Airfoil friction drag reduction based on grid-type and super-dense array plasma actuators

To improve the cruise flight performance of aircraft, two new configurations of plasma actuators(grid-type and super-dense array) were investigated to reduce the turbulent skin friction drag of a low-speed airfoil. The induced jet characteristics of the two actuators in quiescent air were diagnosed with high-speed particle image velocimetry(PIV), and their drag reduction efficiencies were examined under different operating conditions in a wind tunnel. The results showed that the grid-type plasma actuator was capable of producing a wall-normal jet array(peak magnitude: 1.07 m/s) similar to that generated in a micro-blowing technique, while the superdense array plasma actuator created a wavy wall-parallel jet(magnitude: 0.94 m/s) due to the discrete spanwise electrostatic forces. Under a comparable electrical power consumption level,the super-dense array plasma actuator array significantly outperformed the grid-type configuration,reducing the total airfoil friction drag by approximately 22% at a free-stream velocity of 20 m/s.The magnitude of drag reduction was proportional to the dimensionless jet velocity ratio(r), and a threshold r = 0.014 existed under which little impact on airfoil drag could be discerned.

Observer-based dynamic event-triggered control for distributed parameter systems over mobile sensor-plus-actuator networks

We develop a policy of observer-based dynamic event-triggered state feedback control for distributed parameter systems over a mobile sensor-plus-actuator network.It is assumed that the mobile sensing devices that provide spatially averaged state measurements can be used to improve state estimation in the network.For the purpose of decreasing the update frequency of controller and unnecessary sampled data transmission, an efficient dynamic event-triggered control policy is constructed.In an event-triggered system, when an error signal exceeds a specified time-varying threshold, it indicates the occurrence of a typical event.The global asymptotic stability of the event-triggered closed-loop system and the boundedness of the minimum inter-event time can be guaranteed.Based on the linear quadratic optimal regulator, the actuator selects the optimal displacement only when an event occurs.A simulation example is finally used to verify that the effectiveness of such a control strategy can enhance the system performance.

A framework for dynamic modelling of railway track switches considering the switch blades,actuators and control systems

The main contribution of this paper is the development and demonstration of a novel methodology that can be followed to develop a simulation twin of a railway track switch system to test the functionality in a digital environment.This is important because,globally,railway track switches are used to allow trains to change routes;they are a key part of all railway networks.However,because track switches are single points of failure and safety-critical,their inability to operate correctly can cause significant delays and concomitant costs.In order to better understand the dynamic behaviour of switches during operation,this paper has developed a full simulation twin of a complete track switch system.The approach fuses finite element for the rail bending and motion,with physics-based models of the electromechanical actuator system and the control system.Hence,it provides researchers and engineers the opportunity to explore and understand the design space around the dynamic operation of new switches and switch machines before they are built.This is useful for looking at the modification or monitoring of existing switches,and it becomes even more important when new switch concepts are being considered and evaluated.The simulation is capable of running in real time or faster meaning designs can be iterated and checked interactively.The paper describes the modelling approach,demonstrates the methodology by developing the system model for a novel“REPOINT”switch system,and evaluates the system level performance against the dynamic performance requirements for the switch.In the context of that case study,it is found that the proposed new actuation system as designed can meet(and exceed)the system performance requirements,and that the fault tolerance built into the actuation ensures continued operation after a single actuator failure.

Path-Following Control With Obstacle Avoidance of Autonomous Surface Vehicles Subject to Actuator Faults

This paper investigates the path-following control problem with obstacle avoidance of autonomous surface vehicles in the presence of actuator faults,uncertainty and external disturbances.Autonomous surface vehicles inevitably suffer from actuator faults in complex sea environments,which may cause existing obstacle avoidance strategies to fail.To reduce the influence of actuator faults,an improved artificial potential function is constructed by introducing the lower bound of actuator efficiency factors.The nonlinear state observer,which only depends on measurable position information of the autonomous surface vehicle,is used to address uncertainties and external disturbances.By using a backstepping technique and adaptive mechanism,a path-following control strategy with obstacle avoidance and fault tolerance is designed which can ensure that the tracking errors converge to a small neighborhood of zero.Compared with existing results,the proposed control strategy has the capability of obstacle avoidance and fault tolerance simultaneously.Finally,the comparison results through simulations are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Practical prescribed-time fuzzy tracking control for uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying actuators faults

