Cooling by Free Convection at High Rayleigh Number of Cylinders Positioned Above a Plane

Free convection cooling of isothermal circular cylinders positioned above a horizontal plane is investigated numerically, using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package. Computation is performed for high Rayleigh number, in the range 109 − 1011. Chien’s turbulence model of low-Reynolds-number K-ε is used, with Prandtl number of 0.707, corresponding to air near standard conditions. Influence of the underlying plane on heat transfer from the cylinders' surface is examined. As the gap between the plane and cylinders is narrowed, a pattern can be seen whereby heat transfer reaches a minimum that moves closer to the cylinder surface with higher Rayleigh number. The plane’s thermal condition, adiabatic versus isothermal, produces no significant difference in the heat transfer for the present range of gap ratio, in contrast to laminar case

Analog of Astrophysical Magnetorotational Instability in a Couette-Taylor Flow of Polymer Fluids

We report experimental observation of an instability in a Couette-Taylor flow of a polymer fluid in a thin gap between two coaxially rotating cylinders in a regime where their angular velocity decreases with the radius while the specific angular momentum increases with the radius. In the considered regime, neither the inertial Rayleigh instability nor the purely elastic instability are possible. We propose that the observed "elasto-rotational" instability is an analog of the magnetorotational instability which plays a fundamental role in astrophysical Keplerian accretion disks.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Photoacoustic imaging using an 8-beam Fabry-Perot scanner

The planar Fabry Perot (FP) photoacoustic scanner has been shown to provide exquisite high resolution 3D images of soft tissue structures in vivo to depths up to approximately 10mm. However a significant limitation of current embodiments of the concept is low image acquisition speed. To increase acquisition speed, a novel multi-beam scanner architecture has been developed. This enables a line of equally spaced 8 interrogation beams to be scanned simultaneously across the FP sensor and the photoacoustic signals detected in parallel. In addition, an excitation laser operating at 200Hz was used. The combination of parallelising the detection and the high pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of the excitation laser has enabled dramatic reductions in image acquisition time to be achieved. A 3D image can now be acquired in 10 seconds and 2D images at video rates are now possible. © (2016) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

A weighted reduced basis method for parabolic PDEs with random data

This work considers a weighted POD-greedy method to estimate statistical outputs parabolic PDE problems with parametrized random data. The key idea of weighted reduced basis methods is to weight the parameter-dependent error estimate according to a probability measure in the set-up of the reduced space. The error of stochastic finite element solutions is usually measured in a root mean square sense regarding their dependence on the stochastic input parameters. An orthogonal projection of a snapshot set onto a corresponding POD basis defines an optimum reduced approximation in terms of a Monte Carlo discretization of the root mean square error. The errors of a weighted POD-greedy Galerkin solution are compared against an orthogonal projection of the underlying snapshots onto a POD basis for a numerical example involving thermal conduction. In particular, it is assessed whether a weighted POD-greedy solutions is able to come significantly closer to the optimum than a non-weighted equivalent. Additionally, the performance of a weighted POD-greedy Galerkin solution is considered with respect to the mean absolute error of an adjoint-corrected functional of the reduced solution.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

A real-time ultrasonic field mapping system using a Fabry Perot single pixel camera for 3D photoacoustic imaging

A system for dynamic mapping of broadband ultrasound fields has been designed, with high frame rate photoacoustic imaging in mind. A Fabry-Pérot interferometric ultrasound sensor was interrogated using a coherent light single-pixel camera. Scrambled Hadamard measurement patterns were used to sample the acoustic field at the sensor, and either a fast Hadamard transform or a compressed sensing reconstruction algorithm were used to recover the acoustic pressure data. Frame rates of 80 Hz were achieved for 32x32 images even though no specialist hardware was used for the on-the-fly reconstructions. The ability of the system to obtain photocacoustic images with data compressions as low as 10% was also demonstrate

Lunar and Meteorite Sample Education Disk Program - Space Rocks for Classrooms, Museums, Science Centers, and Libraries

