Improved separated-parameter calibration method for binocular vision measurements with a large field of view.

Large field-of-view (FOV) calibration is indispensable to ensure the accuracy of vision measurement systems for large aviation components. We propose an improved separated-parameter calibration method for large-FOV binocular vision measurements with a high flexibility and accuracy. Firstly, the camera parameters are separately calibrated according to the sub-area features of image. Subsequently, based on the spatial-calibration accuracy, a stereoscopic calibration object is devised. The mean error of the proposed method is experimentally obtained as 0.13 mm for a FOV of 2.0 m × 1.5 m. Its feasibility and effectiveness for the measurement in the field is validated by workshop calibration.

A Displacement Field Perception Method for Component Digital Twin in Aircraft Assembly.

Full-field displacement perception and digital twins for core components play a crucial role in the precision manufacturing industry, such as aviation manufacturing. This paper presents a real-time full-field displacement perception method for the combination of online multipoint displacement monitoring and matrix completion theory. Firstly, a conceptual full-field displacement perception model based on the observed information of the multi-points is established. To obtain the full-field displacements of a core component, the component is divided into plentiful discrete points, including observed and unobserved points, based on which the relationship between the observed points and the full-field displacements is established. Then, the solution method of the full-field displacement perception model is proposed. Based on the matrix completion principle and the big data of the simulation, the optimization problem is employed to work out the model and, meanwhile, the pseudo-code is put forward. Finally, the full-field displacement perception experiments are performed. Repeated experiments show that the max error of the displacements calculated by the proposed method can be less than 0.094 mm and the median error can be less than 0.054 mm, while the average time frame can be less than 0.48 s, which is promising considering the high precision and efficiency requirements of the assembly of large aircraft.

Multidimensional Vibration Suppression Method with Piezoelectric Control for Wind Tunnel Models.

In wind tunnel tests, the low-frequency and large-amplitude vibration of the cantilever sting result in poor test data in pitch plane and yaw plane, more seriously, even threatens the safety of wind tunnel tests. To ensure the test data quality, a multidimensional vibration suppression method is proposed to withstand the vibration from any direction, which is based on a system with stackable piezoelectric actuators and velocity feedback employing accelerometers. Firstly, the motion equation of the cantilever sting system is obtained by Hamilton's principle with the assumed mode method. Then, the multidimensional active control mechanism is qualitatively analyzed and a negative velocity feedback control algorithm combined with a root mean square (RMS) evaluation method is introduced to realize active mass and active damping effect, meanwhile, a weight modification method is performed to determine the sequence number of the stacked piezoelectric actuators and the weight of control voltages in real time. Finally, a multidimensional vibration suppression system was established and verification experiments were carried out in lab and a transonic wind tunnel. The results of lab experiments indicate that the damping ratio of the system is improved more than 4.3 times and the spectrum analyses show reductions of more than 23 dB. In addition, wind tunnel test results have shown that for the working conditions (α = -4~10° with γ = 0° or α = -4~10° with γ = 45°) respectively at 0.6 Ma and 0.7 Ma, the remainder vibration is less than 1.53 g, which proves that the multidimensional vibration suppression method has the ability to resist vibration from any direction to ensure the smooth process of wind tunnel tests.

High-Accuracy Calibration Based on Linearity Adjustment for Eddy Current Displacement Sensor.

High precision position control is essential in the process of parts manufacturing and assembling, where eddy current displacement sensors (ECDSs) are widely used owing to the advantages of non-contact sensing, compact volume, and resistance to harsh conditions. To solve the nonlinear characteristics of the sensors, a high-accuracy calibration method based on linearity adjustment is proposed for ECDSs in this paper, which markedly improves the calibration accuracy and then the measurement accuracy. After matching the displacement value and the output voltage of the sensors, firstly, the sensitivity is adjusted according to the specified output range. Then, the weighted support vector adjustment models with the optimal weight of the zero-scale, mid-scale and full-scale are established respectively to cyclically adjust the linearity of the output characteristic curve. Finally, the final linearity adjustment model is obtained, and both the calibration accuracy and precision are verified by the established calibration system. Experimental results show that the linearity of the output characteristic curve of ECDS adjusted by the calibration method reaches over 99.9%, increasing by 1.9⁻5.0% more than the one of the original. In addition, the measurement accuracy improves from 11⁻25 µ m to 1⁻10 µ m in the range of 6mm, which provides a reliable guarantee for high accuracy displacement measurement.

