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At least 379 records · Page 21

Dynamic Flow Management Problems in Air Transportation

In 1995, over six hundred thousand licensed pilots flew nearly thirty-five million flights into over eighteen thousand U.S. airports, logging more than 519 billion passenger miles. Since demand for air travel has increased by more than 50% in the last decade while capacity has stagnated, congestion is a problem of undeniable practical significance. In this thesis, we will develop optimization techniques that reduce the impact of congestion on the national airspace. We start by determining the optimal release times for flights into the airspace and the optimal speed adjustment while airborne taking into account the capacitated airspace. This is called the Air Traffic Flow Management Problem (TFMP). We address the complexity, showing that it is NP-hard. We build an integer programming formulation that is quite strong as some of the proposed inequalities are facet defining for the convex hull of solutions. For practical problems, the solutions of the LP relaxation of the TFMP are very often integral. In essence, we reduce the problem to efficiently solving large scale linear programming problems. Thus, the computation times are reasonably small for large scale, practical problems involving thousands of flights. Next, we address the problem of determining how to reroute aircraft in the airspace system when faced with dynamically changing weather conditions. This is called the Air Traffic Flow Management Rerouting Problem (TFMRP) We present an integrated mathematical programming approach for the TFMRP, which utilizes several methodologies, in order to minimize delay costs. In order to address the high dimensionality, we present an aggregate model, in which we formulate the TFMRP as a multicommodity, integer, dynamic network flow problem with certain side constraints. Using Lagrangian relaxation, we generate aggregate flows that are decomposed into a collection of flight paths using a randomized rounding heuristic. This collection of paths is used in a packing integer programming formulation, the solution of which generates feasible and near-optimal routes for individual flights. The algorithm, termed the Lagrangian Generation Algorithm, is used to solve practical problems in the southwestern portion of United States in which the solutions are within 1% of the corresponding lower bounds.

Patterson, Sarah Stock↗

Model-Checking with Edge-Valued Decision Diagrams

We describe an algebra of Edge-Valued Decision Diagrams (EVMDDs) to encode arithmetic functions and its implementation in a model checking library along with state-of-the-art algorithms for building the transition relation and the state space of discrete state systems. We provide efficient algorithms for manipulating EVMDDs and give upper bounds of the theoretical time complexity of these algorithms for all basic arithmetic and relational operators. We also demonstrate that the time complexity of the generic recursive algorithm for applying a binary operator on EVMDDs is no worse than that of Multi-Terminal Decision Diagrams. We have implemented a new symbolic model checker with the intention to represent in one formalism the best techniques available at the moment across a spectrum of existing tools: EVMDDs for encoding arithmetic expressions, identity-reduced MDDs for representing the transition relation, and the saturation algorithm for reachability analysis. We compare our new symbolic model checking EVMDD library with the widely used CUDD package and show that, in many cases, our tool is several orders of magnitude faster than CUDD.

Roux, Pierre↗

Adaptive Fuzzy Control of a Direct Drive Motor: Experimental Aspects

This paper presents a state feedback adaptive control method for position and velocity control of a direct drive motor. The proposed control scheme allows for integrating heuristic knowledge with mathematical knowledge of a system. It performs well even when mathematical model of the system is poorly understood. The controller consists of an adaptive fuzzy controller and a supervisory controller. The supervisory controller requires only knowledge of the upper bound and lower bound of the system parameters. The fuzzy controller is based on fuzzy basis functions and states of the system. The adaptation law is derived based on the Lyapunov function which ensures that the state of the system asymptotically approaches zero. The proposed controller is applied to a direct drive motor with payload and parameter uncertainty, and the effectiveness is experimentally verified. The real-time performance is compared with simulation results.

Medina, E.↗

Adaptive Fuzzy Control of a Direct Drive Motor

This paper presents a state feedback adaptive control method for position and velocity control of a direct drive motor. The proposed control scheme allows for integrating heuristic knowledge with mathematical knowledge of a system. It performs well even when mathematical model of the system is poorly understood. The controller consists of an adaptive fuzzy controller and a supervisory controller. The supervisory controller requires only knowledge of the upper bound and lower bound of the system parameters. The fuzzy controller is based on fuzzy basis functions and states of the system. The adaptation law is derived based on the Lyapunov function which ensures that the state of the system asymptotically approaches zero. The proposed controller is applied to a direct drive motor with payload and parameter uncertainty, and the effectiveness is verified by simulation results.

