Combustion and structure formation in SHS processes under microgravity conditions: SHS plans for microgravity experiments

This paper outlines ISMAN suggestions for the joint NASA-RSA project 'Combustion and Structure formation in SHS Processes under Microgravity Conditions'. The basic ideas of this work naturally follow from our almost 30-year experience in the field of SHS. As a matter of fact, we have already obtained some results in the following two directions closely related to the microgravity problem. One is the studies on SHS processes in the field of centrifugal forces. These studies aimed at the intensification of gravity-sensitive SHS processes in multicomponent highly caloric systems forming melts at high overloads (up to 2000 g). In other words, these studies had the objectives that are inverse to those in the microgravity studies. The second group of results directly relates to the microgravity problem and the project under consideration. These experiments played the important role in establishing links between SHS and microgravity

Catalytically Assisted Self-Propagating High-Temperature Synthesis of Tantalum Carbide Powders

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66003/1/j.1151-2916.2001.tb00777.x.pd

Particle In Cell Simulation of Combustion Synthesis of TiC Nanoparticles

A coupled continuum-discrete numerical model is presented to study the synthesis of TiC nanosized aggregates during a self-propagating combustion synthesis (SHS) process. The overall model describes the transient of the basic mechanisms governing the SHS process in a two-dimensional micrometer size geometry system. At each time step, the continuum (micrometer scale) model computes the current temperature field according to the prescribed boundary conditions. The overall system domain is discretized with a desired number of uniform computational cells. Each cell contains a convenient number of computation particles which represent the actual particles mixture. The particle-in-cell (discrete) model maps the temperature field from the (continuum) cells to the respective internal particles. Depending on the temperature reached by the cell, the titanium particles may undergo a solid-liquid transformation. If the distance between the carbon particle and the liquid titanium particles is within a certain tolerance they will react and a TiC particle will be formed in the cell. Accordingly, the molecular dynamic method will update the location of all particles in the cell and the amount of transformation heat accounted by the cell will be entered into the source term of the (continuum) heat conduction equation. The new temperature distribution will progress depending on the cells which will time-by-time undergo the chemical reaction. As a demonstration of the effectiveness of the overall model some paradigmatic examples are shown.Comment: submitted to Computer Physics Communication

Radiant ignition of a reactive solid with in-depth absorption

An asymptotic analysis of the limit of large activation energy is presented for radiant ignition of a solid that experiences a one-step Arrhenius reaction in the condensed phase. Both constant and time-dependent radiant-energy fluxes arc considered, and the complete range of values is covered for the absorption coefficient ji. It is shown that as » increases, the structure of the transition stage, which follows the inert heat-conduction stage, passes from a thermal explosion without heat conduction, to a single transient heat-conduction zone with distributed chemical heat release, to a two-zone structure composed of a reactive-diffusive-absorptive zone near the surface and a transient-diffusive zone in the interior. For very high values of u, the reactive-diffusive-absorptive zone further splits into a surface absorption zone and an interior reactive-diffusive zone, thereby reproducing results obtained previously for ignition by a surface-applied energy flux. The analysis shows that contrary to earlier expectation, the nondimensional absorption coefficient must be at least as large as the nondimensional activation energy for in-depth absorption to affect the ignition time negligibly

Nonsteady condensation and evaporation waves

We study motion of a phase transition front at a constant temperature between stable and metastable states in fluids with the universal Van der Waals equation of state (which is valid sufficiently close to the fluid's critical point). We focus on a case of relatively large metastability and low viscosity, when it can be shown analytically that no steadily moving phase-transition front exists. Numerically simulating a system of the one-dimensional Navier-Stokes and continuity equations, we find that, in this case, the nonsteady phase-transition front emits acoustic shocks in forward and backward directions. Through this mechanism, the front drops its velocity and eventually comes to a halt. The acoustic shock wave may shuttle, bouncing elastically from the system's edge and strongly inelastically from the phase transition front. Nonsteady rarefaction shock waves appear in the shuttle process, despite the fact that the model does not admit steady rarefaction waves propagating between stationary states. If the viscosity is below a certain threshold, an instability sets in, driving the system into a turbulent state. This work was supported by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.Comment: revtex text file and four eps files with figures. Physical Review Letters, in pres

Heat treatment of composite based on MAX-phases of the Ti-Al-C system

This paper studies the effect of heat treatment performed at the MAX-phases formation temperature on the phase composition of the MAX/TiC-composite formed in the Ti–Al–C system in the conditions of free SHS-compression. The dependence between the titanium carbide (TiC) content and delay time before applying the load during free SHS-compression is defined. The experimental results show that the proposed heat treatment leads to carbide content reduction

Mechanical activation influence on the morphological properties of La[2]O[3]-TiO[2]-B

The influence of mechanical activation of the powder mixture used to obtain the high-perfomance cathode for accelerating engineering with the SHS-method has been explored. The mechanically processed mixtures have been morphologically analyzed. The optimal modes of mechanical activation have been determined for the mixture

BEDT-TTF organic superconductors: the entangled role of phonons

We calculate the lattice phonons and the electron-phonon coupling of the organic superconductor \kappa-(BEDT-TTF)_2 I_3, reproducing all available experimental data connected to phonon dynamics. Low-frequency intra-molecular vibrations are strongly mixed to lattice phonons. Both acoustic and optical phonons are appreciably coupled to electrons through the modulation of the hopping integrals (e-LP coupling). By comparing the results relevant to superconducting \kappa- and \beta-(BEDT-TTF)_2 I_3, we show that electron-phonon coupling is fundamental to the pairing mechanism. Both e-LP and electron-molecular vibration (e-MV) coupling are essential to reproduce the critical temperatures. The e-LP coupling is stronger, but e-MV is instrumental to increase the average phonon frequency.Comment: 4 pages, including 4 figures. Published version, with Ref. 17 corrected after publicatio