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The paper presents the derivation of a new equivalent skin friction coefficient for estimating the parasitic drag of short-to-medium range fixed-wing unmanned aircraft. The new coefficient is derived from an aerodynamic analysis of ten different unmanned aircraft used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and search and rescue missions. The aircraft is simulated using a validated unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes approach. The UAV’s parasitic drag is significantly influenced by the presence of miscellaneous components like fixed landing gears or electro-optical sensor turrets. These components are responsible for almost half of an unmanned aircraft’s total parasitic drag. The new equivalent skin friction coefficient accounts for these effects and is significantly higher compared to other aircraft categories. It is used to initially size an unmanned aircraft for a typical reconnaissance mission. The improved parasitic drag estimation yields a much heavier unmanned aircraft when compared to the sizing results using available drag data of manned aircraft.
The integration of high temperature thermal energy storages into existing conventional power plants can help to reduce the CO2 emissions of those plants and lead to lower capital expenditures for building energy storage systems, due to the use of synergy effects [1]. One possibility to implement that, is a molten salt storage system with a powerful power-to-heat unit. This paper presents two possible control concepts for the startup of the charging system of such a facility. The procedures are implemented in a detailed dynamic process model. The performance and safety regarding the film temperatures at heat transmitting surfaces are investigated in the process simulations. To improve the accuracy in predicting the film temperatures, CFD simulations of the electrical heater are carried out and the results are merged with the dynamic model. The results show that both investigated control concepts are safe regarding the temperature limits. The gradient controlled startup performed better than the temperature-controlled startup. Nevertheless, there are several uncertainties that need to be investigated further.
The recovery of waste heat requires heat exchangers to extract it from a liquid or gaseous medium into another working medium, a refrigerant. In Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) on Combustion Engines there are two major heat sources, the exhaust gas and the water/glycol fluid from the engine’s cooling circuit. A heat exchanger design must be adapted to the different requirements and conditions resulting from the heat sources, fluids, system configurations, geometric restrictions, and etcetera. The Stacked Shell Cooler (SSC) is a new and very specific design of a plate heat exchanger, created by AKG, which allows with a maximum degree of freedom the optimization of heat exchange rate and the reduction of the related pressure drop. This optimization in heat exchanger design for ORC systems is even more important, because it reduces the energy consumption of the system and therefore maximizes the increase in overall efficiency of the engine.
Concerning current efforts to improve operational efficiency and to lower overall costs of concentrating solar power (CSP) plants with prediction-based algorithms, this study investigates the quality and uncertainty of nowcasting data regarding the implications for process predictions. DNI (direct normal irradiation) maps from an all-sky imager-based nowcasting system are applied to a dynamic prediction model coupled with ray tracing. The results underline the need for high-resolution DNI maps in order to predict net yield and receiver outlet temperature realistically. Furthermore, based on a statistical uncertainty analysis, a correlation is developed, which allows for predicting the uncertainty of the net power prediction based on the corresponding DNI forecast uncertainty. However, the study reveals significant prediction errors and the demand for further improvement in the accuracy at which local shadings are forecasted.
The paper presents an aerodynamic investigation of 70 different streamlined bodies with fineness ratios ranging from 2 to 10. The bodies are chosen to idealize both unmanned and small manned aircraft fuselages and feature cross-sectional shapes that vary from circular to quadratic. The study focuses on friction and pressure drag in dependency of the individual body’s fineness ratio and cross section. The drag forces are normalized with the respective body’s wetted area to comply with an empirical drag estimation procedure. Although the friction drag coefficient then stays rather constant for all bodies, their pressure drag coefficients decrease with an increase in fineness ratio. Referring the pressure drag coefficient to the bodies’ cross-sectional areas shows a distinct pressure drag minimum at a fineness ratio of about three. The pressure drag of bodies with a quadratic cross section is generally higher than for bodies of revolution. The results are used to derive an improved form factor that can be employed in a classic empirical drag estimation method. The improved formulation takes both the fineness ratio and cross-sectional shape into account. It shows superior accuracy in estimating streamlined body drag when compared with experimental data and other form factor formulations of the literature.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) constantly gain in versatility. However, more reliable path planning algorithms are required until full autonomous UAV operation is possible. This work investigates the algorithm 3DVFH* and analyses its dependency on its cost function weights in 2400 environments. The analysis shows that the 3DVFH* can find a suitable path in every environment. However, a particular type of environment requires a specific choice of cost function weights. For minimal failure, probability interdependencies between the weights of the cost function have to be considered. This dependency reduces the number of control parameters and simplifies the usage of the 3DVFH*. Weights for costs associated with vertical evasion (pitch cost) and vicinity to obstacles (obstacle cost) have the highest influence on the failure probability of the local path planner. Environments with mainly very tall buildings (like large American city centres) require a preference for horizontal avoidance manoeuvres (achieved with high pitch cost weights). In contrast, environments with medium-to-low buildings (like European city centres) benefit from vertical avoidance manoeuvres (achieved with low pitch cost weights). The cost of the vicinity to obstacles also plays an essential role and must be chosen adequately for the environment. Choosing these two weights ideal is sufficient to reduce the failure probability below 10%.
