Improved spacecraft shield design requires early entry of radiation constraints into the design process to maximize performance and minimize costs. As a result, we have been investigating high-speed computational procedures to allow shield analysis from the preliminary design concepts to the final design. In particular, we will discuss the progress towards a full three-dimensional and computati...

A prohahilistic approach to design variables optimization of mechanical systems of multi ~ degrees of freedom is presented. The proposed method is based on the mathematical modelling of the systems, Optimization is understood as a calculation of the mean values and standard deviations of the random parameters chosen from the set of all design variables, which in the feasible domain minimize the...

The paper presents an automatic technique for structure optimization of a deterministic test pattern generator (TPG). The TPG is composed of a linear register and a non-linear combinational function that can invert any bit in the generated patterns. Consequently, any arbitrary test sequence can be produced. This kind of a TPG is suitable for on-line built-in self-test (BIST) implementations whe...

For the heat equation on a bounded subdomain Ω of R, we investigate the optimal shape and location of the observation domain in observability inequalities. A new decomposition of L(R) into heat packets allows us to remove the randomization procedure and assumptions on the geometry of Ω in previous works. The explicit nature of the heat packets gives new information about the observability const...

Affordable, reliable endoand exoatmospheric transportation, for both the military and commercial sectors, grows in importance as the world grows smaller and space exploration and exploitation increasingly impact our daily lives. However, the impact of disciplinary, operational, and technological uncertainties inhibit the design of the requisite hypersonic vehicles, an inherently multidisciplina...