During the automatic docking assembly of aircraft wing-fuselage, using monocular camera or dual-camera to monitor the docking stage of the fork-ear will result in an incomplete identification of the fork-ear pose-position and an inaccurate description of the deviation in the intersection holes’ position coordinates. To address this, a quality inspection and error correction method is proposed for the fork-ear docking assembly based on multi-camera stereo vision. Initially, a multi-camera stereo vision detection system is established to inspect the quality of fork-ear docking assembly. Subsequently, a spatial position solution mathematical model of the fork-ear feature points is developed, and a spatial pose determination mathematical model of fork-ear is established by utilised the elliptical cone. Finally, an enhanced artificial fish swarm particle filter algorithm is proposed to track and estimate the coordinate of the fork-ear feature points. An adaptive weighted fusion algorithm is employed to fuse the detection data from the multi-camera and the laser tracker, and a wing pose-position fine-tuning error correction model is constructed. Experimental results demonstrate that the method enhances the effect of the assembly quality inspection and effectively improves the wing-fuselage docking assembly accuracy of the fork-ear type aircraft.

In this paper, a brand-new adaptive fault-tolerant non-affine integrated guidance and control method based on reinforcement learning is proposed for a class of skid-to-turn (STT) missile. Firstly, considering the non-affine characteristics of the missile, a new non-affine integrated guidance and control (NAIGC) design model is constructed. For the NAIGC system, an adaptive expansion integral system is introduced to address the issue of challenging control brought on by the non-affine form of the control signal. Subsequently, the hyperbolic tangent function and adaptive boundary estimation are utilised to lessen the jitter due to disturbances in the control system and the deviation caused by actuator failures while taking into account the uncertainty in the NAIGC system. Importantly, actor-critic is introduced into the control framework, where the actor network aims to deal with the multiple uncertainties of the subsystem and generate the control input based on the critic results. Eventually, not only is the stability of the NAIGC closed-loop system demonstrated using Lyapunov theory, but also the validity and superiority of the method are verified by numerical simulations.

Aiming at alleviating the adverse influence of coupling unmodeled dynamics, actuator faults and external disturbances in the attitude tracking control system of tilt tri-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), a neural network (NN)-based robust adaptive super-twisting sliding mode fault-tolerant control scheme is designed in this paper. Firstly, in order to suppress the unmodeled dynamics coupled with the system states, a dynamic auxiliary signal, exponentially input-to-state practically stability and some special mathematical tools are used. Secondly, benefiting from adaptive control and super-twisting sliding mode control (STSMC), the influence of the unexpected chattering phenomenon of sliding mode control (SMC) and the unknown system parameters can be handled well. Moreover, NNs are employed to estimate and compensate some unknown nonlinear terms decomposed from the system model. Based on a decomposed quadratic Lyapunov function, both the bounded convergence of all signals of the closed-loop system and the stability of the system are proved. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method for the tilt tri-rotor UAVs.

The Dolná Ves K-bentonite deposit is one of a few known economic accumulations of illite-smectite in the world. Several studies have been done on the illite-smectitic component isolated from the Dolná Ves K-bentonite, but there is a shortage of analytical data on the K-bentonite itself. The main goal of the present study was to perform mineralogical and physico-chemical characterizations of various technological types of K-bentonites from the Dolná Ves deposit to better understand the relationships between the various qualitative types and their properties. The type I (high-grade) K-bentonite contains 88–91 wt.% of illite-smectite. The type II (low-grade) K-bentonite contained substantially less illite-smectite, ranging from 37 to 63 wt.%. The illite-smectites isolated from the type I K-bentonites displayed greater expandability, contained more octahedral Mg and less octahedral Fe, had greater cation exchange capacity (CEC), smaller thickness of fundamental particles, and thinner illite-smectite crystals in comparison with illite-smectites from the type II K-bentonites. The LOI (loss-on-ignition) and Al2O3 content increased with increasing amount of illite-smectite. The increase in the expandability by 10% corresponded to an increase in CEC by ~10 meq/100 g. The type I K-bentonites had much greater mass loss at <250°C due to greater expandability. The best tilemaking performance was expected for the type I K-bentonite. This raw material could also be potentially valuable for the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries. Overall, the results showed that the studied technological types of K-bentonites from the Dolná Ves deposit differ not only in terms of illite-smectite contents but also in terms of the nature of the illite-smectites.

We report the experimental results of the commissioning phase in the 10 PW laser beamline of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). The peak power reaches 2.4 PW on target without the last amplifying during the experiment. The laser energy of 72 ± 9 J is directed to a focal spot of approximately 6 μm diameter (full width at half maximum) in 30 fs pulse duration, yielding a focused peak intensity around 2.0 × 1021 W/cm2. The first laser-proton acceleration experiment is performed using plain copper and plastic targets. High-energy proton beams with maximum cut-off energy up to 62.5 MeV are achieved using copper foils at the optimum target thickness of 4 μm via target normal sheath acceleration. For plastic targets of tens of nanometers thick, the proton cut-off energy is approximately 20 MeV, showing ring-like or filamented density distributions. These experimental results reflect the capabilities of the SULF-10 PW beamline, for example, both ultrahigh intensity and relatively good beam contrast. Further optimization for these key parameters is underway, where peak laser intensities of 1022–1023 W/cm2 are anticipated to support various experiments on extreme field physics.

