1,358 research outputs found
Instability and dripping of electrified liquid films flowing down inverted substrates
We consider the gravity-driven flow of a perfect dielectric, viscous, thin liquid film, wetting a flat substrate inclined at a nonzero angle to the horizontal. The dynamics of the thin film is influenced by an electric field which is set up parallel to the substrate surface—this nonlocal physical mechanism has a linearly stabilizing effect on the interfacial dynamics. Our particular interest is in fluid films that are hanging from the underside of the substrate; these films may drip depending on physical parameters, and we investigate whether a sufficiently strong electric field can suppress such nonlinear phenomena. For a non-electrified flow, it was observed by Brun et al. [Phys. Fluids 27, 084107 (2015)] that the thresholds of linear absolute instability and dripping are reasonably close. In the present study, we incorporate an electric field and analyze the absolute and convective instabilities of a hierarchy of reduced-order models to predict the dripping limit in parameter space. The spatial stability results for the reduced-order models are verified by performing an impulse-response analysis with direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the Navier–Stokes equations coupled to the appropriate electrical equations. Guided by the results of the linear theory, we perform DNS on extended domains with inflow and outflow conditions (mimicking an experimental setup) to investigate the dripping limit for both non-electrified and electrified liquid films. For the latter, we find that the absolute instability threshold provides an order-of-magnitude estimate for the electric-field strength required to suppress dripping; the linear theory may thus be used to determine the feasibility of dripping suppression given a set of geometrical, fluid, and electrical parameters
The dynamic phenomena of a tethered satellite: NASA's first Tethered Satellite Mission, TSS-1
The tethered satellite system (TSS) was envisioned as a means of extending a satellite from its base (space shuttle, space station, space platform) into a lower or higher altitude in order to more efficiently acquire data and perform science experiments. This is accomplished by attaching the satellite to a tether, deploying it, then reeling it in. When its mission is completed, the satellite can be returned to its base for reuse. If the tether contains a conductor, it can also be used as a means to generate and flow current to and from the satellite to the base. When current is flowed, the tether interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, deflecting the tether. When the current flows in one direction, the system becomes a propulsive system that can be used to boost the orbiting system. In the other direction, it is a power generating system. Pulsing the current sets up a dynamic oscillation in the tether, which can upset the satellite attitude and preclude docking. A basic problem occurs around 400-m tether length, during satellite retrieval when the satellite's pendulous (rotational) mode gets in resonance with the first lateral tether string mode. The problem's magnitude is determined by the amount of skiprope present coming into this resonance condition. This paper deals with the tethered satellite, its dynamic phenomena, and how the resulting problems were solved for the first tethered satellite mission (TSS-1). Proposals for improvements for future tethered satellite missions are included. Results from the first tethered satellite flight are summarized
Modelling of roof geometries from low-resolution LiDAR data for city-scale solar energy applications using a neighbouring buildings method
This article describes a method to model roof geometries from widely available low-resolution (2 m horizontal) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) datasets for application on a city wide scale. The model provides roof area, orientation, and slope, appropriate for predictions of solar technology performance, being of value to national and regional policy makers in addition to investors and individuals appraising the viability of specific sites. Where present, similar buildings are grouped together based on proximity and building footprint dimensions. LiDAR data from all the buildings in a group is combined to construct a shared high-resolution LiDAR dataset. The best-fit roof shape is then selected from a catalogue of common roof shapes and assigned to all buildings in that group. Method validation was completed by comparing the model output to a ground-based survey of 169 buildings and aerial photographs of 536 buildings, all located in Leeds, UK. The method correctly identifies roof shape in 87% of cases and the modelled roof slope has a mean absolute error of 3.76°. These performance figures are only possible when segmentation, similar building grouping and ridge repositioning algorithms are used
Ground state magnetic dipole moment of 35K
The ground state magnetic moment of 35K has been measured using the technique
of nuclear magnetic resonance on beta-emitting nuclei. The short-lived 35K
nuclei were produced following the reaction of a 36Ar primary beam of energy
150 MeV/nucleon incident on a Be target. The spin polarization of the 35K
nuclei produced at 2 degrees relative to the normal primary beam axis was
confirmed. Together with the mirror nucleus 35S, the measurement represents the
heaviest T = 3/2 mirror pair for which the spin expectation value has been
obtained. A linear behavior of gp vs. gn has been demonstrated for the T = 3/2
known mirror moments and the slope and intercept are consistent with the
previous analysis of T = 1/2 mirror pairs.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Search for axion-like particles using a variable baseline photon regeneration technique
We report the first results of the GammeV experiment, a search for milli-eV
mass particles with axion-like couplings to two photons. The search is
performed using a "light shining through a wall" technique where incident
photons oscillate into new weakly interacting particles that are able to pass
through the wall and subsequently regenerate back into detectable photons. The
oscillation baseline of the apparatus is variable, thus allowing probes of
different values of particle mass. We find no excess of events above background
and are able to constrain the two-photon couplings of possible new scalar
(pseudoscalar) particles to be less than 3.1x10^{-7} GeV^{-1} (3.5x10^{-7}
GeV^{-1}) in the limit of massless particles.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. This is the version accepted by PRL and includes
updated limit
A New Simulation Metric to Determine Safe Environments and Controllers for Systems with Unknown Dynamics
We consider the problem of extracting safe environments and controllers for
reach-avoid objectives for systems with known state and control spaces, but
unknown dynamics. In a given environment, a common approach is to synthesize a
controller from an abstraction or a model of the system (potentially learned
from data). However, in many situations, the relationship between the dynamics
of the model and the \textit{actual system} is not known; and hence it is
difficult to provide safety guarantees for the system. In such cases, the
Standard Simulation Metric (SSM), defined as the worst-case norm distance
between the model and the system output trajectories, can be used to modify a
reach-avoid specification for the system into a more stringent specification
for the abstraction. Nevertheless, the obtained distance, and hence the
modified specification, can be quite conservative. This limits the set of
environments for which a safe controller can be obtained. We propose SPEC, a
specification-centric simulation metric, which overcomes these limitations by
computing the distance using only the trajectories that violate the
specification for the system. We show that modifying a reach-avoid
specification with SPEC allows us to synthesize a safe controller for a larger
set of environments compared to SSM. We also propose a probabilistic method to
compute SPEC for a general class of systems. Case studies using simulators for
quadrotors and autonomous cars illustrate the advantages of the proposed metric
for determining safe environment sets and controllers.Comment: 22nd ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and
Control (2019
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Does mode of administration affect health-related quality-of-life outcomes after stroke?
