16,769 research outputs found
Effect of blade geometry on the aerodynamic loads produced by vertical-axis wind turbines
Accurate aerodynamic modelling of vertical-axis wind turbines poses a significant challenge. The rotation of the turbine induces large variations in the angle of attack of its blades that can manifest as dynamic stall. In addition, interactions between the blades of the turbine and the wake that they produce can result in impulsive changes to the aerodynamic loading. The Vorticity Transport Model has been used to simulate the aerodynamic performance and wake dynamics of three different vertical-axis wind turbine configurations. It is known that vertical-axis turbines with either straight or curved blades deliver torque to their shaft that fluctuates at the blade passage frequency of the rotor. In contrast, a turbine with helically twisted blades delivers a relatively steady torque to the shaft. In this article, the interactions between helically twisted blades and the vortices within their wake are shown to result in localized perturbations to the aerodynamic loading on the rotor that can disrupt the otherwise relatively smooth power output that is predicted by simplistic aerodynamic tools that do not model the wake to sufficient fidelity. Furthermore, vertical-axis wind turbines with curved blades are shown to be somewhat more susceptible to local dynamic stall than turbines with straight blades
An Inexpensive Liquid Crystal Spectropolarimeter for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory Plaskett Telescope
A new, inexpensive polarimetric unit has been constructed for the Dominion
Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) 1.8-m Plaskett telescope. It is implemented as
a plug-in module for the telescope's existing Cassegrain spectrograph, and
enables medium resolution (R~10,000) circular spectropolarimetry of point
sources. A dual-beam design together with fast switching of the wave plate at
rates up to 100Hz, and synchronized with charge shuffling on the CCD, is used
to significantly reduce instrumental effects and achieve high-precision
spectropolarimetric measurements for a very low cost. The instrument is
optimized to work in the wavelength range 4700 - 5300A to simultaneously detect
polarization signals in the H beta line as well as nearby metallic lines. In
this paper we describe the technical details of the instrument, our observing
strategy and data reduction techniques, and present tests of its scientific
performance.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in PAS
A Bayesian method for detecting stellar flares
We present a Bayesian-odds-ratio-based algorithm for detecting stellar flares
in light curve data. We assume flares are described by a model in which there
is a rapid rise with a half-Gaussian profile, followed by an exponential decay.
Our signal model also contains a polynomial background model. This is required
to fit underlying light curve variations that are expected in the data, which
could otherwise partially mimic a flare. We characterise the false alarm
probability and efficiency of this method and compare it with a simpler
thresholding method based on that used in Walkowicz et al (2011). We find our
method has a significant increase in detection efficiency for low
signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) flares. For a conservative false alarm probability
our method can detect 95% of flares with S/N less than ~20, as compared to S/N
of ~25 for the simpler method. As an example we have applied our method to a
selection of stars in Kepler Quarter 1 data. The method finds 687 flaring stars
with a total of 1873 flares after vetos have been applied. For these flares we
have characterised their durations and and signal-to-noise ratios.Comment: Accepted for MNRAS. The code used for the analysis can be found at
https://github.com/BayesFlare/bayesflare/releases/tag/v1.0.
A new efficient method for determining weighted power spectra: detection of low-frequency solar p-modes by analysis of BiSON data
We present a new and highly efficient algorithm for computing a power
spectrum made from evenly spaced data which combines the noise-reducing
advantages of the weighted fit with the computational advantages of the Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT). We apply this method to a 10-year data set of the
solar p-mode oscillations obtained by the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network
(BiSON) and thereby uncover three new low-frequency modes. These are the l=2,
n=5 and n=7 modes and the l=3, n=7 mode. In the case of the l=2, n=5 modes,
this is believed to be the first such identification of this mode in the
literature. The statistical weights needed for the method are derived from a
combination of the real data and a sophisticated simulation of the instrument
performance. Variations in the weights are due mainly to the differences in the
noise characteristics of the various BiSON instruments, the change in those
characteristics over time and the changing line-of-sight velocity between the
stations and the Sun. It should be noted that a weighted data set will have a
more time-dependent signal than an unweighted set and that, consequently, its
frequency spectrum will be more susceptible to aliasing.Comment: 11 pages, 7 Figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, Figure 6 had
to be reduced in size to upload and so may be difficult to view on screen in
.ps versio
Applications of flight control system methods to an advanced combat rotorcraft
Advanced flight control system design, analysis, and testing methodologies developed at the Ames Research Center are applied in an analytical and flight test evaluation of the Advanced Digital Optical Control System (ADOCS) demonstrator. The primary objectives are to describe the knowledge gained about the implications of digital flight control system design for rotorcraft, and to illustrate the analysis of the resulting handling-qualities in the context of the proposed new handling-qualities specification for rotorcraft. Topics covered in-depth are digital flight control design and analysis methods, flight testing techniques, ADOCS handling-qualities evaluation results, and correlation of flight test results with analytical models and the proposed handling-qualities specification. The evaluation of the ADOCS demonstrator indicates desirable response characteristics based on equivalent damping and frequency, but undersirably large effective time-delays (exceeding 240 m sec in all axes). Piloted handling-qualities are found to be desirable or adequate for all low, medium, and high pilot gain tasks; but handling-qualities are inadequate for ultra-high gain tasks such as slope and running landings
Using Three-Body Recombination to Extract Electron Temperatures of Ultracold Plasmas
Three-body recombination, an important collisional process in plasmas,
increases dramatically at low electron temperatures, with an accepted scaling
of T_e^-9/2. We measure three-body recombination in an ultracold neutral xenon
plasma by detecting recombination-created Rydberg atoms using a
microwave-ionization technique. With the accepted theory (expected to be
applicable for weakly-coupled plasmas) and our measured rates we extract the
plasma temperatures, which are in reasonable agreement with previous
measurements early in the plasma lifetime. The resulting electron temperatures
indicate that the plasma continues to cool to temperatures below 1 K.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Geometric approach to Fletcher's ideal penalty function
Original article can be found at: www.springerlink.com Copyright Springer. [Originally produced as UH Technical Report 280, 1993]In this note, we derive a geometric formulation of an ideal penalty function for equality constrained problems. This differentiable penalty function requires no parameter estimation or adjustment, has numerical conditioning similar to that of the target function from which it is constructed, and also has the desirable property that the strict second-order constrained minima of the target function are precisely those strict second-order unconstrained minima of the penalty function which satisfy the constraints. Such a penalty function can be used to establish termination properties for algorithms which avoid ill-conditioned steps. Numerical values for the penalty function and its derivatives can be calculated efficiently using automatic differentiation techniques.Peer reviewe
Predicting Proton-Air Cross Sections at sqrt s ~30 TeV, using Accelerator and Cosmic Ray Data
We use the high energy predictions of a QCD-inspired parameterization of all
accelerator data on forward proton-proton and antiproton-proton scattering
amplitudes, along with Glauber theory, to predict proton-air cross sections at
energies near \sqrt s \approx 30 TeV. The parameterization of the proton-proton
cross section incorporates analyticity and unitarity, and demands that the
asymptotic proton is a black disk of soft partons. By comparing with the p-air
cosmic ray measurements, our analysis results in a constraint on the inclusive
particle production cross section.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, uses epsfig.sty, 5 postscript figures. Minor text
revisions. Systematic errors in k included, procedure for extracting k
clarified. Previously undefined symbols now define
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