Visually building Smale flows in S3

A Smale flow is a structurally stable flow with one dimensional invariant sets. We use information from homology and template theory to construct, visualize and in some cases, classify, nonsingular Smale flows in the 3-sphere

Knots on a positive template have a bounded number of prime factors

Templates are branched 2-manifolds with semi-flows used to model `chaotic' hyperbolic invariant sets of flows on 3-manifolds. Knotted orbits on a template correspond to those in the original flow. Birman and Williams conjectured that for any given template the number of prime factors of the knots realized would be bounded. We prove a special case when the template is positive; the general case is now known to be false.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol5/agt-5-24.abs.htm

Free vibrations of the ERDA-NASA 100 kW wind turbine

The ERDA-NASA wind turbine (windmill), which consists of a 93-foot truss tower, a bed plate that supports mechanical and electrical equipment, and two 62.5-foot long blades, was analyzed to determine its free vibrations using NASTRAN. The finite element representation of the system consisted of beam and plate elements. The free vibrations of the tower alone, the blades alone, and the complete system were determined experimentally in the field. These results were obtained by instrumenting the tower or blades with an accelerometer and impacting the components with an instrumented mass. The predicted results for natural frequencies and mode shapes were in excellent agreement with measured data

In situ ply strength: An initial assessment

The in situ ply strengths in several composites were calculated using laminate fracture data for appropriate low modulus, and high modulus fiber composites were used in conjunction with the least squares method. The laminate fracture data were obtained from tests on Modmor-I graphite/epoxy, AS-graphite/epoxy, boron/epoxy and E-glass/epoxy. The results show that the calculated in situ ply strengths can be considerably different from those measured in unidirectional composites, especially the transverse strengths and those in angleplied laminates with transply cracks

Nonlinear response of boron/aluminum angleplied laminates under cyclic tensile loading: Contributing mechanisms and their effects

The nonlinear response of boron/aluminum angleplied laminates subjected to cyclic loads was investigated. A procedure is outlined and criteria are proposed which can be used to assess the nonlinear response. The procedure consists of testing strategically selected laminate configurations and analyzing the results using composite mechanics. Results from the investigation show the contributions to nonlinear behavior are from: premature random fiber breaks where the ply orientation angle is small relative to the load direction, ply relative rotation at intermediate values of the ply orientation angle, and nonlinear aluminum matrix behavior at large values of the orientation angle. Premature fiber breaks result in progressively more compliant material; large ply relative rotations result in progressively stiffer material; and pronounced matrix nonlinear behavior results in no significant change in the stiffness of the initial load portion