Jun Wang

Environmental wind tunnels play a crucial role in the research and development of high-speed railways. However, constructing and operating these wind tunnels requires significant resources, especially with respect to the cooling system, which serves as a vital subsystem. The cooling system utilizes an air compression refrigeration cycle and consists of multiple components. The efficient operation of these components, along with the adoption of appropriate strategies, greatly enhances the efficiency of the wind tunnel refrigeration system. Despite this, the existing methods for evaluating the refrigeration system do not fully capture the energy consumption of an air compression refrigeration system during practical use. To address this issue and effectively evaluate the wind tunnel refrigeration system, we propose using an exergoeconomic evaluation coefficient with experimental cycles to establish the system. This method incorporates the use of frequency coefficients and related parameters. By employing the newly developed evaluation coefficient as an objective function, we utilize the adaptive value-sharing congestion genetic algorithm to optimize the wind tunnel for high-speed trains. Furthermore, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of different optimization schemes. Traditional optimization methods prove inefficient because of the system’s numerous variables and the presence of multiple peaks in the objective function. Inspired by the biogenetic breeding method, we introduce an optimization approach based on a specific gene mutation. This innovative method significantly reduces optimization time and improves efficiency by approximately 17%.

Environmental wind tunnels for high-speed trains play a significant role in their development. The cooling system of the wind tunnel poses a challenge as it requires lower temperatures and a higher cooling capacity during operation. The conventional approach to wind tunnel refrigeration uses evaporative cooling, which is less efficient at low temperatures and comes with environmental and safety risks. In this study, we propose an innovative air compression refrigeration method based on the Brayton cycle. This method converts high-pressure air into low-temperature air at atmospheric pressure for wind tunnel refrigeration. The new cooling system has reduced energy usage by 3.72 MW, leading to a 13.15% improvement. The return cooler of the system is modeled using the effective number of heat transfer units and the mean temperature difference design method. Additionally, the turbine within the system is analyzed using one-dimensional flow characteristic analysis and the principle of similarity. This method has been validated by comparing it to other published papers. Subsequently, we perform a thorough sensitivity analysis on the key design parameters of the system. We observe that with a sufficient heat transfer area of the recooler, the cooling efficiency of the system exhibits a gradual decline from 64% to 60% as the mass flow rate of the system rises. For a fixed turbine, the cooling efficiency of the system rises from 20% to 62% and subsequently declines to 37%, with an increase in the mass flow rate. As a result, we conclude that the design parameters of the turbine have a more significant influence on the cooling efficiency of the system than the recooler. Our study will establish a foundation for selecting parameters to optimize the refrigeration system in the future.

The Lunar Gravity Compensation Facility (LGCF) is a critical component in ground tests for a crewed lunar roving vehicle (CLRV). The track-following servo subsystem’s performance is of critical importance in the LGCF, as it needs to achieve high-precision tracking of the CLRV’s fast, wide range of motion in the horizontal direction. The subsystem must also operate within various constraints, including those related to speed, acceleration, and position. These requirements introduce new challenges to both the design and control of the subsystem. To tackle these challenges, this paper employs a Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) vector control method based on Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) to achieve accurate speed tracking. Additionally, this paper presents an Explicit Model Predictive Control (EMPC) strategy for precise position servo control of the track-following system under multi-parameter constraints. The simulation model of the track-following servo subsystem is established based on the above methods. The simulation results demonstrate that the position tracking error of the gravity compensation system, constructed using the above method combined with EMPC control, is less than 0.2 m. The control performance of the EMPC is significantly better than those of the PI and LQI controllers. The influence of errors on the drawbar pull is within 12.5%, and its effect on the compensation force is negligible. These results provide theoretical support for the design of a track-following servo subsystem.

The sand/dust environment is an important cause of aircraft failure. A sand/dust environment simulation experiment must be devised to meet the standard technical requirements. Therefore, this article designs the control system for a sand/dust environment test tunnel, including a wind speed control system and a pneumatic conveying and concentration control system. A fuzzy intelligent control method and a deep neural network are used to track and control experimental parameters. Compared to the classic PID algorithm, this method achieves smaller overshoot, faster response speed, no steady error and a better dynamic response curve, as demonstrated by both the test result in the wind tunnel and a simulation result. Both the classic PID control method and the high-precision fuzzy control method are fast, stable, and robust. The fuzzy-SAE intelligent control method not only has the high accuracy of the classic PID control method but also has the high speed, stability, and robustness of fuzzy control, which can meet the intelligent control requirements of the sand/dust environment test equipment.

