5,258 research outputs found
The investigation of flow instabilities on a rotating disk with curvature in the radial direction
The major objective is to explore any visible differences of the flow field with wall curvature of the test body, including possible interaction between Taylor-Gortler instabilities present along concave walls and the inflexional instabilities investigated here. An experimental study was conducted with emphasis placed on making visual observations and recording photographically the flow instabilities present under three different rotating bodies: a flat disk, a concave paraboloid, and a convex paraboloid. The data collected for the three test bodies lead to the conclusion that the wall curvature of the concave and convex paraboloids did not alter the observed flow field significantly from that observed on the flat disk
Environmental legislation as a driver of design
and other research output
Long-term Properties of Accretion Disks in X-ray Binaries: II. Stability of Radiation-Driven Warping
A significant number of X-ray binaries are now known to exhibit long-term
``superorbital'' periodicities on timescales of 10 - 100 days. Several
physical mechanisms have been proposed that give rise to such periodicities, in
particular warping and/or precession of the accretion disk. Recent theoretical
work predicts the stability to disk warping of X-ray binaries as a function of
the mass ratio, binary radius, viscosity and accretion efficiency, and here we
examine the constraints that can be placed on such models by current
observations.
In paper I we used a dynamic power spectrum (DPS) analysis of long-term X-ray
datasets (CGRO, RXTE), focusing on the remarkable, smooth variations in the
superorbital period exhibited by SMC X-1. Here we use a similar DPS analysis to
investigate the stability of the superorbital periodicities in the neutron star
X-ray binaries Cyg X-2, LMC X-4 and Her X-1, and thereby confront stability
predictions with observation. We find that the period and nature of
superorbital variations in these sources is consistent with the predictions of
warping theory.
We also use a dynamic lightcurve analysis to examine the behaviour of Her X-1
as it enters and leaves the 1999 Anomalous Low State (ALS). This reveals a
significant phase shift some 15 cycles before the ALS, which indicates a change
in the disk structure or profile leading into the ALS.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, Re-submitted to MNRAS after referee's comment
Galaxy correlations and the BAO in a void universe: structure formation as a test of the Copernican Principle
A suggested solution to the dark energy problem is the void model, where
accelerated expansion is replaced by Hubble-scale inhomogeneity. In these
models, density perturbations grow on a radially inhomogeneous background. This
large scale inhomogeneity distorts the spherical Baryon Acoustic Oscillation
feature into an ellipsoid which implies that the bump in the galaxy correlation
function occurs at different scales in the radial and transverse correlation
functions. We compute these for the first time, under the approximation that
curvature gradients do not couple the scalar modes to vector and tensor modes.
The radial and transverse correlation functions are very different from those
of the concordance model, even when the models have the same average BAO scale.
This implies that if void models are fine-tuned to satisfy average BAO data,
there is enough extra information in the correlation functions to distinguish a
void model from the concordance model. We expect these new features to remain
when the full perturbation equations are solved, which means that the radial
and transverse galaxy correlation functions can be used as a powerful test of
the Copernican Principle.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, matches published versio
Efficient optimisation of structures using tabu search
This paper presents a novel approach to the optimisation of structures using
a Tabu search (TS) method. TS is a metaheuristic which is used to guide local
search methods towards a globally optimal solution by using flexible memory
cycles of differing time spans. Results are presented for the well established
ten bar truss problem and compared to results published in the literature. In
the first example a truss is optimised to minimise mass and the results
compared to results obtained using an alternative TS implementation. In the
second example, the problem has multiple objectives that are compounded into a
single objective function value using game theory. In general the results
demonstrate that the TS method is capable of solving structural optimisation
problems at least as efficiently as other numerical optimisation approaches
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