542 research outputs found
Break-up of shells under explosion and impact
A theoretical and experimental study of the fragmentation of closed thin
shells made of a disordered brittle material is presented. Experiments were
performed on brown and white hen egg-shells under two different loading
conditions: fragmentation due to an impact with a hard wall and explosion by a
combustion mixture giving rise to power law fragment size distributions. For
the theoretical investigations a three-dimensional discrete element model of
shells is constructed. Molecular dynamics simulations of the two loading cases
resulted in power law fragment mass distributions in satisfactory agreement
with experiments. Based on large scale simulations we give evidence that power
law distributions arise due to an underlying phase transition which proved to
be abrupt and continuous for explosion and impact, respectively. Our results
demonstrate that the fragmentation of closed shells defines a universality
class different from that of two- and three-dimensional bulk systems.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures in eps forma
Coupled DEM-LBM method for the free-surface simulation of heterogeneous suspensions
The complexity of the interactions between the constituent granular and
liquid phases of a suspension requires an adequate treatment of the
constituents themselves. A promising way for numerical simulations of such
systems is given by hybrid computational frameworks. This is naturally done,
when the Lagrangian description of particle dynamics of the granular phase
finds a correspondence in the fluid description. In this work we employ
extensions of the Lattice-Boltzmann Method for non-Newtonian rheology, free
surfaces, and moving boundaries. The models allows for a full coupling of the
phases, but in a simplified way. An experimental validation is given by an
example of gravity driven flow of a particle suspension
New design of electrostatic mirror actuators for application in high-precision interferometry
We describe a new geometry for electrostatic actuators to be used in sensitive laser interferometers, suited for prototype and table top experiments related to gravitational wave detection with mirrors of 100 g or less. The arrangement consists of two plates at the sides of the mirror (test mass), and therefore does not reduce its clear aperture as a conventional electrostatic drive (ESD) would do. Using the sample case of the AEI-10 m prototype interferometer, we investigate the actuation range and the influence of the relative misalignment of the ESD plates with respect to the test mass. We find that in the case of the AEI-10 m prototype interferometer, this new kind of ESD could provide a range of 0.28 μm when operated at a voltage of 1 kV. In addition, the geometry presented is shown to provide a reduction factor of about 100 in the magnitude of the actuator motion coupling to the test mass displacement. We show that therefore in the specific case of the AEI-10 m interferometer, it is possible to mount the ESD actuators directly on the optical table without spoiling the seismic isolation performance of the triple stage suspension of the main test masses
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