Evasion policies for a vessel being chased by pirate skiffs

Piracy attack is a serious safety problem for maritime transport worldwide. Whilst various strategic actions can be taken, such as rerouting vessels and strengthening navy patrols, this still cannot completely eliminate the possibility of a piracy attack. It is therefore important for a commercial vessel to be equipped with operational solutions in case of piracy attacks. In particular, the choice of a direction for rapidly fleeing is a critical decision for the vessel. In this article, we formulate such a problem as a nonlinear optimal control problem. We consider various policies, such as maintaining a straight direction or making turns, develop algorithms to optimize the policies, and derive conditions under which these policies are effective and safe. Our work can be used as a real‐time decision making tool that enables a vessel master to evaluate different scenarios and quickly make decisions.     

Comparison of rank aggregation methods based on inherent ability

Ranking is a common task for selecting and evaluating alternatives. In the past few decades, combining rankings results from various sources into a consensus ranking has become an increasingly active research topic. In this study, we focus on the evaluation of rank aggregation methods. We first develop an experimental data generation method, which can provide ground truth ranking for alternatives based on their “inherent ability.” This experimental data generation method can generate the required individual synthetic rankings with adjustable accuracy and length. We propose characterizing the effectiveness of rank aggregation methods by calculating the Kendall tau distance between the aggregated ranking and the ground truth ranking. We then compare four classical rank aggregation methods and present some useful findings on the relative performances of the four methods. The results reveal that both the accuracy and length of individual rankings have a remarkable effect on the comparison results between rank aggregation methods. Our methods and results may be helpful to both researchers and decision‐makers.     

Allocation with demand competition: Uniform,proportional, and lexicographic mechanisms

We examine capacity allocation mechanisms in a supply chain comprising a monopolistic supplier and two competing retailers with asymmetric market powers. The supplier allocates limited capacity to retailers according to uniform, proportional, or lexicographic mechanism. We study the impact of these allocation mechanisms on supplier pricing decisions and retailer ordering behavior. With individual order size no greater than supplier capacity, we show that all three mechanisms guarantee equilibrium ordering. We provide precise structures of retailer ordering decisions in Nash and dominant equilibria. Further, we compare the mechanisms from the perspective of the supplier, the retailers, and the supply chain. We show that regardless of whether retailer market powers are symmetric, lexicographic allocation with any priority sequence of retailers is better than the other two mechanisms for the supplier. Further, under lexicographic allocation, the supplier gains more profit by granting higher priority to the retailer with greater market power. We also extend our study to the case with multiple retailers. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 85–107, 2017     

无人机电磁弹射器效能分析

无人机电磁弹射器是一个由多子系统构成的装备,且各部分之间联系紧密,并不同程度的影响着整体效能。为了确定各组成部分与电磁弹射器效能的影响关系,对其进行系统评价,将系统的整体效能分解为几种典型的效能指标,并采用关联矩阵法(RMA)对由弹射器子系统和效能指标构成的评价体系进行分析。明确了电磁弹射器各部分对系统效能的影响程度,并给出了提高电磁弹射器效能指标的几点建议。     

直觉层次模糊评价法的航材逆向物流效益评估

在分析影响航材逆向物流效益因素的基础上,构建了航材逆向物流效益指标体系,提出了一种新的效益评估方法,这种方法将直觉模糊熵权法与层次分析法有效地结合起来,共同确定指标权重,再通过模糊综合评价法对航材逆向物流效益进行评估,提高了评估的科学性和准确性,为航材部门完善物流环节、提高物流效益提供了一定的参考。     

平方根无迹卡尔曼滤波仅测角导航的空间交会闭环协方差分析方法

针对基于仅测角导航的空间交会问题,开展了采用线性协方差进行闭环控制误差快速分析方法的研究。建立了基于平方根无迹卡尔曼滤波(Square Root Unscented Kalman Filter,SRUKF)的仅测角导航算法并推导了观测敏感矩阵,构建了基于多脉冲Hill制导的闭环控制线性协方差分析模型。算例验证结果表明:提出的闭环控制协方差分析结果与Monte Carlo打靶结果能够很好地吻合;该方法适用于采用传统扩展卡尔曼滤波(Extended Kalman Filter,EKF)的仅测角导航问题,但其迹向位置的估计存在一个与该方向控制误差方差相当的偏心,其误差椭圆的长轴和短轴分别比基于SRUKF的估计结果大24.68%和20.56%。此外,由于采用了QR分解和Cholesky因子更新两种高效的代数运算,基于SRUKF的协方差分析模型的计算速度要比基于EKF的协方差分析模型的大10%。     

瞄准线稳定精度试验方法研究

通过对目前观瞄仪的瞄准线稳定精度试验方法分析,认为现有的方法测试精度差、效率低,构建了一套由观瞄仪、三轴转台、平行光管、视频记录处理装置等组成的试验系统,提出了一种基于图像处理的瞄准线稳定精度试验方法,该方法在某型军方竞标试验中得到成功应用.     

基于多机载预警雷达的机动目标融合跟踪方法

机动目标跟踪是多机载预警雷达数据融合中的一个难点,传统的卡尔曼滤波本身不足以解决该问题.基于量测噪声协方差估计设计了一种可适用于机动目标的卡尔曼滤波器;引入了协方差交集,提出了一种针对多机载预警雷达数据融合中机动目标跟踪的新方法.仿真实验表明,该方法能够成功稳定地跟踪机动目标,与现有的主流方法相比,该方法的误差性能是最佳的.     

Shock-induced reaction behaviors of functionally graded reactive material

In this paper, the ballistic impact experiments, including impact test chamber and impact double-spaced plates, were conducted to study the reaction behaviors of a novel functionally graded reactive material (FGRM), which was composed of polytetrafluoroethylene/aluminum (PTFE/Al) and PTFE/Al/bismuth trioxide (Bi₂O₃). The experiments showed that the impact direction of the FGRM had a significant effect on the reaction. With the same impact velocity, when the first impact material was PTFE/Al/Bi₂O₃, compared with first impact material PTFE/Al, the FGRM induced higher overpressure in the test chamber and larger damaged area of double-spaced plates. The theoretical model, which considered the shock wave generation and propagation, the effect of the shock wave on reaction efficiency, and penetration behaviors, was developed to analyze the reaction behaviors of the FGRM. The model predicted first impact material of the FGRM with a higher shock impedance was conducive to the reaction of reactive materials. The conclusion of this study provides significant information about the design and application of reactive materials.     

Research progress on advanced rail materials for electromagnetic railgun technology

Electromagnetic railgun attracts more and more attention due to its advantage in speed,cost,and obscurity.It is found that the rail should withstand huge mechanical and thermal shocks during the launching operation.The forms of rail failure are accompanied by gouge,grooving,transition,and arc ablation,etc.The service life of the rail has become a bottleneck restricting the development of elec-tromagnetic railgun technology.A series of researches are carried out to solve rail failure,including analysing the failure mechanism and using various advanced rail materials.This paper provides a comprehensive review of rail materials,including material composition,preparation,microstructure,and properties.We begin from a short background of the requirement of the rail material.Then a detailed investigation of rail materials is described,and the performances of those materials are introduced.Finally,further development prospect of rail material is discussed.