International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
 Journal metrics
See full report
Acceptance rate31%
Submission to final decision108 days
Acceptance to publication20 days
CiteScore2.500
Journal Citation Indicator0.440
Impact Factor1.4

ACP-Based Space Systems: Design, Development, and Operation

Read the full article

 Journal profile

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering serves the international aerospace engineering community through the dissemination of scientific knowledge on practical engineering and design methodologies pertaining to aircraft and space vehicles.

 Editor spotlight

Chief Editor, Professor Zhao, is based at the University of Canterbury and his research interests include applying theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches to study combustion instability, thermoacoustics and aerodynamics.

 Special Issues

We currently have a number of Special Issues open for submission. Special Issues highlight emerging areas of research within a field, or provide a venue for a deeper investigation into an existing research area.

Latest Articles

More articles
Research Article

Multiple Leap Maneuver Trajectory Design and Tracking Method Based on Prescribed Performance Control during the Gliding Phase of Vehicles

A novel standard trajectory design and tracking guidance used in the multiple active leap maneuver mode for hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) is proposed in this paper. First, the dynamic equation and multiconstraint model are first established in the flight path coordinate system. Second, the reference drag acceleration-normalized energy (D-e) profile of the multiple active leap maneuver mode is quickly determined by the Newton iterative algorithm with a single design parameter. The range to go error is corrected by the drag acceleration profile update algorithm, and the drag acceleration error of the gliding terminal is corrected by the aerodynamic parameter estimation algorithm. Then, the reference drag acceleration tracking guidance law is designed based on the prescribed performance control method. Finally, the CAV-L vehicle model is used for numerical simulation. The results show that the proposed method can satisfy the design requirements of drag acceleration under multiple active leap maneuver modes, and the reference drag acceleration can be tracked precisely. The adaptability and robustness of the proposed method are verified by the Monte Carlo simulations under various combined deviation conditions.

Research Article

Fault-Tolerant Control for Carrier-Based Aircraft Automatic Landing Subject to Multiple Disturbances and Actuator Faults

This paper introduces a fault-tolerant control scheme for the automatic carrier landing of carrier-based aircraft using direct lift control. The scheme combines radial basis function neural network and active disturbance rejection control (RBF-ADRC) to overcome the impact of actuator failures and external disturbances. First, the carrier-based aircraft model, the carrier air-wake model, and the actuator fault model were established. Secondly, ADRC is designed to estimate and compensate for actuator faults and disturbances in real time. RBFNN adjusts the ADRC controller parameters based on the system state. Then, the Lyapunov function is constructed to prove the stability of the closed-loop system. The controller is applied to the direct lift control channel, auxiliary attitude channel, and approach power compensation system. The direct lift control improves the performance of fixed-wing aircraft. Finally, comparative simulations were conducted under various actuator failures. The results demonstrate the remarkable fault tolerance of the RBF-ADRC scheme, enabling precise tracking of the desired glide path by the shipboard aircraft even in the presence of actuator failures.

Research Article

An Iterative Determination Method of an Axial Deployment Force of a Lanyard-Deployed Coilable Mast in Local Coil Mode

The axial deployment force is an indispensable parameter of a lanyard-deployed coilable mast, which reflects its load capacity in practical applications. However, research on the axial deployment force in the literature is very limited, and there are no mature numerical methods to determine this parameter in the design stage of coilable masts. In this paper, a numerical method for determining the axial deployment force of a lanyard-deployed coilable mast in the local coil mode is presented. Through this method, the designer can quickly obtain the estimated value of the axial deployment force in the design stage, which is convenient for the quantitative design of parameters. To verify the correctness of the proposed method, a dynamic simulation of the coilable mast is carried out, and a microgravity test is performed. The comparison results show that the error between the numerical method and the simulation and experimental results is less than 5%, which proves the correctness of the proposed method. In addition, the coilable mast studied in this paper has been verified by an actual microsatellite deployment in orbit.

Research Article

Research on the Simulation Method for Equivalent Stiffness of Bolted Connection Thin Plate Structures

Bolted connections are widely used in assembly structures, and their dynamic characteristics are often affected by stiffness, damping, excitation, and other factors. In order to solve the problems of low computational efficiency of fine modeling and large computational error of linearized equivalent modeling of bolted structures, this paper proposes a dynamic characteristic parameter identification method for bolted structures based on the multiscale method and considering the influence of nonlinear factors. In this method, the bolted connection characteristics are simulated in the form of a combination of shear stiffness, torsional stiffness, nonlinear stiffness, and viscous damping coefficient and identified according to the test measurement frequency and frequency response function. At the same time, by establishing the nonlinear dynamic model of bolted structure, the influence of different bolt preloads and excitation forces on the dynamic characteristics of bolted structure is studied.

Research Article

Aeroengine Remaining Life Prediction Using Feature Selection and Improved SE Blocks

Aeroengines use numerous sensors to detect equipment health and ensure proper operation. Currently, filtering useful sensor data and removing useless data is challenging in predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of an aeroengine using deep learning. To reduce computational costs and improve prediction performance, we use random forest to evaluate the feature importance of sensor data. Based on the size of the feature corresponding to the Gini index, we select the appropriate sensor. This helps us to determine which sensor to use and ensures that the computational resources are not wasted on unnecessary sensors. Considering that the RUL of equipment changes in a progressively more complex manner as the equipment is used over time, we propose an improved squeeze and excitation block (SSE) and combine it with a convolutional neural network (CNN). By enhancing the feature selection ability of CNN through segmented squeeze and excitation block, the model can focus on important information within features to effectively improve prediction performance. We compared our experiments with other RUL experiments on the CMAPSS aeroengine dataset and then conducted ablation experiments to verify the critical role of the methods we used.

Research Article

A Dual-Hierarchy Synchronization Method for Signal Preambles with High Detection Rates for Satellite-Based ADS-B Receivers with Different Sensitivities

Existing methods are unable to achieve high detection rates and low false alarm rates of satellite-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) signal preambles at extremely low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) using limited on-star resources. In this paper, a dual-hierarchy synchronization method is proposed, including a first-level coarse synchronization and a second-level fine synchronization. The coarse synchronization process involves three steps: (1) detection of unknown signals, (2) soft decision, and (3) adaptive interval output. The first step introduces the threshold () of the minimum signal energy to be detected to guarantee a high detection rate. In the soft decision step, a value () designed to improve the robustness of the system curbs false detection caused by noise interference. In the last step, the coarse synchronization interval radius () is mapped out according to the SNR to reduce resource consumption. The fine synchronization process is based on the coarse synchronization output, and the correlation peak is calculated to complete the synchronization of the signal preambles. The results show that the proposed method achieves a high detection rate of 96% at an extremely low SNR using a low sampling frequency of 10 MHz. Furthermore, the adjustment of allows this method to be applied to ADS-B receivers with different sensitivities. The comprehensive performance of this method to achieve high detection rates and acceptable false alarm rates at extremely low SNRs with limited on-star resources is verified by final simulations to be superior to other methods.

International Journal of Aerospace Engineering
 Journal metrics
See full report
Acceptance rate31%
Submission to final decision108 days
Acceptance to publication20 days
CiteScore2.500
Journal Citation Indicator0.440
Impact Factor1.4
 Submit Check your manuscript for errors before submitting

Article of the Year Award: Impactful research contributions of 2022, as selected by our Chief Editors. Discover the winning articles.