Luca Piancastelli

Zero Emission Temporary Habitation: Analysis of a Passive Container Housing System Acclimatized by Geothermal Water

This paper presents a novel concept of container mobile housing system denominated ZETHa (Zero Energy Temporary Habitation). It is based on the LESP (Low Exergy Structured Panel) concept, in which the acclimatization is realized by water recirculation inside the external walls of the building and the ZEBRA concept (Zero Energy Consumption Building totally Renewable Addicted). A general plant and building design has been produced with the aim to minimize the presence of thermal bridges. The calculations of energy dispersion have been performed both in the wall and in the whole building. The energetic contribution of renewable energy plants has been evaluated to obtain a totally passive building. This evaluation will also consider energy needs by appliances.Copyright

Flow Analysis of Multiple Injectors in High-Power-Density HSDI CR Diesel Engines

The primary task in DI (Direct Injection) diesel engines design is the fulfilment of the required emission limits. This result should be achieved with acceptable power-to-rpm diagrams, acceptable fuel consumption, acceptable power density and affordable purchase and maintenance expenses. The most common approach to fulfil these requirements is the downsizing. In this case a significant increase in the crankshaft speed and boost pressure is unavoidable. In this way, an improvement in airflow through the redesign of the intake and exhaust geometry is obtained. Unfortunately, duct design is extremely difficult due to “Mach lock”. A further important boundary condition is due the injector inertia. The dynamic response improves with small injectors due to the Newton’s second law. Small injectors designed for unitary power of 15 to 70 HP are extremely common. Therefore, most of the research is centered on these injectors. Furthermore, their small inertia favors better opening and closing time. Nozzles number and position is also greatly influential on combustion performance. The larger surface of the spray reduces the gasification time of the droplets. For these reasons, multiple injectors systems may be used in large high pressure HSDI-CR (High Speed Direct Injection – Common Rail) diesels. Multi injection was commonplace in relatively large old diesels. This paper proposes new intake duct geometries for modern two-injectors-per-cylinder truck-size engines. For this purpose a new promising, patented concept is introduced. The study includes flow simulations during the intake phase. This patented geometry induces the presence of two extremely strong swirls approximately centered to the injectors, with excellent swirl coefficient and high flow rate. The use of swirl generators on the manifolds avoids the necessity to design helical intake ducts. This patented approach simplifies head design. Moreover, using a VG (Variable Geometry) arrangement for the volutes (swirl generators) it is possible to tune the swirl index at the optimum for every crankshaft velocity and every load. In this way, the vehicle fuel consumption is also reduced.

GA multi-objective and experimental optimization for a tail-sitter small UAV

This paper introduces a Montecarlo Genetic Algorithm, hierarchical, multi-objective optimization of a Vertical Take Off landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle having a tail sitter configuration. An optimization of the hierarchical type is introduced in place of the methods generally used multi-objective optimization, such as Pareto and “arbitrary” weighted sums. A Montecarlo method optimizes the weights of the final objective function used by the Genetic Algorithm. A very simple “spreadsheet based” algorithm defines the CAD model of the Genetic Algorithm individuals in order to evaluate the performance of the candidates. The optimization method described in this study appears to be very effective. Then experimental tests were conducted with scaled-down prototypes. Four flight tests were performed: Take Off, Cruise, Slow flight, Landing. A Taguchi matrix was defined for each experiment. The tests started from a prototype that comes directly from the Montecarlo Genetic Algorithm optimization and led to the final prototype shown along the paper (page 7, right figure). Unfortunately, the tail sitter approach proved poor control authority in the final phase of the vertical landing. Even the “final” prototype showed unsatisfactory behavior in case of erratic wind gusts. This unsolved problem is common to the tail sitter configuration that requires a power control by air jets or additional propeller to control the aircraft in the final phase of landing. Unfortunately, this necessity renders the tail sitter configuration inconvenient for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.