A hybrid active/passive exhaust noise control system for locomotives

A prototype hybrid system consisting of active and passive components for controlling far-field locomotive exhaust noise has been designed, assembled, and tested on a locomotive. The system consisted of a resistive passive silencer for controlling high-frequency broadband noise and a feedforward multiple-input, multiple-output active control system for suppressing low-frequency tonal noise. The active system used ten roof-mounted bandpass speaker enclosures with 2-12-in. speakers per enclosure as actuators, eight roof-mounted electret microphones as residual sensors, and an optical tachometer that sensed locomotive engine speed as a reference sensor. The system was installed on a passenger locomotive and tested in an operating rail yard. Details of the system are described and the near-field and far-field noise reductions are compared against the design goal.     

New experimental results on emission and reaction barriers

The use of the method of experimental barrier distributions is now commonplace in the interpretation of heavy-ion fusion excitation functions. The application of a similar technique to the α emission from a hot compound nucleus will be briefly discussed. Less well known than the fusion-barrier distribution is the one obtained from quasi-elastic scattering. Some details of this method will be discussed with particular emphasis on possible advantages for its exploitation with radioactive beams.     

Supershell structure in alkali metal nanowires

Nanowires are formed by indenting and subsequently retracting two pieces of sodium metal. Their cross section gradually reduces upon retraction and the diameters can be obtained from the conductance. In previous work we have demonstrated that when one constructs a histogram of diameters from large numbers of indentation-retraction cycles such histograms show a periodic pattern of stable nanowire diameters due to shell structure in the conductance modes. Here, we report the observation of a modulation of this periodic pattern, in agreement with predictions of a supershell structure.     

Structure and Kinetics of Oxidation of Amphiphilic Nickel(II) Pentaazamacrocycles by Peroxodisulfate and by a Nickel(III) Pendant-Arm Macrocycle

Three nickel(II) pentaazamacrocycles bearing pendant alkyl tails have been synthesized,and the crystal structure of one (bearing an octyl tail) is reported. The redox potentials of the complexes, for oxidation of the nickel(II) centre, is 0.72 V (versus S.H.E.) in all cases, indicating that the pendant alkyl tails have no effect on the redox site. The kinetics of oxidation of the complexes by peroxodisulfate, S₂O₈ ^2- and by aqua(5, 5, 7,12, 12, 14-hexamethyl-1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane-1-acetato)nickel(III),[Ni(hmca)(OH₂)]²⁺ have been studied. Oxidation by S₂O₈ ^2- occursby ion-pairing of the reactants, followed by electron transfer with concomitant peroxo bond fissure. Oxidation by [Ni(hmca)(OH₂)]²⁺ occurs by an outer sphere electron transfer process. Redox kinetics at the nickel centre provides a probe for supramolecular interactions at the pendant tails in such complexes.     

Laser-cooling effects in few-ion clouds of Yb+

We report some laser-cooling effects in a few¹⁷²Yb⁺ ions held in a Paul trap. Pronounced cloud-to-crystal phase transitions have been observed as discontinuities in the Yb⁺ fluorescence spectrum of the 369 nm cooling transition. The first reported two-dimensional images of Yb⁺ clouds with evidence of crystal structure have been recorded using a photon-counting position-sensitive detector. An ion temperature of 100 mK has been estimated from the size of a single ion image. Step-wise cooling of a re-heated, few-ion Yb⁺ cloud was also observed.     

Critical and phase-equilibrium properties of an ab initio based potential model of methanol and 1-propanol using two-phase molecular dynamics simulations

Two-phase molecular dynamics simulations employing a Monte Carlo volume sampling method were performed using an ab initio based force field model parameterized to reproduce quantum-mechanical dimer energies for methanol and 1-propanol at temperatures approaching the critical temperature. The intermolecular potential models were used to obtain the binodal vapor-liquid phase dome at temperatures to within about 10 K of the critical temperature. The efficacy of two all-atom, site-site pair potential models, developed solely from the energy landscape obtained from high-level ab initio pair interactions, was tested for the first time. The first model was regressed from the ab initio landscape without point charges using a modified Morse potential to model the complete interactions; the second model included point charges to separate Coulombic and dispersion interactions. Both models produced equivalent phase domes and critical loci. The model results for the critical temperature, density, and pressure, in addition to the sub-critical equilibrium vapor and liquid densities and vapor pressures, are compared to experimental data. The model's critical temperature for methanol is 77 K too high while that for 1-propanol is 80 K too low, but the critical densities are in good agreement. These differences are likely attributable to the lack of multi-body interactions in the true pair potential models used here.     

Reduced-order models for control of fluids using the eigensystem realization algorithm

As sensors and flow control actuators become smaller, cheaper, and more pervasive, the use of feedback control to manipulate the details of fluid flows becomes increasingly attractive. One of the challenges is to develop mathematical models that describe the fluid physics relevant to the task at hand, while neglecting irrelevant details of the flow in order to remain computationally tractable. A number of techniques are presently used to develop such reduced-order models, such as proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), and approximate snapshot-based balanced truncation, also known as balanced POD. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses: for instance, POD models can behave unpredictably and perform poorly, but they can be computed directly from experimental data; approximate balanced truncation often produces vastly superior models to POD, but requires data from adjoint simulations, and thus cannot be applied to experimental data. In this article, we show that using the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA) (Juang and Pappa, J Guid Control Dyn 8(5):620?C627, 1985) one can theoretically obtain exactly the same reduced-order models as by balanced POD. Moreover, the models can be obtained directly from experimental data, without the use of adjoint information. The algorithm can also substantially improve computational efficiency when forming reduced-order models from simulation data. If adjoint information is available, then balanced POD has some advantages over ERA: for instance, it produces modes that are useful for multiple purposes, and the method has been generalized to unstable systems. We also present a modified ERA procedure that produces modes without adjoint information, but for this procedure, the resulting models are not balanced, and do not perform as well in examples. We present a detailed comparison of the methods, and illustrate them on an example of the flow past an inclined flat plate at a low Reynolds number.     

Quantum mechanics: cleaning up metaphysical baggage

The dynamic electronic structure of atoms and molecules can be directly observed by means of the (e, 2e) reaction, which measures the distribution of energies and momenta of two electrons in coincidence after a knockout reaction initiated by an electron beam of known momentum incident on a molecular gas target. The molecular state for each event is identified by the electron separation energy. The recoil momentum for each event is known from the difference of measured initial and final momenta. It has been verified that values of this momentum are equal under suitable conditions to the momentum of the electron in the target immediately before knockout. Thus the spherically-averaged electron momentum distribution for each molecular orbital is measured. This is directly related to molecular orbitals calculated by the methods of quantum chemistry. Properties obtained by this method for different types of molecules are discussed.     

Details of nuclear masses away from stability: pairing and deformation effects

Exact many-body calculations have been performed in a large Nilsson-model basis using a two-body monopole-pairing force. The diagonalisations are reduced to a manageable size by exploiting the symmetry of the general pairing Hamiltonian and time-reversal invariance. The results have been successfully applied to a study of multi-quasiparticle states in the Hf-W region. An extension of this work, calculating nuclear masses, allows a comparison with the experimental neutron-pairing energiesP _N. These have been studied in detail for the Kr isotopes. Two important conclusions emerge (i) the monopole-pairing term must be generalized to a state-dependent interaction; good results being obtained for a delta-function force (ii) the small nuclear deformations relevant to this mass region appear to vary smoothly, as given by laser spectroscopy experiments, rather than showing the fluctuations of microscopic-macroscopic calculations.