Abstract The water-lubricated thrust bearings of the marine rim-driven thruster (RDT) are usually composed polymer composites, which prone to serious wear under harsh working conditions. Ultrasonic is an excellent non-destructive monitoring technology, but materials characterized by viscoelasticity, heterogeneity, and large acoustic attenuation, making it challenging extract ultrasonic echo sig...

Thruster modeling and control is the core of underwater vehicle control and simulation, because it is the lowest control loop of the system; hence, the system would benefit from accurate and practical modeling of the thrusters. In unmanned underwater vehicles, thrusters are generally propellers driven by electrical motors. Therefore, thrust force is simultaneously affected by motor model, prope...

The article seeks to unify the treatment of conservative force interactions between axi-symmetric bodies and actuators in inviscid flow. Applications include the study of hub interference, diffuser augmented wind turbines and boundary layer ingestion propeller configurations. The conservation equations are integrated over infinitesimal streamtubes to obtain an exact momentum model contemplating...

PEEK is a high strength engineering thermoplastic that suffers from a high friction coefficient and a friction induced wear mode. Past studies with 0 m PEEK and PTFE powders resulted in composite solid lubricant that (at the optimal composition) had a wear rate of k= 2× 10−9 mm3/Nm ith a friction coefficient of μ= 0.12. A compositional grading of PEEK and PTFE is implemented in this study to cr...

Competitive swimmers spread fingers during the propulsive stroke. Due to the inherent inefficiency of human swimming, the question is: does this strategy enhance performance or is it just a more comfortable hand posture? Here we show, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of a 3D model of the hand, that an optimal finger spacing (12 degrees , roughly corresponding to the resting hand postu...

Nomenclature C = chord length, m C T = thrust coefficient f = flapping frequency, Hz h tip = plunge amplitude at the wing tip, m k = ωC∕U ∞ , reduced frequency l span = wingspan, m Re = U ∞ C∕ν, Reynolds number r z = z-directional distance away from the wing tip, m S wing = wing area, m 2 St = fh tip ∕U ∞ , Strouhal number U ∞ = freestream velocity, m∕s ν = kinematic viscosity of fluid, m 2 ∕s ...

The ability to measure extremely low thrust levels with unusual precision is becoming more critical as attempts are made to characterize the performance of emerging micropropulsion systems. Many new attitude control concepts for nanospacecraft involve the production of thrust below 1 μN. A simple, but uniquely successful thrust stand has been developed and used to measure thrust levels as low a...

A novel fluidic thrust-vectoring (FTV) control method based on dual synthetic jets actuator (DSJA) is proposed and evaluated. Numerical simulations are governed by the compressible Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations. According to results, DSJA capable of deflecting a primary jet with velocity 100 m/s height 50 mm approximately 18 degrees momentum coefficient 1.96%. It pr...

We show a correlation between the occurrence of shallow thrust earthquakes and the occurrence of the strongest tides. The rate of earthquakes varies from the background rate by a factor of 3 with the tidal stress. The highest correlation is found when we assume a coefficient of friction of mu = 0.4 for the crust, although we see good correlation for mu between 0.2 and 0.6. Our results quantify ...