Magnetic coupling between Gd and Pr ions and magnetocaloric effect in Gd0.5Pr0.5Al2 compound

In this work, we report the theoretical and experimental investigations on the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties for Gd_0.5Pr_0.5Al₂ compound in different magnetic fields. The magnetization features indicate that Gd_0.5Pr_0.5Al₂ is ferrimagnetic at low temperatures. We also present data from X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) experiments for this compound, with which we have confirmed that the magnetic moments of the Pr ions are antiparallel to the magnetic moments of the Gd ions. The magnetocaloric parameters, ΔT_S and ΔS_T, were obtained from calorimetric data and both curves present normal and inverse magnetocaloric effect. A theoretical model for ferrimagnetic coupling, including the crystalline electrical field anisotropy, was used to describe the ΔT_S and ΔS_T experimental results.     

On finite element methods for heterogeneous elliptic problems

Dealing with variational formulations of second order elliptic problems with discontinuous coefficients, we recall a single field minimization problem of an extended functional presented by Bevilacqua et al. [Bevilacqua, L., Feijóo, R.A., Rojas, L.F., 1974. A variational principle for the Laplace operator with application in the torsion of composite rods. International Journal of Solids Structuring 10, 1091–1102], which we associate with the basic idea supporting discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods. We review residual based stabilized mixed methods applied to Darcy flow in homogeneous porous media and extend them to heterogeneous media with an interface of discontinuity. For smooth interfaces, the proposed formulations preserve the continuity of the flux and exactly imposes the constraint between the tangent components of Darcy velocity on the interface. Convergence studies for a heterogeneous and anisotropic porous medium confirm the same rates of convergence predicted for homogeneous problem with smooth solutions.     

Finite element solution of vector Poisson equation with a coupling boundary condition

The vector Poisson equation is sometimes supplemented by conditions that include the specification of the boundary value of the divergence of the unknown. A rigorous analysis of such a vector Poisson problem and uncoupled solution methods have been presented for domains of C^1,1 and Lipschitz regularity in [1] and [2], respectively. In this work, the finite element approximation of the two uncoupled solution methods is studied, and a convergence analysis of the numerical schemes is provided together with some numerical results. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 16: 71–83, 2000     

An extension of Osher's Riemann solver for chemical and vibrational non-equilibrium gas flows

In this paper we study an extension of Osher's Riemann solver to mixtures of perfect gases whose equation of state is of the form encountered in hypersonic applications. As classically, one needs to compute the Riemann invariants of the system to evaluate Osher's numerical flux. For the case of interest here it is impossible in general to derive simple enough expressions which can lead to an efficient calculation of fluxes. The key point here is the definition of approximate Riemann invariants to alleviate this difficulty. Some of the properties of this new numerical flux are discussed. We give 1D and 2D applications to illustrate the robustness and capability of this new solver. We show by numerical examples that the main properties of Osher's solver are preserved; in particular, no entropy fix is needed even for hypersonic applications.     

Mixed finite element analysis of a thermally nonlinear coupled problem

In Loula and Zhou [Comput Appl Math 20 (2001), 321–339], a thermally coupled nonlinear elliptic system modeling a large class of engineering problems was considered, and some mathematical and numerical analyses (C⁰ Lagrangian finite elements combined with a fixed point algorithm) were given. To continue our work, we propose in this article a mixed method for the potential equation and present the corresponding analyses and numerical implementations. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2006     

Parallel discontinuous Galerkin unstructured mesh solvers for the calculation of three-dimensional wave propagation problems

We discuss the parallel performances of discontinuous Galerkin solvers designed on unstructured tetrahedral meshes for the calculation of three-dimensional heterogeneous electromagnetic and aeroacoustic wave propagation problems. An explicit leap-frog time-scheme along with centered numerical fluxes are used in the proposed discontinuous Galerkin time-domain (DGTD) methods. The schemes introduced are genuinely non-dissipative, in order to achieve a discrete equivalent of the energy conservation. Parallelization of these schemes is based on a standard strategy that combines mesh partitioning and a message passing programming model. The resulting parallel solvers are applied and evaluated on several large-scale, homogeneous and heterogeneous, wave propagation problems.     

