A key feature of fish functional design is the presence of multiple fins that allow thrust vectoring and redirection of fluid momentum to contribute to both steady swimming and maneuvering. A number of previous studies have analyzed the function of dorsal fins in teleost fishes in this context, but the hydrodynamic function of dorsal fins in freely swimming sharks has not been analyzed, despite...

In this paper we develop a CORDIC-based floating-point vectoring algorithm which reduces significantly the amount of microrotation steps as compared to the conventional algorithm. The overhead required to accomplish this is minimized by the introduction of an angle selection function which considers only a few of the total amount of bits used to represent the vector being rotated. At the same t...

A self-designing flight control system (SDFCS) could provide a cost-effective means for developing controllers for new aircraft by eliminating analyst-intensive design of numerous individual controllers, each optimized for a single flight condition. Additionally, the SDFCS could improve the capabilities of existing aircraft by enhancing control performance in new flight regimes such as high ang...

Abstract To foster the competitiveness of European industry in global launcher market, need arose to build up necessary know-how on state-of-the-art vertical take-off landing (VTVL) concepts and corresponding technologies. In EU Horizon 2020 project RETALT (RETro propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies), VTVL approach applying retro is investigated for two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) single-stage-to...

Fluidic devices are often made by irreversibly bonding a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold to itself or a glass substrate by plasma treatment. This method limits the range of materials for fluidic device fabrication and utility for subsequent processing. Here, we present a simple and inexpensive method to fabricate fluidic devices using magnets to reversibly adhere PDMS and other polymer matrice...

Adding ML-style references to a Hindley-Milner polymorphic type system is troublesome because such a system is unsound with naive polymorphic generalization of reference types. Tofte [12] introduced a distinction between imperative and applicative type variables, such that applicative type variables are never in reference types, that provides a simple static analysis of which type variables may...