The paper investigates the practical prescribed-time fuzzy tracking control problem for a category of nonlinear system subject to time-varying actuator faults.The presence of unknown nonlinear dynamics and actuator faults makes achieving tracking control within a prescribed-time challenging.To tackle this issue,we propose a novel practical prescribed-time fuzzy tracking control strategy,which is independent of the initial state of the system and does not rely on precise modeling of the system and actuators.We apply the approximation capabilities of fuzzy logic systems to handle the unknown nonlinear functions and unidentified actuator faults in the system.The piecewise controller and adaptive law constructed based on piecewise prescribed time-varying function and backstepping technique method establish the theoretical framework of practical prescribed-time tracking control,and extend the range of prescribed-time tracking control to infinity.Regardless of the initial conditions,the proposed control strategy can guarantee that all signals remain uniformly bounded within the practical prescribed time in the presence of unknown nonlinear item and time-varying actuator faults.Simulation example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

Study on Sealing Characteristics of Sliding Seal Assembly of Aircraft Hydraulic Actuator

The hydraulic actuator,known as the"muscle"of military aircraft,is responsible for flight attitude adjustment,trajectory control,braking turn,landing gear retracting and other actions,which directly affect its flight efficiency and safety.However,the sealing assembly often has the situation of over-aberrant aperture fit clearance or critical over-aberrant clearance,which increases the failure probability and degree of movable seal failure,and directly affects the flight efficiency and safety of military aircraft.In this paper,the simulation model of hydraulic actuator seal combination is established by ANSYS software,and the sealing principle is described.The change curve of contact width and contact pressure of combination seal under the action of high-pressure fluid is drawn.The effects of different oil pressure,fit clearance and other parameters on the sealing performance are analyzed.Finally,the accelerated life test of sliding seal components is carried out on the hydraulic actuator accelerated life test rig,and the surface morphology is compared and analyzed.The research shows that the O-ring is the main sealing element and the role of the check ring is to protect and support the O-ring to prevent damage caused by squeezing into the fit clearance,so the check ring bears a large load and is prone to shear failure.Excessive fit clearance is the main factor affecting the damage of the check ring,and the damage parts are mainly concentrated at the edge of the sealing surface.This paper provides a theoretical basis for the design of hydraulic actuator and the improvement of sealing performance.

Fully Distributed Nash Equilibrium Seeking for High-Order Players With Actuator Limitations

This paper explores the problem of distributed Nash equilibrium seeking in games, where players have limited knowledge on other players' actions. In particular, the involved players are considered to be high-order integrators with their control inputs constrained within a pre-specified region. A linear transformation for players' dynamics is firstly utilized to facilitate the design of bounded control inputs incorporating multiple saturation functions. By introducing consensus protocols with adaptive and time-varying gains, the unknown actions for players are distributively estimated. Then, a fully distributed Nash equilibrium seeking strategy is exploited, showcasing its remarkable properties: (1) ensuring the boundedness of control inputs;(2) avoiding any global information/parameters;and (3) allowing the graph to be directed. Based on Lyapunov stability analysis, it is theoretically proved that the proposed distributed control strategy can lead all the players' actions to the Nash equilibrium. Finally, an illustrative example is given to validate effectiveness of the proposed method.

Adaptive Fixed-Time Control of Nonlinear MASs With Actuator Faults

The adaptive fixed-time consensus problem for a class of nonlinear multi-agent systems(MASs)with actuator faults is considered in this paper.To approximate the unknown nonlinear functions in MASs,radial basis function neural networks are used.In addition,the first order sliding mode differentiator is utilized to solve the“explosion of complexity”problem,and a filter error compensation method is proposed to ensure the convergence of filter error in fixed time.With the help of the Nussbaum function,the actuator failure compensation mechanism is constructed.By designing the adaptive fixed-time controller,all signals in MASs are bounded,and the consensus errors between the leader and all followers converge to a small area of origin.Finally,the effectiveness of the proposed control method is verified by simulation examples.

