Smart Morphable Surfaces for Aerodynamic Drag Control

Smart Morphable Surfaces enable switchable and tunable aerodynamic drag reduction of bluff bodies. Their topography, resembling the morphology of golf balls, can be custom-generated through a wrinkling instability on a curved surface. Pneumatic actuation of these patterns results in the control of the drag coefficient of spherical samples by up to a factor of two, over a range of flow conditions

Wrinkling crystallography on spherical surfaces

We present the results of an experimental investigation on the crystallography of the dimpled patterns obtained through wrinkling of a curved elastic system. Our macroscopic samples comprise a thin hemispherical shell bound to an equally curved compliant substrate. Under compression, a crystalline pattern of dimples self-organizes on the surface of the shell. Stresses are relaxed by both out-of-surface buckling and the emergence of defects in the quasi-hexagonal pattern. Three-dimensional scanning is used to digitize the topography. Regarding the dimples as point-like packing units produces spherical Voronoi tessellations with cells that are polydisperse and distorted, away from their regular shapes. We analyze the structure of crystalline defects, as a function of system size. Disclinations are observed and, above a threshold value, dislocations proliferate rapidly with system size. Our samples exhibit striking similarities with other curved crystals of charged particles and colloids. Differences are also found and attributed to the far-from-equilibrium nature of our patterns due to the random and initially frozen material imperfections which act as nucleation points, the presence of a physical boundary which represents an additional source of stress, and the inability of dimples to rearrange during crystallization. Even if we do not have access to the exact form of the interdimple interaction, our experiments suggest a broader generality of previous results of curved crystallography and their robustness on the details of the interaction potential. Furthermore, our findings open the door to future studies on curved crystals far from equilibrium

From wrinkling to global buckling of a ring on a curved substrate

We present a combined analytical approach and numerical study on the stability of a ring bound to an annular elastic substrate, which contains a circular cavity. The system is loaded by depressurizing the inner cavity. The ring is modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam and its equilibrium equations are derived from the mechanical energy which takes into account both stretching and bending contributions. The curvature of the substrate is considered explicitly to model the work done by its reaction force on the ring. We distinguish two different instabilities: periodic wrinkling of the ring or global buckling of the structure. Our model provides an expression for the critical pressure, as well as a phase diagram that rationalizes the transition between instability modes. Towards assessing the role of curvature, we compare our results for the critical stress and the wrinkling wavelength to their planar counterparts. We show that the critical stress is insensitive to the curvature of the substrate, while the wavelength is only affected due to the permissible discrete values of the azimuthal wavenumber imposed by the geometry of the problem. Throughout, we contrast our analytical predictions against finite element simulations

From wrinkling to global buckling of a ring on a curved substrate

International audienceWe present a combined analytical approach and numerical study on the stability of a ring bound to an annular elastic substrate, which contains a circular cavity. The system is loaded by depressurizing the inner cavity. The ring is modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam and its equilibrium equations are derived from the mechanical energy which takes into account both stretching and bending contributions. The curvature of the substrate is considered explicitly to model the work done by its reaction force on the ring. We distinguish two different instabilities: periodic wrinklin

Influence of the Integral Quality Monitor transmission detector on high energy photon beams: A multi-centre study

Item does not contain fulltextPURPOSE: The influence of the Integral Quality Monitor (IQM) transmission detector on photon beam properties was evaluated in a preclinical phase, using data from nine participating centres: (i) the change of beam quality (beam hardening), (ii) the influence on surface dose, and (iii) the attenuation of the IQM detector. METHODS: For 6 different nominal photon energies (4 standard, 2 FFF) and square field sizes from 1x1cm2 to 20x20cm2, the effect of IQM on beam quality was assessed from the PDD20,10 values obtained from the percentage dose depth (PDD) curves, measured with and without IQM in the beam path. The change in surface dose with/without IQM was assessed for all available energies and field sizes from 4x4cm2 to 20x20cm2. The transmission factor was calculated by means of measured absorbed dose at 10cm depth for all available energies and field sizes. RESULTS: (i) A small (0.11-0.53%) yet statistically significant beam hardening effect was observed, depending on photon beam energy. (ii) The increase in surface dose correlated with field size (p<0.01) for all photon energies except for 18MV. The change in surface dose was smaller than 3.3% in all cases except for the 20x20cm2 field and 10MV FFF beam, where it reached 8.1%. (iii) For standard beams, transmission of the IQM showed a weak dependence on the field size, and a pronounced dependence on the beam energy (0.9412 for 6MV to 0.9578 for 18MV and 0.9440 for 6MV FFF; 0.9533 for 10MV FFF). CONCLUSIONS: The effects of the IQM detector on photon beam properties were found to be small yet statistically significant. The magnitudes of changes which were found justify treating IQM either as tray factors within the treatment planning system (TPS) for a particular energy or alternatively as modified outputs for specific beam energy of linear accelerators, which eases the introduction of the IQM into clinical practice