Transmission loss predictions for dissipative silencers of arbitrary cross section in the presence of mean flow

A numerical technique is developed for the analysis of dissipative silencers of arbitrary, but axially uniform, cross section. Mean gas flow is included in a central airway which is separated from a bulk reacting porous material by a concentric perforate screen. The analysis begins by employing the finite element method to extract the eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors for a silencer of infinite length. Point collocation is then used to match the expanded acoustic pressure and velocity fields in the silencer chamber to those in the inlet and outlet pipes. Transmission loss predictions are compared with experimental measurements taken for two automotive dissipative silencers with elliptical cross sections. Good agreement between prediction and experiment is observed both without mean flow and for a mean flow Mach number of 0.15. It is demonstrated also that the technique presented offers a considerable reduction in computational expenditure when compared to a three dimensional finite element analysis

Tripropellant engine study

The potential for converting the space shuttle main engine (SSME) to a dual-fuel, dual-mode engine using LOX/hydrocarbon propellants in mode 1 and LOX/H2 in mode 2 was examined. Various engine system concepts were formulated that included staged combustion and gas generator turbine power cycles, and LOX/RP-1, LOX/CH4, and LOX/C3H8 mode 1 propellants. Both oxidizer and fuel regenerative cooling were considered. All of the SSME major components were examined to determine their adaptability to the candidate dual-fuel engines

High-pressure LOX/CH4 injector program

Two injector types, either coaxial or impinging elements, for high pressure LOX/CH4 operation with an existing 40K chamber are examined. A comparison is presented. The detailed fabrication drawings and supporting analysis are presented

Flow and fracture of ice and ice mixtures

Frozen volatiles make up an important volume fraction of the low density moons of the outer solar system. Understanding the tectonic history of the surfaces of these moons, as well as the evolution of their interiors, requires knowledge of the mechanical strength of these icy materials under the appropriate planetary conditions (temperature, hydrostatic pressure, strain rate). Ongoing lab research is being conducted to measure mechanical properties of several different ices under conditions that faithfully reproduce condition both at the moons' surfaces (generally low temperature, to about 100 K, and low pressures) and in the deep interiors (warmer temperatures, pressures to thousands of atmospheres). Recent progress is reported in two different phases of the work: rheology of ices in the NH3-H2O system at temperatures and strain rates lower than ever before explored, with application to the ammonia-rich moons of Saturn and Uranus; and the water ice I yields II phase transformation, which not only applies directly to process deep in the interiors of Ganymede and Callisto, but holds implications for deep terrestrial earthquakes as well

Mode-matching without root-finding: Application to a dissipative silencer

This article presents an analytic mode-matching approach suitable for modelling the propagation of sound in a two-dimensional, three-part, ducting system. The approach avoids the need to the find roots of the characteristic equation for the middle section of the duct (the component) and is readily applicable to a broad class of problems. It is demonstrated that the system of equations, derived via analytic mode-matching, exhibits certain features which ensure that they can be re-cast into a form that is independent of the roots of the characteristic equation for the component. The precise details of the component are irrelevant to the procedure; it is required only that there exists an orthogonality relation, or similar, for the eigenmodes corresponding to the propagating wave-forms in this region. The method is applied here to a simple problem involving acoustic transmission through a dissipative silencer of the type commonly found in heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) ducts. With reference to this example, the silencer transmission loss is computed, and the power balance for the silencer is investigated and is shown to be an identity that is necessarily satisfied by the system of equations, regardless of the level of truncation

A Study of Different Modeling Choices For Simulating Platelets Within the Immersed Boundary Method

The Immersed Boundary (IB) method is a widely-used numerical methodology for the simulation of fluid-structure interaction problems. The IB method utilizes an Eulerian discretization for the fluid equations of motion while maintaining a Lagrangian representation of structural objects. Operators are defined for transmitting information (forces and velocities) between these two representations. Most IB simulations represent their structures with piecewise-linear approximations and utilize Hookean spring models to approximate structural forces. Our specific motivation is the modeling of platelets in hemodynamic flows. In this paper, we study two alternative representations - radial basis functions (RBFs) and Fourier-based (trigonometric polynomials and spherical harmonics) representations - for the modeling of platelets in two and three dimensions within the IB framework, and compare our results with the traditional piecewise-linear approximation methodology. For different representative shapes, we examine the geometric modeling errors (position and normal vectors), force computation errors, and computational cost and provide an engineering trade-off strategy for when and why one might select to employ these different representations.Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures, Accepted (in press) by APNU

High-resolution Spectroscopy of Extremely Metal-poor Stars in the Least Evolved Galaxies: Leo IV

We present high-resolution Magellan/MIKE spectroscopy of the brightest star in the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Leo IV. We measure an iron abundance of [Fe/H] = –3.2, adding to the rapidly growing sample of extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars being identified in Milky Way satellite galaxies. The star is enhanced in the α elements Mg, Ca, and Ti by ~0.3 dex, very similar to the typical Milky Way halo abundance pattern. All of the light and iron-peak elements follow the trends established by EMP halo stars, but the neutron-capture elements Ba and Sr are significantly underabundant. These results are quite similar to those found for stars in the ultra-faint dwarfs Ursa Major II, Coma Berenices, Boötes I, and Hercules, suggesting that the chemical evolution of the lowest-luminosity galaxies may be universal. The abundance pattern we observe is consistent with predictions for nucleosynthesis from a Population III supernova explosion. The extremely low metallicity of this star also supports the idea that a significant fraction (≳10%) of the stars in the faintest dwarfs have metallicities below [Fe/H] = –3.0