Analysis of Silver Nanoparticles Using Single-Particle Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS): Parameters Affecting the Quality of Results

Single–particle analysis using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry offers a new tool for the characterisation of inorganic nanoparticles. Its development is connected with new generations of ultrafast spectrometers. This work is concerned with thorough investigation of parameters affecting the quality of the analysis of Ag nanoparticles, i.e., nanoparticle stability, transport efficiency and sensitivity of determination. The short-term stability of Ag nanoparticles in demineralised water can be prolonged to at least 7?h by the addition of 0.05% gelatin. The sensitivity was affected by plasma power and the nebuliser Ar flow. The transport efficiency decreased with increasing sample uptake, so a compromise between the efficiency and the total number of particles entering the spectrometer should be selected. The estimate of transport efficiency is distorted when more concentrated dispersions of nanoparticles are analysed because of the overlapping of signals of multiple nanoparticles. This effect was observed for dispersions of concentration greater than 1?×?10⁶?mL^?1 where an apparent decrease in transport efficiency from an initial value 7–8% to 1% was observed. The following parameters were found by method validation: concentration limit of detection of 97?mL^?1, nanoparticle diameter limit of detection 15?nm, linearity from 20 to at least 100?nm and repeatability of 1.3%. After validation, the method was applied to determine Ag nanoparticles in river water from the Vltava in Prague. Nanoparticles with diameters of 32–114?nm were found, and their number concentration increased from 340?mL^?1 to 1670?mL^?1 as the stream of water passed through urban agglomeration.     

Dielectric Characteristics for Radio Frequency Waves in a Laboratory Dipole Plasma

Transverse and parallel dielectric permittivity elements have been derived for radio frequency waves in a laboratory dipole magnetic field plasma. Vlasov equation is resolved for both the trapped and untrapped particles as a boundary value problem to define their separate contributions to the dielectric tensor components. To estimate the wave power absorbed in the plasma volume the perturbed electric field and current density components are decomposed in a Fourier series over the poloidal angle. In this case, the dielectric characteristics can be analyzed independently of the solution of the Maxwell's equations. As usual, imaginary part of the parallel permittivity elements is necessary to estimate the electron Landau damping of radio frequency waves, whereas imaginary part of the transverse permittivity elements is important to estimate the wave dissipation by the cyclotron resonances. Computations of the imaginary part of the parallel permittivity elements are carried out in a wide range of the wave frequencies. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Long-time behavior of some Galerkin and Petrov–Galerkin methods for thermoelastic consolidation

Numerical analysis of some finite element methods for the quasi-static thermoelastic consolidation problem of fluid-filled porous materials is presented for the case of smooth exact solutions. Taking advantage of the exponential decay of the error in the initial data with time, error estimates describing the long-time behavior of the semidiscrete approximation are presented and postprocessing techniques are proposed to improve the accuracy of the pore pressure, heat flux, and effective stress approximations. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Parallel ILU preconditioning,a priori pivoting and segregation of variables for iterative solution of the mixed finite element formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations

A parallel ILU preconditioning algorithm for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations has been designed, implemented and tested. The computational mesh is divided into N subdomains which are processed in parallel in different processors. During ILU factorization, matrices and vectors associated with the nodes on the interface between the subdomains are communicated to the equation matrices to the adjacent subdomain. The bases for the parallel algorithm are an appropriate node ordering scheme and a segregation of velocity and pressure degrees of freedom. The inner nodes of the subdomain are numbered first and then the nodes on the interface between the subdomains. To avoid division by zero during the ILU factorization, the equations corresponding to the velocity degrees of freedom are assembled first in the global equation matrix, followed by the equations corresponding to the pressure degrees of freedom. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.