Rheological analysis of highly concentrated w/o emulsions

A series of highly concentrated lipophilic cosmetic emulsions were analysed, in order to determine their rheological and textural properties, as a function of their microstructure. The originality of this study lies in the methodology used, especially the shear-stress scanning analysis. The results of a very powerful and comprehensive dynamic rheological analysis suggest the existence of two critical volume fraction values: besides the “close-packed” value φ _c , a “slack-packed” value φ₀, close to 0.60 could be demonstrated. It has been shown that the close-packed structure is stable under shear; in constrast, the slack-packed configuration, defined as φ₀<φ<φ _c is unstable under shear. A comparison with theoretical models, especially that of Princen, showed good agreement and allowed the close-packed value φ _c to be defined more precisely as 0.67. The gap between 0.67 and 0.74 is probably indicative of a highly polydisperse distribution, as confirmed by microscopic analysis. Flow experiments confirmed the validity of Princen‘s model. Received: 20 February 1997 Accepted: 20 January 1998     

A rheological approach to drill-in fluids optimization

The aim of this work is to propose design criteria, based on rheological characterisation for improving drill-in fluids performance. In particular, it reports an example in which rheological approaches helped improve drill-in fluids resistance to temperature. As a starting system a commercial drill-in fluid containing xanthan gum and calcium carbonate was chosen and evaluated. Different samples were then prepared by changing the initial formulation in order to increase the system's stability to temperature. Drill-in fluids' performance have been compared by considering their “damaging potential”, filtration properties and, “cakes”. All drill-in fluids have been tested before and after aging at a given temperature with “hot rolling tests”. The systems' gel structure was characterized by measuring dynamic moduli (G′ and G′′) in the linear viscoelastic range and all samples were compared by evaluating their “melting” temperature and gel network strength during time cure tests. The results obtained from this work suggest that the rheological tests carried out on the whole drill-in fluid can provide insights into fluids' damaging potential and “cake” structure. In particular, rheology proved to be able to provide quantitative information about gel strength and temperature stability that permitted one to improve drill-in fluids' formulation in order to preclude formation damage and to meet industrial requirements. Received: 6 February 2000 Accepted: 15 November 2000     

Turbulence in the Stratified and Rotating World Ocean

This is an overview of knowledge, derived mainly from observations, of turbulence in the stratified and rotating World Ocean from the 1960s, when mesoscale motions with scales of 30–150 km and 100 days were discovered by neutrally buoyant floats, to the present decade and the use of SF₆“purposeful tracer” release study in the North Atlantic. Most of the ocean is stably stratified, but it contains a rotational turbulent “continua” and isolated rotating eddies, as well as Rossby waves, and many features similar to those of, say, planetary atmospheres. It differs however because (a) the presence of lateral boundaries, the continental land masses, islands, and seamounts, provides constraints to the circulation and to the propagation of eddies, and possibly substantial sources and sinks of eddy motion; (b) channels connecting the oceans to land-locked seas (e.g., the Mediterranean; the formation of water with anomalous properties, “natural tracers”, e.g., temperature or salinity, allows “interthermocline eddies” to be readily detected); and (c) convection and differential seasonal latitudinal forcing introduce upper-ocean variability and intrathermocline eddies. The focus of research interest has moved from “turbulence”per se towards study of its consequences, for example towards dispersion of material particles and dissolved solutes, and the meridional and inter-basin transfers of heat. Received 2 December 1996 and accepted 18 September 1997     

Nonlinearly Elastic Shell Models: A Formal Asymptotic Approach I. The Membrane Model

We consider a family of three‐dimensional shells with the same middle surface, all composed of the same nonlinearly elastic Saint Venant‐Kirchhoff material. Using the method of asymptotic expansions with the thickness as the “small” parameter, and making specific assumptions on the applied forces, the geometry of the middle surface, and the kinematic boundary conditions, we show how a “limiting”, “large‐deformation” two‐dimensional model can be identified in this fashion. By linearization, this nonlinear membrane model reduces to the linear membrane model. (Accepted January 13, 1997)     

Local mass/heat transfer from a wall-mounted block in rectangular channel flow

This investigation explores the mass/heat transfer from a wall-mounted block in a rectangular fully developed channel flow. The naphthalene sublimation scheme was used to measure the level of local mass transfer from the block’s surfaces. The heat transfer coefficient can be obtained by analogy between heat and mass transfer. The effects of the Reynolds number on the local mass transfer from the block’s surfaces have been widely discussed. Results showed that, owing to the flow complexity induced by vortices around the block, the block’s surfaces appeared four different spatial Sherwood number distributions, termed “Wave type”, “U type”, “Slant type”, and “Pit type”. A change in the Reynolds number significantly altered the spatial Sherwood number distributions on the block’s surfaces. Besides, four correlations between the Reynolds number and the surface-averaged Sherwood number were presented for the front, top, side, and rear surfaces of the block at a given block’s height, for the purpose of practical applications.     

