The limits of hamiltonian structures in three-dimensional elasticity,shells, and rods

Summary This paper uses Hamiltonian structures to study the problem of the limit of three-dimensional (3D) elastic models to shell and rod models. In the case of shells, we show that the Hamiltonian structure for a three-dimensional elastic body converges, in a sense made precise, to that for a shell model described by a one-director Cosserat surface as the thickness goes to zero. We study limiting procedures that give rise to unconstrained as well as constrained Cosserat director models. The case of a rod is also considered and similar convergence results are established, with the limiting model being a geometrically exact director rod model (in the framework developed by Antman, Simo, and coworkers). The resulting model may or may not have constraints, depending on the nature of the constitutive relations and their behavior under the limiting procedure. The closeness of Hamiltonian structures is measured by the closeness of Poisson brackets on certain classes of functions, as well as the Hamiltonians. This provides one way of justifying the dynamic one-director model for shells. Another way of stating the convergence result is that there is an almost-Poisson embedding from the phase space of the shell to the phase space of the 3D elastic body, which implies that, in the sense of Hamiltonian structures, the dynamics of the elastic body is close to that of the shell. The constitutive equations of the 3D model and their behavior as the thickness tends to zero dictates whether the limiting 2D model is a constrained or an unconstrained director model. We apply our theory in the specific case of a 3D Saint Venant-Kirchhoff material andderive the corresponding limiting shell and rod theories. The limiting shell model is an interesting Kirchhoff-like shell model in which the stored energy function is explicitly derived in terms of the shell curvature. For rods, one gets (with an additional inextensibility constraint) a one-director Kirchhoff elastic rod model, which reduces to the well-known Euler elastica if one adds an additional single constraint that the director lines up with the Frenet frame. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Juan C. Simo This paper was solicited by the editors to be part of a volume dedicated to the memory of Juan Simo.     

The excited states of pyrazine: A basis set study

Summary Multiconfigurational second order perturbation theory (CASSCF/CASPT2) has been used to investigate the dependence of computed valence excitation energies and transition moments on the basis sets. Pyrazine has been selected as the test molecule. Atomic normal orbital (ANO) type basis sets are used throughout. Contractions of the structure (4s3p1d/2s) are found to be an optimal compromise between the quality and the size of the calculations and are capable of yielding results virtually identical to more extended basis sets.     

Second row transition metal mixed hydride-halide triatomic molecules

Summary The ground state structures and bond energies have been obtained for the triatomic MHX systems where M is the entire sequence of second row transition metal atoms and X is a halide. The most interesting results of this study appear when these systems are compared to the triatomic MH₂ and MX₂ systems. It turns out that the structure of the MHX systems are quite similar to the corresponding MH₂ systems in general. Most of the MHX systems to the right thus have bent low-spin ground states, indicating large covalent contributions to the bonding. RuHX is a special case and has a high-spin linear ground state. For the systems to the left ionicity dominates the bonding. An important result, with implications for halide ligand effects on carbonyl and olefin insertion into M-H and M-R bonds, is that the M-H bonds for the systems to the right have a different character and are significantly weaker for the MHX than for the MH₂ systems. A similar effect is noted when the M-Cl bond strengths of MCl₂ are compared to the ones in MHCl. Both these effects can be explained by a more cationic metal with mores ⁰-state character when halide ligands are present.     

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.