Anharmonicity-induced phonon broadening in aluminum at high temperatures

Thermal phonon broadening in aluminum was studied by theoretical and experimental methods. Using second-order perturbation theory, phonon linewidths from the third-order anharmonicity were calculated from first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) with the supercell finite-displacement method. The importance of all three-phonon processes were assessed and individual phonon broadenings are presented. The good agreement between calculations and prior measurements of phonon linewidths at 300 K and new measurements of the phonon density of states to 750 K indicates that the third-order phonon-phonon interactions calculated from DFT can account for the lifetime broadenings of phonons in aluminum to at least 80% of its melting temperature

Robust optimization for energy transactions in multi-microgrids under uncertainty

Independent operation of single microgrids (MGs) faces problems such as low self-consumption of local renewable energy, high operation cost and frequent power exchange with the grid. Interconnecting multiple MGs as a multi-microgrid (MMG) is an effective way to improve operational and economic performance. However, ensuring the optimal collaborative operation of a MMG is a challenging problem, especially under disturbances of intermittent renewable energy. In this paper, the economic and collaborative operation of MMGs is formulated as a unit commitment problem to describe the discrete characteristics of energy transaction combinations among MGs. A two-stage adaptive robust optimization based collaborative operation approach for a residential MMG is constructed to derive the scheduling scheme which minimizes the MMG operating cost under the worst realization of uncertain PV output. Transformed by its KKT optimality conditions, the reformulated model is efficiently solved by a column-and-constraint generation (C&CG) method. Case studies verify the effectiveness of the proposed model and evaluate the benefits of energy transactions in MMGs. The results show that the developed MMG operation approach is able to minimize the daily MMG operating cost while mitigating the disturbances of uncertainty in renewable energy sources. Compared to the non-interactive model, the proposed model can not only reduce the MMG operating cost but also mitigate the frequent energy interaction between the MMG and the grid

Electronic structure and superconductivity of BiS2-based compounds LaO1-xFxBiS2

Using the density-functional perturbation theory with structural optimization, we investigate the electronic structure, phonon spectra, and superconductivity of BiS2-based layered compounds LaO1-xFxBiS2. For LaO0.5F0.5BiS2, the calculated electron-phonon coupling constant is equal to lambda = 0.8, and obtained Tc = 9.1 K is very close to its experimental value, indicating that it is a conventional electron-phonon superconductor