Exploration of the rotational power consumption of a rigid flapping wing

The development of Micro Air Vehicles with flapping wings is inspired from the observation and study of natural flyers such as insects and birds. This article explores the rotational power consumption of a flapping wing using a mechanical flapper at Re ≃ 4,500. This mechanical flapper is simplified to a 2D translation and a rotation in a water tank. Moreover, the wing kinematics are reduced to a linear translation and a rotation for the purpose of our study. We introduce the notion of non-ideal flapper and associated non-ideal rotational power. Such non-ideal devices are defined as consuming power for adding and removing mechanical power to and from the flow, respectively. First, we use a traditional symmetrical wing kinematic which is a simplified kinematic inspired from natural flyers. The lift coefficient of this flapping is about C _L ≃ 1.5. This symmetrical wing kinematic is chosen as a reference. Further, wing kinematics with asymmetric rotations are then compared with this one. These new kinematics are built using a differential velocity defined according to the translational kinematics, a time lag and a distance, r _kp. The analogy of this distance is discussed as a key point to follow along the chord. First, the wing kinematics are varied keeping a similar shape for the profiles of the angular velocity. It is shown that when compared to the reference wing kinematic, a 10% reduction in the rotational power is obtained whilst the lift is reduced by 9%. Second, we release the limitation to a similar shape for the profiles of the angular velocity leading to a novel shape for the angular velocity profile named here as “double bump” profile. With these new wing kinematics, we show that a 60% reduction in the non-ideal rotational power can be achieved whilst the lift coefficient is only reduced by 1.7%. Such “double bump kinematics” could then be of interest to increase the endurance of Micro Air Vehicles.     

Unsteady flow through screens

Summary Reflected and transmitted pressure waves take place when an incident pressure wave reaches a screen placed in a duct and crossed by a previous steady flow. The thickness of the screen is assumed to be negligible and essure losses through it in the quasi steady flow, which takes place after the passage of the incident pressure wave, are assumed be steady flow ones. The strength of reflected and transmitted pressure waves is related to the strength of the incident wave, to the porosity of the screen and to the previous flow through it. Subsonic and just supersonic quasi steady flow inside the screen are considered. Five commercial screens have been tested with incident shock waves and the experimental results have been compared with the theoretical ones: the agreement is quite satisfactory.

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Sommario L'interazione di un'onda di pressione con una rete intubata attraversata da un flusso preesistente produce un'onda riflessa ed una trasmessa. Si presenta un modello teorico basato essenzialmente sulle potesi che lo spessore della rete sia trascurabile e che le perdite carico attraverso di essa, nel flusso quasi stazionario indotto dalla suddetta interazione, coincidano con quelle proprie di un oto permanente. Si analizza il caso di flusso indotto nella rete ia subsonico che sonico. Si eseguono prove sperimentali su cinque reti di diverse porosità differenti condizioni di flusso, e si verifica l'attendibilità del odello teorico proposto.

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The present work has been supported by the “Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche” (C.N.R.) under Contract no. 115.4075.69.01220.

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The suffixes “u” and “d” pertain to the conditions upstream and downstream of the screen with reference to the flow through it. The suffix “j” refers to the region “j” of the wave diagrams in Fig. 1.     

Constructal Design of Vascular Porous Materials and Electrokinetic Mass Transfer

According to constructal theory, the “generation of flow configuration” is a universal phenomenon in physics. This phenomenon is covered by the constructal law: “For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it.” This paper shows how the constructal law can be used to (1) predict and explain features of “design” in nature, and (2) design effective strategies and configurations for engineering. Many natural flow designs rely on two flow mechanisms: channels with relatively low resistivity, interwoven with diffusion across the interstices. The “design” is the balance between the two mechanisms. The flow from line to line (or plane to plane) through a sufficiently fine porous medium encounters less resistance than the flow through parallel channels when it is configured as trees that alternate with upside down trees: from this follows the prediction that natural porous media (e.g., hill slope) should be multiscale (bidisperse) and non-uniformly distributed. A porous medium contaminated with ionic species is decontaminated the fastest when the ionic flow is configured as two flow mechanisms in balance: “channeling” driven by potential differences between optimally positioned electrodes, and diffusion driven by concentration differences across the interstices between the channels.     

