The Structure of the Auto-Ignition Region of Turbulent Dilute Methanol Sprays Issuing in a Vitiated Co-flow

This paper presents planar imaging of laser induced fluorescence (LIF) from key reactive species in the auto-ignition region of dilute turbulent spray flames of methanol. High-speed (5?kHz) LIF-OH imaging as well as low speed (10?Hz) imaging of joint LIF-OH-CH₂O is performed. The product of the OH and CH₂O signals is used as a qualitative indicator of local heat release. The burner is kept intentionally simple to facilitate computations and the spray is formed upstream of the jet exit plane and carried with air or nitrogen into a hot co-flowing stream of vitiated combustion products. The studied flames are all lifted but differ in the shape of their leading edge and heat release zones. Similarities with auto-ignition of gaseous fuels, as well as differences, are noted here. Formaldehyde is detected earlier than OH implying that the former is a key precursor in the initiation of auto-ignition. Growing kernels of OH that are advected from upstream, close in on the jet centreline and ignite the main flame. The existence of double reaction zones in some flames may be due to ignitable mixtures formed subsequent to local evaporation of droplets and subsequent mixing. When air is used as spray carrier, reaction zones broaden with distance, possibly due to increased partial premixing and regions of intense heat release occur near the flame centreline further downstream. With nitrogen as carrier, the flame maintains a nominal diffusion-like structure with reaction zones of uniform width and substantially less concentration of heat release on the flame centreline.     

Acetone Droplet Behavior in Reacting and Non Reacting Turbulent Flow

Acetone droplet characteristics in reacting and non-reacting turbulent flow are predicted and compared to experimental data. Investigations are conducted to study the effects of surrounding environment properties on the velocities, dispersion, and evaporation of a relatively volatile spray fuel that featured a wide range of Stokes numbers. The simulations are performed in the framework of Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes equations along with the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach in which 12 different classes of the dispersed phase. The phase transition is modeled by the Langmuir-Knudsen law that accounts for non equilibrium effects based on a consistent determination of the molar mass fraction on the droplet surfaces. For the droplet dispersion, the Markov sequence model is improved by adding a correction drift term to the fluid fluctuation velocity at the parcel position along the droplet trajectory. This correction term aimed at accounting for the non-homogeneity effects in the turbulent flow. The combustion is captured using the Bray-Moss-Libby model that is extended to account for the partially premixed spray combustion. The chemistry is described with the flamelet model using a recent detailed reaction mechanism that involves 84 species and 409 reactions for which the Lewis number is not set to the unity. Mean droplet velocities for reacting and non-reacting test cases are compared with experimental data. Good agreement is observed. The spray is interacting with the nozzle edge developing new classes and relatively dense region. Hence the RMS-velocities close to the nozzle exit plan demonstrate discrepancies. The droplets group combustion effect is found to be important in the modeling of the burning velocity which influences the flame propagation. Reasonable agreements between the numerical and the experimental results are also observed in the spray flux and temperature profiles.     

Belief linear programming

This paper proposes solution approaches to the belief linear programming (BLP). The BLP problem is an uncertain linear program where uncertainty is expressed by belief functions. The theory of belief function provides an uncertainty measure that takes into account the ignorance about the occurrence of single states of nature. This is the case of many decision situations as in medical diagnosis, mechanical design optimization and investigation problems. We extend stochastic programming approaches, namely the chance constrained approach and the recourse approach to obtain a certainty equivalent program. A generic solution strategy for the resulting certainty equivalent is presented.     

Rapid decrease of fragment emission time in the range of 3–5 MeV/u excitation energy

Multifragment emission processes from highly excited nuclei produced in ⁴⁰Ar + ¹⁹⁷Au reactions at incident energies of 30 and 60 MeV/u are compared. At the lowest bombarding energy and 3.3 MeV/u excitation energy, the composite system decay process supports the hypothesis of long-lived equilibrated nucleu decaying by successive binary splittings. For excited nuclei around 5 MeV/u, the depletion observed at small relative angles in the correlation functions is interpreted as the result of a strong reduction in the fragment emission time scale.     

