A Wire-Driven Parallel Suspension System with 8 Wires (WDPSS-8) for Low-Speed Wind Tunnels

In wind tunnel tests, the pose of the aircraft model in wire-driven parallel suspension system (WDPSS) is determined by driving several wires. Pose measurement is very important for the study of WDPSS. Using machine vision technology, Monocular Vision Measurement System has been constructed to estimate the pose of the aircraft model by applying a camera calibration, by extracting corresponding control points for the aircraft model, and by applying several homogeneous transformations. This article describes the programs of the measurement system, measurement principle and data processing methods which is based on HALCON to achieve the Solution of the pose of aircraft model. Through experiments, practical feasibility of the system is validated.

In the paper, the concept of time-varying wires structure is proposed to avoid interference between wires and a mobile platform in a wire-driven parallel suspension system. A mathematical model, a kinematic notation model and a calculation model for interference between wires and the mobile platform have been built for it. When the mobile platform moves at a single degree of freedom pitch rotation, the motion equations of relevant hinge are deduced. The simulation results demonstrate that interference can be avoided in the wire-driven parallel manipulators with time-varying wires structure, and the workspace of the mobile platform may be enlarged. But different motions chosen for the hinge correspond to distinguishable sizes of workspace of the wire-driven parallel manipulators with time-varying wires structure. Therefore, according to the requirements to avoid interference, the motion of the hinge can be designed.

Precise force control and position control is essential for many robotic applications. During unilateral or bilateral object handling remote applications, human operators apply excess forces on the actuators with the intention of better grip and it is possible to damage the handled objects. This paper proposes position control and force control techniques when human applies excess force. The controllers consist of predefined force and equilibrium position which are correspond to remote environmental object safety. The operator applied excess force is modeled as a spring force through a virtual stiffness model. The paper introduces proportional derivative position control loop to conventional virtual stiffness controller. The force control loop and the position control loop references are combined in the common dimension of acceleration to produce current reference to the actuator. The sensorless sensing techniques of disturbance observer and reaction force observer are utilized to disturbance suppression and external force estimation. In the force controller, estimated reaction force is reduced to desired value by introducing virtual force loop between reaction force observer output and reaction force feedback input. The position control is achieved by introducing a scaling factor to reaction force feedback path. The switching between force control and position control is possible with scaling factor value. The performances of proposed methods are compared with conventional method and validity of the proposed methods is verified by simulations and experiments.

Mitigating collision is a fundamental issue in contact problems, and is required to ensure the safety of a robotic cell. Research into the contact problem between robots and their environment is divided into two parts: one uses the environmental contact model and parameter estimation, the other uses the robot force control method. There are two main problems with this research method. One is that the two research levels are not effectively combined to form a complete solution for force control in practice. The other problem is that research on excessive contact force in the collision phase has not been studied in depth for force control. In this paper, a sensing-executing bionic system is proposed that combines environmental detection and robotic force control based on the way an ant functions. The bionic system clearly explains the process from environment detection to robot control, which can provide guidance when designing a new robot control system. An adaptive switching control algorithm is proposed to mitigate the collision force in the collision phase. From the simulation results, the collision force is significantly reduced due to the implementation of adaptive switching control. Finally, a new self-sensing device is designed which can be integrated into the robot control device. However, as there are no additional sensors or computational complexity in the system, the effectiveness of the circuit and superiority of the adaptive parameter update must be verified by experimentation.

The best exoskeleton control strategy depends on the task, motivating the development and analysis of an exoskeleton capable of position, force, and impedance control. In this paper, we implement and compare the three controller types via sliding mode control on a custom-built pneumatic cylinder ankle exoskeleton. To evaluate each controller's performance, the exoskeleton was tested on the benchtop and with human subject experiments. With the position controller, the exoskeleton achieved an root-mean-square error (RMSE) of under 5 deg for both the benchtop and human tests. It had a bandwidth of approximately 12 rad/s. The force controller tracked sinusoidal trajectories acceptably well at low frequencies (15% of force range at 6 rad/s), with a bandwidth of approximately 24 rad/s. The error was significantly higher (RMSE of 24% of force range) for the more biologically relevant trajectory. The impedance controller demonstrated the desired spring-like behavior, with position RMSE generally under 5 deg compared to expected position. All three controllers worked equally well for benchtop and human tests. Thus, a pneumatically powered ankle exoskeleton with sliding mode control is capable of accurate position and impedance control and is capable of marginally acceptable force control.