Visual observations of flow structure and melting front morphology in horizontal ice plate melting from above into a mixture

Visual observations reveal a complicated flow in the liquid melt and a melting front configuration resulting from horizontal ice plate melting from above into a 20 wt% calcium chloride aqueous solution. The initial temperature of the ice plate and the mixture are both −5°C. Small scale “mountain and valley” structures (∼1 mm) appear on the flat melting front just after melting begins, which have been called “sharkskin”. Innumerable upward and downward flows appear near the sharkskin and are controlled by its “mountain and valley” structure. These typical flows will considerably promote the melting of the ice plate to be 30% larger as compared to the numerically predicted results assuming a flat melting front (i.e., without the sharkskin), and also by three times larger compared with the results for melting from below.     

Conditional-sampling schemes for turbulent flow,based on the variable-interval time averaging (VITA) algorithm

The variable-interval time-averaging (“VITA”) algorithm has been tested in a variety of turbulent boundary layers for its ability to detect shear-stress-producing motions from hot-wire signals. A “VITA + LEVEL” scheme (which uses criteria for both short-time variance and short-time average, i.e.“level”) has been devised, and used in several different boundary layers. This scheme yields length-scale statistics that are acceptably independent of the conditioning criteria, which the VITA scheme does not.     

System-level simulation of vibratory micromachined gyroscope with fence structure

An equivalent circuit model of a novel fence structure vibratory micromachined gyroscope‘s oscillating properties is modeled by electrical equivalent circuits according to its dynamics equation. Equivalent circuit model of oscillating and differential detection capacitance model are implemented in the circuit simulation tool PSPICE, which is available in oscillating properties analysis such as oscillating‘s transient response, steady response and frequency response to angular rate to optimize working mode of the gyroscope. The model also enables sensor simulation with the interfacing electronics to analyse the performances of the whole system. Behavioral simulation of the system is performed to prove the function of detection circuits. The simulation results and measurement results show that the design of circuits is feasible.     

On the ��principle of virtual power�� for arbitrary parts of a body

Recently, a “principle of virtual power” has been adopted to model the behavior of materials that involve multiple length scales. In these works, the “principle” is stated for arbitrary parts of a body and this arbitrariness is used, but not to its fullest extent, to draw conclusions concerning the structure of the theory that results. Here, a theorem and an example application are given to illustrate the restrictive nature of the requirement that it hold for arbitrary parts of a body and to draw attention to the full consequences that result from this requirement. Several key results that have been reported in the recent literature are incomplete, and this incompleteness has lead to superficial conclusions.     

Structure and orientation dynamics of sepiolite fibers–poly(ethylene oxide) aqueous suspensions under extensional and shear flow,probed by in situ SAXS

The structure and orientation dynamics of sepiolite clay fibers about 1,000 nm long and 10 nm thick, suspended in an aqueous poly(ehtylene oxide) matrix of 10⁵ g/mol molecular mass, have been studied under control extensional and shear flow. A new extensional flow cell developed at the “Laboratoire de Rhéologie” and the combined rheology and small angle X-ray scattering (Rheo-SAXS) setup available at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have allowed access to in situ and time-resolved fiber orientations and structure properties in the volume of suspensions under flow. In the volume fractions and shear rate domains for which the suspensions exhibit shear-thinning properties, two regimes of orientation separated by a critical strain rate have been identified under extensional flow.     

The thomson friction self-oscillations of a two-mass system with delay

A technique is proposed to study and design a mechanical self-oscillating system in the quasiharmonic-oscillation regime. The technique is based on the polynomial approximation of the force due to dry sliding friction by a finite number of terms in the Taylor-series expansion with allowance for energy dissipation in accordance with Pisarenko's hypothesis and the first “improved” asymptotic approximation. Transport University, Kiev, Ukraine. Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 36, No. 7, pp. 137–144, July, 2000.     

Motion of two interconnected mass points under action of non-symmetric viscous friction

This paper deals with the analysis of a one-dimensional motion of two mass points in a resistive medium. The force of resistance is described by small non-symmetric viscous friction acting on each mass point. The magnitude of this force depends on the direction of motion. The mass points are interconnected with a kinematic constraint or with an elastic element. Using the averaging method the expressions for the stationary “on the average” velocity of the systems’s motion as a single whole is found. In case of a small degree of non-symmetry an explicit expression for the stationary “on the average” velocity of the system is derived. For the other case we obtained algebraic equations for the corresponding stationary velocity.     