Distributed fault diagnosis observer for multi-agent system against actuator and sensor faults

Component failures can cause multi-agent system(MAS)performance degradation and even disasters,which provokes the demand of the fault diagnosis method.A distributed sliding mode observer-based fault diagnosis method for MAS is developed in presence of actuator and sensor faults.Firstly,the actuator and sensor faults are extended to the system state,and the system is transformed into a descriptor system form.Then,a sliding mode-based distributed unknown input observer is proposed to estimate the extended state.Furthermore,adaptive laws are introduced to adjust the observer parameters.Finally,the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with numerical simulations.

Ultralong Stretchable Soft Actuator(US2A):Design,Modeling and Application

Actuator plays a significant role in soft robotics.This paper proposed an ultralong stretchable soft actuator(US2A)with a variable and sizeable maximum elongation.The US2A is composed of a silicone rubber tube and a bellows woven sleeve.The maximal extension can be conveniently regulated by just adjusting the wrinkles’initial angle of the bellows woven sleeve.The kinematics of US2A could be obtained by geometrically analyzing the structure of the bellows woven sleeve when the silicone rubber tube is inflated.Based on the principle of virtual work,the actuating models have been established:the pressure-elongation model and the pressure-force model.These models reflect the influence of the silicone tube’s shell thickness and material properties on the pneumatic muscle’s performance,which facilitates the optimal design of US2A for various working conditions.The experimental results showed that the maximum elongation of the US2A prototype is 257%,and the effective elongation could be variably regulated in the range of 0 and 257%.The proposed models were also verified by pressure-elongation and pressure-force experiments,with an average error of 5%and 2.5%,respectively.Finally,based on the US2A,we designed a pneumatic rehabilitation glove,soft arm robot,and rigid-soft coupling continuous robot,which further verified the feasibility of US2A as a soft driving component.

A study of a slim compact piezo inertia actuator

Most previously reported inertia actuators suffer from the problems of low speed and large size.To overcome these shortcomings,this study proposes a slim compact piezo inertia actuator based on the principle of stick–slip drive.Actuated by the transverse motion of a cantilever beam forming part of a monolithic elastomer,this actuator achieves a high velocity.The construction and basic operating principle of the actuator are discussed in detail.Commercial finite element analysis software is employed to determine the appropriate geometry for the monolithic elastomer.To study the actuator’s mechanical characteristics,a prototype is fabricated and a series of experimental tests are performed.According to the results of these tests,the maximum velocity and maximum load force are about 24.03 mm/s and 1.96 N,respectively,and the minimum step size is about 0.47μm.It is shown that the inertia actuator based on a monolithic elastomer with a cantilever beam not only has a slim compact structure,but also exhibits good output characteristics.

Fuzzy Feedback Control for Electro-Hydraulic Actuators

Electro-hydraulic actuators(EHA)have recently played a significant role in modern industrial applications,especially in systems requiring extremely high precision.This can be explained by EHA’s ability to precisely control the position and force through advanced sensors and innovative control algorithms.One of the promising approaches to improve control accuracy for EHA systems is applying classical to modern control algorithms,in which the proportional–inte-gral–derivative(PID)algorithm,fuzzy logic controller,and a hybrid of these methods are popular options.In this paper,we developed a novel version of the fuzzy control algorithm and linear feedback control method,namely fuzzy lin-ear feedback control,to improve the control performance.To achieve the highest performance,wefirst designed a mathematical EHA model based on the Matlab/Simulink software packages thanks to the selected parameters,which are similar to a real EHA system.Then,we respectively applied PID,fuzzy PID(FPID),and fuzzy linear feedback control(FLFC)before comparing them to have a full view of the outstanding advantages of the proposed algorithm.The simulation results showed that the proposed FLFC algorithm is approximately 99%and 77%super-ior in performance to the PID and feedback control algorithms,respectively.