Medina, E.↗

An efficient procedure for computing partial ionization of a gas in numerical fluid dynamics

A numerical procedure is described that allows efficient solution for the three nonlinear and implicit equations of state relating the equilibrium properties of a partially (and singly) ionized neutral gas. In the computation, the values for the intensive variables, that is pressure, temperature and ionization coefficient, are iteratively obtained with a given accuracy starting from assigned values for energy and volume per unit mass. Iterative computation is performed only when the value for the ionization coefficient lies within the lower and the upper bounds fixed by the required number of significant digits; otherwise the two explicit equations of state for nonionized or for fully ionized gases are employed.

Garribba, S.↗

New tabulation of the bound-continuum optical oscillator strength in hydrogenic atoms

Results are presented from calculations of the optical oscillator strength f(n, l, n-sqared epsilon), for hydrogenic atoms in the initial state n., and the final energy state, epsilon, for the range n between 1 and 50, l between 0 and 26, and epsilon between 0 and 10 to the 7th rydbergs/n-sqared. In addition, the bound-continuum oscillator strength is tabulated. The results of the calculations are compared with previously published values, showing satisfactory agreement.

Omidvar, Kazem↗

Modeling and Control of Robot-Structure Coupling During In-Space Structure Assembly

This paper considers the problem of robot-structure coupling dynamics during in-space robotic assembly of large flexible structures. A two-legged walking robot is used as a construction agent, whose primary goal is to stably walking on the flexible structure while carrying a substructure component to a designated location. The reaction forces inserted by the structure to the walking robot are treated as bounded disturbance inputs, and a trajectory tracking robotic controller is proposed that combines the standard full state feedback motion controller and an adaptive controller to account for the disturbance inputs. In this study, a reduced-order Euler-Bernoulli beam structure model is adapted, and a finite number of co-located sensors and actuators are distributed along the span of the beam structure. The robot-structure coupling forces are treated as a bounded external forcing function to the structure, and hence an output covariance constraint problem can be formulated, in terms of linear matrix inequality, for optimal structure control by utilizing the direct output feedback controllers. The numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed robot-structure modeling and control methodology.

Swei, Sean↗

Robust and real-time control of magnetic bearings for space engines

Currently, NASA Lewis Research Center is developing magnetic bearings for Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) turbopumps. The control algorithms which have been used are based on either the proportional-intergral-derivative control (PID) approach or the linear quadratic (LQ) state space approach. These approaches lead to an acceptable performance only when the system model is accurately known, which is seldom true in practice. For example, the rotor eccentricity, which is a major source of vibration at high speeds, cannot be predicted accurately. Furthermore, the dynamics of a rotor shaft, which must be treated as a flexible system to model the elastic rotor shaft, is infinite dimensional in theory and the controller can only be developed on the basis of a finite number of modes. Therefore, the development of the control system is further complicated by the possibility of closed loop system instability because of residual or uncontrolled modes, the so called spillover problem. Consequently, novel control algorithms for magnetic bearings are being developed to be robust to inevitable parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, spillover phenomenon and noise. Also, as pointed out earlier, magnetic bearings must exhibit good performance at a speed over 30,000 rpm. This implies that the sampling period available for the design of a digital control system has to be of the order of 0.5 milli-seconds. Therefore, feedback coefficients and other required controller parameters have to be computed off-line so that the on-line computational burden is extremely small. The development of the robust and real-time control algorithms is based on the sliding mode control theory. In this method, a dynamic system is made to move along a manifold of sliding hyperplanes to the origin of the state space. The number of sliding hyperplanes equals that of actuators. The sliding mode controller has two parts; linear state feedback and nonlinear terms. The nonlinear terms guarantee that the systems would reach the intersection of all sliding hyperplanes and remain on it when bounds on the errors in the system parameters and external disturbances are known. The linear part of the control drives the system to the origin of state space. Another important feature is that the controller parameter can be computed off-line. Consequently, on-line computational burden is small.