Telephone interviews and postal surveys may be a resource-efficient way of assessing health-related quality-of-life post-stroke, if they produce data equivalent to face-to-face interviews. This study explored whether telephone interviews and postal surveys of the Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale (SAQOL-39g) yielded similar results to face-to-face interviews. Participants included people with aphasia and comprised two groups: group one (n =22) were 3-6 months post-stroke; group two (n =26) were ≥1 year post-stroke. They completed either a face-to-face and a telephone interview or a face-to-face interview and a postal survey of the SAQOL-39g. Response rates were higher for group two (87%) than for group one (72-77%). There were no significant differences between respondents and non-respondents on demographics, co-morbidities, stroke severity, or communication impairment. Concordance between face-to-face and telephone administrations (.90-.98) was excellent; and very good-excellent between face-to-face and postal administrations (.84-.96), although scores in postal administrations were lower (significant for psychosocial domain and overall SAQOL-39g in group two). These findings suggest that the SAQOL-39g yields similar results in different modes of administration. Researchers and clinicians may employ alternative modes, particularly in the longer term post-stroke, in order to reduce costs or facilitate clients with access difficulties
A Map-Reduce Parallel Approach to Automatic Synthesis of Control Software
Many Control Systems are indeed Software Based Control Systems, i.e. control
systems whose controller consists of control software running on a
microcontroller device. This motivates investigation on Formal Model Based
Design approaches for automatic synthesis of control software.
Available algorithms and tools (e.g., QKS) may require weeks or even months
of computation to synthesize control software for large-size systems. This
motivates search for parallel algorithms for control software synthesis.
In this paper, we present a Map-Reduce style parallel algorithm for control
software synthesis when the controlled system (plant) is modeled as discrete
time linear hybrid system. Furthermore we present an MPI-based implementation
PQKS of our algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first parallel
approach for control software synthesis.
We experimentally show effectiveness of PQKS on two classical control
synthesis problems: the inverted pendulum and the multi-input buck DC/DC
converter. Experiments show that PQKS efficiency is above 65%. As an example,
PQKS requires about 16 hours to complete the synthesis of control software for
the pendulum on a cluster with 60 processors, instead of the 25 days needed by
the sequential algorithm in QKS.Comment: To be submitted to TACAS 2013. arXiv admin note: substantial text
overlap with arXiv:1207.4474, arXiv:1207.409
Reactive Control Improvisation
Reactive synthesis is a paradigm for automatically building
correct-by-construction systems that interact with an unknown or adversarial
environment. We study how to do reactive synthesis when part of the
specification of the system is that its behavior should be random. Randomness
can be useful, for example, in a network protocol fuzz tester whose output
should be varied, or a planner for a surveillance robot whose route should be
unpredictable. However, existing reactive synthesis techniques do not provide a
way to ensure random behavior while maintaining functional correctness. Towards
this end, we generalize the recently-proposed framework of control
improvisation (CI) to add reactivity. The resulting framework of reactive
control improvisation provides a natural way to integrate a randomness
requirement with the usual functional specifications of reactive synthesis over
a finite window. We theoretically characterize when such problems are
realizable, and give a general method for solving them. For specifications
given by reachability or safety games or by deterministic finite automata, our
method yields a polynomial-time synthesis algorithm. For various other types of
specifications including temporal logic formulas, we obtain a polynomial-space
algorithm and prove matching PSPACE-hardness results. We show that all of these
randomized variants of reactive synthesis are no harder in a
complexity-theoretic sense than their non-randomized counterparts.Comment: 25 pages. Full version of a CAV 2018 pape
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