In this paper, model-based precision force and position control of an ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) is presented. A 23.8 mm × 3.4 mm × 0.16 mm IPMC strip was used as an actuator in a cantilever configuration. Open-loop force and position responses of an IPMC are not repeatable, and hence closed-loop precision control is of critical importance to ensure proper functioning, repeat-ability and reliability. After feedback controllers were designed and implemented with empirically obtained fourth-order plant transfer functions, the overshoot decreased from 460 to 2.8 per cent and the settling time was reduced from 37.5 to 3.22 s in force control. In position control the overshoot decreased from 333 to 20.3 per cent and the settling time was reduced from 21.5 to 2.56 s. Microscale precision force and position control capabilities of the IPMC actuator were also demonstrated experimentally. An 8 μN force resolution was achieved with a force noise of 0.5μN r.m.s., and the position resolution was 6 μm with a position noise of 2.5 μm r.m.s. The maximum force and tip displacement achieved with the IPMC actuator under closed-loop control were 2 mN and 5 mm respectively. The IPMC actuator could follow various commanded force and position trajectories such as sinusoidal and trapezoidal position profiles, and a velocity profile with a 3 mm/s maximum velocity. A novel hybrid force and position control strategy demonstrated its utility in practical micromanipulalion applications where the actuator force must be limited to prevent damaging micro-objects. High-precision control of the IPMC at low force level proved its potential for micromanufacturing and micromanipulation applications such as robotic and biomedical microgrippers.

Recently, in the medical care, in order to achieve micro manipulation, many robots are researched. This paper focuses macro-micro bilateral control system which is one of the micro manipulation robots. Macro-micro bilateral control system consists of position control and force control. Therefore, in this paper, in order to achieve high accuracy macro-micro bilateral control system, high accuracy position control and force control is implemented. Firstly, the high resolution encoder is used. A low friction structure is used to force control. In addition, nominal mass is important for accurate force observation. Therefore, identification of mass is proposed. Macro-micro bilateral control system is implemented with proposed structure and identified nominal mass.

The present study is an attempt to computationally analyze major and minor energy losses in a low speed wind tunnel (LSWT) with special emphasis on pressure drop characterization together with a co-relating theoretical analysis. This study produces preliminary results for analysis and design of an open-circuit LSWT which is to be constructed at Center of Fluid Mechanics at Mondragon University (MU) for analyzing low speed wind flow application(s) with reduced form pressures losses for flow past bluff bodies. Various losses at different sections in the wind tunnel are calculated and total pressure drop across the wind tunnel are estimated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and theoretical methods.

Two different control schemes, position model referenced control (PMRC) and force model referenced control (FMRC), are developed for a simplified two robots model with one interacting axis. The dynamic stability of the position (or force) control under the FMRC (or PMRC) is analyzed. Results indicate that PMRC, although providing better dynamic performance of the position control, may degrade the dynamic performance of the force control. However, FMRC can provide better dynamic performance of both position and force control.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

