Relative Attitude Dynamics and Control of Spacecraft Formation Flying Considering Flexible Panels

As a key technology for orbital applications, researches on spacecraft formation flying (SFF) attract more attention. However, most of existing researches about dynamics and control of SFF focus on rigid spacecrafts without considering the effect of flexible attachments (such as flexible panels). In this paper, relative attitude dynamics and active control of SFF for a flexible spacecraft (follower spacecraft) and a rigid spacecraft (target spacecraft) are investigated. Firstly, a dynamic model of the flexible spacecraft is established by the principle of angular momentum. Then, the equation of relative attitude dynamics between the flexible spacecraft and the rigid spacecraft is derived by the quaternion to represent the attitude relation of the two spacecrafts. Finally, an attitude feedback controller is designed for the SFF system, and its stability is proved by the Lyapunov stability theory. Simulation results indicate that the panel flexibility has an obvious influence on the dynamic behaviour of the system, the designed controller can effectively control the attitude of the two spacecrafts to achieve synchronization, and the elastic vibration of the panels may be suppressed simultaneously.     

Research on Equipment Support Activity Process Simulation Based on Monte Carlo Method

The influencing factors of the equipment support activity process have the characteristics of nonlinearity, high dimension, many constraints, random uncertainty and fuzzy uncertainty. Monte Carlo method can solve the above problems commendably. This paper analyzes the main equipment support activity process and establishes the sampling plan and simulation model of the medium maintenance process based on Monte Carlo method, and the simulation result verifies a fact that the medium maintenance time can be effectively reduced when parallel operation on some procedures is used. It has a practical value and can give good advice to achieve the capability of equipment supportability.     

Strip method for a laterally drifting ship in waves

Lateral drift occurs due to the effects of wind forces, wave drifting forces, or both on ships sailing in actual seas. It is important therefore to investigate the influence of lateral drift on seakeeping performance for improved ship operation. The velocity potential was expanded as an asymptotic power series in terms of the lateral speed parameter, τ, defined as ω _e V ₀/g, where ω _e is the frequency of wave encounter; V ₀ denotes the lateral velocity, which is assumed to be sufficiently small; and g is the acceleration due to gravity. By combining this technique with the strip method, two sets of motion equations of all the hydrodynamic force coefficients for ship seakeeping were derived. The first set is for ships without lateral drift and is the same as the equations in the new strip method, and the second set is for the additional motions induced by lateral drift. It was found that all ship motion modes except surge are coupled when a ship drifts laterally in waves.     

Shock resistance of supercharged boilers through integration with ship structure

The non-linear finite element software ABAQUS was used to simulate the dynamic response of a marine supercharged boiler when subjected to impact loading. Shock resistance was analyzed by the time-domain simulation method. After exhaustive simulations,the effect of air pressure induced by different working conditions on the shock response of a supercharged boiler was reviewed,leading to conclusions about the variability of structural response with different loading parameters. In order to simulate the real impulsive environments of supercharged boilers,the integration of equipment and ship structure was then primarily used to analyze shock response. These distinctly different equipment shock test methods,run under equivalent work conditions,were compared and the causes of discrepancy were analyzed. The main purpose of this paper is to present references for the anti-shock design of marine supercharged boilers.     

Two-dimensional numerical simulation of water splash phenomena with and without surface tension

Two-dimensional numerical analyses were conducted and analyzed to simulate water splash produced by free falling object models starting from the resting position. The equilateral prism-shaped object models were allowed to fall onto the free surface of the water. The moving-particle semi-implicit (MPS) method was used to solve the unsteady Navier-Stokes equation for incompressible fluid flows with and without the surface tension effect. Froude numbers of 0.75, 1.0, and 1.25 were used with different model sizes for the entry velocity at the free surface. Splashes obtained by numerical computation closely agreed with the experimental results. The surface tension force, the Froude number, and the Weber number were found in these calculations to play major roles in determining various types of splash shapes. Model size was found to influence splash phenomena, even if the Froude number remained the same. The dependencies on these two nondimensional numbers and the fundamental law of similarity on water splash with and without the surface tension effect were thoroughly investigated in this research. Several two-dimensional numerical simulations are presented in this article to describe the hydrodynamic behaviors of water splash with and without the surface tension effect.     