Design and Optimization of Actuator for HT-25 Multifunctional Loader

To break down the development interaction of the working gadget of the multi-practical wheel loader and to compute the heap of each part, the Denavit-Hartenberg strategy was applied to build up the kinematics of the instrument model. Also, all the while, set up the elements model of dynamic framework. A multi-body element programming MSC, ADAMS and its active module were applied to assemble component power through a pressure framework reenactment model. An entirety working cycle interaction of the functioning gadget of the wheel loader was mimicked, and the investigation results thoroughly show the development interaction of the functional device and the stacked state of each part, and check the mechanical properties of the working gadget and dynamic execution water-driven framework effectively.

Adaptive Leader-Follower Consensus Control of Multiple Flexible Manipulators With Actuator Failures and Parameter Uncertainties

In this paper,the leader-follower consensus problem for a multiple flexible manipulator network with actuator failures,parameter uncertainties,and unknown time-varying boundary disturbances is addressed.The purpose of this study is to develop distributed controllers utilizing local interactive protocols that not only suppress the vibration of each flexible manipulator but also achieve consensus on joint angle position between actual followers and the virtual leader.Following the accomplishment of the reconstruction of the fault terms and parameter uncertainties,the adaptive neural network method and parameter estimation technique are employed to compensate for unknown items and bounded disturbances.Furthermore,the Lyapunov stability theory is used to demonstrate that followers’angle consensus errors and vibration deflections in closed-loop systems are uniformly ultimately bounded.Finally,the numerical simulation results confirm the efficacy of the proposed controllers.

Output feedback control and parameters influence analysis of active suspension electro-hydraulic servo actuator

The hydraulic servo actuator of heavy vehicle active suspension is investigated to clarify the correlation between system parameters and the control characteristics of active suspension hydraulic servo system.Accordingly, a nonlinear physical model of electro-hydraulic servo active suspension system is built.Compared with the conventional nonlinear modeling, the model in this study considers the asymmetry of working areas caused by single rod hydraulic cylinder in the suspension system.In accordance with the model, a nonlinear output feedback controller based on backstepping is designed, and the effectiveness of the controller is proved based on the experimental platform.The dynamic response curve of the electro-hydraulic servo control system under the change of parameters is generated based on the simulation model.The sensitivity of electro-hydraulic servo control performance to the change of system physical parameters is investigated, and two evaluation indexes are proposed to quantify and compare the effect of all physical parameter changes on position control system.As revealed by the results, the position control characteristics of suspension actuator are more sensitive to the changes of flow gain of the servo valve, system supply oil pressure and effective working areas of cylinder, and the two evaluation indexes are over 10 times higher than other physical parameters.

Numerical Investigation of Flow Separation Control over an NACA0018 Airfoil Using Sweeping Jet Actuator

As an active flow control technology and with the advantages of no moving components, the Sweeping jet actuator has become a hotspot in the field of flow control. However, the linear relationship between oscillation frequency and momentum coefficient in a sweeping jet actuator makes it difficult to determine the dominant factors that affect control effectiveness. Decoupling the oscillation frequency and momentum coefficient, as well as determining the control mechanism, is the focus of studying the sweeping jet actuator. In this study, a novel sweeping jet actuator is designed using synthetic jets instead of feedback channels and applied to the flow separation control of NACA0018 airfoil. This article studies the control effect under three oscillation frequencies of F+ = f × c/U∞ = 1, 10, 100 and three momentum coefficients of Cμ = 0.45%, 0.625%, 0.9%. The numerical results indicate that all three oscillation frequencies have good control effects on flow separation, and the control effect is best when F+ = 1, with the maximum lift coefficient increasing by approximately 14% compared to the other two cases. And the sweeping jet actuator has a better ability to control flow separation as the momentum coefficient increases. By decoupling the characteristics of the sweeping jet actuator and conducting numerical analysis of the flow control effect, it will promote its better engineering application in the field of flow control. .

