Imaging groundwater infiltration dynamics in the karst vadose zone with long-term ERT monitoring

Water infiltration and recharge processes in karst systems are complex and difficult to measure with conventional hydrological methods. In particular, temporarily saturated groundwater reservoirs hosted in the vadose zone can play a buffering role in water infiltration. This results from the pronounced porosity and permeability contrasts created by local karstification processes of carbonate rocks. Analyses of time-lapse 2-D geoelectrical imaging over a period of 3 years at the Rochefort Cave Laboratory (RCL) site in south Belgium highlight variable hydrodynamics in a karst vadose zone. This represents the first long-term and permanently installed electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) monitoring in a karst landscape. The collected data were compared to conventional hydrological measurements (drip discharge monitoring, soil moisture and water conductivity data sets) and a detailed structural analysis of the local geological structures providing a thorough understanding of the groundwater infiltration. Seasonal changes affect all the imaged areas leading to increases in resistivity in spring and summer attributed to enhanced evapotranspiration, whereas winter is characterised by a general decrease in resistivity associated with a groundwater recharge of the vadose zone. Three types of hydrological dynamics, corresponding to areas with distinct lithological and structural features, could be identified via changes in resistivity: (D1) upper conductive layers, associated with clay-rich soil and epikarst, showing the highest variability related to weather conditions; (D2) deeper and more resistive limestone areas, characterised by variable degrees of porosity and clay contents, hence showing more diffuse seasonal variations; and (D3) a conductive fractured zone associated with damped seasonal dynamics, while showing a great variability similar to that of the upper layers in response to rainfall events. This study provides detailed images of the sources of drip discharge spots traditionally monitored in caves and aims to support modelling approaches of karst hydrological processes

Review on possible gravitational anomalies

This is an updated introductory review of 2 possible gravitational anomalies that has attracted part of the Scientific community: the Allais effect that occur during solar eclipses, and the Pioneer 10 spacecraft anomaly, experimented also by Pioneer 11 and Ulysses spacecrafts. It seems that, to date, no satisfactory conventional explanation exist to these phenomena, and this suggests that possible new physics will be needed to account for them. The main purpose of this review is to announce 3 other new measurements that will be carried on during the 2005 solar eclipses in Panama and Colombia (Apr. 8) and in Portugal (Oct.15).Comment: Published in 'Journal of Physics: Conferences Series of the American Institute of Physics'. Contribution for the VI Mexican School on Gravitation and Mathematical Physics "Approaches to Quantum Gravity" (Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico, Nov. 21-27, 2004). Updates to this information will be posted in http://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/~xavier.amador/anomalies.htm

Modeling of synthesis and flow properties of propylene-diene copolymers

Copolymerization with nonconjugated dienes offers an attractive route for introducing long-chain branching in polypropylene. From a simplified set of rate equations for such copolymerization with a metallocene catalyst, we derive the probabilities of branch formation at different stages of the reaction in a semibatch reactor. Using these probabilities, we generate an ensemble of molecules via a Monte Carlo sampling. The knowledge of the branching topology and segment lengths allows us to compute the flow properties of the resins from computational rheology. We compare our model predictions with existing experimental data, namely the molar mass distribution and small amplitude oscillatory shear response, for a set of resins with varying diene content. The rheology data suggest that the entanglement time Ï.,e depends sensitively and in a well-defined fashion on the diene content

Linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties of bidisperse linear polymers: Mixing law and tube pressure effect

In this manuscript, we extend the tube-based model that we developed for predicting the linear viscoelasticity of entangled polymers [van Ruymbeke et al., J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. 128, 7-22 (2005)] to the prediction of the extensional rheology of monodisperse and bidisperse linear polymers and confront the results to experimental data. This model is based on the concepts of stretch-orientation separability [McLeish and Larson, J. Rheol. 42, 81-110 (1998)] and inter-chain pressure [Marrucci and Ianniruberto, Macromolecules 37, 3934-3942 (2004)]. In order to deal with polydisperse samples, a new mixing law is proposed. As it does not require knowledge of the full linear relaxation spectrum, the proposed model is a powerful predictive tool. Very good agreement is found between theoretical and experimental results. For bidisperse samples, the individual contribution of each component is determined, and it is shown that only few percent of long chains are enough to generate the strong strain hardening observed in the experimental data. Last, we discuss the value of the tube diameter relaxation time. For monodisperse samples, this parameter is found to scale with M-2. However, for bidisperse samples, as it was already observed by Wagner et al. [J. Rheol. 52, 67-86 (2008)], the tube diameter relaxation time of the long component must be rescaled, which is contrary to the inter-chain pressure model and opens several new questions. (c) 2010 The Society of Rheology. [DOI:10.1122/1.3478316