A comprehensive survey on the methods of angle of attack measurement and estimation in UAVs

Angle of Attack (AOA) is a crucial parameter which directly affects the aerodynamic forces of an aircraft. The measurement of AOA is required to ensure a safe flight within its designed flight envelop. This paper intends to summarise a comprehensive survey on the measurement techniques and estimation methods for AOA, specifically in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications. In the case of UAVs, weight constraint plays a major role as far as sensor suites are concerned. This results in selecting a suitable estimation method to extract AOA using the available data from the autopilot. The most feasible and widely employed AOA measurement technique is by using the Multi-Hole Probes (MHPs). The MHP measures the AOA regarding the pressure variations between the ports. Due to the importance of MHP in AOA measurement, the calibration methods for the MHP are also included in this paper. This paper discusses the AOA measurement using virtual AOA sensors, their importance and the operation.     

Influence of thickness and initial groove angle in M–K model on limit strain of 7B04 by considering through-thickness stress

Marciniack–Kuczinski (M–K) model is widely used to predict material’s forming limit curve (FLC). The prediction of FLC traditionally neglected through-thickness normal stress. However, it cannot be neglected in some forming processes. Much work has been done to study the effect of through-thickness normal stress on FLC with constant through-thickness normal stress or constant ratio of through-thickness normal stress and maximum principal stress. In addition, based on Nakazima test process, the ratio of through-thickness normal stress and maximum principal stress has been derived, which was a function of instantaneous thickness and loading path. Here, initial groove angle in M–K model was not considered. In this paper, uniaxial tension tests and Nakazima tests were performed on 7B04 aluminum alloy. Based on Hill 48 yield criterion and M–K model, the prediction model of FLC was established. The increase of thickness can enhance FLC. Meanwhile, it is necessary to consider through-thickness normal stress and initial groove angle in prediction model. On the left side of FLC, the effect of initial groove angle on FLC is weakened by increasing sheet thickness. On the right side of FLC, the effect of initial groove angle on FLC is strengthened by increasing sheet thickness. On the right side of FLC, the relation between limit strain points with different thicknesses is linear under one certain loading path. Thickness has decisive effect on through-thickness normal stress level and the changing trendy of through-thickness normal stress during calculation is different under different stress condition.     

Orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics of tethered solar power satellite

A new orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamic model of the tethered solar power satellite (Tethered SPS) is established based on absolute nodal coordinate formulation. The Hamilton’s equation of the system is derived by introducing generalized momentum through Legendre transformation. The correctness of the proposed model is verified by an example. The dynamic characteristics of the Tethered SPS are studied using the symplectic Runge-Kutta method. Simulation results show that the orbital radius and the total energy of the system are well preserved. The attitude of the system is unstable when the mass of the bus system is small. However, the attitude stability is dependent on some other parameters of the system, which requires further studies. It is also found that the average tether force/deformation can be roughly estimated by simplifying the solar panel as a particle. The proposed model can be used to study the orbit-attitude-vibration coupled dynamics and control problems.     

Estimating the spin axis orientation of the Echostar-2 box-wing geosynchronous satellite

For the first time, the spin axis orientation of an inactive box-wing geosynchronous satellite has been estimated from ground-based optical photometric observations of Echostar-2’s specular reflections. Recent photometric light curves obtained of Echostar-2 over four years suggest that unusually bright and brief specular reflections were occurring twice within an observed spin period. These bright and brief specular reflections suggested two satellite surfaces with surface normals separated by approximately 180°. The geometry between the satellite, the Sun, and the observing location at the time of each of the brightest observed reflections, was used to estimate Echostar-2’s equatorial spin axis orientation coordinates. When considering prograde and retrograde rotation, Echostar-2’s spin axis orientation was estimated to have been located within 30° of either equatorial coordinate pole. Echostar-2’s spin axis was observed to have moved approximately 180° in right ascension, within a time span of six months, suggesting a roughly one year spin axis precession period about the satellite’s angular momentum vector.     

Implementation of tactical maneuvers with maneuver libraries

This study creates and combines the general maneuver libraries for fixed-wing aircraft to implement tactical maneuvers. First, the generalized maneuver libraries are established by analyzing the characteristics of tactical maneuvers required in battlefields. The 7th order polynomial is applied to both the creation of the maneuver libraries and the generation of the trajectories or flight paths for modal inputs. To track the desired trajectory, we design the Attitude Command Attitude Hold (ACAH) system and the Rate Command Rate Hold (RCRH) system using Model Following Controller (MFC). Moreover, the Line-of-Sight (LOS) guidance law is designed. In particular, the CONDUIT® is employed to optimize the gains so that the control systems meet the aircraft Handling Qualities (HQ) criteria. Finally, flight simulations are performed for the longitudinal loop, immelmann-turn, and climb-slalom-descent maneuvers to verify that tactical aggressive maneuvers are realizable via the combination of maneuver libraries. This study can contribute to the development of flight techniques for aircraft tactical maneuvers and to the revision of air force operational manuals.     

