Design, Modeling, and Simulation of a Wing Sail Land Yacht

Autonomous land yachts can play a major role in the context of environmental monitoring, namely, in open, flat, windy regions, such as iced planes or sandy shorelines. This work addresses the design, modeling, and simulation of a land yacht probe equipped with a rigid free-rotating wing sail and tail flap. The wing was designed with a symmetrical airfoil and dimensions to provide the necessary thrust to displace the vehicle. Specifically, it proposes a novel design and simulation method for free rotating wing sail autonomous land yachts. The simulation relies on the Gazebo simulator together with the Robotic Operating System (ROS) middleware. It uses a modified Gazebo aerodynamics plugin to generate the lift and drag forces and the yawing moment, two newly created plugins, one to act as a wind sensor and the other to set the wing flap angular position, and the 3D model of the land yacht created with Fusion 360. The wing sail aligns automatically to the wind direction and can be set to any given angle of attack, stabilizing after a few seconds. Finally, the obtained polar diagram characterizes the expected sailing performance of the land yacht. The described method can be adopted to evaluate different wing sail configurations, as well as control techniques, for autonomous land yachts.

Automatic Measurement of Magnetron Rieke Diagrams

A Rieke diagram [1] is a magnetron characteristic that visualizes the dependence of the generated frequency fg and the net delivered power PL on the load reflection coefficient GR. GR is defined in a specific magnetron-to-waveguide coupling structure called the standard or reference launcher (Fig. 1). The diagram is plotted as a family of isolines of constant fg and of constant PL in the polar diagram of GR. Rieke diagrams are essential in the design of applications without isolators, such as domestic or professional microwave ovens. Constructing Rieke diagrams is tedious, time-consuming and equipment-demanding [2], [3], preventing systematic studies of their dependence on operating conditions, such as anode voltage and its ripple, filament current, mounting repeatability, etc. We have devised a procedure, centering around a high-power automatic impedance matching device (autotuner), which enables fully automatic measurement and plotting of the stated dependences. A block diagram of the setup is shown in Fig. 1. The autotuner, when terminated in a match (waterload), can accomplish a task inverse to impedance matching: realizing any desired reflection coefficient GR. The measurement consists of stepping through a grid of n suitably chosen reflection coefficients GR = xR + jyR, covering a desired area of the polar diagram. Each GR is measured accurately by the autotuner, along with the corresponding fg and PL. Thus, raw data for constructing a Rieke diagram are obtained, the data consisting of a collection of n points {GR, fg, PL}i, i = 1…n, with GR, in general, irregularly scattered in the complex plane. A dedicated MATLAB routine then reads the data, sorts them out to create tabulated functions fg = f(xR, yR), PL = f(xR, yR), approximates these by a 2D spline, and uses the splines to plot smoothed isocontours for chosen constant values of fg and PL, completing thus the desired Rieke diagram construction. We will present details of this procedure as well as real-life examples. Fig. 1. Rieke diagram measurement setup. References Meredith, R. J., Engineers' Handbook of Industrial Microwave Heating, London: The IEE, 1998, 250–270. Takahashi, H., I. Namba, K. Akiyama, J. Microwave Power, 1979, 14, 261–267.Yixue, W., Z. Zhaotang, Proc. ICMMT'98, 1998, 795–798.

Optimization for MEMS Filter to Reduce Feed-Through and an Analysis Method Based on Polar Diagram

This paper presents an optimization of polysilicon based RF MEMS filter to improve electric isolation and minimize the feed-through, raising the stop-band reject above 20 dB from the original 0.2 dB, and proposes a performance analysis methodology based on polar diagram, which could simplify and visualize the analysis. Intrinsic feed-through of the device is minimized by optimization of substrate in fabrication process, differing from the characterization method reported previously, which is simple and effective.

Far-field theory of wave power capture by oscillating systems

A new derivation is given of an equation, relating the capture width of a wave power converter to the polar diagram of the waves generated by the device. The pattern of waves in the lee of the device is calculated in detail.