Effects of the weak/micro-discontinuity of interface on the fracture behavior of a functionally graded coating with an inclined crack

The mechanical model was established for the anti-plane fracture problem of a functionally graded coating–substrate system with a coating crack inclined to the weak/micro-discontinuous interface. The Cauchy singular integral equation for the crack was derived using Fourier integral transform, and the Lobatto–Chebyshev collocation method put up by Erdogan and Gupta was used to get its numerical solution. Finally, the effects of the weak/micro-discontinuity of the interface on SIFs were analyzed, the “affected regions” corresponding to the two crack tips have been obtained and their engineering significance was discussed. It was indicated that, for the crack tip in the corresponding “affected region”, to reduce the weak-discontinuity of the interface and to make the interface micro-discontinuous are the two effective ways to reduce the SIF, and the latter way always has more remarkable SIF-reduction effect. For the crack tip outside the “affected region”, its SIF is mainly influenced by material stiffness, and to prevent such a tip from growing toward the interface “softer coating and stiffer substrate” is a more advantageous combination than “stiffer coating and softer substrate”.     

On the Existence and Uniqueness of a Solution to the Interior Transmission Problem for Piecewise-Homogeneous Solids

The interior transmission problem (ITP), which plays a fundamental role in inverse scattering theories involving penetrable defects, is investigated within the framework of mechanical waves scattered by piecewise-homogeneous, elastic or viscoelastic obstacles in a likewise heterogeneous background solid. For generality, the obstacle is allowed to be multiply connected, having both penetrable components (inclusions) and impenetrable parts (cavities). A variational formulation is employed to establish sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a solution to the ITP, provided that the excitation frequency does not belong to (at most) countable spectrum of transmission eigenvalues. The featured sufficient conditions, expressed in terms of the mass density and elasticity parameters of the problem, represent an advancement over earlier works on the subject in that (i) they pose a precise, previously unavailable provision for the well-posedness of the ITP in situations when both the obstacle and the background solid are heterogeneous, and (ii) they are dimensionally consistent, i.e., invariant under the choice of physical units. For the case of a viscoelastic scatterer in an elastic solid it is further shown, consistent with earlier studies in acoustics, electromagnetism, and elasticity that the uniqueness of a solution to the ITP is maintained irrespective of the vibration frequency. When applied to the situation where both the scatterer and the background medium are viscoelastic, i.e., dissipative, on the other hand, the same type of analysis shows that the analogous claim of uniqueness does not hold. Physically, such anomalous behavior of the “viscoelastic-viscoelastic” case (that has eluded previous studies) has its origins in a lesser known fact that the homogeneous ITP is not mechanically insulated from its surroundings—a feature that is particularly cloaked in situations when either the background medium or the scatterer are dissipative. A set of numerical results, computed for ITP configurations that meet the sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution, is included to illustrate the problem. Consistent with the preceding analysis, the results indicate that the set of transmission values is indeed empty in the “elastic-viscoelastic” case, and countable for “elastic-elastic” and “viscoelastic-viscoelastic” configurations.     

A new microtensile tester for the study of MEMS materials with the aid of atomic force microscopy

An apparatus has been designed and implemented to measure the elastic tensile properties (Young's modulus and tensile strength) of surface micromachined polysilicon specimens. The tensile specimens are “dog-bone” shaped ending in a large “paddle” for convenient electrostatic or, in the improved apparatus, ultraviolet (UV) light curable adhesive gripping deposited with electrostatically controlled manipulation. The typical test section of the specimens is 400 μm long with 2 μm×50 μm cross section. The new device supports a nanomechanics method developed in our laboratory to acquire surface topologies of deforming specimens by means of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to determine (fields of) strains via Digital Image Correlation (DIC). With this tool, high strength or non-linearly behaving materials can be tested under different environmental conditions by measuring the strains directly on the surface of the film with nanometer resolution.     

Vortex Shedding from a Hemisphere in a Turbulent Boundary Layer

Supercritical turbulent boundary layer flow over a hemisphere with a rough surface (Re= 150000) has been simulated using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and analyzed using the Karhunen--Loève expansion (“Proper Orthogonal Decomposition,” POD). The time-dependent inflow condition is provided from a separate LES of a boundary layer developing behind a barrier fence and a set of vorticity generators. LES results using significantly different grid resolutions are compared with a corresponding wind tunnel experiment to demonstrate the reliability of the simulation. The separation processes are analyzed by inspecting second-order moments, time spectra, and instantaneous velocity distributions. Applying POD, a detailed study of the spatiotemporal structure of the separation processes has been carried out. From this analysis it can be concluded that the major event in the separated flow behind the obstacle is the shedding of “von Kármán”-type vortices, which can be represented by the first three energetically dominant modes. Received 23 January 1997 and accepted 19 February 1998