The monitoring of water and water vapour diffusion into clay by impedance spectroscopy

The diffusion of water vapour into Bayard montmorillonite and the diffusion/flow of liquid water into Friedland clay were examined with impedance spectroscopy as a first step towards the development of an impedance based sensor system for the in situ monitoring of clay-based barriers for waste containment. By impedance measurements the diffusion of water vapour into clay and the leaching of liquid water through clay barriers can be monitored time-dependently and parameters can be derived from the data that can be used to predict the speed of diffusion/flow through the barrier. Paper presented at the 6th Euroconference on Solid State Ionics, Cetraro, Calabria, Italy, Sept. 12–19, 1999.     

Correlated displacement-T2 MRI by means of a Pulsed Field Gradient-Multi Spin Echo Method

A method for correlated displacement-T2 imaging is presented. A Pulsed Field Gradient-Multi Spin Echo (PFG-MSE) sequence is used to record T2 resolved propagators on a voxel-by-voxel basis, making it possible to perform single voxel correlated displacement-T2 analyses. In spatially heterogeneous media the method thus gives access to sub-voxel information about displacement and T2 relaxation. The sequence is demonstrated using a number of flow conducting model systems: a tube with flowing water of variable intrinsic T2's, mixing fluids of different T2's in an "X"-shaped connector, and an intact living plant. PFG-MSE can be applied to yield information about the relation between flow, pore size and exchange behavior, and can aid volume flow quantification by making it possible to correct for T2 relaxation during the displacement labeling period Delta in PFG displacement imaging methods. Correlated displacement-T2 imaging can be of special interest for a number of research subjects, such as the flow of liquids and mixtures of liquids or liquids and solids moving through microscopic conduits of different sizes (e.g., plants, porous media, bioreactors, biomats).     

Measurement of viscosity and shear wave velocity of a liquid or slurry for on-line process control

An on-line sensor to measure the density of a liquid or slurry, based on longitudinal wave reflection at the solid-fluid interface, has been developed by the staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The objective of this research is to employ shear wave reflection at the solid-fluid interface to provide an on-line measurement of viscosity as well. Both measurements are of great interest for process control in many industries. Shear wave reflection measurements were conducted for a variety of liquids. By analyzing multiple reflections within the solid (only 0.63 cm thick-similar to pipe wall thickness) we increased the sensitivity of the measurement. At the sixth echo, sensitivity was increased sufficiently and this echo was used for fluid interrogation. Shear wave propagation of ultrasound in liquids is dependent upon the viscosity and the shear modulus. The data are analyzed using the theory for light liquids (such as water and sugar water solutions) and also using the theory for highly viscous liquids (such as silicone oils). The results show that, for light liquids, the shear wave reflection measurements interrogate the viscosity. However, for highly viscous liquids, it is the shear wave modulus that dominates the shear wave reflection. Since the density is known, the shear wave velocity in the liquid can be determined from the shear wave modulus. The results show that shear wave velocities in silicone oils are very small and range from 315 to 2389 cm/s. Shear wave reflection measurements are perhaps the only way that shear wave velocity in liquids can be determined, because the shear waves in liquids are highly attenuated. These results show that, depending on the fluid characteristics, either the viscosity or the shear wave velocity can be used for process control. There are several novel features of this sensor: (1) The sensor can be mounted as part of the wall of a pipeline or tank or submerged in a tank. (2) The sensor is very compact and can be located within the process stream. (3) The sensor can interrogate and characterize very attenuative liquids or slurries because the sensor operation depends upon reflection at the interface between the solid and the fluid, rather than on transmission through a liquid. (4) The sensor performance is not affected by fluid flow rate, entrained air, or vibration.     

Experimental Investigation of Thermocapillary Convection in a Liquid Layer with Evaporating Interface

Thermocapillary convection coupling with the evaporation effect of evaporating liquids is studied experimentally. This study focused on an evaporation liquid layer in a rectangular cavity subjected to a horizontal temperature gradient when the top evaporating surface is open to air, while most previous works only studied pure thermocapillary convection without evaporation. Two liquids with different evaporating rates are used to study the coupling of evaporation and thermocapillary convection, and the interfacial temperature profiles for different temperature gradients are measured. The experimental results indicate evidently the influence of evaporation effect on the thermocapillary convection and interfacial temperature profiles. The steady multicellular flow and the oscillatory multicellular flow in the evaporation liquid layer are observed by using the particle-image-velocimetry method.     