The dust storm on the surface of Mars is a severe threat to Mars exploration missions. Taking adequate measures to avoid the impact of the harsh wind-blown dust environment is indispensable. Ground simulation of the Martian high-speed windblown dust environment is helpful for analysis of the environmental effects and evaluations of the suitability of the components and materials. In this paper, a novel reflux subsonic low-density dust wind tunnel is presented to simulate the high-speed windblown dust environment of the Martian atmosphere with a velocity of more than 100 m/s. The sand and dust are fed into the wind tunnel through the ejector assembly together with the compressed gas, resulting in high uniformity of particles in the test section. The construction design of the Mars wind tunnel is introduced. The key parameters, which are the nozzle parameters and the contraction curve, are discussed in detail. The convergent nozzle is most suitable for the ejector assembly. Moreover, the bicubic curve is selected as the contraction curve. The gas-particle two-phase computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations demonstrate the rationality of the wind tunnel design.

Hypersonic vehicles are an important area of research in the aerospace field today. One of the important issues is the power of the engine. In order to achieve large-span flight speeds, a more efficient approach is to use combined power systems. However, the problem of pre-cooler icing can occur in combined engine applications. The flow in the pre-cooler is extremely complex. Outside the tube is the high-temperature wet air entering from the engine intake, and the tube cooling is the ultra-low temperature cooling medium. Icing not only increases the heat exchange resistance of the pre-cooler during operation and affects the heat exchange performance of the pre-cooler, but also causes a large total pressure loss, resulting in a degradation of the engine performance. There is a lack of research on the icing law of the pre-cooler under different parameters. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a corresponding numerical calculation study on pre-cooler icing and explore the influence of various influencing factors on icing. In this paper, a mathematical model of icing (frost) is established for the frosting phenomenon that may occur during the operation of the pre-cooler. Additionally, the principle of heat and mass transfer in the icing process is described by the mathematical model, and the influence of different parameters on the frosting parameters is explored by using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The law of tube bundle icing under different parameters was calculated, and the variation laws of frost layer morphology and wet air pressure drop were obtained. The laws of tube bundle icing under different parameters were calculated, and the changes in frost layer pattern and wet air pressure drop when each parameter was changed, which can provide guidance for the design and application of pre-coolers in the future.

As a critical system of onboard aircraft equipment, the environmental control system (ECS) has an essential impact on flight safety. The performance of the ECS is usually tested using the thermal test facility. The facility comprises temperature and pressure simulation units to simulate the engine bleed air. Currently, the ECS often fails due to the dynamic and rapid changes in the temperature and pressure of bleed air. To achieve the dynamic bleed air simulation, the most critical problem is to simulate the bleed air’s rapid heating and boost process during the actual engine working process. However, the temperature simulation unit has the characteristics of nonlinear and large inertia. Moreover, temperature and pressure control are strongly coupled. These characteristics usually lead to temperature and pressure dynamic control failure. This paper introduces a novel facility that adopted the hot and cold blending method to realize the rapid response of the temperature. Furthermore, it used a particular system structure to reduce pressure and temperature control coupling. In addition, it adopted the lookup-table-based PID (LPID) controller to acquire the rapid response and good steady-state performance of temperature and pressure control. Experimental control results are presented and discussed. The results showed that the facility could meet ECS’s dynamic and steady-state test requirements. The novel facility makes up for the insufficient dynamic test capacity of the previously developed ECS test facilities.

This paper deals with the modeling of the thermal load and the simulation of thermal dynamic characteristics for the hydraulic system of a large airliner in a full mission profile. Firstly, the formation mechanism of the thermal load in the hydraulic system is analyzed, and thermal dynamic modeling is conducted of the hydraulic components of an hydraulic system with an immersed heat exchanger employing the lumped parameter thermal node method and oil temperature and power loss of each key node within the hydraulic system within a full mission profile. Then, a thermal dynamic simulation model based on MATLAB/Simulink is established, and the temperatures at the nodes of different components and the absorptive capacity of the fuel heat sink in the thermal management module are calculated. The simulation results show that the thermal management scheme of the heat exchanger, located in the return oil pipeline of the hydraulic piston pump housing and immersed in the central fuel tank, can dissipate the thermal load of the system. This work is of important significance for temperature analysis and thermal load dissipation of the airliner hydraulic system.

The aircraft engine bleed air simulation thermodynamic laboratory simulation parameters include the bleed air pressure and temperature. However, existing laboratories cannot carry out the dynamic test of the engine bleed air simulation. In the engine bleed air simulation dynamic test, the temperature control has the characteristics of strong coupling and nonlinear and large inertia. The conventional control strategy cannot solve the contradictions of the response speed and stability of the system. Moreover, the dynamic control of the pressure and temperature involve strong coupling. That often leads to the failure of control decisions. Therefore, there is still no relevant report on the laboratory equipment used for the engine dynamic bleed air simulation. According to the above problem, this study adopted heat exchangers for indirect heating to reduce the coupling of dynamic control between temperature and pressure. Specifically, to take into account the rapid response and stability of the system, this study used the lookup table-based PID (LPID) controller to control the temperature and pressure of the bleed air simulation test. The dynamic test errors were within 10%, and the steady-state accuracies were within ±2%. The simulation software results and the engine bleed air simulation test results showed that temperature and pressure control systems based on the LPID controller have advantages: high control precision, a low overshoot amount, a fast response, and a high stability.