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Densely distributed and real-time scour hole monitoring using piezoelectric rod sensors
This study aims to validate a piezoelectric driven-rod scour monitoring system that can sense changes in scour depth along the entire rod at its instrumented location. The proposed sensor is a polymeric slender rod with a thin strip of polyvinylidene fluoride that runs through its midline. Extraction of the fundamental frequency allows the direct calculation of the exposed length (or scour depth) of the slender rod undergoing fluid flow excitation. First, laboratory validation in dry conditions is presented. Second, hydrodynamic testing of the sensor system in a soil-bed flume is discussed. Each rod was installed using a three-dimensional-printed footing designed for ease of installation and stabilization during testing. The sensors were installed in a layout designed to capture symmetric scour conditions around a scaled pier. In order to analyze the system out of steady-state conditions, water velocity was increased in stages during testing to induce different degrees of scour. As ambient water flow excited the portion of the exposed rods, the embedded piezoelectric element outputted a time-varying voltage signal. Different methods were then employed to extract the fundamental frequency of each rod, and the results were compared. Further testing was also performed to characterize the relationship between frequency outputs and flow velocity, which were previously thought to be independent. In general, the proposed driven-rod scour monitoring system successfully captured changing frequencies under varied flow conditions
Effective charging energy for a regular granular metal array
We study the Ambegaokar-Eckern-Sch\"{o}n (AES) model for a regular array of
metallic grains coupled by tunnel junctions of conductance and calculate
both paramagnetic and diamagnetic terms in the Kubo formula for the
conductivity. We find analytically, and confirm by numerical path integral
Monte Carlo methods, that for the conductivity obeys an Arrhenius law
with an effective charging energy
when the temperature is sufficiently low, due to a subtle cancellation between
inelastic-cotunneling contributions in the paramagnetic and diamagnetic
terms. We present numerical results for the effective charging energy and
compare the results with recent theoretical analyses. We discuss the different
ways in which the experimentally observed
law could be attributed to disorder.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, ReVTeX; added estimates of effective charging
energies and discussion of effects of disorde
"Exact" Algorithm for Random-Bond Ising Models in 2D
We present an efficient algorithm for calculating the properties of Ising
models in two dimensions, directly in the spin basis, without the need for
mapping to fermion or dimer models. The algorithm gives numerically exact
results for the partition function and correlation functions at a single
temperature on any planar network of N Ising spins in O(N^{3/2}) time or less.
The method can handle continuous or discrete bond disorder and is especially
efficient in the case of bond or site dilution, where it executes in O(L^2 ln
L) time near the percolation threshold. We demonstrate its feasibility on the
ferromagnetic Ising model and the +/- J random-bond Ising model (RBIM) and
discuss the regime of applicability in cases of full frustration such as the
Ising antiferromagnet on a triangular lattice.Comment: 4.2 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
High power (60mW) single frequency erbium:ytterbium codoped fiber laser
The characteristics of a high power Er3+:Yb3+ single frequency fiber laser pumped at 980nm are reported. The device gives 60mW output power with RIN 10MHz and linewidth 500kHz. At low output powers (< 30mW) the slope efficiency is as high as 25%, falling to 12% at higher powers, the saturation behaviour is related to a bottleneck effect due to the finite Yb-Er transfer rate. Improved performance can be obtained using new fibers with an increased rare-earth concentration which show negligible signs of erbium clustering
Noise Predictions for STM in Systems with Local Electron Nematic Order
We propose that thermal noise in local stripe orientation should be readily
detectable via STM on systems in which local stripe orientations are strongly
affected by quenched disorder. Stripes, a unidirectional, nanoscale modulation
of electronic charge, are strongly affected by quenched disorder in
two-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional systems. While stripe orientations
tend to lock to major lattice directions, dopant disorder locally breaks
rotational symmetry. In a host crystal with otherwise rotational
symmetry, stripe orientations in the presence of quenched disorder map to the
random field Ising model. While the low temperature state of such a system is
generally a stripe glass in two dimensional or strongly layered systems, as the
temperature is raised, stripe orientational fluctuations become more prevalent.
We propose that these thermally excited fluctuations should be readily
detectable in scanning tunneling spectroscopy as {\em telegraph noise} in the
high voltage part of the local curves. We predict the spatial, temporal,
and thermal evolution of such noise, including the circumstances under which
such noise is most likely to be observed. In addition, we propose an in-situ
test, amenable to any local scanning probe, for assessing whether such noise is
due to correlated fluctuations rather than independent switchers.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
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