Flutter of Darrieus wind turbine blades: Correlation of theory and experiment

Flutter analysis of two wind turbines was correlated with experimental data for flutter of Darrieus blades

Flutter of Darrieus wind turbine blades

The testing of Darrieus wind turbines has indicated that under certain conditions, serious vibrations of the blades can occur, involving flatwise bending, torsion, and chordwise bending. A theoretical method of predicting the aeroelastic stability of the coupled bending and torsional motion of such blades with a view to determining the cause of these vibrations, and a means of suppressing them was developed

Individual-blade-control research in the MIT VTOL Technology Laboratory 1977-1985

A new, advanced system for active control of helicopters and its application to the solution of rotor aerodynamic and aeroelastic problems is described. Each blade is individually controlled in the rotating frame over a wide range of frequencies. Application of the system to gust alleviation, attitude stabilization, vibration alleviation, blade lag damping augmentation, stall flutter suppression, blade flapping stabilization, stall alleviation, and performance enhancement is outlined. The effectiveness of the system in achieving most of these applications is demonstrated by experimental results from wind tunnel tests of a model helicopter rotor with individual blade control. The feasibility of achieving many or all of the applications of individual blade control using the conventional helicopter swash plate is demonstrated, and the necessary control laws are presented

Wind Tunnel Generation of Sinusoidal Lateral and Longitudinal Gusts by Circulation of Twin Parallel Airfoils

A gust generator capable of producing sinusoidal lateral and longitudinal gusts was developed for the purpose of studying the gust response of a model rotor-propeller in a wind tunnel. The gust generator utilized harmonic circulation control of twin parallel airfoils to achieve the harmonic lift variation required for gust generation. The gust generator design, construction, and testing is described. Typical test results are presented in the form of lateral and longitudinal gust perturbation velocities as a function of generator reduced frequency

Aerodynamic interference effects on tilting proprotor aircraft

The Green's function method was used to study tilting proprotor aircraft aerodynamics with particular application to the problem of the mutual interference of the wing-fuselage-tail-rotor wake configuration. While the formulation is valid for fully unsteady rotor aerodynamics, attention was directed to steady state aerodynamics, which was achieved by replacing the rotor with the actuator disk approximation. The use of an actuator disk analysis introduced a mathematical singularity into the formulation; this problem was studied and resolved. The pressure distribution, lift, and pitching moment were obtained for an XV-15 wing-fuselage-tail rotor configuration at various flight conditions. For the flight configurations explored, the effects of the rotor wake interference on the XV-15 tilt rotor aircraft yielded a reduction in the total lift and an increase in the nose-down pitching moment. This method provides an analytical capability that is simple to apply and can be used to investigate fuselage-tail rotor wake interference as well as to explore other rotor design problem areas

Improving global estimates of syphilis in pregnancy by diagnostic test type: A systematic review and meta-analysis

AbstractBackground“Probable active syphilis,” is defined as seroreactivity in both non-treponemal and treponemal tests. A correction factor of 65%, namely the proportion of pregnant women reactive in one syphilis test type that were likely reactive in the second, was applied to reported syphilis seropositivity data reported to WHO for global estimates of syphilis during pregnancy.ObjectivesTo identify more accurate correction factors based on test type reported.Search StrategyMedline search using: “Syphilis [Mesh] and Pregnancy [Mesh],” “Syphilis [Mesh] and Prenatal Diagnosis [Mesh],” and “Syphilis [Mesh] and Antenatal [Keyword].Selection CriteriaEligible studies must have reported results for pregnant or puerperal women for both non-treponemal and treponemal serology.Data collection and analysisWe manually calculated the crude percent estimates of subjects with both reactive treponemal and reactive non-treponemal tests among subjects with reactive treponemal and among subjects with reactive non-treponemal tests. We summarized the percent estimates using random effects models.Main resultsCountries reporting both reactive non-treponemal and reactive treponemal testing required no correction factor. Countries reporting non-treponemal testing or treponemal testing alone required a correction factor of 52.2% and 53.6%, respectively. Countries not reporting test type required a correction factor of 68.6%.ConclusionsFuture estimates should adjust reported maternal syphilis seropositivity by test type to ensure accuracy

Tina Fuchs Interview 2016

A 2016 interview with Tina Fuchs, the Dean of Students at Western Oregon University. In her interview, she discusses her career and the changes in student diversity and sustainability that she has witnessed over her 27 years at as an administrator at Western Oregon University

Search for Sterile Neutrinos with a Radioactive Source at Daya Bay

The far site detector complex of the Daya Bay reactor experiment is proposed as a location to search for sterile neutrinos with > eV mass. Antineutrinos from a 500 kCi 144Ce-144Pr beta-decay source (DeltaQ=2.996 MeV) would be detected by four identical 20-ton antineutrino targets. The site layout allows flexible source placement; several specific source locations are discussed. In one year, the 3+1 sterile neutrino hypothesis can be tested at essentially the full suggested range of the parameters Delta m^2_{new} and sin^22theta_{new} (90% C.L.). The backgrounds from six nuclear reactors at >1.6 km distance are shown to be manageable. Advantages of performing the experiment at the Daya Bay far site are described

Neutral Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model with explicit CP violation

The neutral Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) with explicit CP violation is investigated at the 1-loop level, using the effective potential method; not only the loops involving the third generation of quarks and scalar quarks, but also the loops involving $W$ boson, charged Higgs boson, and chargino are taken into account. It is found that for some parameter values of the NMSSM the contributions from the $W$ boson, charged Higgs boson, and chargino loops may modify the masses of the neutral Higgs bosons and the mixings among them significantly, depending on the CP phase. In $e^+e^-$ collisions, the prospects for discovering neutral Higgs bosons are investigated within the context of the NMSSM with explicit CP violation when the dominant component of the lightest neutral Higgs boson is the Higgs singlet field of the NMSSM.Comment: Latex, 23 pages, 6 figure

Charged Higgs boson in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model with explicit CP violation

The phenomenology of the explicit CP violation in the Higgs sector of the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) is investigated, with emphasis on the charged Higgs boson. The radiative corrections due to both quarks and scalar-quarks of the third generation are taken into account, and the negative result of the search for the Higgs bosons at CERN LEP2, with the discovery limit of 0.1 pb, is imposed as a constraint. It is found that there are parameter regions of the NMSSM where the lightest neutral Higgs boson may even be massless, without being detected at LEP2. This implies that the LEP2 data do not contradict the existence of a massless neutral Higgs boson in the NMSSM. For the charged Higgs boson, the radiative corrections to its mass may be negative in some parameter regions of the NMSSM. The phenomenological lower bound on the radiatively corrected mass of the charged Higgs boson is increased as the CP violation becomes maximal, i.e., as the CP violating phase becomes $\pi/2$. At the maximal CP violation, its lower bound is about 110 GeV for 5 $\leqslant \tan \beta \leqslant$ 40. The vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the neutral Higgs singlet is shown to be no smaller than 16 GeV for any parameter values of the NMSSM with explicit CP violation. This value of the lower limit is found to increase up to about 45 GeV as the ratio ($\tan \beta$) of the VEVs of the two Higgs doublets decreases to smaller values ($\sim$ 2). The discovery limit of the Higgs boson search at LEP2 is found to cover about a half of the kinematically allowed part of the whole parameter space of the NMSSM, and the portion is roughly stable against the CP violating phase.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, 6 figure