The Scottish orchestras and new music, 1945-2015

This dissertation critically examines the presentation of new music in live concerts by three Scottish orchestras. It considers what they have commissioned, what performed, the context in which the music has been programmed, and who was involved. The orchestras are the three which are established on a permanent basis and give regular subscription series in Scotland: the BBC Scottish Symphony, Royal Scottish National, and Scottish Chamber Orchestras. The study contributes to the debate around classical music programming of new music, taking these orchestras as examples. It asks how in practice some of those responsible for programming in the period from 1945 to 2015 have reconciled conflicting expectations and desires. On the one hand there is a vast heritage, an 'imaginary museum', of old music, and it is this which most audiences want to hear. On the other hand, living composers continue to write and some audiences want to hear their music performed. This is music which speaks of and to our own times. The dissertation asks about some of the factors which have influenced programmers' decisions and how those programmers have presented new music to the public — alongside the old, in special events, or in another way. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of each type of programming. Underlying these questions is the changing status in the west of western classical music. Even if it is not dying, as some commentators have stated, it is but one among many musics, with a relatively small market share. Given that situation, are orchestras, which are heavily dependent on public and/or private funding, still relevant to contemporary society? And if so, is part of their role to reflect aspects of that society by playing new music

Effects of Bulk Viscosity in Non-linear Bubble Dynamics

The non-linear bubble dynamics equations in a compressible liquid have been modified considering the effects of compressibility of both the liquid and the gas at the bubble interface. A new bubble boundary equation has been derived, which includes a new term resulted from the liquid bulk viscosity effects. The influence of this term has been numerically investigated considering the effects of water vapor and chemical reactions on the bubble evolution. The results clearly indicate that the new term has an important damping role at the collapse, so that its consideration decreases the amplitude of the bubble rebounds after the collapse. This damping feature is more remarkable for higher deriving pressures.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

The influence of reacting gases on the motion of collapsing cavities

An analysis was performed on a collapsing cavity containing reacting gases. It was determined that with reacting gases in the cavity there was significant departure from the fluid mechanics of collapse of a cavity containing inert gases. When reacting gases are present, the nonlinear differential equations of motion, energy, and kinetics must be solved simultaneously. It was found that the time required to reach a given radius during collapse was greater for an exothermic reaction occurring in the gas phase than for the cavity containing a nonreacting gas. For the exothermic reaction the collapse time increases with increasing magnitude of the heat of reaction, while for an endothermic reaction the collapse time does not increase indefinitely with increasing heat of reaction but instead decreases and approaches a finite limit. For small heats of reaction the influence of a reacting gas on cavity motion is only readily detectable during the rebound of the cavity. When the collapse time approaches the half period of the wave, the conversion increases with acoustic pressure. However, when the collapse time approaches the period of the wave, the conversion first decreases, then increases with increasing acoustic pressure. Additional description are presented in the text delineating the behavior of the cavity during the collapse when a gas is reacting within the cavity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32946/1/0000329.pd

Differential criterion of a bubble collapse in viscous liquids

The present work is devoted to a model of bubble collapse in a Newtonian viscous liquid caused by an initial bubble wall motion. The obtained bubble dynamics described by an analytic solution significantly depends on the liquid and bubble parameters. The theory gives two types of bubble behavior: collapse and viscous damping. This results in a general collapse condition proposed as the sufficient differential criterion. The suggested criterion is discussed and successfully applied to the analysis of the void and gas bubble collapses.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Understanding the impact of cavitation on hydrocarbons in the middle distillate range

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Fuel. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Fuel, 156, September 2015, pp. 30-39, http://dx/doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2015.04.026Hydrocarbons in the middle distillate range (C8 - C26) have been treated with ultrasound at 20 kHz - a frequency sufficient to drive acoustic cavitation. The high temperatures experienced as a result of the implosion of fuel vapour bubbles are sufficient to produce pyrolytic degradation and dehydrogenation, as well as a growth mechanism that results in the formation of small particles that have similarities with the primary soot particles produced during diesel combustion. These nanosized particles agglomerate as a result of kinetically driven collisions during cavitation to form a dispersion of micron sized particles in the treated hydrocarbon. The particles are carbonaceous in character, being a mixture of amorphous and graphitic-like carbon. The mass of material produced increases with the C/H atomic ratio of the hydrocarbon undergoing cavitation and is decreased through the addition (1 - 3 %v/v) of low boiling paraffinic hydrocarbons, possibly as a result of lowering the temperature developed inside imploding cavities. Dispersions of microparticles contain equilibrated levels of nanoparticles. If sufficiently high numbers of these smaller primary particles are present they agglomerate due to thermally driven collisions during post-cavitation storage. When this happened a sharp rise in the number of 1 - 2 µm particles was seen after only a few days. Some evidence is presented for the behaviour of ultrasonically treated hydrocarbons being related to the degradation of diesel fuel exposed to hydrodynamic cavitation in the fuel systems of modern common rail direct injection diesel engines.Shell Global Solution

Characterisation of Liposome-Loaded Microbubble Populations for Subharmonic Imaging

Therapeutic microbubbles could make an important contribution to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Acoustic characterisation was performed on microfluidic generated microbubble populations that either were bare or had liposomes attached. Through the use of broadband attenuation techniques (3–8 MHz), the shell stiffness was measured to be 0.72 ± 0.01 and 0.78 ± 0.05 N/m and shell friction was 0.37 ± 0.05 and 0.74 ± 0.05 × 10−6 kg/s for bare and liposome-loaded microbubbles, respectively. Acoustic scatter revealed that liposome-loaded microbubbles had a lower subharmonic threshold, occurring from a peak negative pressure of 50 kPa, compared with 200 kPa for equivalent bare microbubbles. It was found that liposome loading had a negligible effect on the destruction threshold for this microbubble type, because at a mechanical index >0.4 (570 kPa), 80% of both populations were destroyed

Ultrafast synchrotron X-ray imaging studies of microstructure fragmentation in solidification under ultrasound

Ultrasound processing of metal alloys is an environmental friendly and promising green technology for liquid metal degassing and microstructural refinement. However many fundamental issues in this field are still not fully understood, because of the difficulties in direct observation of the dynamic behaviours caused by ultrasound inside liquid metal and semisolid metals during the solidification processes. In this paper, we report a systematic study using the ultrafast synchrotron X-ray imaging (up to 271,554 frame per second) technique available at the Advanced Photon Source, USA and Diamond Light Source, UK to investigate the dynamic interactions between the ultrasonic bubbles/acoustic flow and the solidifying phases in a Bi-8%Zn alloy. The experimental results were complimented by numerical modelling. The chaotic bubble implosion and dynamic bubble oscillations were revealed in-situ for the first time in liquid metal and semisolid metal. The fragmentation of the solidifying Zn phases and breaking up of the liquid-solid interface by ultrasonic bubbles and enhanced acoustic flow were clearly demonstrated and agreed very well with the theoretical calculations. The research provides unambiguous experimental evidence and robust theoretical interpretation in elucidating the dominant mechanisms of microstructure fragmentation and refinement in solidification under ultrasound.The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant No. EP/L019965/1, EP/L019884/1, EP/L019825/1,), the Royal Society Industry Fellowship (for J. Mi), and the Hull University & Chinese Scholarship Council (Hull-CSC) PhD Studentship (for D. Tan). The awards of the synchrotron X-ray beam time (EE8542-1) by the Diamond Light Source, UK, and those (GUP 23649 and GUP 26170) by the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, USA are also gratefully acknowledged. Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357