Limitations on wind-tunnel pressure signature extrapolation

Analysis of some recent experimental sonic boom data has revived the hypothesis that there is a closeness limit to the near-field separation distance from which measured wind tunnel pressure signatures can be extrapolated to the ground as though generated by a supersonic-cruise aircraft. Geometric acoustic theory is used to derive an estimate of this distance and the sample data is used to provide a preliminary indication of practical separation distance values

Wind-tunnel investigation of the validity of a sonic-boom-minimization concept

The Langley unitary plan unitary plan wind tunnel was used to determine the validity of a sonic-boom-minimization theory. Five models - two reference and three low-boom constrained - were tested at design Mach numbers of 1.5 and 2.7. Results show that the pressure signatures generated by the low-boom models had significantly lower overpressure levels than those produced by the reference models and that small changes in the Mach number and/or the lift caused relatively small changes in the signature shape and overpressure level. Boundary-layer effects were found in the signature shape and overpressure level. Boundary-layer effects were found to be sizable on the low-boom models, and when viscous corrections were included in the analysis, improved agreement between the predicted and the measured signatures was noted. Since this agreement was better at Mach 1.5 than at Mach 2.7, it was concluded that the minimization method was definitely valid at Mach 1.5 and was probably valid at Mach 2.7, with further work needed to resolve the uncertainty

Current research in sonic-boom minimization

A review is given of several questions as yet unanswered in the area of sonic-boom research. Efforts, both here at Langley and elsewhere, in the area of minimization, human response, design techniques and in developing higher order propagation methods are discussed. In addition, a wind-tunnel test program being conducted to assess the validity of minimization methods based on a forward spike in the F-function is described

Large-Scale Radio Structure in the Universe: Giant Radio Galaxies

Giant radio galaxies (GRGs), with linear sizes larger than 1 Mpc (H0=50 km/s/Mpc), represent the biggest single objects in the Universe. GRGs are rare among the entire population of radio galaxies (RGs) and their physical evolution is not well understood though for many years they have been of special interest for several reasons. The lobes of radio sources can compress cold gas clumps and trigger star or even dwarf galaxy formation, they can also transport gas from a host galaxy to large distances and seed the IGM with magnetic fields. Since GRGs have about 10 to 100 times larger sizes than normal RGs, their influence on the ambient medium is correspondingly wider and is pronounced on scales comparable to those of clusters of galaxies or larger. Therefore `giants' could play an important role in the process of large-scale structure formation in the Universe. Recently, thanks to the new all sky radio surveys, significant progress in searching for new GRGs has been made.Comment: To appear in Multiwavelength AGN Surveys, ed. R. Maiolino and R. Mujica, Singapore: World Scientific, 2004, 2 page

Theoretical Analysis of Acceptance Rates in Multigrid Monte Carlo

We analyze the kinematics of multigrid Monte Carlo algorithms by investigating acceptance rates for nonlocal Metropolis updates. With the help of a simple criterion we can decide whether or not a multigrid algorithm will have a chance to overcome critial slowing down for a given model. Our method is introduced in the context of spin models. A multigrid Monte Carlo procedure for nonabelian lattice gauge theory is described, and its kinematics is analyzed in detail.Comment: 7 pages, no figures, (talk at LATTICE 92 in Amsterdam

A wind-tunnel investigation of sonic-boom pressure distributions of bodies of revolution at Mach 2.96, 3.83, and 4.63

Measurements of sonic boom pressure distribution of bodies of revolution at Mach 2.96, 3.83, and 4.63 in Unitary Plan wind tunne

Nexus solitons in the center vortex picture of QCD

It is very plausible that confinement in QCD comes from linking of Wilson loops to finite-thickness vortices with magnetic fluxes corresponding to the center of the gauge group. The vortices are solitons of a gauge-invariant QCD action representing the generation of gluon mass. There are a number of other solitonic states of this action. We discuss here what we call nexus solitons, in which for gauge group SU(N), up to N vortices meet a a center, or nexus, provided that the total flux of the vortices adds to zero (mod N). There are fundamentally two kinds of nexuses: Quasi-Abelian, which can be described as composites of Abelian imbedded monopoles, whose Dirac strings are cancelled by the flux condition; and fully non-Abelian, resembling a deformed sphaleron. Analytic solutions are available for the quasi-Abelian case, and we discuss variational estimates of the action of the fully non-Abelian nexus solitons in SU(2). The non-Abelian nexuses carry Chern-Simons number (or topological charge in four dimensions). Their presence does not change the fundamentals of confinement in the center-vortex picture, but they may lead to a modified picture of the QCD vacuum.Comment: LateX, 24 pages, 2 .eps figure