552 research outputs found
Trajectory and spacecraft design for a pole-sitter mission
This paper provides a detailed mission analysis and systems design of a pole-sitter mission. It considers a spacecraft that is continuously above either the North or South Pole and, as such, can provide real-time, continuous and hemispherical coverage of the polar regions. Two different propulsion strategies are proposed, which result in a near-term pole-sitter mission using solar electric propulsion and a far-term pole-sitter mission where the electric thruster is hybridized with a solar sail. For both propulsion strategies, minimum propellant pole-sitter orbits are designed. Optimal transfers from Earth to the pole-sitter are designed assuming Soyuz and Ariane 5 launch options, and a controller is shown to be able to maintain the trajectory under unexpected conditions such as injection errors. A detailed mass budget analysis allows for a trade-off between mission lifetime and payload mass capacity, and candidate payloads for a range of applications are investigated. It results that a payload of about 100 kg can operate for approximately 4 years with the solar-electric spacecraft, while the hybrid propulsion technology enables extending the missions up to 7 years. Transfers between north and south pole-sitter orbits are also considered to observe either pole when illuminated by the Sun
Accelerating the convergence of path integral dynamics with a generalized Langevin equation
The quantum nature of nuclei plays an important role in the accurate
modelling of light atoms such as hydrogen, but it is often neglected in
simulations due to the high computational overhead involved. It has recently
been shown that zero-point energy effects can be included comparatively cheaply
in simulations of harmonic and quasi-harmonic systems by augmenting classical
molecular dynamics with a generalized Langevin equation (GLE). Here we describe
how a similar approach can be used to accelerate the convergence of path
integral (PI) molecular dynamics to the exact quantum mechanical result in more
strongly anharmonic systems exhibiting both zero point energy and tunnelling
effects. The resulting PI-GLE method is illustrated with applications to a
double-well tunnelling problem and to liquid water
Nuclear quantum effects in solids using a colored-noise thermostat
We present a method, based on a non-Markovian Langevin equation, to include
quantum corrections to the classical dynamics of ions in a quasi-harmonic
system. By properly fitting the correlation function of the noise, one can vary
the fluctuations in positions and momenta as a function of the vibrational
frequency, and fit them so as to reproduce the quantum-mechanical behavior,
with minimal a priori knowledge of the details of the system. We discuss the
application of the thermostat to diamond and to ice Ih. We find that results in
agreement with path-integral molecular dynamics can be obtained using only a
fraction of the computational effort.Comment: submitted for publicatio
Nuclear quantum effects in ab initio dynamics: theory and experiments for lithium imide
Owing to their small mass, hydrogen atoms exhibit strong quantum behavior
even at room temperature. Including these effects in first principles
calculations is challenging, because of the huge computational effort required
by conventional techniques. Here we present the first ab-initio application of
a recently-developed stochastic scheme, which allows to approximate nuclear
quantum effects inexpensively. The proton momentum distribution of lithium
imide, a material of interest for hydrogen storage, was experimentally measured
by inelastic neutron scattering experiments and compared with the outcome of
quantum thermostatted ab initio dynamics. We obtain favorable agreement between
theory and experiments for this purely quantum mechanical property, thereby
demonstrating that it is possible to improve the modelling of complex
hydrogen-containing materials without additional computational effort
Understanding Link Dynamics in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamically Steerable Directional Antennas
Abstract. By radiating the power in the direction of choice, electronicallyswitched directional (ESD) antennas can reduce network contention and avoid packet loss. There exists some ESD antennas for wireless sensor networks, but so far researchers have mainly evaluated their directionality. There are no studies regarding the link dynamics of ESD antennas, in particular not for indoor deployments and other scenarios where nodes are not necessarily in line of sight. Our long-term experiments confirm that previous findings that have demonstrated the dependence of angleof-arrival on channel frequency also hold for directional transmissions with ESD antennas. This is important for the design of protocols for wireless sensor networks with ESD antennas: the best antenna direction, i.e., the direction that leads to the highest packet reception rate and signal strength at the receiver, is not stable but varies over time and with the selected IEEE 802.15.4 channel. As this requires protocols to incorporate some form of adaptation, we present an intentionally simple and yet efficient mechanism for selecting the best antenna direction at run-time with an energy overhead below 2 % compared to standard omni-directional transmissions.
Natural Aging and Vacancy Trapping in Al-6xxx
Undesirable natural aging (NA) in Al-6xxx delays subsequent artificial aging
(AA) but the size, composition, and evolution of clustering are challenging to
measure. Here, atomistic details of early-stage clustering in Al-1\%Mg-0.6\%Si
during NA are studied computationally using a chemically-accurate
neural-network potential. Feasible growth paths for the preferred
precipitates identify: dominant clusters differing from motifs;
spontaneous vacancy-interstitial formation creating 14-18 solute atom
-like motifs; and lower-energy clusters requiring chemical
re-arrangement to form nuclei. Quasi-on-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo
simulations reveal that 8-14 solute atom clusters form within 1000 s but that
growth slows considerably due to vacancy trapping inside clusters, with
trapping energies of 0.3-0.5 eV. These findings rationalize why cluster growth
and alloy hardness saturate during NA, confirm the concept of ''vacancy
prisons", and suggest why clusters must be dissolved during AA before formation
of . This atomistic understanding of NA may enable design of
strategies to mitigate negative effects of NA
Efficient stochastic thermostatting of path integral molecular dynamics
The path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) method provides a convenient way
to compute the quantum mechanical structural and thermodynamic properties of
condensed phase systems at the expense of introducing an additional set of
high-frequency normal modes on top of the physical vibrations of the system.
Efficiently sampling such a wide range of frequencies provides a considerable
thermostatting challenge. Here we introduce a simple stochastic path integral
Langevin equation (PILE) thermostat which exploits an analytic knowledge of the
free path integral normal mode frequencies. We also apply a recently-developed
colored-noise thermostat based on a generalized Langevin equation (GLE), which
automatically achieves a similar, frequency-optimized sampling. The sampling
efficiencies of these thermostats are compared with that of the more
conventional Nos\'e-Hoover chain (NHC) thermostat for a number of physically
relevant properties of the liquid water and hydrogen-in-palladium systems. In
nearly every case, the new PILE thermostat is found to perform just as well as
the NHC thermostat while allowing for a computationally more efficient
implementation. The GLE thermostat also proves to be very robust delivering a
near-optimum sampling efficiency in all of the cases considered. We suspect
that these simple stochastic thermostats will therefore find useful application
in many future PIMD simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication on JC
Genetic variability of the ovine αs1-casein
The casein genetic polymorphisms are important for their effects on quantitative traits and technological properties of milk. At the αs1-casein (CSN1S1) level three genetic variants were characterised (A, C, D) in ovine milk (Ferranti et al., 1995)
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