Thermal-to-electrical energy conversion was demonstrated using an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) filled with ferrofluid and equipped annular-type solenoid. The OHP subjected to a 100 °C axial temperature difference allowing the passively oscillate through solenoid, thus accomplishing electromagnetic induction. measured solenoid voltage consisted of aperiodic pulses dominant frequencies between 2 5 Hz peak-to-peak amplitudes approaching 1 mV. Despite exposure thermal phase change cycling within...

Thermal-to-kinetic-to-electrical energy conversion is demonstrated through the use of a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) integrated within section an oscillating heat pipe (OHP) partially filled with water. The sealed PZT was configured as bow spring parallel to dominant flow direction OHP. bottom portion OHP heated in increments 50 W, while its top actively cooled via water blocks. At ∼50 internal fluid started oscillate at ∼2–4 Hz due non-uniform vapor pressure generated evaporator....

Negative obstacles have long been a challenging aspect of autonomous navigation for ground vehicles. However, as terrestrial lidar sensors become lighter and less costly, they increasingly deployed on small, low-flying UAV, affording an opportunity to use these aid in navigation. In this work, we develop analytical model predicting the ability UAV or UGV mounted detect negative obstacles. This improves upon past work area because it takes sensor rotation rate vehicle speed into account, well...

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate and characterize the concept ferrofluidic induction - a process for generating electrical power via cyclic oscillation ferrofluid (iron-based nanofluid) through solenoid. Experimental parameters include: number bias magnets, magnet spacing, solenoid core, fluid pulse frequency ferrofluid-particle diameter. peristaltic pump was used cyclically drive two aqueous ferrofluids, consisting 7-10 nm iron-oxide particles commercially-available...

The thermal performance of a flat-plate oscillating heat pipe (FP-OHP) - with modified evaporator and condenser was experimentally investigated during high flux conditions. copper FP-OHP (101.6 × 101.6 3.18 mm3) possessed two inter-connected layers 1.02 mm2 square channels the possessing parallel, 0.25 0.51 microchannels. microchannels were integrated to enhance evaporation condensation transfer improve FP-OHP’s ability transport flux. oriented vertically locally heated 14.52 cm2 heating...

The flat-plate oscillating heat pipe is a two-phase transfer device that consists of hermetically-sealed, flat substrate with milled mini/micro channels along its surface form closed-loop. start-up and performance FP-OHP dependent upon many parameters including: channel geometry, working fluid, filling ratio, orientation input. current experimental investigation focuses on the thermal behavior copper non-equal lengths, i.e. ‘unbalanced’ design, equal ‘balanced’ at different inputs. Using...

Training object detection algorithms to operate in complex geo-environments remains a significant challenge, necessitating large and diverse datasets (i.e., unique backgrounds conditions) that are not always readily available. Physically generating requisite data can also be both cost time prohibitive depending on the object(s) area(s) of interest, especially case multi-spectral hyper-spectral imagery. Thus, there is increasing interest use synthetic supplement existing physical datasets. To...

The accumulation of falling snow is a complex physical process that involves variety environmental factors. While much past work has been done on the rendering accumulated for gaming applications, scientific simulation limited to large-scale mountain ranges and watersheds. These largescale simulations are not relevant autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) performance, which length scales few meters hundred meters. In this work, we present physics-based implemented using smoothed-particle...

Autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) operating in off-road terrain are influenced by a variety of factors that unique to the environment, especially presence vegetation. Accurately simulating performance AGV requires creation virtual worlds realistically present characteristics vegetation simulations tires, chassis, and sensor systems. In this work, we development implementation coupled soil moisture growth model for generating synthetic terrains use simulations. These digital scenes have high...

<div class="section abstract"> class="htmlview paragraph">The Virtual Autonomous Navigation Environment (VANE) is a set of tools that have been developed over decade to assist autonomy developers in building autonomous systems. VANE has high-fidelity, physics-based sensors and vehicle models interact with virtual environments built by utilizing decades experience characterizing environmental conditions. These are used software-in-the-loop simulations the development evaluation...

Autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are beginning to play a more critical role in military operations. As the size of fighting forces continues draw down, U.S. and coalition partner Armed Forces will become increasingly reliant on UGVs perform mission-critical roles. These roles range from squad-level manned-unmanned teaming large-scale autonomous convoy However, as with increasing levels autonomy entering field, tools for accurately predicting these performance capabilities lacking....

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) employ a wide range of sensing modalities including LiDAR, radar, RGB cameras, and more recently infrared (IR) sensors. IR sensors are becoming an increasingly common component AVs' sensor packages to provide redundancy enhanced capabilities in conditions that adverse for other types For example, while cameras sensitive lighting LiDAR performance is degraded inclement weather such as rain, unaffected by can contribute additional meaningful information weather. The...

Energy Harvesting is a powerful process that deals with exploring different possible ways of converting energy dispersed in the environment into more useful form energy, essentially electrical energy. Piezoelectric materials are known for their ability transferring mechanical or vice versa. Our work takes advantage piezoelectric material's properties to covert thermal an oscillating heat pipe. Specific interest pipe has relevance harvesting low power generation suitable remote electronics...

The United State Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) has developed a suite computational tools called the Computational Test Bed (CTB) for advanced high-fidelity physics-based autonomous vehicle sensor environment simulations. These provide insights into onboard navigation, image processing, fusion techniques, rapid data generation artificial intelligence machine learning techniques across full spectrum (visible, NIR, MWIR, LWIR) various...