two quasi-static methods for mimicking repeated impact response and damage behaviour of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composite laminates. In this study, an 8.45-J single impact was repeated 225 times and mimicked with 225 times 6.51-J quasi-static (energy equivalent) indentations and with 225 quasi-static (force equivalent) indentations following the recorded impact peak force variation. Results show that the loading rate and the inertial effect are the two major factors affecting the responses of the composite laminates under out-of-plane concentrated loading. Both the energy- and force-equivalent quasi-static indentations failed to reproduce the impact responses greatly associated with high loading rate and inertial effect. The force-equivalent quasi-static indentations were performed in a semi-automatic way and induced damage states more similar to those of the repeated impacts than those of the energy-equivalent quasi-static indentations, whereas the latter can be better automated and has better reproducibility compared to that of the repeated impact responses, as it is less dependent on high loading rate and inertial effect.