A Novel Vision-Based Pose Measurement Method Considering the Refraction of Light.

Nowadays, due to the advantages of non-contact and high-speed, vision-based pose measurements have been widely used for aircraft performance testing in a wind tunnel. However, usually glass ports are used to protect cameras against the high-speed airflow influence, which will lead to a big measurement error. In this paper, to further improve the vision-based pose measurement accuracy, an imaging model which considers the refraction light of the observation window was proposed. In this method, a nonlinear camera calibration model considering the refraction brought by the wind tunnel observation window, was established first. What's more, a new method for the linear calibration of the normal vector of the glass observation window was presented. Then, combining with the proposed matching method based on coplanarity constraint, the six pose parameters of the falling target could be calculated. Finally, the experimental setup was established to conduct the pose measurement study in the laboratory, and the results satisfied the application requirements. Besides, experiments for verifying the vision measurement accuracy were also performed, and the results indicated that the displacement and angle measurement accuracy approximately increased by 57% and 33.6%, respectively, which showed the high accuracy of the proposed method.

A Novel Strategy to Eliminate the Influence of Water Adsorption on Quartz Surfaces on Piezoelectric Dynamometers.

Piezoelectric dynamometers are out of use in high humidity. Experimental results showed that piezoelectric coefficients measured by the force-induced charges method initially fluctuated in a small range and then was unstable, and they could not be measured at high relative humidity (RH). The traditional shielding method-insulation paste was not quiet convenient, and it even added the weight of piezoelectric dynamometers. In this paper, a novel strategy that eliminates the influence of water adsorption with quartz surfaces on piezoelectric dynamometers was proposed. First, a water-quartz model was developed to analyze the origin of the RH effect. In the model, water vapor, which was adsorbed by the quartz sheet side surface, was considered. Second, equivalent sheet resistor of the side surface was researched, while the relationship of the three R's (Roughness, RH, and Resistor) was respectively discussed based on the adsorption mechanism. Finally, fluorination technology was skillfully adapted to each surface of quartz sheets to shield the water vapor. The experiment verified the fluorination strategy and made piezoelectric dynamometers work in high humidity up to 90%RH successfully. The results showed that the presented model above was reasonable. In addition, these observations also drew some useful insights to change the structure of piezoelectric dynamometers and improve the properties.

A Measurement Method for Large Parts Combining with Feature Compression Extraction and Directed Edge-Point Criterion.

High-accuracy surface measurement of large aviation parts is a significant guarantee of aircraft assembly with high quality. The result of boundary measurement is a significant parameter for aviation-part measurement. This paper proposes a measurement method for accurately measuring the surface and boundary of aviation part with feature compression extraction and directed edge-point criterion. To improve the measurement accuracy of both the surface and boundary of large parts, extraction method of global boundary and feature analysis of local stripe are combined. The center feature of laser stripe is obtained with high accuracy and less calculation using a sub-pixel centroid extraction method based on compress processing. This method consists of a compressing process of images and judgment criterion of laser stripe centers. An edge-point extraction method based on directed arc-length criterion is proposed to obtain accurate boundary. Finally, a high-precision reconstruction of aerospace part is achieved. Experiments are performed both in a laboratory and an industrial field. The physical measurements validate that the mean distance deviation of the proposed method is 0.47 mm. The results of the field experimentation show the validity of the proposed method.

Improved camera calibration method based on perpendicularity compensation for binocular stereo vision measurement system.

