The attitude control of an aircraft is usually fulfilled by means of thrusters at high altitudes. Therefore, the possibility of using also aerodynamic surfaces would produce the advantage of reducing the amount of fuel for the thrusters to be loaded on board. For this purpose, Zuppardi already considered some aerodynamic problems linked to the use of a wing flap in a previous paper. A NACA 0010 airfoil with a trailing edge flap of 35% of the chord, in the range of angle of attack 0-40 deg and flap deflections up to 30 deg was investigated. Computer tests were carried out in hypersonic, rarefied flow by a direct simulation Monte Carlo code at the altitudes of 65 and 85 km of Earth Atmosphere. The present work continues this subject, considering the same airfoil and free stream conditions but two flap extensions of 45% and 25% of the chord and two flap deflections of 15 and 30 deg. The main purpose is to compare the influence of the flap dimension with that of the flap deflection. The present analysis is carried out in terms of: 1) percentage variation of the global aerodynamic coefficients with respect to the no-flap configuration, 2) increment of pressure and heat flux on the airfoil lower surface due to the Shock Wave-Shock Wave Interaction (SWSWI) with respect to the same quantities with no SWSWI or in no-flap configuration, 3) flap hinge moment. Issues 2) and 3) are important for the design of the mechanical and thermal protection system and of the flap actuator, respectively. Under the above mentioned test and geometrical conditions, the flap deflection is aerodynamically more effective than the flap extension, because it involves higher variation of the aerodynamic coefficients. However, tests verify that a smaller deflection angle involves the advantage of a smaller increment of pressure and heat flux on the airfoil lower surface, due to SWSWI, as well as a smaller hinge moment.

Since composite structures are widely used in structural engineering, delamination in such structures is an important issue of research. Delamination is one of a principal cause of failure in composites. In This study the electrical potential (EP) technique is applied to detect and locate delamination in basalt fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) laminate composite pipe by using electrical capacitance sensor (ECS). The proposed EP method is able to identify and localize hidden delamination inside composite layers without overlapping with other method data accumulated to achieve an overall identification of the delamination location/size in a composite, with high accuracy, easy and low-cost. Twelve electrodes are mounted on the outer surface of the pipe. Afterwards, the delamination is introduced into between the three layers (0º/90º/0º)s laminates pipe, split into twelve scenarios. The dielectric properties change in basalt FRP pipe is measured before and after delamination occurred using arrays of electrical contacts and the variation in capacitance values, capacitance change and node potential distribution are analyzed. Using these changes in electrical potential due to delamination, a finite element simulation model for delamination location/size detection is generated by ANSYS and MATLAB, which are combined to simulate sensor characteristic. Response surfaces method (RSM) are adopted as a tool for solving inverse problems to estimate delamination location/size from the measured electrical potential changes of all segments between electrodes. The results show good convergence between the finite element model (FEM) and estimated results. Also the results indicate that the proposed method successfully assesses the delamination location/size for basalt FRP laminate composite pipes. The illustrated results are in excellent agreement with the experimental results available in the literature, thus validating the accuracy and reliability of the proposed technique.

Landing phase is one of the crucial and most important phases during robotic aerospace explorations. It concerns the impact of the landing module of a spacecraft on a celestial body. Risks and uncertainties of landing are mainly due to the morphology of the surface, the possible presence of rocks and other obstacles or subsidence. The present work quotes results of a computational analysis direct to investigate the stability during the landing phase of a lander on Phobos, a Mars Moon. The present study makes use of available software tools for the simulation analyses and results processing. Due to the nature of the system under consideration (i.e., large displacements and interaction between several systems), multibody simulations were performed to analyze the lander's behavior after the impact with the celestial body. The landing scenario was chosen as a result of a DOE (Design of Experiments) analysis in terms of lander velocity and position, or ground slope. In order to verify the reliability of the present multibody methodology for this particular aerospace issue, two different software tools were employed in order to emphasize two different ways to simulate the crash-box, a particular component of the system used to cushion the impact. The results show the most important frames of the simulations so as to provide a general idea about how lander behaves in its descent and some trends of the main characteristics of the system. In conclusion, the success of the approach is demonstrated by highlighting that the results (crash-box shortening trend and lander's kinetic energy) are comparable between the two tools and that the stability is ensured.