Bioinspired MXene-Based Soft Actuators Exhibiting Angle-Independent Structural Color

In nature,many living organisms exhibiting unique structural coloration and soft-bodied actuation have inspired scientists to develop advanced structural colored soft actuators toward biomimetic soft robots.However,it is challenging to simultaneously biomimic the angle-independent structural color and shape-morphing capabilities found in the plum-throated cotinga flying bird.Herein,we report biomimetic MXene-based soft actuators with angle-independent structural color that are fabricated through controlled self-assembly of colloidal SiO_(2) nanoparticles onto highly aligned MXene films followed by vacuum-assisted infiltration of polyvinylidene fluoride into the interstices.The resulting soft actuators are found to exhibit brilliant,angle-independent structural color,as well as ultrafast actuation and recovery speeds(a maximum curvature of 0.52 mm−1 can be achieved within 1.16 s,and a recovery time of~0.24 s)in response to acetone vapor.As proof-of-concept illustrations,structural colored soft actuators are applied to demonstrate a blue gripper-like bird’s claw that can capture the target,artificial green tendrils that can twine around tree branches,and an artificial multicolored butterfly that can flutter its wings upon cyclic exposure to acetone vapor.The strategy is expected to offer new insights into the development of biomimetic multifunctional soft actuators for somatosensory soft robotics and next-generation intelligent machines.

Experimental and numerical investigation of a self-supplementing dual-cavity plasma synthetic jet actuator

The primary issue regarding the plasma synthetic jet actuator(PSJA)is its performance attenuation at high frequencies.To solve this issue,a self-supplementing,dual-cavity,plasma synthetic jet actuator(SD-PSJA)is designed,and the static properties of the SD-PSJA are investigated through experiments and numerical simulations.The pressure measurement shows that the SD-PSJA has two saturation frequencies(1200 Hz and 2100 Hz),and the experimental results show that both the saturation frequencies decrease as the volume of the bottom cavity of the SD-PSJA increases.As the size of the supplement hole increases,the first saturation frequency increases continuously,while the second saturation frequency shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing.Numerical simulations show that the working process of the SD-PSJA is similar to that of the PSJA,but the volume of the cavity in the SD-PSJA is smaller than that of the PSJA;the SD-PSJA can supplement air to the top cavity through two holes,thus reducing the refresh time and effectively improving the jet intensity of the actuator at high frequencies.

Turbulent boundary layer control with DBD plasma actuators

The flat-plate turbulent boundary layer at Reτ=1140 is manipulated using a spanwise array of bidirectional dielectric barrier discharge(DBD)plasma actuators.Based on the features of no moving mechanical parts in the DBD plasma control technology and hot-wire anemometer velocity measurements,a novel convenient method of local drag reduction(DR)measurement is proposed by measuring the single-point velocity within the linear region of the viscous sublayer.We analyze the premise of using the method,and the maximum effective measurement range of-73.1%<DR<42.2%is obtained according to the experimental environment in this work.The local drag decreases downstream of the center of two adjacent upper electrodes and increases downstream of the upper electrodes.The magnitude of the local DR increases with increasing voltage and decreases as it moves away from the actuators.For the spanwise position in between,the streamwise distribution of the local DR is very dependent on the voltage.The variable-interval time-average detection results reveal that all bursting intensities are reduced compared to the baseline,and the amount of reduction is comparable to the absolute values of the local DR.Compared with previous results,we infer that the control mechanism is that many meandering streaks are combined together into single stabilized streaks.

Importance of Three-Dimensional Piezoelectric Coupling Modeling in Quantitative Analysis of Piezoelectric Actuators

This paper demonstrates the importance of three-dimensional(3-D)piezoelectric coupling in the electromechanical behavior of piezoelectric devices using three-dimensional finite element analyses based on weak and strong coupling models for a thin cantilevered piezoelectric bimorph actuator.It is found that there is a significant difference between the strong and weak coupling solutions given by coupling direct and inverse piezoelectric effects(i.e.,piezoelectric coupling effect).In addition,there is significant longitudinal bending caused by the constraint of the inverse piezoelectric effect in the width direction at the fixed end(i.e.,3-D effect).Hence,modeling of these effects or 3-D piezoelectric coupling modeling is an electromechanical basis for the piezoelectric devices,which contributes to the accurate prediction of their behavior.