Mitigating the Effects of Atmospheric Turbulence: Towards More Useful Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract

This report is the research summary of flying MAV experiments in turbulent flow, utilizing prior research measuring and reproducing aspects of the outdoor environment. Turbulence was replicated in a large wind engineering tunnel and was well mixed, thus replicating atmospheric turbulence under neutrally stable conditions far removed from local effects. Current studies are focused on using increasingly small fixed-wing and flapping-wing aircraft with IMU video tracking, and upstream flow measurements to correlate measured turbulence with vehicle disturbances. Rate, acceleration, force and pressure sensors are being evaluated to determine candidates for providing phase-advanced measurement of incipient turbulence, which can allow the aircraft to preemptively move the control surfaces to suppress attitude and position disturbances.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 18, 2010
Accession Number
ADA530012

Entities

People

  • Mark Shortis
  • Mujahid Abdulrahim
  • Simon C Watkins

Organizations

  • RMIT University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Atmospheric Motion
  • Boundary Layer
  • Control Surfaces
  • Control Systems
  • Engineering
  • Fixed Wing Aircraft
  • Flow
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Inertial Measurement Units
  • Measurement
  • Micro Air Vehicles
  • Pressure Measurement
  • Turbulent Flow
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

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  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Robotics and Automation.