Stability of large horizontal-axis axisymmetric wind turbines

The stability of large horizontal axis, axi-symmetric, power producing wind turbines was examined. The analytical model used included the dynamic coupling of the rotor, tower and power generating system. The aerodynamic loading was derived from blade element theory. Each rotor blade was permitted tow principal elastic bending degrees of freedom, one degree of freedom in torsion and controlled pitch as a rigid body. The rotor hub was mounted in a rigid nacelle which may yaw freely or in a controlled manner. The tower can bend in two principal directions and may twist. Also, the rotor speed can vary and may induce perturbation reactions within the power generating equipment. Stability was determined by the eigenvalues of a set of linearized constant coefficient differential equations. All results presented are based on a 3 bladed, 300 ft. diameter, 2.5 megawatt wind turbine. Some of the parameters varied were; wind speed, rotor speed structural stiffness and damping, the effective stiffness and damping of the power generating system and the principal bending directions of the rotor blades. Unstable or weakly stable behavior can be caused by aerodynamic forces due to motion of the rotor blades and tower in the plane of rotation or by mechanical coupling between the rotor system and the tower

Using Rasch analysis to form plausible health states amenable to valuation: the development of CORE-6D from CORE-OM in order to elicit preferences for common mental health problems

Purpose: To describe a new approach for deriving a preference-based index from a condition specific measure that uses Rasch analysis to develop health states. Methods: CORE-OM is a 34-item instrument monitoring clinical outcomes of people with common mental health problems. CORE-OM is characterised by high correlation across its domains. Rasch analysis was used to reduce the number of items and response levels in order to produce a set of unidimensionally-behaving items, and to generate a credible set of health states corresponding to different levels of symptom severity using the Rasch item threshold map. Results: The proposed methodology resulted in the development of CORE-6D, a 2-dimensional health state description system consisting of a unidimensionally-behaving 5-item emotional component and a physical symptom item. Inspection of the Rasch item threshold map of the emotional component helped identify a set of 11 plausible health states, which, combined with the physical symptom item levels, will be used for the valuation of the instrument, resulting in the development of a preference-based index. Conclusions: This is a useful new approach to develop preference-based measures where the domains of a measure are characterised by high correlation. The CORE-6D preference-based index will enable calculation of Quality Adjusted Life Years in people with common mental health problems

Open and Closed Loop Stability of Hingeless Rotor Helicopter Air and Ground Resonance

The air and ground resonance instabilities of hingeless rotor helicopters are examined on a relatively broad parametric basis including the effects of blade tuning, virtual hinge locations, and blade hysteresis damping, as well as size and scale effects in the gross weight range from 5,000 to 48,000 pounds. A special case of a 72,000 pound helicopter air resonance instability is also included. The study shows that nominal to moderate and readily achieved levels of blade inertial hysteresis damping in conjunction with a variety of tuning and/or feedback conditions are highly effective in dealing with these instabilities. Tip weights and reductions in pre-coning angles are also shown to be effective means for improving the air resonance instability

New Exploration in the Chitral Valley, Pakistan: An Extension of the Gandharan Grave Culture

NoNew survey in the Chitral Valley has doubled the number of recorded Gandharan Grave culture sites in the region and extended their geographical range. The numbers and location of sites indicates that the Gandharan Grave culture was well established in the Chitral valley, suggesting that the valley may have been central to this cultural development, rather than marginal

Lattice dynamics of anharmonic solids from first principles

An accurate and easily extendable method to deal with lattice dynamics of solids is offered. It is based on first-principles molecular dynamics simulations and provides a consistent way to extract the best possible harmonic - or higher order - potential energy surface at finite temperatures. It is designed to work even for strongly anharmonic systems where the traditional quasiharmonic approximation fails. The accuracy and convergence of the method are controlled in a straightforward way. Excellent agreement of the calculated phonon dispersion relations at finite temperature with experimental results for bcc Li and bcc Zr is demonstrated

BFT Hamiltonian embedding for SU(3) Skyrmion

We newly apply the Batalin, Fradkin and Tyutin (BFT) formalism to the SU(3) flavor Skyrmion model to investigate the Weyl ordering correction to the structure of the hyperfine splittings of strange baryons. On the other hand, the Berry phases and Casimir effects are also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, modified titl

Using Rasch analysis to form plausible health states amenable to valuation: the development of CORE-6D from CORE-OM in order to elicit preferences for common mental health problems

Purpose: To describe a new approach for deriving a preference-based index from a condition specific measure that uses Rasch analysis to develop health states. Methods: CORE-OM is a 34-item instrument monitoring clinical outcomes of people with common mental health problems. CORE-OM is characterised by high correlation across its domains. Rasch analysis was used to reduce the number of items and response levels in order to produce a set of unidimensionally-behaving items, and to generate a credible set of health states corresponding to different levels of symptom severity using the Rasch item threshold map. Results: The proposed methodology resulted in the development of CORE-6D, a 2-dimensional health state description system consisting of a unidimensionally-behaving 5-item emotional component and a physical symptom item. Inspection of the Rasch item threshold map of the emotional component helped identify a set of 11 plausible health states, which, combined with the physical symptom item levels, will be used for the valuation of the instrument, resulting in the development of a preference-based index. Conclusions: This is a useful new approach to develop preference-based measures where the domains of a measure are characterised by high correlation. The CORE-6D preference-based index will enable calculation of quality adjusted life years in people with common mental health problems.Rasch analysis; health-related quality of life; condition-specific measure; preference-based health; health states; CORE-6D; CORE-OM; mental health; quality-adjusted life years

Calculating the mass fraction of primordial black holes

We reinspect the calculation for the mass fraction of primordial black holes (PBHs) which are formed from primordial perturbations, finding that performing the calculation using the comoving curvature perturbation c in the standard way vastly overestimates the number of PBHs, by many orders of magnitude. This is because PBHs form shortly after horizon entry, meaning modes significantly larger than the PBH are unobservable and should not affect whether a PBH forms or not - this important effect is not taken into account by smoothing the distribution in the standard fashion. We discuss alternative methods and argue that the density contrast, Δ, should be used instead as super-horizon modes are damped by a factor k2. We make a comparison between using a Press-Schechter approach and peaks theory, finding that the two are in close agreement in the region of interest. We also investigate the effect of varying the spectral index, and the running of the spectral index, on the abundance of primordial black holes