Variable camber flap technology can adjust the spanwise circulation distribution, thereby reducing the induced drag. Therefore, the concept of variable camber flap is introduced into the design of propeller aircraft wing, and the design for drag reduction of propeller aircraft is carried out. The numerical simulation of the propeller aircraft is carried out by using the actuator disc method with non-uniform distribution of radial and circumferential loads. Through the unsteady simulation of a single propeller, the aerodynamic load on a periodic propeller is extracted as a boundary condition to the steady simulation of the full aircraft. The load extracted by the actuator disc is compared with the unsteady simulation result, which verifies the reliability of the method. The design for drag reduction at cruise and climb design conditions are respectively carried out with the variable camber flap technology. The variable camber cruise configuration is evaluated at both the begin and end cruise conditions. The results show that, after the flaps deflecting at a small angle according to the circulation distribution, the camber distribution of the wing is adjusted to make the circulation distribution closer to the elliptical circulation distribution. At the design cruise condition, the drag coefficient is reduced by 1.4 counts, and the lift-drag ratio increase by 0.1. At both begin and end cruise conditions, the drag coefficient decreases by 1 count, and the lift-drag ratio increases by 0.07. At the design climb condition, the drag coefficient decreases by 1 count, and the lift-to-drag ratio increases by 0.09.

The commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software STAR-CCM+ was used to simulate the flow and breakup characteristics of a Liquid Jet Injected into the gaseous Crossflow (LJIC) under real engine operating conditions. The reasonable calculation domain geometry and flow boundary conditions were obtained based on a civil aviation engine performance model similar to the Leap-1B engine which was developed using the GasTurb software and the preliminary design results of its low-emission combustor. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model was applied to simulate the breakup feature of the near field of LJIC. The numerical method was validated and calibrated through comparison with the public test data at atmospheric conditions. The results showed that the numerical method can capture most of the jet breakup structure and predict the jet trajectory with an error not exceeding ±5%. The verified numerical method was applied to simulate the breakup of LJIC at the real engine operating condition. The breakup mode of LJIC was shown to be surface shear breakup at elevated condition. The trajectory of the liquid jet showed good agreement with Ragucci’s empirical correlation.

Electric-powered disposable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have wide applications due to their advantages in terms of long time flight and load capacity. Thus, improving their endurance has become an important task to enhance the performance of these UAVs. To achieve this, we investigated a battery dumping strategy which splits the battery into several packs that are used and dumped in sequence to reduce the dead weight. The Peukert effect is also considered. In this paper, the sensitivity analysis method was employed to analyse the endurance benefits for different battery weight ratios, Peukert constants and capacities, quantitatively. The results show that the endurance benefits are significantly affected by all three parameters. For ideal batteries, the endurance can be improved by 20% and 28% respectively when employing a double-pack or triple-pack battery strategy (for a battery weight ratio of 0.4), but these benefits will fall rapidly if the Peukert constant exceeds 1.0 or the battery weight declines. Besides, the endurance will be 10% longer if the lift coefficient rather than the velocity remains constant after the battery packs are dumped at a Peukert constant of 1.2.

In the livestock husbandry compensatory growth may be explored as a means to improve nutrient utilization, to reduce gut health problems due to excess protein intake, to simplify feeding strategies and thus to improve production efficiencies. This study investigated the effects of early protein restriction (EPR) and early antibiotic intervention (EAI) on growth performance, intestinal morphology, colonic bacteria, metabolites and mucosal gene expressions during the restriction phase and re-alimentation phase. A total of 64 piglets (10.04 ± 0.73 kg) were randomly divided into four treatment groups according to a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement with two levels of proteins (14% v. 20%) and two levels of antibiotics (0 v. 50 mg/kg kitasamycin and 20 mg/kg colistin sulphate). After a 30-day restriction phase with four kinds of diets, all groups were fed the same diets for another 74 days. The results showed that EPR decreased BW, average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake in the restriction phase (P < 0.01) and increased ADG on days 66 to 104 of the late re-alimentation phase. Early protein restriction could decrease the villus height in the jejunum (P < 0.05), while shifting to the same diets restored the villus height. Meanwhile, during the re-alimentation phase, pigs in the protein restriction groups had increased concentrations of total short chain fatty acids (P < 0.05), and modified the abundances of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes in the colon. Furthermore, the lower microbial diversity caused by EPR was improved, and gene expression analysis indicated a better barrier function in the colon. During the whole trial, EAI had no interaction with EPR and played a dispensable role in compensatory growth. Collectively, the retardation of growth caused by EPR can be compensated for in the later stages of pig raising, and accompanied by altered intestinal morphology, microbial composition.

In several lately published studies, the association between single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, rs12252) of IFITM3 and the risk of influenza is inconsistent. To further understand the association between the SNP of IFITM3 and the risk of influenza, we searched related studies in five databases including PubMed published earlier than 9 November 2017. Ten sets of data from nine studies were included and data were analysed by Revman 5.0 and Stata 12.0 in our updated meta-analysis, which represented 1365 patients and 5425 no-influenza controls from four different ethnicities. Here strong association between rs12252 and influenza was found in all four genetic models. The significant differences in the allelic model (C vs. T: odds ratio (OR) = 1.35, 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.03–1.79), P = 0.03) and homozygote model (CC vs. TT: OR = 10.63, 95% CI (3.39–33.33), P < 0.00001) in the Caucasian subgroup were discovered, which is very novel and striking. Also novel discoveries were found in the allelic model (C vs. T: OR = 1.37, 95% CI (1.08–1.73), P = 0.009), dominant model (CC + CT vs. TT: OR = 1.48, 95% CI (1.08–2.02), P = 0.01) and homozygote model (CC vs. TT: OR = 2.84, 95% CI (1.36–5.92), P = 0.005) when we compared patients with mild influenza with healthy individuals. Our meta-analysis suggests that single-nucleotide T to C polymorphism of IFITM3 associated with increasingly risk of severe and mild influenza in both Asian and Caucasian populations.