Suppression of combustion oscillations with mechanical devices Interim report

Static rocket thrust chamber simulator for cylindrical cold flow-type apparatus desig

Estimation of turbulence in fan-rotor wakes for broadband noise prediction during acoustic preliminary design

When calculating broadband fan noise caused by rotor-stator wake interaction analytically, information about the airflow, particularly about the turbulence in the rotor wakes, is necessary. During the pre-design phase, two-dimensional streamline methods are commonly used. These provide only general flow quantities like mean-flow velocities or total-pressure losses. Turbulent parameters such as turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent integral length scale need to be deduced from these quantities. There are several models mentioned in the literature which correlate the wake size with the wake turbulence. But they usually comprise calibration factors that need to be assessed empirically by numerical simulations or measurements. The contribution of the paper is to present an updated semi-empirical model for rotor-wake turbulence quantities, derived on the basis of an extensive comparison of the model with measurements and numerical simulations on four different turbofan stages. A recalibration of the empirical factors improved the noise prediction by 8 dB, reaching an accuracy of 2 dB. In addition, it is shown, that the endwall flow is responsible for large variance in the noise prediction, and may have a contribution of up to 2 dB to the overall sound power

Orbit Selection for the Proposed Lynx Observatory Mission

The Advanced Concepts Office design team performed several analyses and trades in support of orbit selection for the proposed Lynx mission, an x-ray observatory being submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. Though the descriptions in this Technical Memorandum (TM) focus on the Lynx mission, the approach and process for selecting the final orbit is applicable to a variety of proposed science and exploration missions. To select the best orbit for the Lynx science, mission designers assembled a team of subsystem and discipline experts, in addition to mission analysts, to evaluate several candidate orbits. These discipline experts included members of the science and instrument team, power and avionics, thermal, propulsion, and environments. The goal was to clearly show the benefits and weaknesses of each orbit in the trade space and provide sound justification for the final selection. Discipline experts conducted trades and evaluated the results using a variety of methods including engineering judgement, rough estimates, and detailed calculations, and rolled the results into a final grade using a weighted grading method. The orbit options could then be ranked. The principal investigator (PI) for the mission, along with the science team, was given the task of final orbit selection. The result of the trades indicated that a halo orbit about the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (SE-L2), similar to the planned orbit for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), was the best choice for the Lynx mission. Details of how the team arrived at this selection are below

A primary fish gill cell culture model to assess pharmaceutical uptake and efflux:evidence for passive and facilitated transport

AbstractThe gill is the principle site of xenobiotic transfer to and from the aqueous environment. To replace, refine or reduce (3Rs) the large numbers of fish used in in vivo uptake studies an effective in vitro screen is required that mimics the function of the teleost gill. This study uses a rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) primary gill cell culture system grown on permeable inserts, which tolerates apical freshwater thus mimicking the intact organ, to assess the uptake and efflux of pharmaceuticals across the gill. Bidirectional transport studies in media of seven pharmaceuticals (propranolol, metoprolol, atenolol, formoterol, terbutaline, ranitidine and imipramine) showed they were transported transcellularly across the epithelium. However, studies conducted in water showed enhanced uptake of propranolol, ranitidine and imipramine. Concentration-equilibrated conditions without a concentration gradient suggested that a proportion of the uptake of propranolol and imipramine is via a carrier-mediated process. Further study using propranolol showed that its transport is pH-dependent and at very low environmentally relevant concentrations (ngL−1), transport deviated from linearity. At higher concentrations, passive uptake dominated. Known inhibitors of drug transport proteins; cimetidine, MK571, cyclosporine A and quinidine inhibited propranolol uptake, whilst amantadine and verapamil were without effect. Together this suggests the involvement of specific members of SLC and ABC drug transporter families in pharmaceutical transport

Electron capture by Ne4+ ions from atomic hydrogen

Using the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ion-atom merged-beams apparatus, the absolute total electron-capture cross section has been measured for collisions of Ne4+ with hydrogen and deuterium at relative energies in the center-of-mass frame between 0.10 and 1006 eV/u. Comparison with previous measurements shows large discrepancies between 80 and 600 eV/u. For energies below ∼1 eV∕u, a sharply increasing cross section is attributed to the ion-induced dipole attraction between the reactants. Multichannel Landau-Zener calculations are performed between 0.01 and 5000 eV/u and compare well to the measured total cross sections. Below ∼5 eV∕u, the present total cross section calculations show a significant target isotope effect. At 0.01 eV/u, the H:D total cross section ratio is predicted to be ∼1.4 where capture is dominated by transitions into the Ne3+ (2s22p23d) configuration

A model sensitivity study of the impact of clouds on satellite detection and retrieval of volcanic ash

Volcanic ash is commonly observed by infrared detectors on board Earth-orbiting satellites. In the presence of ice and/or liquid-water clouds, the detected volcanic ash signature may be altered. In this paper the sensitivity of detection and retrieval of volcanic ash to the presence of ice and liquid-water clouds was quantified by simulating synthetic equivalents to satellite infrared images with a 3-D radiative transfer model. The sensitivity study was made for the two recent eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull (2010) and Grimsvotn (2011) using realistic water and ice clouds and volcanic ash clouds. The water and ice clouds were taken from European Centre for Medium-RangeWeather Forecast (ECMWF) analysis data and the volcanic ash cloud fields from simulations by the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART. The radiative transfer simulations were made both with and without ice and liquid-water clouds for the geometry and channels of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI). The synthetic SEVIRI images were used as input to standard reverse absorption ash detection and retrieval methods. Ice and liquid-water clouds were on average found to reduce the number of detected ash-affected pixels by 6-12 %. However, the effect was highly variable and for individual scenes up to 40% of pixels with mass loading > 0 : 2 gm 2 could not be detected due to the presence of water and ice clouds. For coincident pixels, i. e. pixels where ash was both present in the FLEXPART (hereafter referred to as "Flexpart") simulation and detected by the algorithm, the presence of clouds overall increased the retrieved mean mass loading for the Eyjafjallajokull (2010) eruption by about 13 %,while for the Grimsvotn (2011) eruption ash-mass loadings the effect was a 4% decrease of the retrieved ash-mass loading. However, larger differences were seen between scenes (standard deviations of +/- 30 and +/- 20% for Eyjafjallajokull and Grimsvotn, respectively) and even larger ones within scenes. The impact of ice and liquid-water clouds on the detection and retrieval of volcanic ash, implies that to fully appreciate the location and amount of ash, hyperspectral and spectral band measurements by satellite instruments should be combined with ash dispersion modelling

Generating pointing motions for a humanoid robot by combining motor primitives

The human motor system is robust, adaptive and very flexible. The underlying principles of human motion provide inspiration for robotics. Pointing at different targets is a common robotics task, where insights about human motion can be applied. Traditionally in robotics, when a motion is generated it has to be validated so that the robot configurations involved are appropriate. The human brain, in contrast, uses the motor cortex to generate new motions reusing and combining existing knowledge before executing the motion. We propose a method to generate and control pointing motions for a robot using a biological inspired architecture implemented with spiking neural networks. We outline a simplified model of the human motor cortex that generates motions using motor primitives. The network learns a base motor primitive for pointing at a target in the center, and four correction primitives to point at targets up, down, left and right from the base primitive, respectively. The primitives are combined to reach different targets. We evaluate the performance of the network with a humanoid robot pointing at different targets marked on a plane. The network was able to combine one, two or three motor primitives at the same time to control the robot in real-time to reach a specific target. We work on extending this work from pointing to a given target to performing a grasping or tool manipulation task. This has many applications for engineering and industry involving real robots