Heat flux sensor design reduces extraneous source effects

Heat flux sensor isolates the sensor and its transmitting thermocouple from undesirable heat sources by incorporating a radiator section that forms a radiation shield between mounting cup and sensor. Bonding of the thermocouple cable to the underside of the radiator provides a conductive path to dissipate extraneous heat that might otherwise reach the sensor

Heat flux sensor assembly

Heat flux sensor assembly with proviso for heat shield to reduce radiative transfer between sensor element

Galileo internal electrostatic discharge program

The Galileo spacecraft which will orbit Jupiter in 1988 will encounter a very harsh environment of energetic electrons. These electrons will have sufficient energy to penetrate the spacecraft shielding, consequently depositing charges in the dielectric insulating materials or ungrounded conductors. The resulting electric field could exceed the breakdown strength of the insulating materials, producing discharges. The transients produced from these Internal Electrostatic Discharges (IESD) could, depending on their relative location, be coupled to nearby cables and circuits. These transients could change the state of logic circuits or degrade or even damage spacecraft components, consequently disrupting the operation of subsystems and systems of the Galileo spacecraft during its expected mission life. An extensive testing program was initiated for the purpose of understanding the potential threats associated with these IESD events. Data obtained from these tests were used to define design guidelines

Gravitational Correction to Running of Gauge Couplings

We calculate the contribution of graviton exchange to the running of gauge couplings at lowest non-trivial order in perturbation theory. Including this contribution in a theory that features coupling constant unification does not upset this unification, but rather shifts the unification scale. When extrapolated formally, the gravitational correction renders all gauge couplings asymptotically free.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; v2: Clarified awkward sentences and notations. Corrected typos. Added references and discussion thereof in introduction. Minor copy editting changes to agree with version to be published in Physical Review Letter

Thermomechanical characterization of Hastelloy-X under uniaxial cyclic loading

In most high-temperature engineering applications, components are subjected to complex combinations of thermal and mechanical loading during service. A number of viscoplastic constitutive models were proposed which potentially can provide mathematical descriptions of material response under such conditions. Implementation of these models into large finite element codes such as MARC has already resulted in much improved inelastic analysis capability for hot-section aircraft engine components. However, a number of questions remain regarding the validity of methods adopted in characterizing these constitutive models for particular high-temperature materials. One area of concern is that the majority of experimental data available for this purpose are determined under isothermal conditions. This is in contrast to service conditions which, as noted above, almost always involve some form of thermal cycling. The obvious question arises as to whether a constitutive model characterized using an isothermal data base can adequately predict material response under thermomechanical conditions. An experimental program was initiated within the HOST program to address this particular concern. The results of the most recent isothermal and thermomechanical experiments are described

Preliminary investigation of a possible dose rate effect on survival of cells irradiated with low energy protons

Apparatus has been developed for the irradiation of V79-379A Chinese hamster lung fibroblast cells with 3.6 MeV protons from the Van de Graaff accelerator at the National Accelerator Centre in Faure. The original intention of this work was to investigate and measure a possible dose rate effect on the survival of V79 cells, in the dose range from zero to 25 Gy, at dose rates of about 3 Gy/s and 300 Gy/s. The survival curves initially obtained were anomalous in that they showed abnormally high levels of survival and a tendency to remain at a constant survival level for doses above 10 Gy. Systematic attempts to correct this observed anomaly, involved the following; apparatus improvements were made, a means of measuring the beam profile was devised, the current measuring device and the dosimetry were improved and a possible dose rate effect on intracellular oxygen was investigated. After these improvements, the anomalous effect was much reduced, but not entirely eliminated. The final results showed no significant difference between the survival of cells irradiated at dose rates of about 3 Gy/s and 300 Gy/s; qualitative differences were however noticeable. After correction for the effect of a non-uniform beam profile, the survival curves were significantly different to published work. This difference suggested a possible dose rate effect between dose rates of about 0.1 Gy/s and dose rates above 3 Gy/s

The Global Star Formation Rate from the 1.4 GHz Luminosity Function

The decimetric luminosity of many galaxies appears to be dominated by synchrotron emission excited by supernova explosions. Simple models suggest that the luminosity is directly proportional to the rate of supernova explosions of massive stars averaged over the past 30 Myr. The proportionality may be used together with models of the evolving 1.4 GHz luminosity function to estimate the global star formation rate density in the era z < 1. The local value is estimated to be 0.026 solar masses per year per cubic megaparsec, some 50% larger than the value inferred from the Halpha luminosity density. The value at z ~ 1 is found to be 0.30 solar masses per year per cubic megaparsec. The 10-fold increase in star formation rate density is consistent with the increase inferred from mm-wave, far-infrared, ultra-violet and Halpha observations.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, Astrophysical Journal Letters (in press); new PS version has improved figure placemen

Some Physical Consequences of Abrupt Changes in the Multipole Moments of a Gravitating Body

The Barrab\`es-Israel theory of light-like shells in General Relativity is used to show explicitly that in general a light-like shell is accompanied by an impulsive gravitational wave. The gravitational wave is identified by its Petrov Type N contribution to a Dirac delta-function term in the Weyl conformal curvature tensor (with the delta-function singular on the null hypersurface history of the wave and shell). An example is described in which an asymptotically flat static vacuum Weyl space-time experiences a sudden change across a null hypersurface in the multipole moments of its isolated axially symmetric source. A light-like shell and an impulsive gravitational wave are identified, both having the null hypersurface as history. The stress-energy in the shell is dominated (at large distance from the source) by the jump in the monopole moment (the mass) of the source with the jump in the quadrupole moment mainly responsible for the stress being anisotropic. The gravitational wave owes its existence principally to the jump in the quadrupole moment of the source confirming what would be expected.Comment: 26 pages, tex, no figures, to appear in Phys.Rev.

On the structure of subsets of an orderable group with some small doubling properties

The aim of this paper is to present a complete description of the structure of subsets S of an orderable group G satisfying |S^2| = 3|S|-2 and is non-abelian