In order to avoid the defects of contact measurement, such as limited range, complex constructing and disability of 3-D parameter acquisition, we built a binocular videogrammetric system for measuring 3-D geometry parameters of wind tunnel test models, for instance, displacement, rotation angle and vibration, in low-speed wind tunnel. The system is based on the principles of close-range digital photogrammetry. As a non-contact system, it acquires parameters without interference in the experiments, and it has adjustable range and simple structure. It is worth mentioning that this is a Realtime measurement system, so that it can greatly compress the experiment period, furthermore, it is also able to provide some specific experiments with parameters for online adjustment. In this system, images are acquired through two industrial digital cameras and a PCI-E image acquisition card, and they are processed in a PC. The two cameras are triggered by signals come from a function signal generator, so that images of different cameras will have good temporal synchronization to ensure the accuracy of 3-D reconstruction. A two-step stereo calibration technique using planar pattern developed by Zhengyou Zhang is used to calibrate these cameras. Results of wind tunnel test indicate that the system can provide displacement accuracy better than 0.1% and rotation angle accuracy better than 0.1 degree, besides, the vibration frequency accuracy is superior to 0.1Hz in the low-frequency range.

The Low-Speed Anechoic Wind Tunnel at Sun Yat-Sen University is a premier facility designed for experimental research on aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of aircraft scaled models or components. As a 3/4 closed-circuit wind tunnel with a contraction section nozzle dimension of 0.8 m × 0.6 m, it can be configured either as a closed test section or an open-jet section. The freestream velocity in the closed test section can be adjusted from 5 m/s to 80 m/s, while the openjet section ranges from 10 m/s to 70 m/s. The test section is enclosed within an anechoic chamber with dimensions of 5.5 m × 6 m × 3.5 m to ensure non-reflecting conditions. After the wind tunnel’s construction, comprehensive tests were conducted to evaluate its acoustical and aerodynamic performance. This paper presents the design criteria and characterization of the wind tunnel’s key components, along with the methods and results of benchmarking the flow quality and acoustic performance. This wind tunnel features exceptional flow quality with low turbulence intensity of 0.08% , 1% in the closed test section and open-jet section, respectively. The minimal level of background noise can attain a decibel level of 6.9 dBA under no-flow conditions, and at maximum flow velocity (70 m/s ) in the open-jet test section, the background noise reached 74.9 dB(A).The findings demonstrate that the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic performance indicators of the wind tunnel are comparable to similar facilities worldwide, positioning it as the leading aeroacoustic research facility in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area at present.

To address the demands for precision and load-bearing capacity in the installation of building panels, a hybrid force-position driven robot with redundant actuation has been developed. The mechanical performance of this robot is primarily governed by its central parallel mechanism, which is equipped with redundant actuators matching the degrees of freedom. Non-redundant and redundant actuators are respectively responsible for position and force control. The inclusion of redundant force-driven joints has increased the internal coupling within the mechanism. To enhance the coordination between position and force control, a hybrid synchronized control method based on cross-coupling has been proposed. Initially, kinematic and dynamic models of the parallel structure were established. Under predefined trajectories, the theoretical inputs for each actuator were calculated using inverse kinematics and dynamics. Subsequently, employing the principle of cross-coupling, the torque output from the position actuators was used as feedback. This feedback was processed by a synchronized coordination controller to adjust the output force of the redundant force-driven joints. By adjusting the output force of the redundant actuators, the torque burden on the position actuators was effectively reduced, thereby enhancing the precision of position control. Additionally, under the same load conditions, smaller power actuators could be utilized for position control, reducing the overall weight of the robot and improving its load-to-weight ratio. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, a robotic simulation environment was established. The simulation results demonstrated significant reductions in the average torque required by the position actuators across three different trajectories, with reductions of 91.43%, 54.56%, and 80.6% respectively. Finally, the load-bearing capacity and the load-to-weight ratio of the prototype were assessed. Experimental results confirmed that the prototype achieved a load-to-weight ratio of 15.83%, validating the effectiveness of the hybrid synchronized control method based on cross-coupling.