A new technology for studying multicomponent liquids using a quartz crystal resonator: Theory and applications

A new technique for analyzing multicomponent liquids is suggested. It is based on recording “electronic autographs” of liquids and thereby allows one to identify and certify them. In this technique, information comes from the dynamics of the complex process of self-organization in drying drops, this dynamics being dependent on the composition and structure of the liquid. Detecting the self-organization dynamics as acoustomechanical impedance, one can reveal quantitative distinctions between liquids and thereby test their quality by comparing with a reference.     

Impedance method for measuring shear elasticity of liquids

Experimental results of studying low-frequency (74 kHz) shear elasticity of polymer liquids by the impedance method (analogous to the Mason method) are presented. A free-volume thick liquid layer is placed on the horizontal surface of a piezoelectric quartz crystal with dimensions 34.7 × 12 × 5.5 cm. The latter performs tangential vibrations at resonance frequency. The liquid layer experiences shear strain, and shear waves should propagate in it. From the theory of the method, it follows that, with an increase in the layer thickness, both real and imaginary resonance frequency shifts should exhibit damped oscillations and tend to limiting values. For the liquids under study, the imaginary frequency shift far exceeds the real one, which testifies to the presence of bulk shear elasticity.     

Influence of an electric field on the dynamic viscosity of liquid dielectrics

Experimental dependences of the dynamic viscosity of dielectric liquids on the applied voltage are considered. The experiment is remarkable because of the elimination of the electric current through the liquid in a series of measurements by insulating one of the electrodes from the liquid. The change in the viscosity of the liquid media can be a consequence of alteration of the structure of the liquid and the formation of ion-molecule groups differing from the previously existing ones. The variation of the mechanical properties of the medium with variation of the applied field strength points out the influence of charge formation on them. The dependences for polar and nonpolar liquids are considered. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 68, 40–43 (January 1998)     

Quantitative NMR monitoring of liquid ingress into repellent heterogeneous layered fabrics

Fabrics which are water repellent and repellent to other liquids are often constructed using multiple layers of material. Such a construction is preferable to a single layer of a liquid-repellent textile because, under the action of an applied pressure, ingress of a liquid through the first layer can be halted by the second or subsequent layers. In the quantitative investigation of this problem, current techniques provide limited information on the progress and distribution of the liquid as it ingresses into a fabric. Moreover, many techniques require that the material is delaminated prior to analysis, and cannot be conducted in real time to measure the progress of a liquid through the textile substrate. In this work we demonstrate that unilateral NMR, which allows signal to be collected from a volume of interest in a material residing above the instrument, can be a powerful tool to quantitatively monitor the ingress of a liquid through a layered sample exhibiting pronounced heterogeneities in repellency. A known volume of oil was placed on the top of a model textile sample composed of three 80 microm thick layers. Spatially resolved one dimensional vertical NMR profiles of the system were acquired as a function of the pressure vertically applied to the top of the sample. These profiles show that the absolute liquid volume present in each layer of textile can routinely be measured within 4 min with a spatial resolution of 15 microm. If each individual layer exhibits different repellency to the test liquid, the complexity of the dynamics of the ingress can be investigated in great detail. An elegant application of the unilateral instrument was obtained in which the sensitive volume matched the region of interest of the individual layers of the textile under investigation.     

Flow-driven voltage generation in carbon nanotubes

The flow of various liquids and gases over single-walled carbon nanotube bundles induces an electrical signal (voltage/current) in the sample along the direction of the flow. The electrical response generated by the flow of liquids is found to be logarithmic in the flow speed over a wide range. In contrast, voltage generated by the flow of gas is quadratically dependent on the gas flow velocity. It was found that the underlying physics for the generation of electrical signals by liquids and gases are different. For the liquid, the Coulombic interaction between the ions in the liquid and the charge carriers in the nanotube plays a key role while electrical signal generation due to gas flow is due to an interplay of Bernoulli’s principle and Seebeck effect. Unlike the liquid case which is specific to the nanotubes, the gas flow effect can be seen for a variety of solids ranging from single and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, graphite and doped semiconductors.     

