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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Laser Dot Projection Photogrammetry And Force Balance Measurement Techniques For Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles, David H. Curtis Mar 2009

Laser Dot Projection Photogrammetry And Force Balance Measurement Techniques For Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles, David H. Curtis

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop testing methods capable of analyzing the performance of a miniature flapping-wing mechanism that can later be adapted to a flapping wing micro air vehicle (MAV). A previously designed and built flapping only mechanism was used for testing, while a previously designed flapping and pitch mechanism was fabricated utilizing an Objet Eden 500V 3-dimensional printer and its operation demonstrated. The flapping mechanism was mounted on a six component force balance. Force and moment data were collected for a variety of wing sets at different flapping frequencies. The testing was conducted using wings composed …


Evaluation Of An Opnet Model For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks, Clifton M. Durham Mar 2009

Evaluation Of An Opnet Model For Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks, Clifton M. Durham

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was first used as early as the American Civil War, when the North and the South unsuccessfully attempted to launch balloons with explosive devices. Since the American Civil War, the UAV concept has been used in all subsequent military operations. Over the last few years, there has been an explosion in the use of UAVs in military operations, as well as civilian and commercial applications. UAV Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are fast becoming essential to conducting Network-Centric Warfare (NCW). As of October 2006, coalition UAVs, exclusive of hand-launched systems, had flown almost …


Characterizing The Exhaust Plume Of The Three-Electrode Micro Pulsed Plasma Thrusters, Myeongkyo Seo Mar 2009

Characterizing The Exhaust Plume Of The Three-Electrode Micro Pulsed Plasma Thrusters, Myeongkyo Seo

Theses and Dissertations

Three-electrode micro-PPTs are a new version of two electrode micro-PPTs devices. Performance predictions and contamination expectations are essential characteristics needed by satellite designers. In order to focus on thruster specific impulse, thrust and efficiency, measuring the exhaust velocity or impulse bit and propellant consumption rate is essential. While this is not always possible to measure directly, focusing on the ejected mass from the PPT provides significant information allowing determination of these performance statistics. Specifically, focusing on exhaust angle distribution and velocity of the exhaust particles is the emphasis of this work. The results show that the three-electrode micro-PPT is more …


Probabilistic Estimation Of Rare Random Collisions In 3-Space, Timothy Holzmann Mar 2009

Probabilistic Estimation Of Rare Random Collisions In 3-Space, Timothy Holzmann

Theses and Dissertations

A study of risk assessment for artillery fire randomly colliding with fixed wing aircraft is presented. The research lends itself to a general study of collision models. Current models of object collisions fall under one of three categories: the historical model, the gas particle model, and the satellite model. These three vary in data requirements and mathematical representation of the impact event. The gas particle model is selected for its flexibility and robust estimation. However, current mathematical development in the literature does not include certain spatial and dynamic components necessary for a general encounter (collision) model. These are derived in …


Using Predictive Rendering As A Vision-Aided Technique For Autonomous Aerial Refueling, Adam D. Weaver Mar 2009

Using Predictive Rendering As A Vision-Aided Technique For Autonomous Aerial Refueling, Adam D. Weaver

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort seeks to characterize a vision-aided approach for an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to autonomously determine relative position to another aircraft in a formation, specifically to address the autonomous aerial refueling problem. A system consisting of a monocular digital camera coupled with inertial sensors onboard the UAS is analyzed for feasibility of using this vision-aided approach. A three-dimensional rendering of the tanker aircraft is used to generate predicted images of the tanker as seen by the receiver aircraft. A rigorous error model is developed to model the relative dynamics between an INS-equipped receiver and the tanker aircraft. A …