Aspects of the transpiration model for aerofoil design

Transpiration is a technique in which extra non-physical normal flows are created on an aerofoil surface in order to form a new streamline pattern such that the surface streamlines no longer follow the aerofoil surface under inviscid flow. The transpiration model is an important technique adopted in aerofoil design either to avoid mesh regeneration when aerofoil profile co-ordinates are adjusted or to find shape corrections in inverse design methods. A first-order approximation (with respect to the normal streamline displacement) to the transpiration model is commonly adopted; it is shown that this can be a poor approximation especially in regions of high curvature. In this paper more accurate approximations are developed to address this problem and improve the accuracy.     

The effects of flow split ratio and flow rate in manifolds

This paper reports a combined experimental and numerical investigation of three-dimensional steady turbulent flows in inlet manifolds of square cross-section. Predictions and measurements of the flows were carried out using computational fluid dynamics and laser Doppler anemometry techniques respectively. The flow structure was characterized in detail and the effects of flow split ratio and inlet flow rate were studied. These were found to cause significant variations in the size and shape of recirculation regions in the branches, and in the turbulence levels. It was then found that there is a significant difference between the flow rates through different branches. The performance of the code was assessed through a comparison between predictions and measurements. The comparison demonstrates that all important features of the flow are well represented by the predictions.     

Trace pollutants analysis in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy technique

The results of a joint experiment of IFAM-Pisa and ENEA-Frascati for the detection of traces of pollutants in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced spectroscopy technique are reported. Using samples of soil with known pollutants' concentration [Geochemical Exploration Reference (GXR) silicate from US Geological Survey], we were able to estimate the sensitivity of this Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technique to be of the order of some parts per million for a vast class of metallic pollutants, including extremely dangerous soil pollutants such as copper, lead and chromium.ENEA guest with HC&M fellowship     

An experimental and computational investigation of crack initiation and stable crack growth of ductile materials

Crack initiation and stable crack growth under monotonic loading in steels has been studied using an elastic-plastic finite element analysis. The fracture criterion used for crack initiation and stable crack growth was the critical strain energy density. In addition the shift core method for the analysis of crack extension was used. In the shift core modelling method, crack advance is simulated by moving the coordinates of the core region which surrounds the crack tip, to obtain the stiffness reduction. Simultaneously the core itself geometrically undergoes a simple rigid-body motion or translation during the crack extension. The analytically calculated and experimentally measured load for crack initiation and the subsequent stable crack growth agreed well.     

Advances in the chemical synthesis of brassinosteroids

This review generalizes the latest advances in the chemical synthesis of the plant growth regulators brassinosteroids in 1990–1994.Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Belarus Academy of Sciences, 220141, Minsk, ul. Zhodinskaya, 5/2. Translated from Khimiya Prirodnykh Soedinenii, No. 4, pp. 507–544, July–August, 1997.     

Comparison of Two Reformulation-Linearization Technique Based Linear Programming Relaxations for Polynomial Programming Problems

In this paper, we compare two strategies for constructing linear programmingrelaxations for polynomial programming problems using aReformulation-Linearization Technique (RLT). RLT involves an automaticreformulation of the problem via the addition of certain nonlinear impliedconstraints that are generated by using the products of the simple boundingrestrictions (among other products), and a subsequent linearization based onvariable redefinitions. We prove that applying RLT directly to the originalpolynomial program produces a bound that dominates in the sense of being atleast as tight as the value obtained when RLT is applied to the jointcollection of all equivalent quadratic problems that could be constructed byrecursively defining additional variables as suggested by Shor.     

Characterization of high-order harmonic radiation on femtosecond and attosecond time scales

We characterize the temporal structure of high-order harmonic radiation on both the femtosecond and attosecond time scales. The harmonic emission is characterized by mixed-color two-photon ionization with an infrared femtosecond laser using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer where both pump and probe arms travel completely separate paths. In a first experiment, we measure the duration and chirp of individual harmonics. In a second experiment, we resolve, for the first time with this type of setup, the attosecond beating of several harmonics generated under conditions similar to the first experiment. We suggest that the results of both measurements can be combined to determine the full attosecond time structure of the harmonic emission. PACS 32.80.Rm; 42.65.Ky     

Elevation of the glass transition temperature in flexible‐chain semicrystalline polymers

In the idealized two‐phase model of a semicrystalline polymer, the amorphous intercrystalline layers are considered to have the same properties as the fully‐amorphous polymer. In reality, these thin intercrystalline layers can be substantially influenced by the presence of the crystals, as individual polymer molecules traverse both crystalline and amorphous phases. In polymers with rigid backbone units, such as poly(etheretherketone), PEEK, previous work has shown this coupling to be particularly severe; the glass transition temperature (T_g) can be elevated by tens of degrees celsius, with the magnitude of the elevation correlating directly with the thinness of the amorphous layer. However, this connection has not been explored for flexible‐chain polymers, such as those formed from vinyl‐type monomers. Here, we examine T_g in both isotactic polystyrene (iPS) and syndiotactic polystyrene (sPS), crystallized under conditions that produce a range of amorphous layer thicknesses. T_g is indeed shown to be elevated relative to fully‐amorphous iPS and sPS, by an amount that correlates with the thinness of the amorphous layer; the magnitude of the effect is severalfold less than that in PEEK, consistent with the minimum lengths of polymer chain required to make a fold in the different cases. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 1198–1204, 2007     

Static dust sphere in Einstein-Cartan theory

Physically meaningful solutions of the field equations for static spherical dust distributions in the Einstein-Cartan theory have been obtained. There is one in which the spin is zero at the center and another with zero spin at the boundary of the sphere.