Feasibility of electrostatic microparticle propulsion

This paper discusses the feasibility of electrostatic space propulsion which uses microparticles as propellant. It is shown that particle charging in a plasma is not sufficient for electrostatic acceleration. Moreover, it appears technically difficult to extract charged particles out of a plasma for subsequent acceleration without them being discharged. Two novel thruster concepts are proposed. In the first one, particles with low secondary electron emission are charged using energetic electrons in the order of magnitude of 100eV. The second concept charges the particles by contact with needle electrodes at high electrostatic potential (∼20kV). Both methods allow the maximum possible charges on microparticles. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft

Spontaneous deterministic side-branching behavior in phase-field simulations of equiaxed dendritic growth

The accepted view on dendritic side-branching is that side-branches grow as the result of selective amplification of thermal noise and that in the absence of such noise dendrites would grow without the development of side-arms. However, recently there has been renewed speculation about dendrites displaying deterministic side-branching [see, e.g., M. E. Glicksman, Metall. Mater. Trans A 43, 391 (2012)]. Generally, numerical models of dendritic growth, such as phase-field simulation, have tended to display behaviour which is commensurate with the former view, in that simulated dendrites do not develop side-branches unless noise is introduced into the simulation. However, here, we present simulations that show that under certain conditions deterministic side-branching may occur. We use a model formulated in the thin interface limit and a range of advanced numerical techniques to minimise the numerical noise introduced into the solution, including a multigrid solver. Spontaneous side-branching seems to be favoured by high undercoolings and by intermediate values of the capillary anisotropy, with the most branched structures being obtained for an anisotropy strength of 0.03. From an analysis of the tangential thermal gradients on the solid-liquid interface, the mechanism for side-branching appears to have some similarities with the deterministic model proposed by Glicksman

A multi-level spectral deferred correction method

The spectral deferred correction (SDC) method is an iterative scheme for computing a higher-order collocation solution to an ODE by performing a series of correction sweeps using a low-order timestepping method. This paper examines a variation of SDC for the temporal integration of PDEs called multi-level spectral deferred corrections (MLSDC), where sweeps are performed on a hierarchy of levels and an FAS correction term, as in nonlinear multigrid methods, couples solutions on different levels. Three different strategies to reduce the computational cost of correction sweeps on the coarser levels are examined: reducing the degrees of freedom, reducing the order of the spatial discretization, and reducing the accuracy when solving linear systems arising in implicit temporal integration. Several numerical examples demonstrate the effect of multi-level coarsening on the convergence and cost of SDC integration. In particular, MLSDC can provide significant savings in compute time compared to SDC for a three-dimensional problem

Determination of nutrient salts by automatic methods both in seawater and brackish water: the phosphate blank

9 páginas, 2 tablas, 2 figurasThe main inconvenience in determining nutrients in seawater by automatic methods is simply solved: the preparation of a suitable blank which corrects the effect of the refractive index change on the recorded signal. Two procedures are proposed, one physical (a simple equation to estimate the effect) and the other chemical (removal of the dissolved phosphorus with ferric hydroxide).Support for this work came from CICYT (MAR88-0245 project) and Conselleria de Pesca de la Xunta de GaliciaPeer reviewe