Sinha, Alok↗

Numerical simulations of particle orbits around 2060 Chiron

Scattered light from orbiting or coorbiting dust is a primary signature by which Earth-based observers study the activity and atmosphere of the unusual outer solar system object 2060 Chiron. Therefore, it is important to understand the lifetime, dynamics, and loss rates of dust in its coma. We report here dynamical simulations of particles in Chiron's collisionless coma. The orbits of 17,920 dust particles were numerically integrated under the gravitational influence of Chiron, the Sun, and solar radiation pressure. These simulations show that particles ejected from Chiron are more likely to follow suborbital trajectories, or to escape altogether, than to enter quasistable orbits. Significant orbital lifetimes can only be achieved for very specific launch conditions. These results call into question models of a long-term, bound coma generated by discrete outbursts, and instead suggest that Chiron's coma state is closely coupled to the nearly instantaneous level of Chiron's surface activity.

Stern, S. A.↗

Generalization of the Time-Energy Uncertainty Relation of Anandan-Aharonov Type

A new type of time-energy uncertainty relation was proposed recently by Anandan and Aharonov. Their formula, to estimate the lower bound of time-integral of the energy-fluctuation in a quantum state is generalized to the one involving a set of quantum states. This is achieved by obtaining an explicit formula for the distance between two finitely separated points in the Grassman manifold.

Hirayama, Minoru↗

Indirect M-MRAC for Systems with Time Varying Parameters and Bounded Disturbances

The paper presents a prediction-identification model based adaptive control method for uncertain systems with time varying parameters in the presence of bounded external disturbances. The method guarantees desired tracking performance for the system s state and input signals. This is achieved by feeding back the state prediction error to the identification model. It is shown that the desired closed-loop properties are obtained with fast adaptation when the error feedback gain is selected proportional to the square root of the adaptation rate. The theoretical findings are confirmed via a simulation example.

Stepanyan, Vahram↗

Assessment of the Gaussian Covariance Approximation over an Earth-Asteroid Encounter Period

In assessing the risk an asteroid may pose to the Earth, the asteroids state is often predicted for many years, often decades. Only by accounting for the asteroids initial state uncertainty can a measure of the risk be calculated. With the asteroids state uncertainty growing as a function of the initial velocity uncertainty, orbit velocity at the last state update, and the time from the last update to the epoch of interest, the asteroids position uncertainties can grow to many times the size of the Earth when propagated to the encounter risk corridor. This paper examines the merits of propagating the asteroids state covariance as an analytical matrix. The results of this study help to bound the efficacy of applying different metrics for assessing the risk an asteroid poses to the Earth. Additionally, this work identifies a criterion for when different covariance propagation methods are needed to continue predictions after an Earth-encounter period.

planetary defense↗

Assessment of the Gaussian Covariance Approximation over an Earth-Asteroid Encounter Period

In assessing the risk an asteroid may pose to the Earth, the asteroids state is often predicted for many years, often decades. Only by accounting for the asteroids initial state uncertainty can a measure of the risk be calculated. With the asteroids state uncertainty growing as a function of the initial velocity uncertainty, orbit velocity at the last state update, and the time from the last update to the epoch of interest, the asteroids position uncertainties can grow to many times the size of the Earth when propagated to the encounter risk corridor. This paper examines the merits of propagating the asteroids state covariance as an analytical matrix. The results of this study help to bound the efficacy of applying different metrics for assessing the risk an asteroid poses to the Earth. Additionally, this work identifies a criterion for when different covariance propagation methods are needed to continue predictions after an Earth-encounter period.

uncertainty characterization↗

Development of an Aerosol Opacity Retrieval Algorithm for Use with Multi-Angle Land Surface Images

In 1998, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) will fly aboard the EOS-AM1 spacecraft. MISR will enable unique methods for retrieving the properties of atmospheric aerosols, by providing global imagery of the Earth at nine viewing angles in four visible and near-IR spectral bands. As part of the MISR algorithm development, theoretical methods of analyzing multi-angle, multi-spectral data are being tested using images acquired by the airborne Advanced Solid-State Array Spectroradiometer (ASAS). In this paper we derive a method to be used over land surfaces for retrieving the change in opacity between spectral bands, which can then be used in conjunction with an aerosol model to derive a bound on absolute opacity.