This paper presents the design and construction of a small-scale low-speed open circuit wind tunnel suitable for experimental testing and analysis of aerodynamic phenomena. The wind tunnel is specifically designed for low-speed applications, focusing on flows within velocities of 35 meters per second with turbulence conditions below 10 percent. The design process of a wind tunnel involves considerations such as dimensions, design parameters, and instrumentation to ensure accurate flow measurements, with key components including a settling chamber, contraction section, test section, diffuser, and drive system working together to remove disturbances, create uniform flow, minimize blockage effects, and generate required airflow for accurate aerodynamic testing. This paper highlights the design considerations, key components, construction techniques, and the significance of the wind tunnel for aerodynamic testing, validation of simulations, and education. The designed wind tunnel is capable of producing controlled and repeatable low-speed flow conditions, making it suitable for a wide range of applications, including aerodynamic testing of scaled- down models, validation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, and educational purposes. The small-scale design allows for cost-effective construction and operation while maintaining reliable results.

9R7. Aeroacoustic Measurements. - Edited by TJ Mueller (Dept of Aero and Mech Eng, Univ of Notre Dame, 112 Hessert Center, Notre Dame IN 46556-5684). Springer-Verlag, Berlin. 2002. 313 pp. ISBN 3-540-41757-5. $99.00.Reviewed by MG Prasad (Dept of Mech Eng, Stevens Inst of Tech, Hoboken NJ 07030).It is well known that experimental work plays an important role in acoustics. In particular, the acoustical measurements in the presence of airflow is challenging due to test conditions. This book deals with this challenging and important topic in acoustics namely aeroacoustics. The five chapters of the book deal with various aspects aeroacoustic measurements with applications. Chapter 1, on “Microphone measurements in and out of air stream,” deals with the acoustic characteristics of wind tunnels. The discussions include criteria for simulation of aeroacoustic test environment with requirements such as propagation effect, scaling, low background noise levels, etc. Chapter 2 presents “Beam forming in acoustic testing.” The use of beam forming technique and its applications in the modeling of wind tunnel noise with non-acoustic hard walls and free jets are discussed. Several beam forming algorithms with techniques for removing interference is discussed in this chapter. Chapter 3 covers “Aeroacoustic phased array testing in low speed wind tunnels.” A comprehensive treatment of the design and application of acoustic phased array measurement capability for low speed wind tunnels is presented. Various aspects of operation such as calibration, data handling, etc, are discussed. Chapter 4 is on “Source characterization by correlation techniques.” The characterization of acoustical sources using correlation techniques is presented. The chapter discusses various mathematical aspects through cross-correlation and coherence functions. Various examples including correlation measurements between surface pressure and far field acoustic pressure field data are included. The last chapter is “An anechoic facility for basic aeroacoustic research.” The chapter presents the design, construction, and performance evaluation of an anechoic wind tunnel facility for low speed and low turbulence applications. Use of such a facility to experimentally investigate fluid-solid interaction is discussed. A specific wind tunnel facility is described. As an example the use of the facility for a marine propeller response to inflow disturbance is discussed. All chapters are well presented. In summary, Aeroacoustic Measurements is a nice integration of presentations of various recognized contributors. The book deals with important issues in design and performance evaluation of wind tunnel test facilities, measurement techniques, and mathematical aspects. Nice photographs and figures are included. Each chapter has a large number of references. The book is recommended for libraries and all graduate students, researchers, and professionals in acoustics. In particular, those involved in experimental aeroacoustics will find this book very useful.

A wind tunnel test of a Goldschmied propulsor will be completed in the Cal Poly 3’ by 4’ low speed wind tunnel at a Reynolds number of approximately 2.25x10 6 . The axi-symmetric model has a discrete suction slot at 85% of the length and a fineness ratio of 2.8. The model is meant to take advantage of aerodynamic benefits from Boundary Layer Control to prevent separation and increase the pressure recover on the aft body, as well as from Boundary Layer Ingestion to increase propulsive efficiency. This wind tunnel test will specifically quantify the influence of the suction slot width and suction flow rate on the net longitudinal force of the model, and propulsive efficiency differences between the Goldschmied propulsor concept and a traditional propulsion system. Due to a delay of funding, this project is currently concluding the model manufacturing phase, with the wind tunnel testing to be completed by the end of 2011.