This book demonstrates the potential of the blended wing body (BWB) concept for significant improvement in both fuel efficiency and noise reduction and addresses the considerable challenges raised for control engineers because of characteristics like open-loop instability, large flexible structure, and slow control surfaces. This text describes state-of-the-art and novel modeling and control design approaches for the BWB aircraft under consideration. The expert contributors demonstrate how exceptional robust control performance can be achieved despite such stringent design constraints as guaranteed handling qualities, reduced vibration, and the minimization of the aircraft's structural loads during maneuvers and caused by turbulence. As a result, this innovative approach allows the building of even lighter aircraft structures, and thus results in considerable efficiency improvements per passenger kilometer. The treatment of this large, complex, parameter-dependent industrial control problem highlights relevant design issues and provides a relevant case study for modeling and control engineers in many adjacent disciplines and applications. Modeling and Control for a Blended Wing Body Aircraft presents research results in numeric modeling and control design for a large, flexible, civil BWB aircraft in the pre-design stage as developed within the EU FP7 research project ACFA 2020. It is a useful resource for aerospace and control engineers as it shows the complete BWB aircraft modeling and control design process, carried out with the most recent tools and techniques available. presents research results in numeric modeling and control design for a large, flexible, civil BWB aircraft in the pre-design stage as developed within the EU FP7 research project ACFA 2020. It is a useful resource for aerospace and control engineers as it shows the complete BWB aircraft modeling and control design process, carried out with the most recent tools and techniques available. Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

This open access book presents research and evaluation results of the Austrian flagship project "Connecting Austria," illustrating the wide range of research needs and questions that arise when semi-automated truck platooning is deployed in Austria. The work presented is introduced in the context of work in similar research areas around the world. This interdisciplinary research effort considers aspects of engineering, road-vehicle and infrastructure technologies, traffic management and optimization, traffic safety, and psychology, as well as potential economic effects. The book's broad perspective means that readers interested in current and state-of-the-art methods and techniques for the realization of semi-automated driving and with either an engineering background or with a less technical background gain a comprehensive picture of this important subject. The contributors address many questions such as: Which maneuvers does a platoon typically have to carry out, and how? How can platoons be integrated seamlessly in the traffic flow without becoming an obstacle to individual road users? What trade-offs between system information (sensors, communication effort, etc.) and efficiency are realistic? How can intersections be passed by a platoon in an intelligent fashion? Consideration of diverse disciplines and highlighting their meaning for semi-automated truck platooning, together with the highlighting of necessary research and evaluation patterns to address such a broad task scientifically, makes Energy-Efficient and Semi-automated Truck Platooning a unique contribution with methods that can be extended and adapted beyond the geographical area of the research reported.

This open access book presents research and evaluation results of the Austrian flagship project "Connecting Austria," illustrating the wide range of research needs and questions that arise when semi-automated truck platooning is deployed in Austria. The work presented is introduced in the context of work in similar research areas around the world. This interdisciplinary research effort considers aspects of engineering, road-vehicle and infrastructure technologies, traffic management and optimization, traffic safety, and psychology, as well as potential economic effects. The book's broad perspective means that readers interested in current and state-of-the-art methods and techniques for the realization of semi-automated driving and with either an engineering background or with a less technical background gain a comprehensive picture of this important subject. The contributors address many questions such as: Which maneuvers does a platoon typically have to carry out, and how? How can platoons be integrated seamlessly in the traffic flow without becoming an obstacle to individual road users? What trade-offs between system information (sensors, communication effort, etc.) and efficiency are realistic? How can intersections be passed by a platoon in an intelligent fashion? Consideration of diverse disciplines and highlighting their meaning for semi-automated truck platooning, together with the highlighting of necessary research and evaluation patterns to address such a broad task scientifically, makes Energy-Efficient and Semi-automated Truck Platooning a unique contribution with methods that can be extended and adapted beyond the geographical area of the research reported.

In this work, an advanced active vibration control system acting on a railway vehicle multibody dynamic model is applied to show the possible reduction of rail car body vibration amplitudes to improve ride comfort. The control concept uses Piezo stack actuators directly acting on the rail car body structure. Several promising actuator positioning cases are evaluated in various excitation scenarios by co-simulation of the multibody system dynamics in the SimPACK(r) simulation environment and the online vibration control algorithm in MatLab/SIMULINK(r). This way, a meaningful analysis of the system in its full complexity is carried out, showing the achievable improvement in ride comfort. Besides the simulation setup and results, this work contains a step by step instruction of the controller design procedure. There, critical decisions in the control design process are pointed out. A detailed modeling of the piezoelectric actuators is performed to address non-linearities and to show compensation measures. The concluding result interpretation and outlook discuss the capabilities of the approach and provides guidelines for the choice and placement of actuators for real railway vehic