Dambusters Simulation - Lab Report Example

DAMBUSTERS SIMULATION By Student’s name Course code and name Professor’s name University name City, State Date of submission Introduction Simulations are configured operations that are meant to observe engineering behaviours of given models. These behaviours are equated to real life situations and extensively studied prior to implementation of a given solution or a product. This is because of the dangers that real life experiments pose to the environment and the user or even wastage of resources such as time and money. Therefore, simulations are meant to eliminate doubts and bottlenecks through system optimization for perfect performance. For this reason, simulations are multileveled and cultured in order to assist in product or solution development through a procedural approach shown below (Maria, 1997). Figure 1: Schematic presentation of simulation procedure. In order to get acquainted with flight modelling and simulation, this study aims at performing dambusters simulations through use of basic html programming. Dambusters is an operation that was carried out by squadron 617 that made its way to the books of legend based on the principles applied in making it successful. In an operation dubbed as operation chastise, aircrafts mounted with bombs were used by the Royal Air Force to render the Germany dams namely Möhne and Edersee catastrophic. In a close study of this catastrophic event that saw more than 1600 individuals drown, Dildy (2010) established that this operation was mainly successful based on the kinematic equations of motion. This simulation takes the same route and deploys equation 1 to 4 shown below in order to successfully model for the bouncing bomb to burst the sluice wall. 1 (1) (2) (3) (4) Methodology The computer internet browser was run on http://www.html5test.com and the score found to be 444 out of 555. The basic tools for this simulation were then downloaded with the inclusion of jquery.js, canvas.js and dam0.html. The notepad++ software for html text editing was downloaded from the website http://www.notepad-plus.com, installed on the computer and run tested to working condition. The html file was clicked on the first instance to establish whether it was opening on the default computer browser. The results were as shown in figure 1 below: Figure 2: Results obtained on running dam0.html file in browser. The coordinates of the above resulting squares were investigated to find out their orientation in order to establish how the html coordinate system works. This was based on the tutorial video as shown in the snapshot in figure 2. Basically, the coordinate system followed the order of the x coordinate and the y coordinate originating from the top left corner of the browse followed by the width and height in terms of pixels. Figure 3: Coordinate system as depicted on an html canvas. On understanding the coordinate concept in the tutorial video, the html file was opened in notepad++ editing software. This appeared as shown in the figure below. Figure 4: Initial outlook of the html file on initial opening. In order to master the html basics the example below was set as a standard in which the red ball had to be programmed to bounce across the four walls of the green square. The green background had to be (400,300) from the origin which translated to a length and width of 400x300 pixels. The red ball was programmed to have a radius of 20 units Figure 5: Example to be obtained for acquaintance purposes. Once the example set in place was achieved to satisfactory levels, the simulation exercise kicked off. Figure 6: Image of final program to bounce the ball across all sides of platform. Figure 7: Image of ball bouncing across all sides of the layout. Dambusters Simulation The main working files were downloaded from the database and copied into one folder for simulation commencement. It was noted that the main objective of this simulation was to achieve a model of the Lancaster bomber moving the left to right on the canvas together with the bomb and at some point the bomb had to be dropped with a given velocity in order to bounce towards the target wall from where it would slip into water at free fall. Therefore, the first step was to develop the images that would be utilised in this exercise then followed by coding in order to achieve the objective. Images of the plane were simply found on the internet by searching for the term “dambusters” and “Lancaster bomber”. The initial photograph of the plane is as extracted from the website is shown in the figure below. Figure 8: The original image of a super hornet (Alpha Coders , 2014). This image was then cropped to a random resolution using Adobe Photoshop CS6 and the right colour contrast instilled onto it. Resizing the images was an important aspect because they were required to have a workable aspect ratio among each other. The plane image was therefore resized to 448x102 pixels and saved as a PNG image due to the transparency benefit it poses towards html development. The image achieved during this exercise is shown in the figure below. Figure 9: Cropped image of the dambuster. The background image was then drawn to resolution 947x500 and saved in PNG form shown in the figure below. Figure 10: Background image developed to 947x500 pixels. The image of the bomb was equally developed to achieve 38x39 pixels considering it was a small object. Figure 11: Image of the bomb. In order to achieve the required program, the downloaded template had to be edited in order to achieve the simulation objective. The initial step was guided by laying the proper coordinates for the plane, the background and the bomb as instructed by the coordinate diagram below. \ Figure 12: The html coordinate system. The initial coordinates for the background picture were set at (0, 0) as per the instructions above. The plane was fixed at an initial point of (0, 150) and coordinates (100, 195) on the (x, y) axis of the background. Running this program gave the results shown below. Figure 13: Results of running html on declaring objects. On entering the object code and the variables, the plane is expected to start moving and at some point drop the bomb which then bounces and falls off into water. The figure below shows the code and the results that are achieved from this simulation. Figure 14: Code to be executed for bomb to fall off while plane is moving. Figure 15: Results of running code in figure 14. Conclusion In concluding this simulation exercise it was noted that as much it may appear simple, it is really important to undertake a simulation. It came to light that fine tuning can be quite easily done using this simulation for real life practice to be undertaken later. The objective of this simulation is achieved as the plane successfully drops the bomb which then hits the water thereby bouncing twice and hitting the wall. In real life, once the bomb hits the wall it is expected to drown into water and due to the incorporated hydrostatics, the bomb shall explode leading to collapsing of the dam wall. Varying the speeds is noted to have an effect on the number of times that the bomb bounces before hitting the wall. List of References Alpha Coders , 2014. Military - Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Wallpaper. [Online] Available at: http://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=362286 [Accessed 20 May 2014]. Dildy, D., 2010. Dambusters - Operation Chastise 1943. Cambridge: Osprey Publishing. Maria, A., 1997. Introduction to modelling and simulation. In Proceedings of the 1997 winter simulation conference. New York, 1997. Read More