Opto-Electronic Properties of MBE-Grown ZnSSe Thin Films on ITO Substrates

The opto-electronic properties of molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE)-grown ZnSSe thin films on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) glass substrates were investigated in this work. Ultraviolet (UV) photoresponsivity as high as 0.01 A/W and three orders of visible rejection power were demonstrated. The results of d.c. resistivity measurements revealed that the resistivity of the ZnSSe thin films decreased as the crystal size increases and reaches a value of 4.3 × 10¹¹ Ω cm for a thin film grown at the optimized substrate temperature of 290°C. The results of a.c. impedance measurements performed in the frequency range of 40 to 4000 Hz further indicated that the impedance of this alloy thin film can provide a good match with the liquid crystal layer of a liquid crystal light valve for UV imaging applications.     

Detection of separation in S-duct diffusers using shear sensitive liquid crystals

In the present experimental investigation, shear sensitive liquid crystals have been successfully used to study the flow characteristics and detect separation in two-dimensional Sduct diffusers of different curvatures. Tapered-fin vortex generators in two different orientations were used to control flow separation that was observed on one of the curved walls of the diffuser. The results were verified by conventional oil flow visualization technique and excellent agreement was observed. In addition to visualization, detailed measurements that included wall static pressure, skin friction, diffuser exit total pressure and velocity distributions were taken in a uniform inlet flow with Reynolds number of 3.49 × 10⁵. These results are presented here in terms of skin friction distribution, distortion and total pressure loss coefficients. The extent of the separation zone (in terms of intensity of red distribution) in the diffuser with and without vortex generators (in both configurations) compared well with the Preston tube measurements. The present study demonstrates that shear sensitive liquid crystals can be efficiently used to study the flow physics in complex internal flows. In addition, the results also indicate that shear sensitive liquid crystals can be effectively used not only as flow visualization tool but also to gain quantitative information about the flow field in internal flows.     

Visualization of the sound scattering by a cylinder

The schlieren method is applied to visualizing the sound scattering ofa cylinder immersed in the liquids.Images of the echoes,caused by normal andoblique incidence from a cylinder,are obtained for two kinds of liquids:(1)theliquid is composed of a transparent liquid;and(2)the liquid is composed of twonon-mixable transparent liquids.It is found experimentally that the echo canbe caused by the discontinaites in the shadow zone.This fact is utilized to dem-onstrate the locus of the helical surface wave creeping along the surface of thecylinder.For such cases the three-dimensional image can be described by thismethod and has not to use the system with special appliances and complexalgorithm.     

Measuring fluid and slurry density and solids concentration non-invasively

Staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a highly sensitive, non-invasive, self-calibrating, on-line sensor to measure the density, speed of sound, and attenuation of ultrasound for a liquid or slurry flowing through a pipeline; the approach can also be applied for measurements made in vessels. The sensor transducers are mounted directly upon the stainless steel wall and the pipeline wall becomes part of the measurement system. Multiple reflections within the stainless steel wall are used to determine the acoustic impedance of the liquid, where the acoustic impedance is defined as the product of the density and the speed of sound. The probe becomes self-calibrating because variations in the pulser voltage do not affect the measurements. This feature leads to the stability of the measurements and the instrument requires much less time and effort to calibrate. Further, the calibration remains constant in time, because it does not depend upon the pulser voltage remaining at a given value. By basing the measurement upon multiple reflections, the sensitivity of the measurement is significantly increased. For slurries with wt% solids concentration of 1% or less, high sensitivity is gained by analyzing attenuation measurements obtained from multiple paths through the slurry. For slurries with higher concentrations of solids, sufficient sensitivity is obtained by analyzing data from a simple transmission. Data are presented that show probe performance for each of these cases: very dilute and highly concentrated kaolin clay slurries.     

Viscous withdrawal of miscible liquid layers

In viscous withdrawal, a converging flow imposed in an upper layer of viscous liquid entrains liquid from a lower, stably stratified layer. Using the idea that a thin tendril is entrained by a local straining flow, we propose a scaling law for the volume flux of liquid entrained from miscible liquid layers. A long-wavelength model including only local information about the withdrawal flow is degenerate, with multiple tendril solutions for one withdrawal condition. Including information about the global geometry of the withdrawal flow removes the degeneracy while introducing only a logarithmic dependence on the global flow parameters into the scaling law.     

