313,448 research outputs found
The construction and operation of a water tunnel in application to flow visualization studies of an oscillating airfoil
The water tunnel which was constructed at the NASA Ames Research Center is described along with the flow field adjacent to an oscillating airfoil. The design and operational procedures of the tunnel are described in detail. Hydrogen bubble and thymol blue techniques are used to visualize the flow field. Results of the flow visualizations are presented in a series of still pictures and a high speed movie. These results show that time stall is more complicated than simple shedding from the leading edge or the trailing edge, particularly at relatively low frequency oscillations comparable to those of a helicopter blade. Therefore, any successful theory for predicting the stall loads on the helicopter blades must treat an irregular separated region rather than a discrete vortex passing over each blade surface
Control of fast electron propagation in foam target by high-Z doping
The influence of high-Z dopant (Bromine) in low-Z foam (polystyrene) target
on laser-driven fast electron propagation is studied by the 3D hybrid
particle-in-cell (PIC)/fluid code HEETS.It is found that the fast electrons are
better confined in doped targets due to the increasing resistivity of the
target, which induces a stronger resistive magnetic field which acts to
collimate the fast electron propagation.The energy deposition of fast electrons
into the background target is increased slightly in the doped target, which is
beneficial for applications requiring long distance propagation of fast
electrons, such as fast ignition
Lagrange Model for the Chiral Optical Properties of Stereometamaterials
We employ a general Lagrange model to describe the chiral optical properties
of stereometamaterials. We derive the elliptical eigenstates of a twisted
stacked split-ring resonator, taking phase retardation into account. Through
this approach, we obtain a powerful Jones matrix formalism which can be used to
calculate the polarization rotation, ellipticity, and circular dichroism of
transmitted waves through stereometamaterials at any incident polarization. Our
experimental measurements agree well with our model.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Theory and experimen
A CFD-informed quasi-steady model of flapping-wing aerodynamics
Aerodynamic performance and agility during flapping flight are determined by the combination of wing shape and kinematics. The degree of morphological and kinematic optimization is unknown and depends upon a large parameter space. Aimed at providing an accurate and computationally inexpensive modelling tool for flapping-wing aerodynamics, we propose a novel CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-informed quasi-steady model (CIQSM), which assumes that the aerodynamic forces on a flapping wing can be decomposed into quasi-steady forces and parameterized based on CFD results. Using least-squares fitting, we determine a set of proportional coefficients for the quasi-steady model relating wing kinematics to instantaneous aerodynamic force and torque; we calculate power as the product of quasi-steady torques and angular velocity. With the quasi-steady model fully and independently parameterized on the basis of high-fidelity CFD modelling, it is capable of predicting flapping-wing aerodynamic forces and power more accurately than the conventional blade element model (BEM) does. The improvement can be attributed to, for instance, taking into account the effects of the induced downwash and the wing tip vortex on the force generation and power consumption. Our model is validated by comparing the aerodynamics of a CFD model and the present quasi-steady model using the example case of a hovering hawkmoth. This demonstrates that the CIQSM outperforms the conventional BEM while remaining computationally cheap, and hence can be an effective tool for revealing the mechanisms of optimization and control of kinematics and morphology in flapping-wing flight for both bio-flyers and unmanned aerial systems
Geometric phases in a scattering process
The study of geometric phase in quantum mechanics has so far be confined to
discrete (or continuous) spectra and trace preserving evolutions. Consider only
the transmission channel, a scattering process with internal degrees of freedom
is neither a discrete spectrum problem nor a trace preserving process. We
explore the geometric phase in a scattering process taking only the
transmission process into account. We find that the geometric phase can be
calculated by the some method as in an unitary evolution. The interference
visibility depends on the transmission amplitude. The dependence of the
geometric phase on the barrier strength and the spin-spin coupling constant is
also presented and discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
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