Substitution of satellite-based land surface temperature defective data using GSP method

Land surface temperature (LST) as an important environmental variable provides valuable information for earth environmental system modelling. Currently, LST is obtained through satellite thermal sensors at various spatial and temporal resolutions. Although spatially continuous satellite-based LST measurements are intended to overcome the shortcomings of sparse ground-based LST measurements, LST images often contain anomalous values due to the existence of clouds or sensor malfunctioning. The problem becomes more serious where the users deal with high spatial resolution characterized by low temporal resolution. This study examines the capability of a newly developed graph signal processing (GSP) method using two-dimensional single-date thermal data. For this purpose, four Landsat/TIRS datasets are analyzed. The data of five elliptical regions on thermal images are eliminated and then reconstructed through the GSP method and using the LST values of the enclosing rectangles containing the ellipsoids. The results indicate that the temperature variation determined by the GSP method generally conforms to the original image LST values. According to a correlation test conducted on the original image LST and those obtained through the GSP method, the values vary from 58% to 95%, which is an above-the-average rate (RMSE from 0.69 to 2.27). The statistical analysis of the original image LST in both the elliptical regions and the enclosing rectangles containing the ellipsoids indicates that an increase in the variance of LST data causes an increased error in the calculation of temperature by the GSP method, and vice versa. The results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Duncan test indicated that an increase in the number of the non-zero spectral bins would result in increased RMSE values for all the dates and the regions. Moreover, the model errors were significant at the 0.05 level across all the image date and five elliptical study regions. Based on the results, the use of this method is recommended for the reconstruction of LST missing values, where dissimilarity of atmospheric conditions limits the use of other methods that depend on the time series data of various dates and a great deal of data calculation.     

Orbital stability close to asteroid 624 Hektor using the polyhedral model

We investigate the orbital stability close to the unique L4-point Jupiter binary Trojan asteroid 624 Hektor. The gravitational potential of 624 Hektor is calculated using the polyhedron model with observational data of 2038 faces and 1021 vertexes. Previous studies have presented three different density values for 624 Hektor. The equilibrium points in the gravitational potential of 624 Hektor with different density values have been studied in detail. There are five equilibrium points in the gravitational potential of 624 Hektor no matter the density value. The positions, Jacobian, eigenvalues, topological cases, stability, as well as the Hessian matrix of the equilibrium points are investigated. For the three different density values the number, topological cases, and the stability of the equilibrium points with different density values are the same. However, the positions of the equilibrium points vary with the density value of the asteroid 624 Hektor. The outer equilibrium points move away from the asteroid’s mass center when the density increases, and the inner equilibrium point moves close to the asteroid’s mass center when the density increases. There exist unstable periodic orbits near the surface of 624 Hektor. We calculated an orbit near the primary’s equatorial plane of this binary Trojan asteroid; the results indicate that the orbit remains stable after 28.8375?d.     

Manifold structure preservative for hyperspectral target detection

A nonparametric method termed as manifold structure preservative (MSP) is proposed in this paper for hyperspectral target detection. MSP transforms the feature space of data to maximize the separation between target and background signals. Moreover, it minimizes the reconstruction error of targets and preserves the topological structure of data in the projected feature space. MSP does not need to consider any distribution for target and background data. So, it can achieve accurate results in real scenarios due to avoiding unreliable assumptions. The proposed MSP detector is compared to several popular detectors and the experiments on a synthetic data and two real hyperspectral images indicate the superior ability of it in target detection.     

航空电子产品电磁环境效应模块化设计方法

对高强度辐射场（HIRF）环境特点与干扰类型进行分析，采用理论计算、计算机仿真技术（CST）的仿真分析及实测等方法分别对某型飞机航空电子系统综合显示单元的外部强电磁辐射场孔缝耦合、场线耦合及芯片前端电路影响关键芯片的相关规律进行了研究，给出了相关设计建议。结果表明，可通过分析孔缝、场线耦合获得进入关键芯片前端电路的电磁干扰能量，再结合关键芯片前端电路网络对干扰的插入损耗分析，获得关键芯片在外部强场激励下的感应电压。     

面向学生的智能解题专家系统的研究与设计

探讨了网络在专家系统中的应用 ,给出了一个基于网络的面向学生的智能解题专家系统的模型 ,分析了设计的基本过程。从专家系统出发 ,探讨了基于知识的推理系统。最后 ,从以上设计出发 ,总结了基于该模型的系统需进一步研究的工作。