基于液体的电控光学成像系统

提出一种基于液体的电控光学成像器件,其结构是一个容纳有三层液体的圆柱容器,上下两层是导电液体,中间一层是油性液体.圆柱容器的内壁依次涂覆了透明导电层和绝缘介质层.在透明导电层与上下导电液体间施加两个不同的外部电压,分别用来控制容器中两个液体界面的形状.两个外加电压的适当匹配使该光学成像器件在焦距变化的同时保证像面位置不动.文章以器件对无穷远处成像为例,基于高斯光学理论对器件做了详细的计算,给出了两个外加电压的匹配关系以及系统的焦距表达式,并对系统做了相关的模拟分析,分析的结果表明本文所设计的光学成像器件的变倍比可达1:1.5,体现该器件是一种可靠的变焦光学成像器件.     

A proposed new experimental setup for determination of refractive indices of liquids by mode line measurements

A new experimental method is proposed for measuring the refractive indices of liquids based on mode line measurements. The experimental setup consists of a dielectric substrate in which a rectangular hollow is formed containing the concerned liquid. This is covered by a trapezium-shaped prism. The liquid, confined between both basin walls and the prism, forms a wavegude. Thus, the refractive index of the liquid can be determined by measuring the propagating modes in the structure. Using this technique, the refractive indices of liquids can be measured to an accuracy of the order of 1×10^-4.     

Low-frequency sound transmission through a gas-liquid interface

Typically, sound speed in gases is smaller and mass density is much smaller than in liquids, resulting in a very strong acoustic impedance contrast at a gas-liquid interface. Sound transmission through a boundary with a strong impedance contrast is normally very weak. This paper studies the power output of localized sound sources and acoustic power fluxes through a plane gas-liquid interface in a layered medium. It is shown that, for low-frequency sound, a phenomenon of anomalous transparency can occur where most of the acoustic power generated by a source in a liquid half-space can be radiated into a gas half-space. The main physical mechanism responsible for anomalous transparency is found to be an acoustic power transfer by inhomogeneous (evanescent) waves in the plane-wave decomposition of the acoustic field in the liquid. The effects of a liquid's stratification and of guided sound propagation in the liquid on the anomalous transparency of the gas-liquid interface are considered. Geophysical and biological implications of anomalous transparency of water-air interface to infrasound are indicated.     

New image contrast method in magnetic resonance imaging via ultrasound

When applied to a sample, ultrasound (US) gives rise to a displacement of tissue and a flow in a liquid due to the acoustic radiation pressure. These movements depend on the viscoelastic properties of the sample and can be visualized precisely with an MRI scanner using diffusion- sensitive pulse sequences. In this paper, measurements will be presented, which show the visualization of the US under variation of its parameters in different liquids and in tissue.     

Electroconvective flow induced by dielectric barrier injection in silicone oil

It has been demonstrated that dielectric barrier actuators can be used to induce electrohydrodynamics flows in air as well as in gas. These actuators are often called surface non-thermal plasma actuators in gas applications. Plasma actuators have proved their efficiency for aerodynamics flow control in air. However dielectric barrier devices don't generate plasma in liquids. Electroconvective flows are induced by charge injection at the surface electrode tip. These dielectric barrier injectors (DBI) are particularly well adapted for wall jet production vortex, shedding, and mixing layer applications in dielectric liquids. Dielectric barrier actuators have proved their efficiency on various dielectric liquids. In this study, a dielectric barrier device is tested on silicon oil. Instead of the typical wall jet, a reverse flow is observed in specific configurations. Particle Image Velocimetry and Shlieren measurements are achieved to characterize the unusual electroconvective flow.     

The radio frequency conductivity of some aliphatic alcohols at different temperatures

Activation energies for viscous flow and conductivity are computed from experimental values of RF conductivity (frequency 400 kHz) at different temperatures for eight polar liquids. It is observed that for aliphatic alcohols the activation energy for conductivity is greater than that for viscous flow. However, their ratio is slightly greater than unity and is different for different alcohols whereas for nonassociating polar liquids the ratio is almost equal to unity. The dependence of conductivity on viscosity for the liquid alcohols does not follow the Walden’s law but can be well represented by Adamczewskis relation.