Hydrothermal Ethanol Flames in Co-Flow Jets

Results on the autoignition and stabilization of ethanol hydrothermal flames in a Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) reactor operating at constant pressure are reported. The flames are observed as luminous reaction zones occurring in supercritical water; i.e., water at conditions above its critical point (approximately 22 MPa and 374 C). A co-flow injector is used to inject fuel (inner flow), comprising an aqueous solution ranging from 20%-v to 50%-v ethanol, and air (annular flow) into a reactor filled with supercritical water at approximately 24.3 MPa and 425 C. Results show hydrothermal flames are autoignited and form diffusion flames which exhibit laminar and/or turbulent features depending upon flow conditions. Two orthogonal camera views are used; one providing a backlit shadowgraphic image of the co-flow jet and the other providing color images of the flame. In addition, spectroscopic measurements of flame emissions in the UV and visible spectrum are discussed

Robust Hybrid Precoding for Interference Exploitation in Massive Mimo Systems

In this paper, we consider a multiuser massive MIMO system with hybrid analog-digital precoding architecture. The phase shifters in the hybrid precoding architecture are assumed to be imperfect, where the true values of both phase and magnitude of the phase shifters are different from their nominal values. For a given analog precoding matrix, we develop an iterative algorithm to compute robust digital precoders based on the interference exploitation approach to eliminate any potential symbol errors due to the phase shifter impairments. Numerical experiments demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm and show its advantage over a conventional robust precoding technique

Interference Exploitation-Based Hybrid Precoding With Robustness Against Channel Errors

The extremely high cost associated with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems when it is employed with fully digital precoding can be reduced by applying hybrid precoding at an expense of increased transmit power. In such a hybrid precoding system, the transmit power required to achieve a certain quality-of-service (QoS) can be significantly reduced by employing the constructive interference (CI) precoding technique. However, as illustrated in the paper, the symbol error rate (SER) performance of CI-based precoding is very sensitive to channel errors. To address this challenge we propose a hybrid precoding approach with robustness against channel quantization error and channel estimation error. Simulation results demonstrate the superior energy efficiency of the proposed robust hybrid precoding when compared to that of a conventional non-robust precoding scheme in achieving a required QoS target

Enhancement of magnetoresistance in manganite multilayers

Magnanite multilayers have been fabricated using La0.67Ca0.33MnO3 as the ferromagnetic layer and Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 and Nd0.5Ca0.5MnO3 as the spacer layers. All the multilayers were grown on LaAlO3 (100) by pulse laser deposition. An enhanced magnetoresistnace (defined (RH- R0)/R0) of more than 98% is observed in these multilayers. Also a low field magnetoresistance of 41% at 5000 Oe is observed in these multilayer films. The enhanced MR is attributed to the induced double exchange in the spacer layer, which is giving rise to more number of conducting carriers. This is compared by replacing the spacer layer with LaMnO3 where Mn exists only in 3+ state and no enhancement is observed in the La0.67Ca0.33MnO3 / LaMnO3 multilayers as double exchange mechanism can not be induced by external magnetic fields.Comment: 13 pages, 5 Figure

Efficient and realistic device modeling from atomic detail to the nanoscale

As semiconductor devices scale to new dimensions, the materials and designs become more dependent on atomic details. NEMO5 is a nanoelectronics modeling package designed for comprehending the critical multi-scale, multi-physics phenomena through efficient computational approaches and quantitatively modeling new generations of nanoelectronic devices as well as predicting novel device architectures and phenomena. This article seeks to provide updates on the current status of the tool and new functionality, including advances in quantum transport simulations and with materials such as metals, topological insulators, and piezoelectrics.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figure

Night sky at the Indian Astronomical Observatory during 2000-2008

We present an analysis of the optical night sky brightness and extinction coefficient measurements in UBVRI at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO), Hanle, during the period 2003-2008. They are obtained from an analysis of CCD images acquired at the 2 m Himalayan Chandra Telescope at IAO. Night sky brightness was estimated using 210 HFOSC images obtained on 47 nights and covering the declining phase of solar activity cycle-23. The zenith corrected values of the moonless night sky brightness in mag/square arcsecs are 22.14(U), 22.42(B), 21.28(V), 20.54(R) and 18.86(I) band. This shows that IAO is a dark site for optical observations. No clear dependency of sky brightness with solar activity is found. Extinction values at IAO are derived from an analysis of 1325 images over 58 nights. They are found to be 0.36 in U-band, 0.21 in B-band, 0.12 in V-band, 0.09 in R-band and 0.05 in I-band. On average, extinction during the summer months is slightly larger than that during the winter months. No clear evidence for a correlation between extinction in all bands and the average night time wind speed is found. Also presented here is the low resolution moonless optical night sky spectrum for IAO covering the wavelength range 3000-9300 \AA. Hanle region thus has the required characteristics of a good astronomical site in terms of night sky brightness and extinction, and could be a natural candidate site for any future large aperture Indian optical-infrared telescope(s).Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, uses basi.cls, accepted for publication in Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of Indi

Aerodynamic drag reduction by heat addition into the shock layer for a large angle blunt cone in hypersonic flow

Reduction in aerodynamic drag for a large angle blunt cone flying at hypersonic Mach number by heat addition into the shock layer is demonstrated in HST2 hypersonic shock tunnel. The heat addition is achieved by the exothermic reaction of chromium atoms ablated from the stagnation region of the chromium coated blunt cone with the atomic oxygen behind the shock wave. The measurements show about 47% reduction in the drag coefficient for a 60° apex angle blunt cone in a Mach 8 flow of 3.4 MJ/kg specific enthalpy. The reduction in drag is measured using the accelerometer based force balance system and the heat addition into the shock layer is identified by the surface mounted thin film heat flux gauges and the corresponding movement of the shock wave is visualized by schlieren pictures

Diffusion Limited Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) in Microgravity Environments

Tests designed to quantify the gravitational effects on thermal mixing and reactant injection in a Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) reactor have recently been performed in the Zero Gravity Facility (ZGF) at NASA s Glenn Research Center. An artificial waste stream, comprising aqueous mixtures of methanol, was pressurized to approximately 250 atm and then heated to 450 C. After uniform temperatures in the reactor were verified, a controlled injection of air was initiated through a specially designed injector to simulate diffusion limited reactions typical in most continuous flow reactors. Results from a thermal mapping of the reaction zone in both 1-g and 0-g environments are compared. Additionally, results of a numerical model of the test configuration are presented to illustrate first order effects on reactant mixing and thermal transport in the absence of gravity

Interference Exploitation-Based Hybrid Precoding With Robustness Against Phase Errors

Hybrid analog-digital precoding significantly reduces the hardware costs in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceivers when compared with fully digital precoding at the expense of increased transmit power. In order to mitigate the above-mentioned shortfall, we use the concept of constructive interference-based precoding, which has been shown to offer significant transmit power savings when compared with the conventional interference suppression-based precoding in fully digital multiuser MIMO systems. Moreover, in order to circumvent the potential quality-of-service degradation at the users due to the hardware impairments in the transmitters, we judiciously incorporate robustness against such vulnerabilities in the precoder design. Since the undertaken constructive interference-based robust hybrid precoding problem is nonconvex with infinite constraints and thus difficult to solve optimally, we decompose the problem into two subtasks, namely, analog precoding and digital precoding. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to compute the optimal constructive interference-based robust digital precoders. Furthermore, we devise a scheme to facilitate the implementation of the proposed algorithm in a low-complexity and distributed manner. We also discuss the block-level analog precoding techniques. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm and its implementation scheme over the state-of-the-art methods