No abstract

Modal decomposition techniques, flow field and spectral analysis are employed to investigate the wake dynamics and destabilisation mechanisms of a four-bladed marine propeller with or without a nozzle. Numerical simulations are conducted using the Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) model for the wake and the Arbitrary Mesh Interface (AMI) method for the blade rotation. The presence of the nozzle significantly reduces the wake's streamwise velocity, delays the wake destabilisation, increases the wake length, and changes the morphologies of wake vortices. In particular, the hub vortex in the ducted propeller wake is broken down into chaotic turbulence by the perturbation of the backflow. From modal analysis, the spatial scale of flow phenomena decreases with the increase of modal frequency. Underlying destabilisation mechanisms in the wake correspond to some characteristic frequencies. The interaction of each sheet vortex with the previously shed tip (leakage) vortices occurs at blade passing frequency (BPF). The pairing of adjacent tip (leakage) vortices occurs at half-BPF. The long-wave instability of the hub vortex and the wake meandering are stochastic processes, each of which occurs at a frequency lower or equal to shaft frequency (SF). These four destabilisation mechanisms can approximately reconstruct the large-scale flow phenomena in the wake. Moreover, each sheet vortex's alternating connection and disconnection with the previously shed tip (leakage) vortices cause the short-wave instability of the tip (leakage) vortices and generate the secondary vortices. The radial expansion motion of large-scale helical vortices in the outer slipstream dominates the wake meandering phenomenon.

No abstract

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated path tracking for networked nonholonomic mobile vehicles, while building and keeping a desired formation. The control laws proposed are categorized into two envelopes by integrating individual path tracking and global virtual structure approaches. One is steering individual vehicles to track virtual vehicles moving along predefined paths, generated by a formation reference vehicle (FRV) of a time-varying desired virtual structure. The other is ensuring paths to be well tracked in order to build a geometric formation, through the distributed feedback law for path parameters related to the virtual vehicles, such that the physical vehicles are on the desired placements of the formation structure. Within this framework, geometric path tracking is achieved via nonlinear control theory, where an approaching angle is injected as a heading guidance design. The distributed feedback law is analyzed under communication constraints using algebraic graph theory. It is formally shown that the path tracking error of each vehicle is reduced to zero, and vehicles in the networked team globally asymptotically converge to a desired formation with equal path parameters. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control design.