An improved progressive preconditioning method for steady non‐cavitating and sheet‐cavitating flows

An improved progressive preconditioning method for analyzing steady inviscid and laminar flows around fully wetted and sheet‐cavitating hydrofoils is presented. The preconditioning matrix is adapted automatically from the pressure and/or velocity flow‐field by a power‐law relation. The cavitating calculations are based on a single fluid approach. In this approach, the liquid/vapour mixture is treated as a homogeneous fluid whose density is controlled by a barotropic state law. This physical model is integrated with a numerical resolution derived from the cell‐centered Jameson's finite volume algorithm. The stabilization is achieved via the second‐and fourth‐order artificial dissipation scheme. Explicit four‐step Runge–Kutta time integration is applied to achieve the steady‐state condition. Results presented in the paper focus on the pressure distribution on hydrofoils wall, velocity profiles, lift and drag forces, length of sheet cavitation, and effect of the power‐law preconditioning method on convergence speed. The results show satisfactory agreement with numerical and experimental works of others. The scheme has a progressive effect on the convergence speed. The results indicate that using the power‐law preconditioner improves the convergence rate, significantly. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

XPS analysis of bio‐organic systems

A survey of the literature is made for the XPS analysis of food products (mainly spray‐dried powders, which reveal a considerable surface enrichment in lipids) and of microorganisms and related systems (extracellular polymer substances and biofilms). This survey is used as a background for discussions and recommendations regarding methodology. Sample preparation methods reviewed are freeze drying, analysis of frozen hydrated specimens and adsorption of surface‐active biocompounds on model substrates. Peak decomposition is a way to increase the wealth of information provided by the XPS spectra. It should be performed after a check that sample charge stabilization is satisfactory. Moreover, ensuring the precision needed to make comparisons within sets of samples may involve a trade‐off between imposing constraints and generating information. The examination of correlations between spectral data in the light of chemical guidelines is useful to validate or improve peak decomposition and component assignment, and may also upgrade the chemical information regarding speciation. Further upgrading may be achieved by expressing marker XPS data in terms of concentrations of compounds of interest. Different methods of computation are discussed, providing a composition in terms of ingredients, classes of biochemical compounds, or various organic and inorganic compounds. As an alternative or complement to this deterministic approach, multivariate analysis of suitable spectral windows provides spectral components, which may be used for comparing samples, and which may have a direct chemical relevance or be used to identify features of interest. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of experimental imperfections on a spin counting experiment

Spin counting NMR is an experimental technique that allows a determination of the size and time evolution of networks of dipolar coupled nuclear spins. This work reports on an average Hamiltonian treatment of two spin counting sequences and compares the efficiency of the two cycles in the presence of flip errors, RF inhomogeneity, phase transients, phase errors, and offset interactions commonly present in NMR experiments. Simulations on small quantum systems performed using the two cycles reveal the effects of pulse imperfections on the resulting multiple quantum spectra, in qualitative agreement with the average Hamiltonian calculations. Experimental results on adamantane are presented, demonstrating differences in the two sequences in the presence of pulse errors.     

The use of phase codes in ultrasound imaging: SNR gain and bandwidth requirements

Most of the literature on coded excitation describes the signal-to-noise ratio gain of a coded waveform in terms of the time-bandwidth product. We have shown that in the context of ultrasound imaging, the expression for the SNR gain provided by matched filtering a coded waveform, can be reduced to the total number of chips in the transmit signal. Hence, the SNR gain is independent of both the bandwidth and the duration of a single-chip. This concept is described in detail, clarifying this seeming contradiction. The impact of bandwidth and pulse duration on the SNR, SNR gain and axial resolution is described. Bandwidth requirements and the impact of regulatory peak-power limitations are also addressed.     

Inelastic neutron scattering from isotactic polypropylene

We used inelastic neutron scattering to probe the low‐energy excitations in semicrystalline isotactic polypropylenes with different degrees of crystallinity. The contributions from the amorphous and crystalline regions to the total scattering intensity were extracted under the assumption of a weighted linear contribution of the two regions in a simplified two‐phase system. The resulting intensity from the amorphous region showed a peak at 1.2 meV that was in good agreement with the previously determined boson peak characteristic of atactic polypropylene. The possibility of a contribution to the boson peak region by longitudinal acoustic mode modes that are characteristic of semicrystalline polymers and appear in the same low‐frequency region is discussed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 39: 2852–2859, 2001     

两端对称负折射率缺陷复合光子晶体:多通道滤波和光开关

采用传输矩阵法对两端对称负折射率缺陷复合光子晶体结构[D(AB)mD]N的透射特性进行了研究.结果表明:当N=2时,该结构透射谱的禁带出现两个完全共振透射峰,当N增加时,每个共振透射峰又分裂为N-1条；当复合光子晶体的层数m逐渐增加时,透射峰的品质因子逐渐提高,且分裂的共振透射峰距离逐渐减少；既为该结构实现高品质的多通...     

A Stokes model with cavitation for the numerical simulation of hydrodynamic lubrication

We present a cavitation model based on the Stokes equation and formulate adaptive finite element methods for its numerical solution. A posteriori error estimates and adaptive algorithms are derived, and numerical examples illustrating the theory are supplied, in particular with comparison to the simplified Reynolds model of lubrication. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward multipurpose NMR experiments

Standard phase cycled NMR pulse sequences were generalized such that for each individual step of the pulse phase cycle the free induction decay is stored separately without phase correction. This is in contrast to the usual practice, where pulse responses are phase shifted immediately (by applying a ‘receiver phase’) and co‐added as they are stored. The approach used here allows one to extract different types of NMR information, which are usually referred to as different ‘experiments’, from the same raw data set a posteriori by using complex linear combinations. Storing the free induction decays of individual phase cycle steps separately and using specific linear combinations of these data to obtain a particular type of information increase the overall efficiency of a given set of NMR experiments substantially, because all information can be derived from a single multiplexed data set. This ‘super‐experiment’ requires only as much time as the most complex of the derived specific experiments alone. The principle of this multipurpose approach was demonstrated by performing different multiple‐quantum filtered COSY experiments. It also becomes possible to generate linear combinations, which differ from the conventionally acquired spectra a posteriori. For example, we implemented diagonal peak reduction by using zero‐ and single‐quantum filtered COSY contributions without requiring additional experiment time. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.