72,383 research outputs found
Collisions and close encounters involving massive main-sequence stars
We study close encounters involving massive main sequence stars and the
evolution of the exotic products of these encounters as common--envelope
systems or possible hypernova progenitors. We show that parabolic encounters
between low-- and high--mass stars and between two high--mass stars with small
periastrons result in mergers on timescales of a few tens of stellar freefall
times (a few tens of hours). We show that such mergers of unevolved low--mass
stars with evolved high--mass stars result in little mass loss (
M) and can deliver sufficient fresh hydrogen to the core of the
collision product to allow the collision product to burn for several million
years. We find that grazing encounters enter a common--envelope phase which may
expel the envelope of the merger product. The deposition of energy in the
envelopes of our merger products causes them to swell by factors of .
If these remnants exist in very densely-populated environments
( pc), they will suffer further collisions which may
drive off their envelopes, leaving behind hard binaries. We show that the
products of collisions have cores rotating sufficiently rapidly to make them
candidate hypernova/gamma--ray burst progenitors and that of massive
stars may suffer collisions, sufficient for such events to contribute
significantly to the observed rates of hypernovae and gamma--ray bursts.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, LaTeX, to appear in MNRAS (in press
Percolation games, probabilistic cellular automata, and the hard-core model
Let each site of the square lattice be independently assigned
one of three states: a \textit{trap} with probability , a \textit{target}
with probability , and \textit{open} with probability , where
. Consider the following game: a token starts at the origin, and two
players take turns to move, where a move consists of moving the token from its
current site to either or . A player who moves the token
to a trap loses the game immediately, while a player who moves the token to a
target wins the game immediately. Is there positive probability that the game
is \emph{drawn} with best play -- i.e.\ that neither player can force a win?
This is equivalent to the question of ergodicity of a certain family of
elementary one-dimensional probabilistic cellular automata (PCA). These
automata have been studied in the contexts of enumeration of directed lattice
animals, the golden-mean subshift, and the hard-core model, and their
ergodicity has been noted as an open problem by several authors. We prove that
these PCA are ergodic, and correspondingly that the game on has
no draws.
On the other hand, we prove that certain analogous games \emph{do} exhibit
draws for suitable parameter values on various directed graphs in higher
dimensions, including an oriented version of the even sublattice of
in all . This is proved via a dimension reduction to a
hard-core lattice gas in dimension . We show that draws occur whenever the
corresponding hard-core model has multiple Gibbs distributions. We conjecture
that draws occur also on the standard oriented lattice for
, but here our method encounters a fundamental obstacle.Comment: 35 page
Structural Analysis and Performance-Based Validation of a Composite Wing Spar
Electric-motor powered aircraft possess the ability to operate with efficient energy delivery, but lack the operational range of internal combustion engine powered aircraft. This range limitation requires the use of high aspect ratio, thin-chord wings to minimize aerodynamic drag losses, which results in highly loaded composite spar structures. High aspect ratio wings are required to increase mission durations for a NASA-developed experimental multi-rotor electric powered aircraft denoted as the Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology and Operations Research (SCEPTOR) or X-57. This paper examines the structural performance of the composite main wing spars to validate spar strength using ply-based laminate finite element methods. Geometric scaling of a main spar test-section was initially proposed for proof-testing but sacrificed stability. Ply-based structures modeling with local structural features was implemented as a risk-reduction methodology. Ply-based modeling was selected to augment the conventional building block approach to reduce risk, and leverage a performance-based approval processes encouraged in Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) design guidance. Therefore, ply-based laminate modeling of the full-scale main spar and forward spar shear-web attachments were subsequently undertaken to determine load path complexity with predicted flight loads. Ply-based modeling included stress concentrations and interlaminate behavior at interface locations that can be obscured in traditional finite element sizing models. Analysis of the wing spar laminate ply-based models compared with bearing test coupon performance was used to reduce future wing assembly proof-testing burden and facilitate performance-based flight hardware safety for the X-57 experimental aircraft
The Jammed Phase of the Biham-Middleton-Levine Traffic Model
Initially a car is placed with probability p at each site of the
two-dimensional integer lattice. Each car is equally likely to be East-facing
or North-facing, and different sites receive independent assignments. At odd
time steps, each North-facing car moves one unit North if there is a vacant
site for it to move into. At even time steps, East-facing cars move East in the
same way. We prove that when p is sufficiently close to 1 traffic is jammed, in
the sense that no car moves infinitely many times. The result extends to
several variant settings, including a model with cars moving at random times,
and higher dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; revised journal versio
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