1,720,989 research outputs found
Investigation of the student-professor interaction and self-learning ability for an aerospace engineering student
No full textBased on the didactic experiences of the authors as professors of Aerospace Engineering, this article proposes a mathematical model of the learning of the students in Aerospace Engineering. Starting from the definition of a taxonomy of the student's cognitive levels, a continuous-time model of the student's learning dynamics is developed. To this end, various factors linked to the nature of the student are introduced, such as inertia in learning, forgetting of concepts, readiness to educational stimuli and self-learning skills. Based on the analysis of stability and the position of the equilibrium points of the newly developed model, the characterization of the different types of the student is obtained by outlining different skills in assimilating the educational stimuli or in exploiting self-learning skills. Finally, teaching strategies are proposed based on such analysis
Representing the dynamics of student learning and interactions with a university curriculum
No full textThe aim of the present study is to formulate a model that describes the dynamics of university students on the basis of continuous time differential equations and Petri Nets. Students are modeled by continuous time functions that represent their ability to deal with theoretical concepts and put them into practice. In addition, the curriculum is seen as a set of activities that students can select according to their willingness. The application of the model to public data of aerospace engineering students will be the subject of future work. Copyright (C) 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
A Mathematical Model in Automatic Control Aerospace Engineering Education
No full textThe aerospace engineering educational system aims to create future professionals able to solve problems of high complexity, with time constraints and which solutions matches prescribed level of performance. In our past work, we introduced the innovative concept of the Professional Readiness Level (PRL) as a unique parameter to quantify how close the students are to the aerospace industry. In this paper we propose a dynamic model, of the PRL, capable to capture, in simple but effective way, the student behaviour we, as professors, observed in our educative experience
An experience of project based learning in aerospace engineering
No full textBased on the authors teaching experiences this paper proposes the developing of a ProJect-Based Learning (PJBL) environment for Automatic Control Education in Aerospace Engineering (ACEAE), which have been developed in several projects that involved the same authors. The PJBL approach have been based on the following major aspects: a Hardware/Software platform (quadricopter and related ground station, etc) as an environment to design and implement automatic control laws, and a proper choice of such tools in order to facilitate the communication of the knowledge between student of different classes and academic years, thus also improving communication skills and teamwork experience. A new didactic formulation is thus proposed, summarized by a Professional Readiness Level (PRL) table, useful to organize the learning of automatic controls for the Aerospace Engineering faculties. The actual status of this concept is applied at the University of Bologna in the courses of Automatic flight Control and Applied Control. In this work the choice of educational tools which could make the academic laboratory activities sustainable over time is proposed and the effectiveness of the proposed approach is assessed by means of the direct experience of the authors which summarize the feedback of the students involved in courses
Mach number virtual sensor for civil aircraft extended guidance navigation and control
No full textThis paper proposes an airspeed virtual sensor to extend the guidance navigation and control functions of an aircraft. The main idea is to exploit the indirect measurement of the aerodynamic forces applying on a control surface which are clearly related to the aircraft airspeed. Focusing on those aircraft equipped with a Fly By Wire system, at least one actuator is installed on each of the control surfaces; the actuators operate the surface by fighting against the aerodynamic forces. Generally speaking, aircraft are designed with a minimum set of control surfaces (one elevator, one rudder and two ailerons) but there are lots of examples of aircraft with redundant control surfaces. To the best of authors' knowledge, the proposed "Least Squares - Sliding Mode" estimator is new and it merges two concepts: the least squares, which exploit the available redundant actuator-surfaces systems to minimize the errors, and the sliding mode, that, in finite time, pushes the aircraft airspeed estimation toward the actual value. The algorithm has been applied to real Airbus aircraft flight data set leading to very encouraging preliminary results
Diagnosability of GNSS/IMU system without hardware redundancy
No full textThis paper addresses the fault diagnosis problem of sensors of an aeronautical system based on GNSS/IMU. The model considered is a rigid body with 6DoF. Considering its linearized kinematic model, the proposed FDI scheme is based on a generalized bank of observers (GBO) designed with the UIO theory. The fault scenario is composed by multiple but not concurrent faults without any hypothesis on the kind of fault. The structural conditions for fault diagnosability are analytically demonstrated
Uniform non-convex optimisation via Extremum Seeking
Full text linkThe paper deals with a well-known extremum seeking scheme by proving uniformity properties with respect to the amplitudes of the dither signal and of the cost function. Those properties are then used to show that the scheme guarantees the global minimiser to be semi-global practically stable despite the presence of local minima. Under the assumption of a globally Lipschitz cost function, it is shown that the scheme, improved through a high-pass filter, makes the global minimiser practically stable with a global domain of attraction
An extremum seeking approach to search and rescue operations in avalanches using ARVA
No full textSearch and rescue operations in avalanches can greatly benefit from the support of unmanned aerial vehicles, which could safely and autonomously fly above the snow surface to estimate the position of the victim. This work relies upon the Appareil de Recherche de Victimes (ARVA), which consists of a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is worn by the victim and produces an electromagnetic field that can be sensed by the receiver, integrated on the drone. A receiver able to sense the complete 3D electromagnetic field has been developed, whose model and properties are presented in this work. The main contribution of this work is the development of a control algorithm able to drive the ARVA-equipped drone as close as possible to the victim location
On the Semi-Global Stability of an EK-Like Filter
Full text linkThis letter proposes to apply the Kalman-like observer paradigm to general nonlinear systems by linearization along the estimated trajectory, similarly to an Extended Kalman Filter. The main difference is that the quadratic Riccati equation is replaced by a linear Lyapunov equation which can be solved and explicitly related to a determinability Gramian. This allows to show by Lyapunov analysis and without any ad-hoc assumption on the Riccati solution, that the resulting observer, called Extended Kalman-like Filter, can be made semi-globally convergent if the input is actively used to a) stabilize the (unknown) true trajectory, b) sufficiently excite the determinability of the linearized systems along the (known) estimated trajectory. A class of systems where this compromise can be reached is provided
Detectability analysis of faults affecting actuators and sensors of flexible space structures
No full textThe design of reliable and fault tolerant space flexible structures is a key point to guarantee successful space missions. This paper presents a study of detectability of faults affecting sensors and actuators of a continuous flexible structure subject to unknown disturbances. Several sensors and actuators configurations, also including the so called co-located setup, are investigated. The structural properties of these class of systems is studied by means of the geometric approach-based system theory which provides, in a coordinate-free framework, necessary and sufficient conditions for the resolvability of the fault detection problem
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