Advanced Solid-State Array Spectroradiometer ASAS ↗

Performance bounds on parallel self-initiating discrete-event

The use is considered of massively parallel architectures to execute discrete-event simulations of what is termed self-initiating models. A logical process in a self-initiating model schedules its own state re-evaluation times, independently of any other logical process, and sends its new state to other logical processes following the re-evaluation. The interest is in the effects of that communication on synchronization. The performance is considered of various synchronization protocols by deriving upper and lower bounds on optimal performance, upper bounds on Time Warp's performance, and lower bounds on the performance of a new conservative protocol. The analysis of Time Warp includes the overhead costs of state-saving and rollback. The analysis points out sufficient conditions for the conservative protocol to outperform Time Warp. The analysis also quantifies the sensitivity of performance to message fan-out, lookahead ability, and the probability distributions underlying the simulation.

Nicol, David M.↗

Marangoni Effects of a Drop in an Extensional Flow: The Role of Surfactant Physical Chemistry

While the changes in stresses caused by surfactant adsorption on non-deforming interfaces have been fairly well established, prior to this work, there were few studies addressing how surfactants alter stresses on strongly deforming interfaces. We chose the model problem of a drop in a uniaxial extensional flow to study these stress conditions To model surfactant effects at fluid interfaces, a proper description of the dependence of the surface tension on surface concentration, the surface equation of state, is required. We have adopted a surface equation of state that accounts for the maximum coverage limit; that is, because surfactants have a finite cross sectional area, there is an upper bound to the amount of surfactant that can adsorb in a monolayer. The surface tension reduces strongly only when this maximum coverage is approached. Since the Marangoni stresses go as the derivative of the surface equation of state times the surface concentration gradient, the non-linear equation of state determines both the effect of surfactants in the normal stress jump, (which is balanced by the product of the mean curvature of the interface times the surface tension), and the tangential stress jump, which is balanced by Marangoni stresses. First, the effects of surface coverage and intermolecular interactions among surfactants which drive aggregation of surfactants in the interface were studied. (see Pawar and Stebe, Physics of Fluids).

Stebe, Kathleen J.↗

The Dolinar Receiver in an Information Theoretic Framework

Optical communication at the quantum limit requires that measurements on the optical field be maximally informative, but devising physical measurements that accomplish this objective has proven challenging. The Dolinar receiver exemplifies a rare instance of success in distinguishing between two coherent states: an adaptive local oscillator is mixed with the signal prior to photodetection, which yields an error probability that meets the Helstrom lower bound with equality. Here we apply the same local-oscillator-based architecture with aninformation-theoretic optimization criterion. We begin with analysis of this receiver in a general framework for an arbitrary coherent-state modulation alphabet, and then we concentrate on two relevant examples. First, we study a binary antipodal alphabet and show that the Dolinar receiver's feedback function not only minimizes the probability of error, but also maximizes the mutual information. Next, we study ternary modulation consistingof antipodal coherent states and the vacuum state. We derive an analytic expression for a near-optimal local oscillator feedback function, and, via simulation, we determine its photon information efficiency (PIE). We provide the PIE versus dimensional information efficiency (DIE) trade-off curve and show that this modulation and the our receiver combination performs universally better than (generalized) on-off keying plus photoncounting, although, the advantage asymptotically vanishes as the bits-per-photon diverges towards infinity.

optical communications↗

Current collection in a magnetoplasma

The authors present a survey of a very incomplete subject, current collection in a magnetoplasma. The best-developed and simplest theories for current collection are steady-state collisionless theories, and these must be understood before departures from them can be analyzed usefully. Thus, the authors begin with a review of them. The authors include some recent numerical results which indicate that steady-state collisionless Laplace-limit currents remain substantially below the Parker-Murphy (1967) canonical upper bound out to very large electrode potentials, and approach it as a limit only very slowly if at all. Attempts to correct this theory for space-charge effects lead to potential disturbances which extend to infinite distance along the electrode's magnetic shadow, unless collisional effects are also taken into account. However, even a small amount of relative plasma drift motion, such as that involved in a typical rocket experiment, can change this conclusion fundamentally. It is widely believed that time-averaged current collection may be increased by effects of plasma turbulence, and the authors review the available evidence for and against this contention. Steady-state collisionless particle dynamics predicts the existence of a toroidal region of trapped orbits which surrounds the electrode. Light emissions from this region have been photographed, indicating that collisional ionization may also occur there, and this, and/or scattering by collisions or possibly turbulent fluctuations in this region, may also increase current collection by the electrode. The authors also discuss effects on particle motions near the electrode, associated with breakdown of magnetic insulation in the region of large electric fields near it.

Laframboise, Jim G.↗