High-precision calibration of binocular vision systems plays an important role in accurate dimensional measurements. In this paper, an improved camera calibration method is proposed. First, an accurate intrinsic parameters calibration method based on active vision with perpendicularity compensation is developed. Compared to the previous work, this method eliminates the effect of non-perpendicularity of the camera motion on calibration accuracy. The principal point, scale factors, and distortion factors are calculated independently in this method, thereby allowing the strong coupling of these parameters to be eliminated. Second, an accurate global optimization method with only 5 images is presented. The results of calibration experiments show that the accuracy of the calibration method can reach 99.91%.

Pose measurement method and experiments for high-speed rolling targets in a wind tunnel.

High-precision wind tunnel simulation tests play an important role in aircraft design and manufacture. In this study, a high-speed pose vision measurement method is proposed for high-speed and rolling targets in a supersonic wind tunnel. To obtain images with high signal-to-noise ratio and avoid impacts on the aerodynamic shape of the rolling targets, a high-speed image acquisition method based on ultrathin retro-reflection markers is presented. Since markers are small-sized and some of them may be lost when the target is rolling, a novel markers layout with which markers are distributed evenly on the surface is proposed based on a spatial coding method to achieve highly accurate pose information. Additionally, a pose acquisition is carried out according to the mentioned markers layout after removing mismatching points by Case Deletion Diagnostics. Finally, experiments on measuring the pose parameters of high-speed targets in the laboratory and in a supersonic wind tunnel are conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the position measurement precision is less than 0.16 mm, the pitching and yaw angle precision less than 0.132° and the roll angle precision 0.712°.

Electronic, Optical, and Lattice Dynamical Properties of Tetracalcium Trialuminate (Ca4Al6O13).

The electronic, optical, and lattice dynamical properties of tetracalcium trialuminate (Ca4Al6O13) with a special sodalite cage structure were calculated based on the density functional theory. Theoretical results show that Ca4Al6O13 is ductile and weakly anisotropic. The calculated Young's modulus and Poisson ratio are 34.18 GPa and 0.32, respectively. Ca4Al6O13 is an indirect-gap semiconductor with a band gap of 5.41 eV. The top of the valence band derives from O 2p states, and the bottom of conduction band consists of Ca 3d states. Transitions from O 2p, 2s states to empty Ca 4s, 3d and Al 3s, 3p states constitute the major peaks of the imaginary part of the dielectric function. Ca4Al6O13 is a good UV absorber for photoelectric devices due to the high absorption coefficient and low reflectivity. The lattice vibration analysis reveals that O atoms contribute to the high-frequency portions of the phonon spectra, while Ca and Al atoms make important contributions to the middle- and low-frequency portions. At the center of the first Brillouin zone, lattice vibrations include the Raman active modes (E, A1), infrared active mode (T2), and silentmodes (T1, A2). Typical atomic displacement patterns were also investigated to understand the vibration modes more intuitively.

Thrust stand for low-thrust liquid pulsed rocket engines.

A thrust stand is developed for measuring the pulsed thrust generated by low-thrust liquid pulsed rocket engines. It mainly consists of a thrust dynamometer, a base frame, a connecting frame, and a data acquisition and processing system. The thrust dynamometer assembled with shear mode piezoelectric quartz sensors is developed as the core component of the thrust stand. It adopts integral shell structure. The sensors are inserted into unique double-elastic-half-ring grooves with an interference fit. The thrust is transferred to the sensors by means of static friction forces of fitting surfaces. The sensors could produce an amount of charges which are proportional to the thrust to be measured. The thrust stand is calibrated both statically and dynamically. The in situ static calibration is performed using a standard force sensor. The dynamic calibration is carried out using pendulum-typed steel ball impact technique. Typical thrust pulse is simulated by a trapezoidal impulse force. The results show that the thrust stand has a sensitivity of 25.832 mV/N, a linearity error of 0.24% FSO, and a repeatability error of 0.23% FSO. The first natural frequency of the thrust stand is 1245 Hz. The thrust stand can accurately measure thrust waveform of each firing, which is used for fine control of on-orbit vehicles in the thrust range of 5-20 N with pulse frequency of 50 Hz.