The optimization design of the power system is essential for stratospheric airships with paradoxical requirements of high reliability and low weight. The methodology of orthogonal experiment is presented to deal with the problem of the optimization design of the airship's power system. Mathematical models of the solar array, regenerative fuel cell, and power management subsystem (PMS) are presented. The basic theory of the method of orthogonal experiment is discussed, and the selection of factors and levels of the experiment and the choice of the evaluation function are also revealed. The proposed methodology is validated in the optimization design of the power system of the ZhiYuan-2 stratospheric airship. Results show that the optimal configuration is easily obtained through this methodology. Furthermore, the optimal configuration and three sub-optimal configurations are in the Pareto frontier of the design space. Sensitivity analyses for the weight and reliability of the airship's power system are presented.
A robust H∞ directional controller for a sampled-data autonomous airship with polytopic parameter uncertainties was proposed. By input delay approach, the linearized airship model was transformed into a continuous-time system with time-varying delay. Sufficient conditions were then established based on the constructed Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, which guarantee that the system is mean-square exponentially stable with H∞ performance. The desired controller can be obtained by solving the obtained conditions. Simulation results show that guaranteed minimum H∞ performance γ=1.4037 and fast response of attitude for sampled-data autonomous airship are achieved in spite of the existence of parameter uncertainties.
Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based sensors offer important advantages over traditional instrumentation with regards to real-time structural health monitoring (SHM) of composite materials and structures in recent years. FBG sensors, integrated into existing structures or embedded into new ones, have played a major role in assessing the safety and integrity of engineering structures. In this paper, a review on the latest research of the FBG-based SHM technique for composite field is presented. Firstly, the FBG sensing principle is briefly discussed and FBG and several other optical fiber sensors (OFSs) for SHM are performance-compared. Then, several examples of the use of FBG sensors in composite SHM are illustrated, including those from the field of cure monitoring, civil engineering, aviation, aerospace, marine and offshore platform. Finally, some existing problems are pointed out and some proposals for further researches are provided.
