Hybrid Photothermal Technique for Microscale Thermal Conductivity Measurement

Most existing thermal conductivity measurement techniques of nuclear fuel only measure the overall effective thermal conductivity of the fuel, cladding, and gap, with low spatial-resolution. However, damage to nuclear fuel microstructure caused by neutron-irradiation can result in sharp, local changes of thermal conductivity. Additionally, extremely large temperature-gradients (~1600 K/cm) from the fuel centerline to the coolant result in similar gradients of thermal conductivity. Therefore, in pursuit of greater understanding of nuclear fuel performance, the objective of this study was to develop a non-contact thermal conductivity measurement technique to provide micron-sized spatial-resolution capability. Based on photothermal techniques and using both frequency and spatial-domain photothermal reflectance methods, an experimental measurement system was designed, built, and tested for measuring the thermal conductivity of a thin-film coated material with micron resolution. This hybrid method involves separate measurement of thermal diffusivity, D, and thermal effusivity, e, from which, thermal conductivity, k = (e2/D)1/2 is calculated. A detailed parametric analysis using analytical solutions and a numerical model has been performed to guide the experiment and optimize measurement conditions. The measurement system was validated using two calibration samples having thermal conductivities at both the upper and lower limit of the common range of nuclear fuels (~1 - 10 W/m/K). Sources of experimental errors are discussed qualitatively and the uncertainty of the measurement system for the thermal conductivity range of interest is quantified. The measured error is found to be about 10%, and up to close to 20% for the worst case (upper limit of k range). An extended application of the modulated laser excitation technique is explored to measure mechanical properties of solid materials. This technique involves obtaining the natural frequencies of different vibrational modes of a cantilever beam sample allowing for the extraction of the elasticity constants of the material. From Neumann\u27s principle, the number of independent elasticity constants is dependent on the symmetry of the material structure. Specifically, symmetries of crystalline materials and composite materials are analyzed. Experimental results of two validation samples with cubic crystal system agreed well with the published values with experimental errors of ~10%

The study of frequency-scan photothermal reflectance technique for thermal diffusivity measurement

A frequency scan photothermal reflectance technique to measure thermal diffusivity of bulk samples is studied in this manuscript. Similar to general photothermal reflectance methods, an intensity-modulated heating laser and a constant intensity probe laser are used to determine the surface temperature response under sinusoidal heating. The approach involves fixing the distance between the heating and probe laser spots, recording the phase lag of reflected probe laser intensity with respect to the heating laser frequency modulation, and extracting thermal diffusivity using the phase lag–(frequency)1/2 relation. The experimental validation is performed on three samples (SiO2, CaF2, and Ge), which have a wide range of thermal diffusivities. The measured thermal diffusivity values agree closely with the literature values. Compared to the commonly used spatial scan method, the experimental setup and operation of the frequency scan method are simplified, and the uncertainty level is equal to or smaller than that of the spatial scan method

Theoretical analysis of low GWP mixture R600a/R1234ze as a possible alternative to R600a in domestic refrigerators

In this study, a thermodynamic analysis of R600a and R600a/R134ze mixture at three compositions of 0%, 20% and 50% R1234ze is measured in a domestic refrigerator. The main purpose of this study is to theoretically verify the possibility of applying the mixture R600a/R1234ze in large capacity refrigerator. The performance has been assessed for different condensing temperatures between 30 and 50? with constant -20? evaporating temperature .The performance of the refrigerator was compared in terms of volumetric cooling capacity, COP (coefficient of performance), compression ratio and compressor discharge temperature. The results show that the volumetric cooling capacity, COP, compressor power consumption and compressor discharge temperature of R600a/R1234ze mixture are similar to those of pure R600a,so that R600a compressor can be used for R600a/R1234ze mixture without any modifications. The amount charge of the mixture R600a/R1234ze is slight lower than that of R600a in the same equipment. Flammability decreases in R600a/R1234ze mixtures with increasing fractions of R1234ze. This is an desirable characteristic because of the large charge requirement of large refrigeration systems