Vibration is a source of performance degradation in all optical imaging systems. Performance of high resolution remote sensing payloads is often limited due to satellite platform vibrations. Effects of Linear and high frequency sinusoidal vibrations on the system MTF are known exactly in closed form but the low frequency vibration effects is a random process and must be considered statistically. Usually the vibration MTF budget is defined based on the mission requirements and the overall MTF limitations. For analyzing low frequency effects, designer must know all the systems specifications and parameters. With a good understanding of harmful vibration frequencies and amplitudes in the system preliminary design phase, their effects could be removed totally or partially. This procedure is cost effective and let the designer to eliminate just harmful vibrations and avoids over-designing. In this paper we have analyzed the effects of low-frequency platform vibrations on the payload's modulation transfer function. We have used a statistical analysis to find the probability of imaging with a MTF equal or greater than a pre-defined budget for different missions. The worst and average cases have been discussed and finally we have proposed "look-up figures". Using these look-up figures, designer can choose the electro-optical parameters in such a way that vibration effects be less than its pre-defined budget. Furthermore, using the results, we can propose a damping profile based on which vibration frequencies and amplitudes must be eliminated to stabilize the payload system.

The description of transitional flows by means of RANS equations is sometimes based on non-local approaches which require the computation of some boundary layer properties. In this work a non-local Laminar Kinetic Energy model is used to predict transitional and separated flows. Usually the non-local term of this model is evaluated along the grid lines of a structured mesh. An alternative approach, which does not rely on grid lines, is introduced in the present work. This new approach allows the use of fully unstructured meshes. Furthermore, it reduces the grid-dependence of the predicted results. The approach is employed to study the transitional flows in the T106c turbine cascade and around a NACA0021 airfoil by means of a discontinuous Galerkin method. The local nature of the discontinuous Galerkin reconstruction is exploited to implement an adaptive algorithm which automatically refines the mesh in the most significant regions.

This paper presents a first step towards the understanding of water diffusion in RTM textile composite materials for aircraft applications and focuses on the development of experimental and numerical approaches to characterize the diffusion kinetics within the material. The method consists in making samples which are representative of the materials architecture and carrying out gravimetric tests on such samples. Analysis of results with the aid of a diffusion model reconstructing the architecture of the samples helps identifying the diffusion behaviour of the material.

This article covenants with the post buckling witticism of carbon nanotube reinforced composite (CNTRC) beam supported with an elastic foundation in thermal atmospheres with arbitrary assumed random system properties. The arbitrary assumed random system properties are be modeled as uncorrelated Gaussian random input variables. Unvaryingly distributed (UD) and functionally graded (FG) distributions of the carbon nanotube are deliberated. The material belongings of CNTRC beam are presumed to be graded in the beam depth way and appraised through a micromechanical exemplary. The basic equations of a CNTRC beam are imitative constructed on a higher order shear deformation beam (HSDT) theory with von-Karman type nonlinearity. The beam is supported by two parameters Pasternak elastic foundation with Winkler cubic nonlinearity. The thermal dominance is involved in the material properties of CNTRC beam is foreseen to be temperature dependent (TD). The first and second order perturbation method (SOPT) and Monte Carlo sampling (MCS) by way of CO nonlinear finite element method (FEM) through direct iterative way are offered to observe the mean, coefficient of variation (COV) and probability distribution function (PDF) of critical post buckling load. Archetypal outcomes are presented for the volume fraction of CNTRC, slenderness ratios, boundary conditions, underpinning parameters, amplitude ratios, temperature reliant and sovereign random material properties with arbitrary system properties. The present defined tactic is corroborated with the results available in the literature and by employing MCS.