Adaptive controller design for a switched model of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles

Since most of the control strategies for air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (AHVs) concentrate on the control-oriented models built at/around a specific working point, it is somewhat hard to extend them to the broader flight envelop. Aiming at the above deficiency, this paper formulates the dynamics of AHVs as several sub-models, which switch to each other in accordance with the flight condition and make up of the control-oriented switched model (COSM). With the aid of the COSM, two adaptive tracking controllers are proposed for the purposes of velocity tracking and altitude tracking, sequentially. By utilizing neural networks and designing robust control laws, the possible changes on the force and moment coefficients in the COSM are successfully handled. The time-varying inertia parameters of AHVs are also considered at design level. It is worth emphasizing that while this strategy is developed based on a switched model, the resulting control algorithm is continuous with no connection to the switching signal. Analysis indicates that both velocity and altitude tracking errors remain small within the whole flight envelop, which is further confirmed by a simulation study.     

Rotating Detonation Combustor Research at the University of Cincinnati

Rotating detonation combustors (RDC) are at the forefront of pressure gain combustion (PGC) research. The simplicity in design and the ease of assembly makes it a promising technology that could be integrated into existing combustor architectures. This is, however, coupled with the considerable complexities of the detonation-based flow field, and the associated modes and coupling mechanisms. The current paper is an overview of the research done at the University of Cincinnati to address some of the challenges and questions pertaining to the physics of RDC operation. Issues such as combustor geometry, injection schemes and mixing, varied reactants behavior and modes of RDC operation are discussed. The effects of pressurization of the combustor, along with other detonation enhancement strategies are also deliberated upon. When appropriate, parallels are drawn to the phenomena of high frequency combustion instabilities to address the similarities in observations between the two fields.     

Solidifying framework nucleic acids

正Living organisms have developed their unique strategies during the natural evolution for building hard tissues with minerals, including silica, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and ferric oxide [1]. Such biomineralized materials generally have complex hierarchical structures with excellent mechanical properties. Although bioinspired approaches have led to the creation of well-defined synthetic structural materials ranging from micro to macro scales, the rational design of discrete biomimetic structures at the nanoscale remains a grand challenge.     

Mesoscopic Modeling of Capillarity-Induced Two-Phase Transport in a Microfluidic Porous Structure

Mesoscopic modeling at the pore scale offers great promise in exploring the underlying structure transport performance of flow through porous media. The present work studies the fluid flow subjected to capillarity-induced resonance in porous media characterized by different porous structure and wettability. The effects of porosity and wettability on the displacement behavior of the fluid flow through porous media are discussed. The results are presented in the form of temporal evolution of percentage saturation and displacement of the fluid front through porous media. The present study reveals that the vibration in the form of acoustic excitation could be significant in the mobilization of fluid through the porous media. The dependence of displacement of the fluid on physicochemical parameters like wettability of the surface, frequency along with the porosity is analyzed. It was observed that the mean displacement of the fluid is more in the case of invading fluid with wetting phase where the driving force strength is not so dominant.     

Three-term polynomial progressions in subsets of finite fields

We prove that the group of diffeomorphisms of the interval [0, 1] contains surface groups whose action on (0, 1) has no global fix point and such that only countably many points of the interval (0, 1) have non-trivial stabiliser.     

Application of ion-imprinted polymer synthesized by precipitation polymerization as an efficient and selective sorbent for separation and pre-concentration of chromium ions from some real samples

In this study, a new Cr(III)-imprinted polymer (Cr(III)-IIP) is prepared from CrCl₃·6H₂O, methacrylic acid functional monomer, ethyleneglycoldimethacrylate cross-linking agent, 2,2?-azobisisobutyronitrile radical initiator and 2,2-(azanediylbis (ethane-2,1-diyl))bis(isoindoline-1,3-dione) ligand. To obtain the maximum adsorption capacity, the optimum condition was studied through pH, type and concentration of eluent, IIP weight, sample volume as well as the adsorption and desorption times. The Cr(III) ion content was determined via flame atomic absorption spectrometer. In optimum conditions, the adsorption capacity of the IIP for Cr(III) was obtained to be 74.65 mg g^?1, using 50 mg of IIP and the initial pH solution of 3.0. Both the adsorption and desorption times for quantitative analyses of Cr(III) ions were 15 and 5 min; respectively. After elution of the adsorbed ions by 3 mL of 4 mol L^?1 HNO₃ aqueous solution, the established IIP-based SPE procedure provides a reasonable pre-concentration factor of 100. The IIP-based pre-concentration method provides a low detection limit of 1.7 µg L^?1 with good repeatability (RSD?=?3.22%). Reusability studies confirmed that synthesis IIP is reusable and recoverable up to six cycles. According to the selectivity experiments, it was concluded that the prepared sorbent possesses more affinity toward Cr(III) ions than other ions such as Al³⁺, Pb²⁺, Cu²⁺, Mn²⁺, Fe²⁺, Zn²⁺, and Ni²⁺ ions. To evaluate the potential applicability of the proposed separation method, the pre-concentration and determination of trace amounts of Cr(III) were performed successfully in food samples with complex matrices, a bestial sample (i.e. cow liver) and an herbal product (i.e., broccoli) as real samples.