Spatially localized measurement of thermal conductivity using a hybrid photothermal technique

A photothermal technique capable of measuring thermal conductivity with micrometer lateral resolution is presented. This technique involves measuring separately the thermal diffusivity, D, and thermal effusivity, e, to extract the thermal conductivity, k = (e2/D)1/2. To generalize this approach, sensitivity analysis is conducted for materials having a range of thermal conductivities. Application to nuclear fuel is consider by performing experimental validation using two materials (CaF2 and SiO2) having thermal properties representative of fresh and high burnup nuclear fuel. The measured conductivities compare favorably with literature values

LMDX: Language Model-based Document Information Extraction and Localization

Large Language Models (LLM) have revolutionized Natural Language Processing (NLP), improving state-of-the-art on many existing tasks and exhibiting emergent capabilities. However, LLMs have not yet been successfully applied on semi-structured document information extraction, which is at the core of many document processing workflows and consists of extracting key entities from a visually rich document (VRD) given a predefined target schema. The main obstacles to LLM adoption in that task have been the absence of layout encoding within LLMs, critical for a high quality extraction, and the lack of a grounding mechanism ensuring the answer is not hallucinated. In this paper, we introduce Language Model-based Document Information Extraction and Localization (LMDX), a methodology to adapt arbitrary LLMs for document information extraction. LMDX can do extraction of singular, repeated, and hierarchical entities, both with and without training data, while providing grounding guarantees and localizing the entities within the document. In particular, we apply LMDX to the PaLM 2-S LLM and evaluate it on VRDU and CORD benchmarks, setting a new state-of-the-art and showing how LMDX enables the creation of high quality, data-efficient parsers

Characterization of a Weak Allele of Zebrafish cloche Mutant

Hematopoiesis is a complicated and dynamic process about which the molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Danio rerio (zebrafish) is an excellent vertebrate system for studying hematopoiesis and developmental mechanisms. In the previous study, we isolated and identified a cloche172 (clo172) mutant, a novel allele compared to the original cloche (clo) mutant, through using complementation test and initial mapping. Here, according to whole mount in-situ hybridization, we report that the endothelial cells in clo172 mutant embryos, although initially developed, failed to form the functional vascular system eventually. In addition, further characterization indicates that the clo172 mutant exhibited weaker defects instead of completely lost in primitive erythroid cells and definitive hematopoietic cells compared with the clos5 mutant. In contrast, primitive myeloid cells were totally lost in clo172 mutant. Furthermore, these reappeared definitive myeloid cells were demonstrated to initiate from the remaining hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in clo172 mutant, confirmed by the dramatic decrease of lyc in clo172runx1w84x double mutant. Collectively, the clo172 mutant is a weak allele compared to the clos5 mutant, therefore providing a model for studying the early development of hematopoietic and vascular system, as well as an opportunity to further understand the function of the cloche gene

An Experimental Investigation on the Performance of a Water Storage Tank with Sodium Acetate Trihydrate

Phase change material (PCM) water tanks have a major influence on the efficiency improvement of solar energy systems. This article discusses the effects of PCM under various inlets in a tank based on related research. So as to research the performance of the water storage tank, this paper built a set of water tank experimental systems using sodium acetate trihydrate. The thermal characteristics of two different water tanks were analyzed at 2, 6 and 10 L/min when the inlet temperature was 20 °C and the initial high temperature was 80 °C. The test results indicate that adding PCMs helps to provide an extra 1.4% of stored heat, prolong the hot water outlet time, and has a better thermal stratification, compared with ordinary water tanks. However, PCMs do not give off heat quickly at high flow rates. Besides the exergy efficiency (EE) gradually decreasing, the MIX number first decreases and then increases; the fill efficiency (FE) has the opposite trend with the flow increasing. FE has a max of 0.905 at 6 L/min