3D printing of cement composites

The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of generating 3D structures directly in rapid-hardening Portland cement (RHPC) using 3D Printing (3DP) technology. 3DP is a Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) process that generates parts directly from CAD in a layer-wise manner. 3D structures were successfully printed using a polyvinylalcohol: RHPC ratio of 3:97 w/w, with print resolutions of better than 1mm. The test components demonstrated the manufacture of features, including off-axis holes, overhangs / undercuts etc that would not be manufacturable using simple mould tools. Samples hardened by 1 day post-build immersion in water at RT offered Modulus of Rupture (MOR) values of up to 0.8±0.1MPa, and, after 26 days immersion in water at RT, offered MOR values of 2.2±0.2MPa, similar to bassanite-based materials more typically used in 3DP (1-3 MPa). Post-curing by water immersion restructured the structure, removing the layering typical of ALM processes, and infilling porosity

Nuclear modification factor in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions

The transverse momentum dependent nuclear modification factors (NMF), namely $R_{CP}$, is investigated for protons produced in Au + Au at 1$A$ GeV within the framework of the isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model. It is found that the radial collective motion during the expansion stage affects the NMF at low transverse momentum a lot. By fitting the transverse mass spectra of protons with the distribution function from the Blast-Wave model, the magnitude of radial flow can be extracted. After removing the contribution from radial flow, the $R_{CP}$ can be regarded as a thermal one and is found to keep unitary at transverse momentum lower than 0.6 GeV/c and enhance at higher transverse momentum, which can be attributed to Cronin effect.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; aceepted by Physics Letters

Evaporation-triggered microdroplet nucleation and the four life phases of an evaporating Ouzo drop

Evaporating liquid droplets are omnipresent in nature and technology, such as in inkjet printing, coating, deposition of materials, medical diagnostics, agriculture, food industry, cosmetics, or spills of liquids. While the evaporation of pure liquids, liquids with dispersed particles, or even liquid mixtures has intensively been studied over the last two decades, the evaporation of ternary mixtures of liquids with different volatilities and mutual solubilities has not yet been explored. Here we show that the evaporation of such ternary mixtures can trigger a phase transition and the nucleation of microdroplets of one of the components of the mixture. As model system we pick a sessile Ouzo droplet (as known from daily life - a transparent mixture of water, ethanol, and anise oil) and reveal and theoretically explain its four life phases: In phase I, the spherical cap-shaped droplet remains transparent, while the more volatile ethanol is evaporating, preferentially at the rim of the drop due to the singularity there. This leads to a local ethanol concentration reduction and correspondingly to oil droplet nucleation there. This is the beginning of phase II, in which oil microdroplets quickly nucleate in the whole drop, leading to its milky color which typifies the so-called 'Ouzo-effect'. Once all ethanol has evaporated, the drop, which now has a characteristic non-spherical-cap shape, has become clear again, with a water drop sitting on an oil-ring (phase III), finalizing the phase inversion. Finally, in phase IV, also all water has evaporated, leaving behind a tiny spherical cap-shaped oil drop.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figure

Evaporating pure, binary and ternary droplets: thermal effects and axial symmetry breaking

The Greek aperitif Ouzo is not only famous for its specific anise-flavored taste, but also for its ability to turn from a transparent miscible liquid to a milky-white colored emulsion when water is added. Recently, it has been shown that this so-called Ouzo effect, i.e. the spontaneous emulsification of oil microdroplets, can also be triggered by the preferential evaporation of ethanol in an evaporating sessile Ouzo drop, leading to an amazingly rich drying process with multiple phase transitions [H. Tan et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 113(31) (2016) 8642]. Due to the enhanced evaporation near the contact line, the nucleation of oil droplets starts at the rim which results in an oil ring encircling the drop. Furthermore, the oil droplets are advected through the Ouzo drop by a fast solutal Marangoni flow. In this article, we investigate the evaporation of mixture droplets in more detail, by successively increasing the mixture complexity from pure water over a binary water-ethanol mixture to the ternary Ouzo mixture (water, ethanol and anise oil). In particular, axisymmetric and full three-dimensional finite element method simulations have been performed on these droplets to discuss thermal effects and the complicated flow in the droplet driven by an interplay of preferential evaporation, evaporative cooling and solutal and thermal Marangoni flow. By using image analysis techniques and micro-PIV measurements, we are able to compare the numerically predicted volume evolutions and velocity fields with experimental data. The Ouzo droplet is furthermore investigated by confocal microscopy. It is shown that the oil ring predominantly emerges due to coalescence

Exact factorization of the time-dependent electron-nuclear wavefunction

We present an exact decomposition of the complete wavefunction for a system of nuclei and electrons evolving in a time-dependent external potential. We derive formally exact equations for the nuclear and electronic wavefunctions that lead to rigorous definitions of a time-dependent potential energy surface (TDPES) and a time-dependent geometric phase. For the $H_2^+$ molecular ion exposed to a laser field, the TDPES proves to be a useful interpretive tool to identify different mechanisms of dissociation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Positive Semidefiniteness and Positive Definiteness of a Linear Parametric Interval Matrix

We consider a symmetric matrix, the entries of which depend linearly on some parameters. The domains of the parameters are compact real intervals. We investigate the problem of checking whether for each (or some) setting of the parameters, the matrix is positive definite (or positive semidefinite). We state a characterization in the form of equivalent conditions, and also propose some computationally cheap sufficient\,/\,necessary conditions. Our results extend the classical results on positive (semi-)definiteness of interval matrices. They may be useful for checking convexity or non-convexity in global optimization methods based on branch and bound framework and using interval techniques

Averaging approximation to singularly perturbed nonlinear stochastic wave equations

An averaging method is applied to derive effective approximation to the following singularly perturbed nonlinear stochastic damped wave equation \nu u_{tt}+u_t=\D u+f(u)+\nu^\alpha\dot{W} on an open bounded domain $D\subset\R^n$\,, $1\leq n\leq 3$\,. Here $\nu>0$ is a small parameter characterising the singular perturbation, and $\nu^\alpha$\,, $0\leq \alpha\leq 1/2$\,, parametrises the strength of the noise. Some scaling transformations and the martingale representation theorem yield the following effective approximation for small $\nu$, u_t=\D u+f(u)+\nu^\alpha\dot{W} to an error of \ord{\nu^\alpha}\,.Comment: 16 pages. Submitte