This work presents a methodology for automated
damage-sensitive feature extraction and anomaly
detection under multivariate operational variability
for in-flight assessment of wings. The
method uses a passive excitation approach, i. e.
without the need for artificial actuation. The
modal system properties (natural frequencies and
damping ratios) are used as damage-sensitive
features. Special emphasis is placed on the use
of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensing technology
and the consideration of Operational and
Environmental Variability (OEV). Measurements
from a wind tunnel investigation with a composite
cantilever equipped with FBG and piezoelectric
sensors are used to successfully detect an impact
damage. In addition, the feasibility of damage
localisation and severity estimation is evaluated
based on the coupling found between damageand
OEV-induced feature changes.
In this paper the way to a 5-day-car with respect to a modular valve train systems for spark ignited combustion engines is shown. The necessary product diversity is shift from mechanical or physical components to software components. Therefore, significant improvements of logistic indicators are expected and shown. The working principle of a camless cylinder head with respect to an electromagnetical valve train (EMVT) is explained and it is demonstrated that shifting physical diversity to software is feasible. The future design of combustion engine systems including customisation can be supported by a set of assistance tools which is shown exemplary.
New materials often lead to innovations and advantages in technical applications. This also applies to the particle receiver proposed in this work that deploys high-temperature and scratch resistant transparent ceramics. With this receiver design, particles are heated through direct-contact concentrated solar irradiance while flowing downwards through tubular transparent ceramics from top to bottom. In this paper, the developed particle receiver as well as advantages and disadvantages are described. Investigations on the particle heat-up characteristics from solar irradiance were carried out with DEM simulations which indicate that particle temperatures can reach up to 1200 K. Additionally, a simulation model was set up for investigating the dynamic behavior. A test receiver at laboratory scale has been designed and is currently being built. In upcoming tests, the receiver test rig will be used to validate the simulation results. The design and the measurement equipment is described in this work.
Flow separation is a phenomenon that occurs in all kinds of supersonic nozzles sometimes during run-up and shut-down operations. Especially in expansion nozzles of rocket engines with large area ratio, flow separation can trigger strong side loads that can damage the structure of the nozzle. The investigation presented in this paper seeks to establish measures that may be applied to alter the point of flow separation. In order to achieve this, a supersonic nozzle was placed at the exit plane of the conical nozzle. This resulted in the generation of cross flow surrounding the core jet flow from the conical nozzle. Due to the entrainment of the gas stream from the conical nozzle the pressure in its exit plane was found to be lower than that of the ambient. A Cold gas instead of hot combustion gases was used as the working fluid. A mathematical simulation of the concept was validated by experiment. Measurements confirmed the simulation results that due to the introduction of a second nozzle the pressure in the separated region of the conical nozzle was significantly reduced. It was also established that the boundary layer separation inside the conical nozzle was delayed thus allowing an increased degree of overexpansion. The condition established by the pressure measurements was also demonstrated qualitatively using transparent nozzle configurations.
In this paper we investigate the use of deep neural networks for 3D object detection in uncommon, unstructured environments such as in an open-pit mine. While neural nets are frequently used for object detection in regular autonomous driving applications, more unusual driving scenarios aside street traffic pose additional challenges. For one, the collection of appropriate data sets to train the networks is an issue. For another, testing the performance of trained networks often requires tailored integration with the particular domain as well. While there exist different solutions for these problems in regular autonomous driving, there are only very few approaches that work for special domains just as well. We address both the challenges above in this work. First, we discuss two possible ways of acquiring data for training and evaluation. That is, we evaluate a semi-automated annotation of recorded LIDAR data and we examine synthetic data generation. Using these datasets we train and test different deep neural network for the task of object detection. Second, we propose a possible integration of a ROS2 detector module for an autonomous driving platform. Finally, we present the performance of three state-of-the-art deep neural networks in the domain of 3D object detection on a synthetic dataset and a smaller one containing a characteristic object from an open-pit mine.
This work presents the Multi-Bees-Tracker (MBT3D) algorithm, a Python framework implementing a deep association tracker for Tracking-By-Detection, to address the challenging task of tracking flight paths of bumblebees in a social group. While tracking algorithms for bumblebees exist, they often come with intensive restrictions, such as the need for sufficient lighting, high contrast between the animal and background, absence of occlusion, significant user input, etc. Tracking flight paths of bumblebees in a social group is challenging. They suddenly adjust movements and change their appearance during different wing beat states while exhibiting significant similarities in their individual appearance. The MBT3D tracker, developed in this research, is an adaptation of an existing ant tracking algorithm for bumblebee tracking. It incorporates an offline trained appearance descriptor along with a Kalman Filter for appearance and motion matching. Different detector architectures for upstream detections (You Only Look Once (YOLOv5), Faster Region Proposal Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN), and RetinaNet) are investigated in a comparative study to optimize performance. The detection models were trained on a dataset containing 11359 labeled bumblebee images. YOLOv5 reaches an Average Precision of AP = 53, 8%, Faster R-CNN achieves AP = 45, 3% and RetinaNet AP = 38, 4% on the bumblebee validation dataset, which consists of 1323 labeled bumblebee images. The tracker’s appearance model is trained on 144 samples. The tracker (with Faster R-CNN detections) reaches a Multiple Object Tracking Accuracy MOTA = 93, 5% and a Multiple Object Tracking Precision MOTP = 75, 6% on a validation dataset containing 2000 images, competing with state-of-the-art computer vision methods. The framework allows reliable tracking of different bumblebees in the same video stream with rarely occurring identity switches (IDS). MBT3D has much lower IDS than other commonly used algorithms, with one of the lowest false positive rates, competing with state-of-the-art animal tracking algorithms. The developed framework reconstructs the 3-dimensional (3D) flight paths of the bumblebees by triangulation. It also handles and compares two alternative stereo camera pairs if desired.
