this paper reports a cfd modeling study to investigate the hydrogen-air mixture combustion in a micro scale chamber. nine species with nineteen reversible reactions were considered in the premixed combustion model. the effect of operational and geometrical conditions including; combustor size, wall conductivity, reactant flow rates and hydrogen feed splitting on combustion stability and outlet ...

In the framework of our research on biologically inspired microrobotics, we have developed two novel Automatic Flight Control Systems (AFCS): OCTAVE (Optical altitude Control sysTem for Autonomous VEhicles) and OSCAR (Optical Scanning sensor for the Control of Autonomous Robots), both based on insects’ visuomotor control systems. OCTAVE was tested and found to confer on a tethered aerial robot ...

The UK Co-operative Crash Injury Study currently includes data on 205 seat belted drivers from frontal impacts in which an air bag deployed; of these, 142 suffered some degree of injury. To detect the influence of frontal air bags, the distribution of injury over the body regions of these drivers was compared to that of a much larger group from vehicles without air bags. The injured drivers fro...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and micro air vehicles (MAV) are already intensively used in geodetic applications. State of the art autonomous systems are however geared towards the application area in safe and obstacle-free altitudes greater than 30 meters. Applications at lower altitudes still require a human pilot. A new application field will be the reconstruction of structures and building...

Abstract: In recent decades, micro air vehicles driven by electric propellers have become a hot topic, and developed quickly. The performance of the vehicles depends on the rotational speed of propellers, thus, improving the accuracy of rotational speed measurement is beneficial to the vehicle’s performance. This paper presents the development of a soft sensor for the rotational speed measureme...

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) are noted for their small size and low-Reynolds number flight regime. Because they have small mass, they are attractive for use in sensing of toxic plumes. This mission requires high aerodynamic efficiency and the ability to be quickly and easily launched. A variable-sweep wing is investigated to meet these goals. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate that swee...

We review and expand on the control of separated flows over flat plates and airfoils at low Reynolds numbers associated with micro air vehicles. Experimental observations of the steady-state and transient lift response to actuation, and its dependence on the actuator, airfoil geometry, and flow conditions are discussed and an attempt is made to unify them in terms of their excitation of periodi...

Precise trajectory tracking is a crucial property for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) to operate in cluttered environment or under disturbances. In this paper we present a detailed comparison between two state-of-the-art model-based control techniques for MAV trajectory tracking. A classical Linear Model Predictive Controller (LMPC) is presented and compared against a more advanced Nonlinear Model Pr...

Ten Vicon MX T40 (4 megapixel) motion capture cameras available in the Micro-Aerial Vehicle and Sensor Networks (MAVSeN) Laboratory at Louisiana Tech University act as the source of data. The MAVSeN lab conducts research and development in small-scale vehicle design, cooperative intelligent sensing, and control algorithms for unmanned air and ground vehicles (see Figure 1). As the figure partia...