11,159 research outputs found
Automated knowledge capture in 2D and 3D design environments
In Life Cycle Engineering, it is vital that the engineering knowledge for the product is captured throughout its life cycle in a formal and structured manner. This will allow the information to be referred to in the future by engineers who did not work on the original design but are wanting to understand the reasons that certain design decisions were made. In the past, attempts were made to try to capture this knowledge by having the engineer record the knowledge manually during a design session. However, this is not only time-consuming but is also disruptive to the creative process. Therefore, the research presented in this paper is concerned with capturing design knowledge automatically using a traditional 2D design environment and also an immersive 3D design environment. The design knowledge is captured by continuously and non-intrusively logging the user during a design session and then storing this output in a structured eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format. Next, the XML data is analysed and the design processes that are involved can be visualised by the automatic generation of IDEF0 diagrams. Using this captured knowledge, it forms the basis of an interactive online assistance system to aid future users who are carrying out a similar design task
Anomalous microwave conductivity coherence peak in c-axis MgB2 thin film
The temperature dependence of the real part of the microwave complex
conductivity at 17.9 GHz obtained from surface impedance measurements of two
c-axis oriented MgB2 thin films reveals a pronounced maximum at a temperature
around 0.6 times the critical temperature. Calculations in the frame of a
two-band model based on Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory suggest that
this maximum corresponds to an anomalous coherence peak resembling the two-gap
nature of MgB2. Our model assumes there is no interband impurity scattering and
a weak interband pairing interaction, as suggested by bandstructure
calculations. In addition, the observation of a coherence peak indicates that
the pi-band is in the dirty limit and dominates the total conductivity of our
filmsComment: 10 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Climate change mitigation strategies for mechanically controlled repositories: The case of The National Archives, Kew
A computer based building simulation model was developed to examine the energy load and environmental management in The National Archives Q1 repository building in Kew, UK to optimise environmental management and examine the impacts of climate change. The need to accurately simulate the hygrothermal environment inside the archive building which houses mainly paper-based records led to the choice of EnergyPlus as the modelling software. The study presents the simulation results of five environmental strategies which predict energy saving potential as high as 43% without significantly affecting the quality of the preservation environment. The effect of climate change is predicted to have little impact on the archive environment due to the filtering effect of the air conditioning system. On the other hand, an increase in total energy load by 15% and 24% is predicted under the worst case climate change scenario in 2050 and 2080, respectively, if the current environmental management practice is continued into the future. However, the identified energy saving strategies could represent possible mitigative solutions in reducing future energy load against the impact of climate change
Charged particle display
An optical shutter based on charged particles is presented. The output light
intensity of the proposed device has an intrinsic dependence on the
interparticle spacing between charged particles, which can be controlled by
varying voltages applied to the control electrodes. The interparticle spacing
between charged particles can be varied continuously and this opens up the
possibility of particle based displays with continuous grayscale.Comment: typographic errors corrected in Eqs (37) and (39); published in
Journal of Applied Physics; doi:10.1063/1.317648
U(1)' solution to the mu-problem and the proton decay problem in supersymmetry without R-parity
The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is plagued by two major
fine-tuning problems: the mu-problem and the proton decay problem. We present a
simultaneous solution to both problems within the framework of a U(1)'-extended
MSSM (UMSSM), without requiring R-parity conservation. We identify several
classes of phenomenologically viable models and provide specific examples of
U(1)' charge assignments. Our models generically contain either lepton number
violating or baryon number violating renormalizable interactions, whose
coexistence is nevertheless automatically forbidden by the new U(1)' gauge
symmetry. The U(1)' symmetry also prohibits the potentially dangerous and often
ignored higher-dimensional proton decay operators such as QQQL and UUDE which
are still allowed by R-parity. Thus, under minimal assumptions, we show that
once the mu-problem is solved, the proton is sufficiently stable, even in the
presence of a minimum set of exotics fields, as required for anomaly
cancellation. Our models provide impetus for pursuing the collider
phenomenology of R-parity violation within the UMSSM framework.Comment: Version published in Phys. Rev.
Effect of magnetic order on the superfluid response of single-crystal ErNiBC: A penetration depth study
We report measurements of the in-plane magnetic penetration depth (T) in single crystals of ErNiBC down to 0.1 K using
a tunnel-diode based, self-inductive technique at 21 MHz. We observe four
features: (1) a slight dip in (T) at the Nel
temperature = 6.0 K, (2) a peak at = 2.3 K, where a weak
ferromagnetic component sets in, (3) another maximum at 0.45 K, and (4) a final
broad drop down to 0.1 K. Converting to superfluid density , we see
that the antiferromagnetic order at 6 K only slightly depresses
superconductivity. We seek to explain some of the above features in the context
of antiferromagnetic superconductors, where competition between the
antiferromagnetic molecular field and spin fluctuation scattering determines
increased or decreased pairbreaking. Superfluid density data show only a slight
decrease in pair density in the vicinity of the 2.3 K feature, thus supporting
other evidences against bulk ferromagnetism in this temperature range.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Coarse-grained computations of demixing in dense gas-fluidized beds
We use an "equation-free", coarse-grained computational approach to
accelerate molecular dynamics-based computations of demixing (segregation) of
dissimilar particles subject to an upward gas flow (gas-fluidized beds). We
explore the coarse-grained dynamics of these phenomena in gently fluidized beds
of solid mixtures of different densities, typically a slow process for which
reasonable continuum models are currently unavailable
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