Aerial application technology

Droplet Technologies Inc. 937-1 West Whitehall Road, State College, PA 16801, USA. Johnson, D., Spray Drift Task Force (1997) A Summary of aerial Application Studies Stewart Agricultural Research Services, PO Box 509, Macon, Missouri 63552, USA. 

The introduction in the early 1970 s of the soil-incorporated, water-soluble systemic insecticide/nematicide aldicarb was regarded as a major advance in the technology of pest control. It eliminated the once prevalent hazard of inadvertent exposure of applicators or inhabitants of nearby dwellings, wildlife, and useful insects to toxic chemicals during spraying or aerial application of pesticides. 

Pomsin-Sirirak, T.N., Y.-C. Tai, H. Nassef, and C.M. Ho. 2001. Titanium-alloy MEMS wing technology for a micro aerial vehicle application. Sensors and Actuators, A Physical 89(l-2) 95-103. 

Thermoplastic-based blends are widely used in military applications for various reasons. One of the reasons is the need to have the best technology to win a battle. During World War I when aerial combat first took place, canvas and dope (shellac) covering for airplane wings and fuselages was used, and that is one of the earliest uses of composite materials. By the time the war ended, BaekeUte (invented in 1907) was in commercial production. A canvas and phenolic resin composite was being widely used for airplane and marine components when World War n started. 

New and improved sensor and communication technologies create opportunities for designing embedded and mobile systems that are able to interact with their environment, and exhibit smart and autonomous behavior. Furthermore, collaboration between mobile entities can also be envisaged for improving their functionality as well as performance. Example applications include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and smart cars, where for instance, UAVs can be used for environmental surveillance and control, and smart vehicles coordinating their behaviors can be used to increase traffic throughput and improve mobility without the need of using more space for the respective traffic infrastructures. 

There have been a number of studies of the breakup of viscoelastic filaments because of interfacial tension, all of which show that the viscoelastic response results in dynamics that differ markedly from the Rayleigh breakup of inelastic filaments, but the focus for interfacial tension-driven breakup has been on dilute polymer solutions of interest in aerial spraying and inkjet technology applications. The hterature is less extensive for breakup of polymer melts, and some of the issues relevant to dilute solutions are probably not of concern for melts because of the orders-of-magnitude difference in the ratio of interfacial to viscous (or elastic) stresses. 

There are also advantages with glass fibre-reinforced materials. For example, the typical processing temperature with 30% glass fibre-reinforced PEI (360-380 °C) blended with 21% PPO can be reduced to 310-340 °C. This flow-optimised technology can find applications in, for example, automotive headlamp reflectors, lamp bases, throttles, chip carriers and aerials. 

Lithium-ion battery technology is being introduced into power supplies used by the US Armed Forces for a variety of applications, including land (such as portable systems, small vehicles, and communication) marine (submarines and imderwater vehicles) air (unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]), and space (satellites and space ships) uses. In many cases, the same cells and design parameters that support coimnercial battery packs are used in military battery packs. This approach is expected to result in a major decrease in the total life cycle cost of the equipment these batteries support. Besides cost, military applications have special requirements for lithium-ion batteries ... 

Established equivalence. Sometimes established regulations (especially if not objective-based) are too inflexible to deal with new technologies or alternative applications. The alternative solution is thus for the user to demonstrate to the authority that the new product/approach has equivalence to existing approved solutions. A typical example can be found in the certification of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on establishing an equivalent level of safety as maimed air vehicles. 

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