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Composite sandwich structures are widely used in the aerospace field due to their advantages of high strength, lightweight, and fatigue resistance. However, these structures are prone to damage with very-low-energy impacts. In order to improve the impact resistance of aircraft skin structure, a low-velocity impact resistance of sandwich structure specimens was tested by means of drop hammer impact, and the impact damage area was scanned by ultrasonic C-scan, and obtains the impact damage of specimens with different impact energies and different ply sequences. Combined with the Hashin failure criterion, the finite element equivalent model of composite sandwich structure under low-velocity impact was established. The errors between the simulation results and the C-scan results of the test piece were less than 10%, in which the experimental measurements and numerical predictions were in close agreement. Finally, the finite element equivalent model was applied to optimize the application of model sandwich, which was used for fuselage skin of a certain electric aircraft. The total thickness of the laminate structure remains unchanged before and after optimization, but the impact resistance was significantly enhanced. The ±45° lay-up was beneficial for the structure to absorb the impact energy.

Recently, flight control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in non-global positioning system (GPS) environments has become increasingly important. In such an environment, visual sensors are important, and their main roles are self-localization and obstacle avoidance. In this paper, the concept of a multi-camera UAV system with multiple cameras attached to the body is proposed to realize high-precision omnidirectional visual recognition, self-localization, and obstacle avoidance simultaneously, and a two-camera UAV is developed as a prototype. The proposed flight control system can switch between visual servoing (VS) for collision avoidance and visual odometry (VO) for self-localization. The feasibility of the proposed control system was verified by conducting flight experiments with the insertion of obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preparation of duplex coating is an innovative way to improve components surface in terms of mechanical and tribological properties by the combination of high velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF) and physical vapor deposition (PVD) technologies. The present work focused on the construction, mechanical properties and high temperature tribological behaviors of the duplex coating consisting of a thick HVOF Cr3C2-NiCr interlayer and a thin PVD TiN top layer, as well as compared it with the Cr3C2-NiCr coating and the single TiN film. The results showed that the Cr3C2-NiCr/TiN duplex coating exhibited higher hardness, elastic modulus, H/E and H3/E2 ratios and superior load-bearing capacity than the single TiN film. The introduction of Cr3C2-NiCr intermediate layer did not affect the microstructure of TiN film but significantly improved the adhesion strength between TiN film and substrate, as well as the wear resistance sliding against WC ball at different temperatures. In addition, the friction and wear mechanism of the Cr3C2-NiCr coating, TiN film and Cr3C2-NiCr/TiN duplex coating was revealed by investigating the friction-induced morphological and structural evolutions of the sliding surface at elevated temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]