Despite the challenges of pioneering molten salt towers (MST), it remains the leading technology in central receiver power plants today, thanks to cost effective storage integration and high cost reduction potential. The limited controllability in volatile solar conditions can cause significant losses, which are difficult to estimate without comprehensive modeling [1]. This paper presents a Methodology to generate predictions of the dynamic behavior of the receiver system as part of an operating assistance system (OAS). Based on this, it delivers proposals if and when to drain and refill the receiver during a cloudy period in order maximize the net yield and quantifies the amount of net electricity gained by this. After prior analysis with a detailed dynamic two-phase model of the entire receiver system, two different reduced modeling approaches where developed and implemented in the OAS. A tailored decision algorithm utilizes both models to deliver the desired predictions efficiently and with appropriate accuracy.
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems are able to store energy cost-effectively in their integrated thermal energy storage (TES). By intelligently combining Photovoltaics (PV) systems with CSP, a further cost reduction of solar power plants is expected, as well as an increase in dispatchability and flexibility of power generation. PV-powered Resistance Heaters (RH) can be deployed to raise the temperature of the molten salt hot storage from 385 °C up to 565 °C in a Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) plant. To avoid freezing and decomposition of molten salt, the temperature distribution in the electrical resistance heater is investigated in the present study. For this purpose, a RH has been modeled and CFD simulations have been performed. The simulation results show that the hottest regions occur on the electric rod surface behind the last baffle. A technical optimization was performed by adjusting three parameters: Shell-baffle clearance, electric rod-baffle clearance and number of baffles. After the technical optimization was carried out, the temperature difference between the maximum temperature and the average outlet temperature of the salt is within the acceptable limits, thus critical salt decomposition has been avoided. Additionally, the CFD simulations results were analyzed and compared with results obtained with a one-dimensional model in Modelica.
A hybrid-electric propulsion system combines the advantages of fuel-based systems and battery powered systems and offers new design freedom. To take full advantage of this technology, aircraft designers must be aware of its key differences, compared to conventional, carbon-fuel based, propulsion systems. This paper gives an overview of the challenges and potential benefits associated with the design of aircraft that use hybrid-electric propulsion systems. It offers an introduction of the most popular hybrid-electric propulsion architectures and critically assess them against the conventional and fully electric propulsion configurations. The effects on operational aspects and design aspects are covered. Special consideration is given to the application of hybrid-electric propulsion technology to both unmanned and vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The authors conclude that electric propulsion technology has the potential to revolutionize aircraft design. However, new and innovative methods must be researched, to realize the full benefit of the technology.
High aerodynamic efficiency requires propellers with high aspect ratios, while propeller sweep potentially reduces noise. Propeller sweep and high aspect ratios increase elasticity and coupling of structural mechanics and aerodynamics, affecting the propeller performance and noise. Therefore, this paper analyzes the influence of elasticity on forward-swept, backward-swept, and unswept propellers in hover conditions. A reduced-order blade element momentum approach is coupled with a one-dimensional Timoshenko beam theory and Farassat's formulation 1A. The results of the aeroelastic simulation are used as input for the aeroacoustic calculation. The analysis shows that elasticity influences noise radiation because thickness and loading noise respond differently to deformations. In the case of the backward-swept propeller, the location of the maximum sound pressure level shifts forward by 0.5 °, while in the case of the forward-swept propeller, it shifts backward by 0.5 °. Therefore, aeroacoustic optimization requires the consideration of propeller deformation.
We present first results from a newly developed monitoring station for a closed loop geothermal heat pump test installation at our campus, consisting of helix coils and plate heat exchangers, as well as an ice-store system. There are more than 40 temperature sensors and several soil moisture content sensors distributed around the system, allowing a detailed monitoring under different operating conditions.In the view of the modern development of renewable energies along with the newly concepts known as Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 (high-tech strategy from the German government), we created a user-friendly web application, which will connect the things (sensors) with the open network (www). Besides other advantages, this allows a continuous remote monitoring of the data from the numerous sensors at an arbitrary sampling rate.Based on the recorded data, we will also present first results from numerical simulations, taking into account all relevant heat transport processes.The aim is to improve the understanding of these processes and their influence on the thermal behavior of shallow geothermal systems in the unsaturated zone. This will in turn facilitate the prediction of the performance of these systems and therefore yield an improvement in their dimensioning when designing a specific shallow geothermal installation.