A mechanism for high-frequency oscillation in ramjet combustors and afterburners

An experimental investigation was made of the behavior of a small two-dimensional combustion chamber, burning a uniform mixture of air and fuel vapor under conditions of high-frequency oscillation or screech. Measurements were made of the limits of stable screech, the amplitude and frequency of pressure oscillations over a wide range of mixture ratio, inlet air temperature, and combustor flow rate. Spark schlieren photographs and high-speed motion pictures taken of the combustion process showed, in agreement with other investigations, that the high-frequency oscillation is accompanied by vortices shed periodically from the flameholder lip with the same frequency as the oscillation. The following mechanism of exciting the oscillations is suggested. A mode of transverse oscillation is excited as the result of periodic transport of combustible material, associated with the vortices, into the hot wake of the flameholder. The vortices, in turn, are generated at the flameholder lips by the fluctuating transverse velocity. When the ignition time delay lies in the proper range, the phase relationship between oscillations in transverse velocity and combustion intensity is such that the oscillation is amplified

Output feedback control of linear multipass processes

An error actuated output feedback controller for a sub-class of linear multipass processes designated as 'differential unit memory' is defined. Further, the design of this controller for closed-loop stability is considered. In particular, a recently developed computationally feasible stability tesits used to present some preliminary work on this problem

Phase and group delay calibration of a very long baseline interferometer by East Coast VLBI Group

Precisely timed pulses injected into the input of each receiver are used to calibrate the phase and group delay through each interferometer terminal. The short duration pulses are generated at a 1 MHz rate directly from the output of the frequency standard. The pulses are injected into the receiver at a level low enough to produce less than one percent increase in system temperature, yet can be extracted during processing with a high enough signal to noise ratio to determine the phase of the calibration rails within 1 degree in 1 second of integration. The calibration system also includes precise cable measurement electronics and a pulse echo for clock synchronization

Amplification efficiency and thermal stability of qPCR instrumentation: Current landscape and future perspectives

This is a final draft version of the publication following acceptance by the journal.Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is a method of amplifying and detecting small samples of genetic material in real time and is in routine use across many laboratories. Speed and thermal uniformity, two important factors in a qPCR test, are in direct conflict with one another in conventional peltier‑driven thermal cyclers. To overcome this, companies are developing novel thermal systems for qPCR testing. More recently, qPCR technology has developed to enable its use in point‑of‑care testing (POCT), where the test is administered and results are obtained in a single visit to a health provider, particularly in developing countries. For a system to be suitable for POCT it must be rapid and reliable. In the present study, the speed and thermal uniformity of four qPCR thermal cyclers currently available were compared, two of which use the conventional peltier/block heating method and two of which use novel heating and cooling methods

Absolute calibration of a wideband antenna and spectrometer for sky noise spectral index measurements

A new method of absolute calibration of sky noise temperature using a three-position switched spectrometer, measurements of antenna and low noise amplifier impedance with a vector network analyzer, and ancillary measurements of the amplifier noise waves is described. The details of the method and its application to accurate wideband measurements of the spectral index of the sky noise are described and compared with other methods.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, published in Radio Scienc

The Response of Normal Shocks in Diffusers

The frequency response of a normal shock in a diverging channel is calculated for application to problems of pressure oscillations in ramjet engines. Two limits of a linearized analysis arc discussed: one represents isentropic flow on both sides of a shock wave; the other may be a crude appr'l'I;imation to the influence of flow separation induced hy the wave. Numerical results arc given, and the influences of the shock wave on oscillations in the engine are discus,ed

Stability Tests for a Class of 2D Continuous-Discrete Linear Systems with Dynamic Boundary Conditions

Repetitive processes are a distinct class of 2D systems of both practical and theoretical interest. Their essential characteristic is repeated sweeps, termed passes, through a set of dynamics defined over a finite duration with explicit interaction between the outputs, or pass profiles, produced as the system evolves. Experience has shown that these processes cannot be studied/controlled by direct application of existing theory (in all but a few very restrictive special cases). This fact, and the growing list of applications areas, has prompted an on-going research programme into the development of a 'mature' systems theory for these processes for onward translation into reliable generally applicable controller design algorithms. This paper develops stability tests for a sub-class of so-called differential linear repetitive processes in the presence of a general set of initial conditions, where it is known that the structure of these conditions is critical to their stability properties

PI output feedback control of differential linear repetitive processes

Repetitive processes are characterized by a series of sweeps, termed passes, through a set of dynamics defined over a finite duration known as the pass length. On each pass an output, termed the pass profile, is produced which acts as a forcing function on, and hence contributes to, the dynamics of the next pass profile. This can lead to oscillations which increase in amplitude in the pass-to-pass direction and cannot be controlled by standard control laws. Here we give new results on the design of physically based control laws. These are for the sub-class of so-called differential linear repetitive processes which arise in applications areas such as iterative learning control. They show how a form of proportional-integral (PI) control based only on process outputs can be designed to give stability plus performance and disturbance rejection

Fast sampling control of a class of differential linear repetitive processes

Repetitive processes are a distinct class of 2D linear systems of practical and theoretical interest. Most of the available control theory for them is for the case of linear dynamics and focuses on systems theoretic properties such as stability and controllability/observability. This paper uses an extension of standard, or 1D, feedback control schemes to control a physically relevant sub-class of these processes