Nuevos dispositivos y criterios de análisis de señales de resonancia magnética para la caracterización humedad/porosidad de suelos y acuíferos superficiales

Un estudio geofísico mediante resonancia se realiza mediante la excitación del agua del subsuelo a partir de la emisión de una intensidad variable a lo largo de un cable extendido sobre la superficie en forma cuadrada o circular. El volumen investigado depende del tamaño de dicho cable, lo cual, junto con la intensidad utilizada para la excitación del agua determina las diferentes profundidades del terreno de las que se va a extraer información, que se encuentran entre 10 y 100 m, habitualmente. La tesis doctoral presentada consiste en la adaptación del Método de Resonancia Magnética para su utilización en aplicaciones superficiales mediante bucles de tamaño reducido. Dicha información sobre el terreno en la escala desde decímetros a pocos metros es interesante en relación a la física de suelos y en general en relación a diferentes problemas de Ingeniería, tanto de extracción de agua como constructiva. Una vez realizada la revisión del estado de conocimiento actual del método en relación a sus aplicaciones usuales, se estudian los problemas inherentes a su adaptación a medidas superficiales. Para solventar dichos problemas se han considerado dos líneas de investigación principales: En primer lugar se realiza un estudio de la influencia de las características del pulso de excitación emitido por el equipo en la calidad de las medidas obtenidas, y las posibles estrategias para mejorar dicho pulso. El pulso de excitación es un parámetro clave en la extracción de información sobre diferentes profundidades del terreno. Por otro lado se busca la optimización del dispositivo de medida para su adaptación al estudio de los primeros metros del suelo mediante el equipo disponible, tratándose éste del equipo NumisLITE de la casa Iris Instruments. ABSTRACT Magnetic Resonance Sounding is a geophysical method performed through the excitation of the subsurface water by a variable electrical intensity delivered through a wire extended on the surface, forming a circle or a square. The investigated volume depends on the wire length and the intensity used, determining the different subsurface depths reached. In the usual application of the method, this depth ranges between 10 and 100 m. This thesis studies the adaptation of the above method to more superficial applications using smaller wire loops. Information about the subsurface in the range of decimeter to a few meters is interesting regarding physics of soils, as well as different Engineering problems, either for water extraction or for construction. After a review of the nowadays state of the art of the method regarding its usual applications, the special issues attached to its use to perform very shallow measures are studied. In order to sort out these problems two main research lines are considered: On the one hand, a study about the influence of the characteristics of the emitted pulse in the resulting measure quality is performed. Possible strategies in order to improve this pulse are investigated, as the excitation pulse is a key parameter to obtain information from different depths of the subsurface. On the other hand, the study tries to optimize the measurement device to its adaptation to the study of the first meters of the ground with the available instrumentation, the NumisLITE equipment from Iris Instruments.

On-site measurement of limiting subcell in multijunction solar devices

It is well known that the response of any photovoltaic solar cell is dependent on the spectral characteristics of the incident radiation. This dependency is crucial in the output characteristics of a multijunction (MJ) cell where the spectral composition of the radiation determines the overall photocurrent produced, as either the top or the middle subcell will be limiting its response. The current mismatching between top and middle subcell is translated into energy losses, affecting the yield of the system. For research and commercial purposes it is interesting to measure accurately the incident solar radiation on a MJ cell, in terms of its spectral composition. This measurement will allows us to determine the photocurrent generated in each band of the multijunction device. Nowadays, the only way of measuring the photocurrent generated by each subcell is done with isotype cells or with spectroradiometers but there is no device capable of directly measuring each subcell photocurrent. In this paper it is described a device based on a commercial multijunction solar cell that is capable of measuring the direct irradiance for the top and middle bands thus it offers information of the limiting subcell (top or middle) in outdoors conditions.

High-brightness all semiconductor laser at 1.57 µm for space-borne lidar measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide: device design and analysis of requirements

The availability of suitable laser sources is one of the main challenges in future space missions for accurate measurement of atmospheric CO2. The main objective of the European project BRITESPACE is to demonstrate the feasibility of an all-semiconductor laser source to be used as a space-borne laser transmitter in an Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) lidar system. We present here the proposed transmitter and system architectures, the initial device design and the results of the simulations performed in order to estimate the source requirements in terms of power, beam quality, and spectral properties to achieve the required measurement accuracy. The laser transmitter is based on two InGaAsP/InP monolithic Master Oscillator Power Amplifiers (MOPAs), providing the ON and OFF wavelengths close to the selected absorption line around 1.57 µm. Each MOPA consists of a frequency stabilized Distributed Feedback (DFB) master oscillator, a modulator section, and a tapered semiconductor amplifier optimized to maximize the optical output power. The design of the space-compliant laser module includes the beam forming optics and the thermoelectric coolers.The proposed system replaces the conventional pulsed source with a modulated continuous wave source using the Random Modulation-Continuous Wave (RM-CW) approach, allowing the designed semiconductor MOPA to be applicable in such applications. The system requirements for obtaining a CO2 retrieval accuracy of 1 ppmv and a spatial resolution of less than 10 meters have been defined. Envelope estimated of the returns indicate that the average power needed is of a few watts and that the main noise source is the ambient noise.

Calibration of accelerometers for the measurement of microvibrations

The accelerometers used for the measurement of microvibrations or microgravity applications, such as active control of space structures, attitude control, scientific payloads, or even on-Earth testing of structures at very low-excitation levels, require a dedicated calibration procedure that includes the gravitational effects. Otherwise, on-Earth calibrations can be inaccurate due to the collateral projection of the local gravity onto the sensitive axis. An on-Earth calibration technique for the 107102s amplitude range and 0-100-Hz frequency range is described. Special attention has been given to the modeling of gravitational effects on the response of the calibration device and the accelerometer itself. The sensitivity and resolution tests performed on piezoelectric accelerometers showthe accuracy andthe potential of thistechnique. Typical scale factorun certainty, which hasbeen carefully analyzed, is of the order of 2% at acceleration levels of 10sg.