ISS-based robust adaptive fuzzy algorithm for maintaining a ship＇s track

This paper focuses on the problem of linear track keeping for marine surface vessels. The influence exerted by sea currents on the kinematic equation of ships is considered first. The input-to-state stability （ISS） theory used to verify the system is input-to-state stable. Combining the Nussbaum gain with backstepping techniques, a robust adaptive fuzzy algorithm is presented by employing fuzzy systems as an approximator for unknown nonlinearities in the system. It is proved that the proposed algorithm that guarantees all signals in the closed-loop system are ultimately bounded. Consequently, a ship＇s linear track-keeping control can be implemented. Simulation results using Dalian Maritime University＇s ocean-going training ship ＇YULONG＇ are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

CFD simulation of propeller and rudder performance when using additional thrust fins

To analyse a possible way to improve the propulsion performance of ships,the unstructured grid and the Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes equations were used to calculate the performance of a propeller and rudder fitted with additional thrust fins in the viscous flow field.The computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT was used to simulate the thrust and torque coefficient as a function of the advance coefficient of propeller and the thrust efficiency of additional thrust fins. The pressure and velocity flow behind the propeller was calculated. The geometrical nodes of the propeller were constituted by FORTRAN program and the NUMBS method was used to create a configuration of the propeller,which was then used by GAMMBIT to generate the calculation model. The thrust efficiency of fins was calculated as a function of the number of additional fins and the attack angles. The results of the calculations agree fairly well with experimental data,which shows that the viscous flow solution we present is useful in simulating the performance of propellers and rudders with additional fins.     

Study of station and attitude maneuver of submergence rescue vehicle

It is an important control process to operate motion of an submergence rescue vehicle(SRV). Seeing that the motion of the submergence rescue vehicle is special, it is necessary to employ non-linear predictive control system. For this reason, continuous dynamic performance of the system, the logical components and the operative restraints are expressed as the non-linear equations of state with the inequality restraints, and the model principle of hybrid system is introduced. The conclusion shows that it comes true to exactly control position and attitude of the SRV by means of non-linear model predictive control. The test in a model basin has also proved that the above methods are efficient.     

Research on vibration and near-field sound radiation of ring-ribbed cylindrical shell coated deadening and decoupling materials

The research on structural vibration and sound radiation of underwater ring-ribbed cylindrical shell, which is coated with a kind of deadening and decoupling materials, becomes a focus in recent years. This paper analyzes the problem on two aspects: model experiment and numerical calculation. The model experiment is carried out including three cases firstly, in which the structural vibration response and radiating acoustic field are measured respectively, and the results gained in these three cases are analyzed to discuss the effect of reducing structural vibration and radiating noise of the deadening and decoupling materials. The coupling FEM/BEM and the SEA methods are both used in numerical calculation, i.e. the arithmetic of the coupling FEM/BEM method is adopted to calculate the low frequency characteristics and the SEA method is adopted to calculate the medium-high frequencies characteristics of the model. By comparing experimental results with numerical calculation results, it is proved that the algorithm adopted in this paper is reasonable.     

Classification of underwater still objects based on multi-field features and SVM

A Support Vector Machine is used as a classifier to the automatic detection and recognition of underwater still objects. Discrimination between the objects can be transferred into different projection spaces by the process of multi-field feature extraction. The multi-field feature vector includes time-domain, spectral, time-frequency distribution and bi-spectral features. Underwater target recognition can be considered as a problem of small sample recognition. SVM algorithm is appropriate to this kind of problems because of its outstanding generalizability. The SVM is contrasted with a Gaussian classifier and a k-nearest classifier in some experiments using real data of lake or sea trial. The experimental results indicate that SVM is better than the others two.