NASA is eager for students and the public to experience lunar Apollo samples and meteorites first hand. Lunar rocks and soil, embedded in Lucite disks, are available for educators to use in their classrooms, museums, science centers, and public libraries for education activities and display. The sample education disks are valuable tools for engaging students in the exploration of the Solar System. Scientific research conducted on the Apollo rocks reveals the early history of our Earth-Moon system and meteorites reveal much of the history of the early solar system. The rocks help educators make the connections to this ancient history of our planet and solar system and the basic processes accretion, differentiation, impact and volcanism. With these samples, educators in museums, science centers, libraries, and classrooms can help students and the public understand the key questions pursued by many NASA planetary missions. The Office of the Curator at Johnson Space Center is in the process of reorganizing and renewing the Lunar and Meteorite Sample Education Disk Program to increase reach, security and accountability. The new program expands the reach of these exciting extraterrestrial rocks through increased access to training and educator borrowing. One of the expanded opportunities is that trained certified educators from science centers, museums, and libraries may now borrow the extraterrestrial rock samples. Previously the loan program was only open to classroom educators so the expansion will increase the public access to the samples and allow educators to make the critical connections to the exciting exploration missions taking place in our solar system. Each Lunar Disk contains three lunar rocks and three regolith soils embedded in Lucite. The anorthosite sample is a part of the magma ocean formed on the surface of Moon in the early melting period, the basalt is part of the extensive lunar mare lava flows, and the breccias sample is an important example of the violent impact history of the Moon. The disks also include two regolith soils and orange glass from a pyroclastic deposit. Each Meteorite Disk contains two ordinary chondrites, one carbonaceous chondrite, one iron, one stony iron, and one achondrite. These samples will help educators share the early history of the solar system with students and the public. Educators may borrow either lunar or meteorite disks and the accompanying education materials through the Johnson Space Center Curatorial Office. In trainings provided by the NASA Aerospace Education Services Program specialists, educators certified to borrow the disk learn about education resources, the proper use of the samples, and the special security for care and shipping of the disks. The Lunar and Meteorite Sample Education Disk Program will take NASA exploration to more people. Getting Space Rocks out to the public and inspiring the public about new space exploration is the focus of the NASA disk loan program

A Two-Step Certified Reduced Basis Method

In this paper we introduce a two-step Certified Reduced Basis (RB) method. In the first step we construct from an expensive finite element “truth” discretization of dimension N an intermediate RB model of dimension N≪N . In the second step we construct from this intermediate RB model a derived RB (DRB) model of dimension M≤N. The construction of the DRB model is effected at cost O(N) and in particular at cost independent of N ; subsequent evaluation of the DRB model may then be effected at cost O(M) . The DRB model comprises both the DRB output and a rigorous a posteriori error bound for the error in the DRB output with respect to the truth discretization. The new approach is of particular interest in two contexts: focus calculations and hp-RB approximations. In the former the new approach serves to reduce online cost, M≪N: the DRB model is restricted to a slice or subregion of a larger parameter domain associated with the intermediate RB model. In the latter the new approach enlarges the class of problems amenable to hp-RB treatment by a significant reduction in offline (precomputation) cost: in the development of the hp parameter domain partition and associated “local” (now derived) RB models the finite element truth is replaced by the intermediate RB model. We present numerical results to illustrate the new approach.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR Grant number FA9550-07-1-0425)United States. Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD/AFOSR Grant number FA9550-09-1-0613)Norwegian University of Science and Technolog

Accelerated High-Resolution Photoacoustic Tomography via Compressed Sensing

Current 3D photoacoustic tomography (PAT) systems offer either high image quality or high frame rates but are not able to deliver high spatial and temporal resolution simultaneously, which limits their ability to image dynamic processes in living tissue. A particular example is the planar Fabry-Perot (FP) scanner, which yields high-resolution images but takes several minutes to sequentially map the photoacoustic field on the sensor plane, point-by-point. However, as the spatio-temporal complexity of many absorbing tissue structures is rather low, the data recorded in such a conventional, regularly sampled fashion is often highly redundant. We demonstrate that combining variational image reconstruction methods using spatial sparsity constraints with the development of novel PAT acquisition systems capable of sub-sampling the acoustic wave field can dramatically increase the acquisition speed while maintaining a good spatial resolution: First, we describe and model two general spatial sub-sampling schemes. Then, we discuss how to implement them using the FP scanner and demonstrate the potential of these novel compressed sensing PAT devices through simulated data from a realistic numerical phantom and through measured data from a dynamic experimental phantom as well as from in-vivo experiments. Our results show that images with good spatial resolution and contrast can be obtained from highly sub-sampled PAT data if variational image reconstruction methods that describe the tissues structures with suitable sparsity-constraints are used. In particular, we examine the use of total variation regularization enhanced by Bregman iterations. These novel reconstruction strategies offer new opportunities to dramatically increase the acquisition speed of PAT scanners that employ point-by-point sequential scanning as well as reducing the channel count of parallelized schemes that use detector arrays