This paper describes recent research on flapping-wing micro air vehicles, based on insect-like aerodynamics. A combined analytical, experimental and CFD approach is being adopted to understand and design suitable wing aerodynamics and kinematics. The CFD has used the Fluent 6 commercial code together with the grid-generating software Gambit 2; the experiments have been conducted in air and wate...

This paper presents a method to model and analyze the coupled nonlinear flight dynamics and aeroelasticity of highly flexible flyingwings. A low-order nonlinear strain-based finite element framework is used, which is capable of capturing the fundamental impact of geometrically nonlinear effects in a computationally effective formulation target for preliminary vehicle design and control evaluati...

This paper presents an adaptive neural network approach to the trajectory tracking control of micro aerial vehicles especially when they are ying in a limited indoor area. Di!ering from conventional controllers, the proposed controller employs the outer position loop to directly generate angular velocity commands in the presence of unknown aerodynamics and disturbances and then the fast inner l...

A review of the state-of-the-art in hypersonic aeroelasticity and aerothermoelasticity is provided. Recently, the main focus in this area has been on the development of computational aeroelastic and aerothermoelastic methods capable of studying complete hypersonic vehicles. Thus, in addition to a survey of studies conducted in this area over the past six decades, two important issues are a focu...

A challenge for the fluid dynamics community is to adapt to and exploit the trend towards greater multidisciplinary focus in research and technology. The past decade has witnessed substantial growth in the research field of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO). MDO is a methodology for the design of complex engineering systems and subsystems that coherently exploits the synergism of mutu...

Unmanned air systems are becoming increasingly pervasive in academia as well as industry. Aerospace research and education have to-date focused on the fundamental aerodynamics, structures, and control technologies required for these systems, typically relying on commercial avionics packages to provide the hardware and baseline software needed for unmanned vehicle flight testing. This paper desc...

Supersonic commercial aircraft noise predictions have frequently considered only exhaust noise from the jet engines. Meeting the stringent noise requirements that apply to the subsonic fleet will require reducing jet exhaust noise to the point that fan noise may also require reduction. This report discusses the prediction of fan noise for a supersonic commercial aircraft using existing empirica...

This paper considers an energy management problem for an electric vehicle and explains how to solve it with an inversion-based approach. Modeling assumptions are discussed and yield the formulation of a simple, yet representative, optimal control problem to solve. This tutorial problem can serve as a benchmark for future works and other optimization techniques as it comprises the effects of gra...

Inlets and exhaust nozzles are often omitted in aerodynamic simulations of aircraft due to the complexities involved in the modeling of engine details and flow physics. However, the omission is often improper since inlet or plume flows may have a substantial effect on vehicle aerodynamics. A method for modeling the effect of inlets and exhaust plumes using boundary conditions within an inviscid...