Tubing and cable cutting tool

A hand held hydraulic cutting tool was developed which is particularly useful in deactivating ejection seats in military aircraft rescue operations. The tool consists primarily of a hydraulic system composed of a fluid reservoir, a pumping piston, and an actuator piston. Mechanical cutting jaws are attached to the actuator piston rod. The hydraulic system is controlled by a pump handle. As the pump handle is operated the actuator piston rod is forced outward and thus the cutting jaws are forced together. The frame of the device is a flexible metal tubing which permits easy positioning of the tool cutting jaws in remote and normally inaccessible locations. Bifurcated cutting edges ensure removal of a section of the tubing or cable to thereby reduce the possibility of accidental reactivation of the tubing or cable being severed

Characterisation of flame development with ethanol, butanol, iso-octane, gasoline and methane in a direct-injection spark-ignition engine

Research into novel internal combustion engines requires consideration of the diversity in future fuels that may contain significant quantities of bio-components in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions from vehicles and contribute to energy sustainability. However, most biofuels have different chemical and physical properties to those of typical hydrocarbons; these can lead to different mechanisms of mixture preparation and combustion. The current paper presents results from an optical study of combustion in a direct-injection spark-ignition research engine with gasoline, iso-octane, ethanol and butanol fuels injected from a centrally located multi-hole injector. Methane was also employed by injecting it into the inlet plenum of the engine to provide a benchmark case for well-mixed ‘homogeneous’ charge preparation. Crank-angle resolved flame chemiluminescence images were acquired and post-processed for a series of consecutive cycles for each fuel, in order to calculate in-cylinder rates of flame growth and motion. In-cylinder pressure traces were used for heat release analysis and for comparison with the image-processing results. All tests were performed at 1500 RPM with 0.5 bar intake plenum pressure. Stoichiometric (ϕ = 1.0) and lean (ϕ = 0.83) conditions were considered. The combustion characteristics were analysed with respect to laminar and turbulent burning velocities obtained from combustion bombs in the literature and from traditional combustion diagrams in order to bring all data into the context of current theories and allow insights by making comparisons were appropriate

An Analysis of the Combustion Behavior of Ethanol, Butanol, Iso-Octane, Gasoline, and Methane in a Direct-Injection Spark-Ignition Research Engine

Future automotive fuels are expected to contain significant quantities of bio-components. This poses a great challenge to the designers of novel low-CO2 internal combustion engines because biofuels have very different properties to those of most typical hydrocarbons. The current article presents results of firing a direct-injection spark-ignition optical research engine on ethanol and butanol and comparing those to data obtained with gasoline and iso-octane. A multihole injector, located centrally in the combustion chamber, was used with all fuels. Methane was also employed by injecting it into the inlet plenum to provide a benchmark case for well-mixed “homogeneous” charge preparation. The study covered stoichiometric and lean mixtures (λ = 1.0 and λ = 1.2), various spark advances (30–50° CA), a range of engine temperatures (20–90°C), and diverse injection strategies (single and “split” triple). In-cylinder gas sampling at the spark-plug location and at a location on the pent-roof wall was also carried out using a fast flame ionization detector to measure the equivalence ratio of the in-cylinder charge and identify the degree of stratification. Combustion imaging was performed through a full-bore optical piston to study the effect of injection strategy on late burning associated with fuel spray wall impingement. Combustion with single injection was fastest for ethanol throughout 20–90°C, but butanol and methane were just as fast at 90°C; iso-octane was the slowest and gasoline was between iso-octane and the alcohols. At 20°C, λ at the spark plug location was 0.96–1.09, with gasoline exhibiting the largest and iso-octane the lowest value. Ethanol showed the lowest degree of stratification and butanol the largest. At 90°C, stratification was lower for most fuels, with butanol showing the largest effect. The work output with triple injection was marginally higher for the alcohols and lower for iso-octane and gasoline (than with single injection), but combustion stability was worse for all fuels. Triple injection produced a lower degree of stratification, with leaner λ at the spark plug than single injection. Combustion imaging showed much less luminous late burning with tripe injection. In terms of combustion stability, the alcohols were more robust to changes in fueling (λ = 1.2) than the liquid hydrocarbons

The electron distribution function downstream of the solar-wind termination shock: Where are the hot electrons?

In the majority of the literature on plasma shock waves, electrons play the role of "ghost particles," since their contribution to mass and momentum flows is negligible, and they have been treated as only taking care of the electric plasma neutrality. In some more recent papers, however, electrons play a new important role in the shock dynamics and thermodynamics, especially at the solar-wind termination shock. They react on the shock electric field in a very specific way, leading to suprathermal nonequilibrium distributions of the downstream electrons, which can be represented by a kappa distribution function. In this paper, we discuss why this anticipated hot electron population has not been seen by the plasma detectors of the Voyager spacecraft downstream of the solar-wind termination shock. We show that hot nonequilibrium electrons induce a strong negative electric charge-up of any spacecraft cruising through this downstream plasma environment. This charge reduces electron fluxes at the spacecraft detectors to nondetectable intensities. Furthermore, we show that the Debye length $\lambda _{\mathrm D}^{\kappa}$ grows to values of about $\lambda _{\mathrm D}^{\kappa}/\lambda _{\mathrm D}\simeq 10^{6}$ compared to the classical value $\lambda _{\mathrm D}$ in this hot-electron environment. This unusual condition allows for the propagation of a certain type of electrostatic plasma waves that, at very large wavelengths, allow us to determine the effective temperature of the suprathermal electrons directly by means of the phase velocity of these waves. At moderate wavelengths, the electron-acoustic dispersion relation leads to nonpropagating oscillations with the ion-plasma frequency $\omega _{\mathrm p}$ , instead of the traditional electron plasma frequency.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Novel Fiber Design for Wideband Conversion and Amplification in Multimode Fibers

We propose an operating principle to achieve broadband and highly tunable mode conversion and amplification exploiting inter-modal four wave mixing in a multimode fiber. A bandwidth of 30 nanometers is demonstrated by properly designing a simple step-index silica fiber.Comment: Ecoc conference 201

Tungsten thermal neutron dosimeter

Tungsten-185 activity, which is produced by neutron activation of tungsten-184, determines thermal neutron flux. Radiochemical separation methods and counting techniques for irradiated tungsten provide accurate determination of the radiation exposure

Crystallization of a Mos1 transposase-inverted-repeat DNA complex: biochemical and preliminary crystallographic analyses

A complex formed between Mos1 transposase and its inverted-repeat DNA has been crystallized. The crystals diffract to 3.25 Å resolution and exhibit monoclinic (P2(1)) symmetry, with unit-cell parameters a = 120.8, b = 85.1, c = 131.6 Å, β = 99.3°. The X-ray diffraction data display noncrystallographic twofold symmetry and characteristic dsDNA diffraction at ∼3.3 Å. Biochemical analyses confirmed the presence of DNA and full-length protein in the crystals. The relationship between the axis of noncrystallographic symmetry, the unit-cell axes and the DNA diffraction pattern are discussed. The data are consistent with the previously proposed model of the paired-ends complex containing a dimer of the transposase

Do Borders Matter? Soviet economic Reform after the Coup

macroeconomics, Soviet, borders, economic reform