Study on wave dispersion characteristics of piezoelectric sandwich nanoplates considering surface effects

In this study, the wave propagation properties of piezoelectric sandwich nanoplates deposited on an orthotropic viscoelastic foundation are analyzed by considering the surface effects (SEs). The nanoplates are composed of a composite layer reinforced by graphene and two piezoelectric surface layers. Utilizing the modified Halpin-Tsai model, the material parameters of composite layers are obtained. The displacement field is determined by the sinusoidal shear deformation theory (SSDT). The Euler-Lagrange equation is derived by employing Hamilton’s principle and the constitutive equations of piezoelectric layers considering the SEs. Subsequently, the nonlocal strain gradient theory (NSGT) is used to obtain the equations of motion. Next, the effects of scale parameters, graphene distribution, orthotropic viscoelastic foundation, and SEs on the propagation behavior are numerically examined. The results reveal that the wave frequency is a periodic function of the orthotropic angle. Furthermore, the wave frequency increases with the increase in the SEs.

     

伏安特性实验中电压表的改进应用

改进了传统电压表的面板设计,使电压表不仅能测两端的电压,还能测量自身的电流.于是在测量元件的伏安特性实验中,使用该电压表可以不考虑被测器件电阻的大小,均采用电流表外接的接线方式,即让电压表分流.再利用电压表的电流测量功能,测出自身分流电流的大小,从而可以准确得出被测器件的电流与两端的电压.     

Traveling waves for a reaction–diffusion–advection predator–prey model

In this paper we study a reaction–diffusion–advection predator–prey model in a river. The existence of predator-invasion traveling wave solutions and prey-spread traveling wave solutions in the upstream and downstream directions is established and the corresponding minimal wave speeds are obtained. While some crucial improvements in theoretical methods have been established, the proofs of the existence and nonexistence of such traveling waves are based on Schauder’s fixed-point theorem, LaSalle’s invariance principle and Laplace transform. Based on theoretical results, we investigate the effect of the hydrological and biological factors on minimal wave speeds and hence on the spread of the prey and the invasion of the predator in the river. The linear determinacy of the predator–prey Lotka–Volterra system is compared with nonlinear determinacy of the competitive Lotka–Volterra system to investigate the mechanics of linear and nonlinear determinacy.     

Experimental and LES investigation of premixed methane/air flame propagating in a tube with a thin obstacle

In this paper, an experimental and numerical investigation of premixed methane/air flame dynamics in a closed combustion vessel with a thin obstacle is described. In the experiment, high-speed video photography and a pressure transducer are used to study the flame shape changes and pressure dynamics. In the numerical simulation, four sub-grid scale viscosity models and three sub-grid scale combustion models are evaluated for their individual prediction compared with the experimental data. High-speed photographs show that the flame propagation process can be divided into five stages: spherical flame, finger-shaped flame, jet flame, mushroom-shaped flame and bidirectional propagation flame. Compared with the other sub-grid scale viscosity models and sub-grid scale combustion models, the dynamic Smagorinsky–Lilly model and the power-law flame wrinkling model are better able to predict the flame behaviour, respectively. Thus, coupling the dynamic Smagorinsky–Lilly model and the power-law flame wrinkling model, the numerical results demonstrate that flame shape change is a purely hydrodynamic phenomenon, and the mushroom-shaped flame and bidirectional propagation flame are the result of flame–vortex interaction. In addition, the transition from “corrugated flamelets” to “thin reaction zones” is observed in the simulation.     

