Hurricane Hugo Collection - Accession 1160

This collection consists of newspapers and other publications related to Hurricane Hugo. Hurricane Hugo was a category 5 hurricane that made landfall near Charleston, SC and was still classified as a hurricane with 80 MPH wind gusts as it moved inland through York County. Hurricane Hugo was the costliest hurricane in U. S. History at the time and this collection chronicles the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo with a focus on the damage caused by Hugo in the York County, SC and Mecklenburg County, NC.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/2506/thumbnail.jp

Design for a High Energy Density Kelvin-Helmholtz Experiment

While many high energy density physics (HEDP) Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instability experiments have been fielded as part of basic HEDP and astrophysics studies, not one HEDP Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) experiment has been successfully performed. Herein, a design for a novel HEDP x-ray driven KH experiment is presented along with supporting radiation-hydrodynamic simulation and theory

Analysis of Images from Experiments Investigating Fragmentation of Materials

Image processing techniques have been used extensively to identify objects of interest in image data and extract representative characteristics for these objects. However, this can be a challenge due to the presence of noise in the images and the variation across images in a dataset. When the number of images to be analyzed is large, the algorithms used must also be relatively insensitive to the choice of parameters and lend themselves to partial or full automation. This not only avoids manual analysis which can be time consuming and error-prone, but also makes the analysis reproducible, thus enabling comparisons between images which have been processed in an identical manner. In this paper, we describe our approach to extracting features for objects of interest in experimental images. Focusing on the specific problem of fragmentation of materials, we show how we can extract statistics for the fragments and the gaps between them

Bent Marshak Waves

Radiation driven heat waves (Marshak Waves) are ubiquitous in astrophysics and terrestrial laser driven high energy density plasma physics (HEDP) experiments. Generally, the equations describing Marshak waves are so nonlinear, that solutions involving more than one spatial dimension require simulation. However, in this paper we show how one may analytically solve the problem of the two-dimensional nonlinear evolution of a Marshak wave, bounded by lossy walls, using an asymptotic expansion in a parameter related to the wall albedo and a simplification of the heat front equation of motion. Three parameters determine the nonlinear evolution, a modified Markshak diffusion constant, a smallness parameter related to the wall albedo, and the spacing of the walls. The final nonlinear solution shows that the Marshak wave will be both slowed and bent by the non-ideal boundary. In the limit of a perfect boundary, the solution recovers the original diffusion-like solution of Marshak. The analytic solution will be compared to a limited set of simulation results and experimental data

Fragmentation in Biaxial Tension

We have carried out an experiment that places a ductile stainless steel in a state of biaxial tension at a high rate of strain. The loading of the ductile metal spherical cap is performed by the detonation of a high explosive layer with a conforming geometry to expand the metal radially outwards. Simulations of the loading and expansion of the metal predict strain rates that compare well with experimental observations. A high percentage of the HE loaded material was recovered through a soft capture process and characterization of the recovered fragments provided high quality data, including uniform strain prior to failure and fragment size. These data were used with a modified fragmentation model to determine a fragmentation energy

A Variational Method in Out of Equilibrium Physical Systems

A variational principle is further developed for out of equilibrium dynamical systems by using the concept of maximum entropy. With this new formulation it is obtained a set of two first-order differential equations, revealing the same formal symplectic structure shared by classical mechanics, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. In particular, it is obtained an extended equation of motion for a rotating dynamical system, from where it emerges a kind of topological torsion current of the form $\epsilon_{ijk} A_j \omega_k$, with $A_j$ and $\omega_k$ denoting components of the vector potential (gravitational or/and electromagnetic) and $\omega$ is the angular velocity of the accelerated frame. In addition, it is derived a special form of Umov-Poynting's theorem for rotating gravito-electromagnetic systems, and obtained a general condition of equilibrium for a rotating plasma. The variational method is then applied to clarify the working mechanism of some particular devices, such as the Bennett pinch and vacuum arcs, to calculate the power extraction from an hurricane, and to discuss the effect of transport angular momentum on the radiactive heating of planetary atmospheres. This development is seen to be advantageous and opens options for systematic improvements.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, submitted to review, added one referenc

An experimental testbed for the study of hydrodynamic issues in supernovae

More than a decade after the explosion of supernova 1987A, unresolved discrepancies still remain in attempts to numerically simulate the mixing processes initiated by the passage of a very strong shock through the layered structure of the progenitor star. Numerically computed velocities of the radioactive 56Ni56Ni and 56Co,56Co, produced by shock-induced explosive burning within the silicon layer, for example, are still more than 50% too low as compared with the measured velocities. To resolve such discrepancies between observation and simulation, an experimental testbed has been designed on the Omega Laser for the study of hydrodynamic issues of importance to supernovae (SNe). In this paper, results are presented from a series of scaled laboratory experiments designed to isolate and explore several issues in the hydrodynamics of supernova explosions. The results of the experiments are compared with numerical simulations and are generally found to be in reasonable agreement. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69986/2/PHPAEN-8-5-2446-1.pd