Transparency effects in heavy-ion collisions over the energy range 100–300 MeV/nucleon

Direct measurements of total reaction cross sections between 100 and 300 MeV/nucleon indicate that σ_R reaches a minimum around 300 MeV/nucleon corresponding to the maximum of the (surface) transparency effects in heavy ion collisions. Data are well reproduced by simple microscopic calculations and are in agreement with the new parametrization we proposed earlier.     

The Herglotz-Zagier function, double zeta functions, and values of L-series

In this paper, we define L-series generalizing the Herglotz-Zagier function (Ber. Verhandl. Sächsischen Akad. Wiss. Leipzig 75 (3-14) (1923) 31, Math. Ann. 213 (1975) 153), and the double zeta function (First European Congress of Mathematics, Vol. II, Paris, 1992, pp. 497-512; Progress in Mathematics, Vol. 120, Birkhäuser, Basel, 1994) and evaluate them after meromorphic continuation at integer points in their extended domains. This is accomplished in three steps. First, when is a periodic function and are the harmonic numbers, we establish identities relating these series to the L-series

     

Quasi-static cylindrical cavity expansion in an elastoplastic compressible Mises solid

The self-similar elastoplastic field induced by quasi-static expansion of a pressurized cylindrical cavity is investigated for Mises solids under the assumption of plane-strain. Material behavior is modeled by the elastoplastic J₂ flow theory with the standard hypoelastic version. The theory accounts for elastic-compressibility and allows for arbitrary strain-hardening (or softening) in the plastic range. A formulation of the exact governing equations is presented and analyzed in detail for the remote elastic field and for asymptotic plastic behavior near the cavity wall, along with numerical investigations for the entire deformation zone. An analytical solution was obtained under the axially-hydrostatic assumption (axial stress coincides with hydrostatic stress) within an error of about 2% or less as compared to the exact, numerically evaluated, value of cavitation pressure. Two ad-hoc compressibility approximations for cavitation pressure are suggested. These relations, which give very accurate results, appear to provide tight lower and upper bounds on the exact value of cavitation pressure within an error of less than 0.5%.     

Active Control of Shallow,Slack Cable Using the Parametric Control of End Tension

This study presents a practical, fieldable active controller applicable to shallow, slack cables. The controller is based upon an underlying theory that does not assume that the inertial forces are negligible in the direction of the cable chord. The theoretical framework is developed, and an experimental verification is presented. The experiments utilized a TV camera to track a small number of LED targets on the controlled cable, a commercial X-Y tracker and a PC to compute the cable's present position and velocity, and a linear actuator to vary the cable's tension. A Kalman filter was employed to smooth the position estimates and provide least-squares estimates of the cable velocity. The stability limits for the phase and amplitude of the control signal were established. An analytical estimate of the induced damping expected from the control algorithm is derived. Experimental measurements of the cable frequency and induced damping compared well with theoretical predictions. It is shown that he proposed active control approach is a simple, reliable, as well as an effective, method for vibration attenuation in lightly damped, shallow, slack cables.     

Improved MMC-LES to compute the structure of a mixed-mode turbulent flame series

An improved version of the Lagrangian multiple mapping conditioning model coupled with large eddy simulation (MMC-LES) is applied to compute the structure of a range of turbulent mixed-mode flames stabilised on the Sydney piloted burner with compositionally inhomogeneous inlet. The calculations are compared with detailed measurements. While premixed MMC-LES models are yet to be developed, the most commonly deployed version and code for MMC-LES uses a mixture-fraction-based approach and a sparse-Lagrangian notional particle method that is most suitable for non-premixed combustion. The improvements reported here are due to (i) a more rigorous density coupling approach, (ii) a more refined mixing time scale, and (iii) selective particle intensification to improve localness in physical space as well as mixture fraction space. This intensification is selectively applied in upstream regions where mixed-mode combustion dominates and is relaxed further downstream as the jet flames transition to a non-premixed flame structure. The computed results show good agreement with experimental data hence confirming the feasibility of the improved MMC-LES approach in being able to account for mixed-mode combustion as well as for finite-rate chemistry effects. These promising results warrant future extension of the selective particle intensification method to become automatically adaptive.