143 research outputs found
The solid surface combustion space shuttle experiment hardware description and ground-based test results
The Lewis Research Center is developing a series of microgravity combustion experiments for the Space Shuttle. The Solid Surface Combustion Experiment (SSCE) is the first to be completed. SSCE will study flame spreading over thermally thin fuels (ashless filter paper) under microgravity conditions. The flight hardware consists of a combustion chamber containing the sample and a computer which takes the data and controls the experiment. Experimental data will include gas-phase and solid-phase temperature measurements and motion pictures of the combustion process. Flame spread rates will be determined from the motion pictures
Opposed-Flow Flame Spreading in Reduced Gravity
Experimental results obtained in drop towers and in Space Shuttle based experiments coupled with modelling efforts are beginning to provide information that is allowing an understanding to be developed of the physics of opposed-flow flame spread at reduced gravity where the spread rate and flow velocity are comparable and of the role played by radiative and diffusive processes in flame spreading in microgravity. Here we describe one Space Shuttle based experiment on flame spreading in a quiescent environment, the Solid Surface Combustion Experiment, SSCE, one planned microgravity experiment on flame spreading in a radiatively-controlled, forced opposing flow environment, the Diffusive and Radiative Transport in Fires Experiment, DARTFire, modelling efforts to support these experiments, and some results obtained to date
An experimental study of the influence of elevated buoyancy levels on flame spread rate over thermally thin cellulosic materials
The role of buoyancy on the flame spread rate over paper and its effect on extinction was studied by changing the gravity level and pressure. It was found that the flame spread rate decreases as the buoyancy induced flow increases. A method for correlating flame spread data using dimensionless parameters is presented. The Damkohler number is shown to be the dependent variable
The Effect of Ambient Pressure on Flame Spread over Thin Cellulosic Fuel in a Quiescent Microgravity Environment
Needle & knot : binder boilerplate tied up
To lighten the burden of programming language mechanization, many approaches have been developed that tackle the substantial boilerplate which arises from variable binders. Unfortunately, the existing approaches are limited in scope. They typically do not support complex binding forms (such as multi-binders) that arise in more advanced languages, or they do not tackle the boilerplate due to mentioning variables and binders in relations. As a consequence, the human mechanizer is still unnecessarily burdened with binder boilerplate and discouraged from taking on richer languages.
This paper presents Knot, a new approach that substantially extends the support for binder boilerplate. Knot is a highly expressive language for natural and concise specification of syntax with binders. Its meta-theory constructively guarantees the coverage of a considerable amount of binder boilerplate for well-formed specifications, including that for well-scoping of terms and context lookups. Knot also comes with a code generator, Needle, that specializes the generic boilerplate for convenient embedding in COQ and provides a tactic library for automatically discharging proof obligations that frequently come up in proofs of weakening and substitution lemmas of type-systems.
Our evaluation shows, that Needle & Knot significantly reduce the size of language mechanizations (by 40% in our case study). Moreover, as far as we know, Knot enables the most concise mechanization of the POPLmark Challenge (1a + 2a) and is two-thirds the size of the next smallest. Finally, Knot allows us to mechanize for instance dependentlytyped languages, which is notoriously challenging because of dependent contexts and mutually-recursive sorts with variables
Equality, Quasi-Implicit Products, and Large Eliminations
This paper presents a type theory with a form of equality reflection:
provable equalities can be used to coerce the type of a term. Coercions and
other annotations, including implicit arguments, are dropped during reduction
of terms. We develop the metatheory for an undecidable version of the system
with unannotated terms. We then devise a decidable system with annotated terms,
justified in terms of the unannotated system. Finally, we show how the approach
can be extended to account for large eliminations, using what we call
quasi-implicit products.Comment: In Proceedings ITRS 2010, arXiv:1101.410
Extending scientific computing system with structural quantum programming capabilities
We present a basic high-level structures used for developing quantum
programming languages. The presented structures are commonly used in many
existing quantum programming languages and we use quantum pseudo-code based on
QCL quantum programming language to describe them. We also present the
implementation of introduced structures in GNU Octave language for scientific
computing. Procedures used in the implementation are available as a package
quantum-octave, providing a library of functions, which facilitates the
simulation of quantum computing. This package allows also to incorporate
high-level programming concepts into the simulation in GNU Octave and Matlab.
As such it connects features unique for high-level quantum programming
languages, with the full palette of efficient computational routines commonly
available in modern scientific computing systems. To present the major features
of the described package we provide the implementation of selected quantum
algorithms. We also show how quantum errors can be taken into account during
the simulation of quantum algorithms using quantum-octave package. This is
possible thanks to the ability to operate on density matrices
A Successful Broad-band Survey for Giant Lya Nebulae I: Survey Design and Candidate Selection
Giant Lya nebulae (or Lya "blobs") are likely sites of ongoing massive galaxy
formation, but the rarity of these powerful sources has made it difficult to
form a coherent picture of their properties, ionization mechanisms, and space
density. Systematic narrow-band Lya nebula surveys are ongoing, but the small
redshift range covered and the observational expense limit the comoving volume
that can be probed by even the largest of these surveys and pose a significant
problem when searching for such rare sources. We have developed a systematic
search technique designed to find large Lya nebulae at 2<z<3 within deep
broad-band imaging and have carried out a survey of the 9.4 square degree NOAO
Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS) Bootes field. With a total survey comoving
volume of ~10^8 h^-3_70 Mpc^3, this is the largest volume survey for Lya
nebulae ever undertaken. In this first paper in the series, we present the
details of the survey design and a systematically-selected sample of 79
candidates, which includes one previously discovered Lya nebula.Comment: Accepted to ApJ after minor revision; 25 pages in emulateapj format;
18 figures, 3 table
Refining Inductive Types
Dependently typed programming languages allow sophisticated properties of
data to be expressed within the type system. Of particular use in dependently
typed programming are indexed types that refine data by computationally useful
information. For example, the N-indexed type of vectors refines lists by their
lengths. Other data types may be refined in similar ways, but programmers must
produce purpose-specific refinements on an ad hoc basis, developers must
anticipate which refinements to include in libraries, and implementations must
often store redundant information about data and their refinements. In this
paper we show how to generically derive inductive characterisations of
refinements of inductive types, and argue that these characterisations can
alleviate some of the aforementioned difficulties associated with ad hoc
refinements. Our characterisations also ensure that standard techniques for
programming with and reasoning about inductive types are applicable to
refinements, and that refinements can themselves be further refined
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