Development of a multi‐scale ocean model by using particle Laplacian method for anisotropic mass transfer

The direct injection of CO₂ into the deep ocean is one of the feasible ways for the mitigation of the global warming, although there is a concern about its environmental impact near the injection point. To minimize its biological impact, it is necessary to make CO₂ disperse as quickly as possible, and it is said that injection with a pipe towed by a moving ship is effective for this purpose. Because the injection ship moves over a spatial scale of O(10²km), a mesoscale model is necessary to analyse the dispersion of CO₂. At the same time, since it is important to investigate high CO₂ concentration near the injection point, a small‐scale model is also required. Therefore, in this study, a numerical model was developed to analyse CO₂ dispersion in the deep ocean by using a fixed mesoscale and a moving small‐scale grid systems, the latter of which is nested and moves in the former along the trajectory of the moving ship. To overcome the artificial diffusion of mass concentration at the interface of the two different grid systems and to keep its spatial accuracy almost the same as that in the small‐scale, a particle Laplacian method was adopted and newly modified for anisotropic diffusion in the ocean. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time domain topology optimization of 3D nanophotonic devices

We present an efficient parallel topology optimization framework for design of large scale 3D nanophotonic devices. The code shows excellent scalability and is demonstrated for optimization of broadband frequency splitter, waveguide intersection, photonic crystal-based waveguide and nanowire-based waveguide. The obtained results are compared to simplified 2D studies and we demonstrate that 3D topology optimization may lead to significant performance improvements.     

GPU-accelerated molecular dynamics simulation for study of liquid crystalline flows

We have developed a GPU-based molecular dynamics simulation for the study of flows of fluids with anisotropic molecules such as liquid crystals. An application of the simulation to the study of macroscopic flow (backflow) generation by molecular reorientation in a nematic liquid crystal under the application of an electric field is presented. The computations of intermolecular force and torque are parallelized on the GPU using the cell-list method, and an efficient algorithm to update the cell lists was proposed. Some important issues in the implementation of computations that involve a large number of arithmetic operations and data on the GPU that has limited high-speed memory resources are addressed extensively. Despite the relatively low GPU occupancy in the calculation of intermolecular force and torque, the computation on a recent GPU is about 50 times faster than that on a single core of a recent CPU, thus simulations involving a large number of molecules using a personal computer are possible. The GPU-based simulation should allow an extensive investigation of the molecular-level mechanisms underlying various macroscopic flow phenomena in fluids with anisotropic molecules.     

不同地区大气光学湍流内外尺度测量

 用光学湍流参数自动测量系统对内陆地区和沿海地区光学湍流内外尺度进行了大量的实验观测。分析了湍流尺度的日变化规律，给出了其频数分布。结果表明：两地内尺度的均值为十几mm，外尺度的均值约为2 m；内陆地区内尺度日变化趋势较为复杂，而外尺度的日变化趋势与湍流强度十分相似；沿海地区内外尺度与湍流强度均无明显关系。大气湍流尺度的大小和分布状态是随时间和空间变化的，因此，在估算实际大气湍流对光学系统的影响时，需要实测湍流尺度以便得到准确的结果。     

On the Stability of the O(N)-Invariant and the Cubic-Invariant Three-Dimensional N-Component Renormalization-Group Fixed Points in the Hierarchical Approximation

We compute renormalization-group fixed points and their spectrum in an ultralocal approximation. We study a case of two competing nontrivial fixed points for a three-dimensional real N-component field: the O(N)-invariant fixed point vs. the cubic-invariant fixed point. We compute the critical value N _c of the cubic ⁴-perturbation at the O(N)-fixed point. The O(N)-fixed point is stable under a cubic ⁴-perturbation below N _c; above N _c it is unstable. The Critical value comes out as 2.219435<N _c<2.219436 in the ultralocal approximation. We also compute the critical value of N at the cubic invariant fixed point. Within the accuracy of our computations, the two values coincide.     

Energy as a Fifth Dimension

A recent analysis of the experimental data on some physical phenomena ruled by the four fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravitational) seems to show the possibility of describing such interactions in terms of a deformation of the usual Minkowski spacetime, with a metric whose coefficients do depend on the energy of the process considered. In this paper, we show that such results can be accounted for in terms of a Kaluza-Klein-like scheme, based on a five-dimensional Riemannian space in which energy plays the role of the fifth dimension. The corresponding five-dimensional Einstein equations in vacuum are solved in some cases of physical relevance and it is shown that all the phenomenological metrics describing the four fundamental forces are recovered as special cases of the classes of solutions found. Possible developments of the formalism are also briefly outlined.