Ballistic design and testing of a composite armour reinforced by CNTs suitable for armoured vehicles

This paper is investigating the use of composite armour reinforced by nanomaterials, for the protection of light armoured(LAV) and medium armoured military vehicles(MAV), and the interaction between the composite materials and high-performance ballistic projectiles. Four armour materials, consisted of front hybrid fibre reinforced polymer cover layer, ceramic strike-face, fibre reinforced polymer intermediate layer and the metal matrix composite reinforced backplate, were manufactured and assembled by adhesive technology. The proposed laminated protection system is suitable for armoured ground vehicles;however, it could be used as armour on ground, air and naval platforms. The design of the protection system, including material selection and thickness, was elaborated depending on the performance requirements of Level 4 + STANAG 4569 military standard(projectile 14.5 mm × 114 mm API B32) and especially on a design philosophy which is analysed with the specifications. The backplate of this new composite is a hybrid material of Metal Matrix Composite(MMC) reinforced with carbon nanotubes(CNTs), manufactured with the use of powder metallurgy technique. The composite backplate material was morphologically, mechanically and chemically analysed. Results show that all plates are presenting high mechanical properties and ballistic characteristics, compared to commonly used armour plates. Real military ballistic tests according to AEP-STANAG 4569 were carried out for the total composite armour systems. After the ballistic tests, AA2024-CNT3 showed the best protection results, compared with the other plates(AA2024-CNT1 and AA2024-CNT2), with the projectile being unable to fully penetrate the composite plate.

Blast disruption using 3D grids/perforated plates for vehicle protection

In this work, blast disruption and mitigation using 3D grids/perforated plates were tested for underbelly and side protection of vehicles. Two vehicle simulants were used: a small-scale one for side vehicle protection assessment and a true-to-scale simulant for underbelly protection testing. The deformation of target plates was assessed. These were either unprotected or protected by three different types of disruptors. The first disruptor was made of a sandwich structure of two perforated plates filled with a thin aluminum structure allowing the air to pass through. The two other disruptors were made of pieces of cast metallic foam. Two different kinds of foams were used: one with large cells and the second one with small cells. Beforehand, the mitigation efficiency of the disruptors was evaluated using an explosivedriven shock tube(EDST). The experiments showed that blast disruption/mitigation by 3D grid/perforated plate structures was not suitable for vehicle side protection. However, 3D grids/perforated structures proved to be relatively effective for underbelly protection compared to an equivalent mass of steel.

Fractional Gradient Descent RBFNN for Active Fault-Tolerant Control of Plant Protection UAVs

With the increasing prevalence of high-order systems in engineering applications, these systems often exhibitsignificant disturbances and can be challenging to model accurately. As a result, the active disturbance rejectioncontroller (ADRC) has been widely applied in various fields. However, in controlling plant protection unmannedaerial vehicles (UAVs), which are typically large and subject to significant disturbances, load disturbances andthe possibility of multiple actuator faults during pesticide spraying pose significant challenges. To address theseissues, this paper proposes a novel fault-tolerant control method that combines a radial basis function neuralnetwork (RBFNN) with a second-order ADRC and leverages a fractional gradient descent (FGD) algorithm.We integrate the plant protection UAV model’s uncertain parameters, load disturbance parameters, and actuatorfault parameters and utilize the RBFNN for system parameter identification. The resulting ADRC exhibits loaddisturbance suppression and fault tolerance capabilities, and our proposed active fault-tolerant control law hasLyapunov stability implications. Experimental results obtained using a multi-rotor fault-tolerant test platformdemonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other control strategies regarding load disturbance suppressionand fault-tolerant performance.