Filter properties of seam material from paved urban soils

International audienceDepositions of all kinds of urban dirt and dust including anthropogenic organic substances like soot change the filter properties of the seam filling material of pervious pavements and lead to the formation of a new soil substrate called seam material. In this study, the impact of the particular urban form of organic matter (OM) on the seam materials CECpot, the specific surface area (As), the surface charge density (SCD), the adsorption energies (Ea) and the adsorption of Cd and Pb were assessed. The Cd and Pb displacement through the pavement system has been simulated in order to assess the risk of soil and groundwater contamination from infiltration of rainwater in paved urban soils. As, Ea and SCD derived from water vapor adsorption isotherms, CECpot, Pb and Cd adsorption isotherms where analyzed from adsorption experiments. The seam material is characterized by a darker munsell-color and a higher Corg (12 to 48g kg-1) compared to the original seam filling. Although, the increased Corg leads to higher As (16m2g-1) and higher CECpot (0.7 to 4.8cmolckg-1), with 78cmolckg-1C its specific CECpot is low compared to OM of non-urban soils. This can be explained by a low SCD of 1.2×10-6molc m-2 and a low fraction of high adsorption energy sites which is likely caused by the non-polar character of the accumulated urban OM in the seam material. The seam material shows stronger sorption of Pb and Cd compared to the original construction sand. The retardation capacity of seam material for Pb is similar, for Cd it is much smaller compared to natural sandy soils with similar Corg concentrations. The simulated long term displacement scenarios for a street in Berlin do not indicate an acute contamination risk for Pb . For Cd the infiltration from puddles can lead to a breakthrough of Cd through the pavement system during only one decade. Although they contain contaminations itself, the accumulated forms of urban OM lead to improved filter properties of the seam material and may retard contaminations more effectively than the originally used construction sand

Absolute calibration of the LOPES antenna system

Radio emission in extensive air showers arises from an interaction with the geomagnetic field and is subject of theoretical studies. This radio emission has advantages for the detection of high energy cosmic rays compared to secondary particle or fluorescence measurement methods. Radio antennas like the LOPES30 antenna system are suited to investigate this emission process by detecting the radio pulses. The characteristic observable parameters like electric field strength and pulse length require a calibration which was done with a reference radio source resulting in an amplification factor representing the system behavior in the environment of the KASCADE-Grande experiment. Knowing the amplification factor and the gain of the LOPES antennas LOPES30 is calibrated absolutely for systematic analyses of the radio emission.Comment: 5 pages, Proceedings of International Workshop on Acoustic and Radio EeV Neutrino detection Activities: ARENA, May 17-19, 2005, DESY Zeuthe

Capabilities of the Impact Testing Facility at Marshall Space Flight Center

The test and analysis capabilities of the Impact Testing Facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are described. Nine different gun systems accommodate a wide range of projectile and target sizes and shapes at velocities from subsonic through hypersonic, to accomplish a broad range of ballistic and hypervelocity impact tests. These gun systems include ballistic and microballistic gas and powder guns, a two-stage light gas gun, and specialty guns for weather encounter studies. The ITF "rain gun" is the only hydrometeor impact gun known to be in existence in the United States that can provide single impact performance data with known raindrop sizes. Simulation of high velocity impact is available using the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamic Code. The Impact Testing Facility provides testing, custom test configuration design and fabrication, and analytical services for NASA, the Department of Defense, academic institutions, international space agencies, and private industry in a secure facility located at Marshall Space Flight Center, on the US Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. This facility performs tests that are subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and DoD secret classified restrictions as well as proprietary and unrestricted tests for civil space agencies, academic institutions, and commercial aerospace and defense companies and their suppliers

Modelling agronomic properties of Technosols constructed with urban wastes

International audienceThe greening of urban and suburban areas requires large amounts of arable earth that is a non-renewable resource. However, concentration of population in cities leads to the production of high amounts of wastes and by-products that are nowadays partly recycled as a resource and quite systematically exported out of urban areas. To preserve natural soil resources, a strategy of waste recycling as fertile substitutes is proposed. Eleven wastes are selected for their environmental harmlessness and their contrasted physico-chemical properties for their potential use in pedological engineering. The aim is (i) to demonstrate the feasibility of the formulation of fertile substrates exclusively with wastes and (ii) to model their physico-chemical properties following various types, number and proportions of constitutive wastes. Twenty-five binary and ternary combinations are tested at different ratios for total carbon, Olsen available phosphorus, cation exchange capacity, water pH, water retention capacity and bulk density. Dose-response curves describe the variation of physico-chemical properties of mixtures depending on the type and ratio of selected wastes. If these mixtures mainly mimic natural soils, some of them present more extreme urban soil features, especially for pH and P Olsen. The fertility of the new substrates is modelled by multilinear regressions for the main soil properties

On noise treatment in radio measurements of cosmic ray air showers

Precise measurements of the radio emission by cosmic ray air showers require an adequate treatment of noise. Unlike to usual experiments in particle physics, where noise always adds to the signal, radio noise can in principle decrease or increase the signal if it interferes by chance destructively or constructively. Consequently, noise cannot simply be subtracted from the signal, and its influence on amplitude and time measurement of radio pulses must be studied with care. First, noise has to be determined consistently with the definition of the radio signal which typically is the maximum field strength of the radio pulse. Second, the average impact of noise on radio pulse measurements at individual antennas is studied for LOPES. It is shown that a correct treatment of noise is especially important at low signal-to-noise ratios: noise can be the dominant source of uncertainty for pulse height and time measurements, and it can systematically flatten the slope of lateral distributions. The presented method can also be transfered to other experiments in radio and acoustic detection of cosmic rays and neutrinos.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to NIM A, Proceedings of ARENA 2010, Nantes, Franc