Quantum vacuum photon-modes and superhydrophobicity

Nanostructures are commonly used for developing superhydrophobic surfaces. However, available wetting theoretical models ignore the effect of vacuum photon-modes alteration on van der Waals forces and thus on hydrophobicity. Using first-principle calculations, we show that superhydrophibicity of nanostructured surfaces is dramatically enhanced by vacuum photon-modes tuning. As a case study, wetting contact angles of a water droplet above a polyethylene nanostructured surface are obtained from the interaction potential energy calculated as function of the droplet-surface separation distance. This new approach could pave the way for the design of novel superhydrophobic coatings.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, final version published in Physical Review Letter

Our Town Rehearsal Report, September 22, 2016

Providence College Department of Theatre, Dance & Film Our Town rehearsal report, September 22, 2016https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/ourtown_pubs/1005/thumbnail.jp

The LifeV library: engineering mathematics beyond the proof of concept

LifeV is a library for the finite element (FE) solution of partial differential equations in one, two, and three dimensions. It is written in C++ and designed to run on diverse parallel architectures, including cloud and high performance computing facilities. In spite of its academic research nature, meaning a library for the development and testing of new methods, one distinguishing feature of LifeV is its use on real world problems and it is intended to provide a tool for many engineering applications. It has been actually used in computational hemodynamics, including cardiac mechanics and fluid-structure interaction problems, in porous media, ice sheets dynamics for both forward and inverse problems. In this paper we give a short overview of the features of LifeV and its coding paradigms on simple problems. The main focus is on the parallel environment which is mainly driven by domain decomposition methods and based on external libraries such as MPI, the Trilinos project, HDF5 and ParMetis. Dedicated to the memory of Fausto Saleri.Comment: Review of the LifeV Finite Element librar

Antiferromagnetic interactions in single crystalline Zn1-xCoxO thin films

In a rather contradictory situation regarding magnetic data on Co-doped ZnO, we have succeeded in fabricating high-quality single crystalline Zn1-xCoxO (x=0.003-0.07) thin films. This gives us the possibility, for the first time, to examine the it intrinsic magnetic properties of ZnO:Co at a quantitative level and therefore to address several unsolved problems, the major one being the nature of the Co-Co interaction in the ZnO structure.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures,accepted for publication in PR

Stabilized Reduced Basis Approximation of Incompressible Three-Dimensional Navier-Stokes Equations in Parametrized Deformed Domains

In this work we are interested in the numerical solution of the steady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow in pipes with varying curvatures and cross-sections. We intend to compute a reduced basis approximation of the solution, employing the geometry as a parameter in the reduced basis method. This has previously been done in a spectral element $P_{{ \mathcal{N}}} - P_{{ \mathcal{N}}-2}$ setting in two dimensions for the steady Stokes equations. To compute the necessary basis-functions in the reduced basis method, we propose to use a stabilized P 1−P 1 finite element method for solving the Navier-Stokes equations on different geometries. By employing the same stabilization in the reduced basis approximation, we avoid having to enrich the velocity basis in order to satisfy the inf-sup condition. This reduces the complexity of the reduced basis method for the Navier-Stokes problem, while keeping its good approximation properties. We prove the well posedness of the reduced problem and present numerical results for selected parameter dependent three dimensional pipe