Experimental study of surface roughness noise

A turbulent boundary-layer flow over a rough wall generates a dipole sound field as the near-field hydrodynamic disturbances in the turbulent boundary-layer scatter into radiated sound at small surface irregularities. In this paper, phased microphone arrays are applied to the experimental study of surface roughness noise. The radiated sound from two rough plates and one smooth plate in an open jet is measured at three streamwise locations, and the beamforming source maps demonstrate the dipole directivity. Higher source strengths can be observed in the rough plates than the smooth plate, and the rough plates also enhance the trailing-edge noise. A prediction scheme in previous theoretical work is used to describe the strength of a distribution of incoherent dipoles over the rigid plate and to simulate the sound detected by the microphone array. Source maps of measurement and simulation exhibit encouraging similarities in both source pattern and source strength, which confirms the dipole nature and the predicted magnitude of roughness noise. The simulations underestimate the streamwise gradient of the source strengths and overestimate the source strengths at the highest frequency. © 2007 by Yu Liu and Ann P. Dowling.

On high-frequency noise scattering by aerofoils in flow

Abstract A theoretical model is developed for the sound scattered when a sound wave is incident on a cambered aerofoil at non-zero angle of attack. The model is based on the linearization of the Euler equations about a steady subsonic flow, and is an adaptation of previous work which considered incident vortical disturbances. Only high-frequency sound waves are considered. The aerofoil thickness, camber and angle of attack are restricted such that the steady flow past the aerofoil is a small perturbation to a uniform flow. The singular perturbation analysis identifies asymptotic regions around the aerofoil; local 'inner' regions, which scale on the incident wavelength, at the leading and trailing edges of the aerofoil; Fresnel regions emanating from the leading and trailing edges of the aerofoil due to the coalescence of singularities and points of stationary phase; a wake transition region downstream of the aerofoil leading and trailing edge; and an outer region far from the aerofoil and wake. An acoustic boundary layer on the aerofoil surface and within the transition region accounts for the effects of curvature. The final result is a uniformly-valid solution for the far-field sound; the effects of angle of attack, camber and thickness are investigated. © 2013 Cambridge University Press.

Prediction of combustion noise for an aeroengine combustor

Combustion noise may become an important noise source for lean-burn gas turbine engines, and this noise is usually associated with highly unsteady flames. This work aims to compute the broadband combustion noise spectrum for a realistic aeroengine combustor and to compare with available measured noise data on a demonstrator aeroengine. A low-order linear network model is applied to a demonstrator engine combustor to obtain the transfer function that relates to unsteadiness in the rate of heat release, acoustic, entropic, and vortical fluctuations. A spectral model is used for the heat release rate fluctuation, which is the source of the noise. The mean flow of the aeroengine combustor required as input data to this spectral model is obtained from Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations. The computed acoustic field for a low-to-medium power setting indicates that the models used in this study capture the main characteristics of the broadband spectral shape of combustion noise. Reasonable agreement with the measured spectral level is achieved. © 2012 AIAA.

Fast, sensitive and low-noise nanowire and graphene field effect transistors for room-temperature detection of Terahertz quantum cascade laser emission

Antenna-coupled field effect transistors have been developed as plasma-wave THz detectors in both InAs nanowire and graphene channel materials. Room temperature operation has been achieved up to 3 THz, with noise equivalent power levels < 10-10 W/Hz1/2, and high-speed response already suitable for large area THz imaging applications. © 2013 IEEE.

Noise and stability in giant-chirp oscillators mode-locked with a nanotube-based saturable absorber

We compare experimental results showing stable dissipative-soliton solutions exist in mode-locked lasers with ultra-large normal dispersion (as large as 21.5 ps2), with both the analytic framework provided by Haus' master-equation and full numerical simulations. © 2010 Optical Society of America.

Noise and vibration in brushless doubly fed machine and brushless doubly fed reluctance machine

This study investigates modes of vibration in brushless doubly fed machine and brushless doubly fed reluctance machine due to the interaction of its fundamental magnetic fields, via the bending forces they set up in the back iron. It is shown that the presence of two field components of different pole numbers leads to vibration components in addition to those that would be expected in single field machines such as the induction motor. Formulations for the frequencies and magnitudes of the expected vibration components are given and verified experimentally. It is shown that the strength of the vibration components is highly dependent on the choice of pole numbers in the machine, with some much worse than equivalent induction machines and some very similar. The methodology presented enables designers to determine whether their machines are likely to suffer from vibration problems in advance of construction, and to apply remedies where appropriate. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.

Noise suppression in a novel monolithically integrated michelson interferometer

A novel monolithically integrated Michelson Interferometer using intersecting twincontact semiconductor optical amplifiers is proposed whereby the two arms are gain imbalanced to give noise suppression. Experimental OSNR improvements of 6.2dB for 8ps pulses is demonstrated. © 2005 Optical Society of America.

Noise suppression in a novel monolithically integrated michelson interferometer

A novel monolithically integrated Michelson Interferometer using intersecting twincontact semiconductor optical amplifiers is proposed whereby the two arms are gain imbalanced to give noise suppression. Experimental OSNR improvements of 6.2dB for 8ps pulses is demonstrated. © 2005 Optical Society of America.

Single camera pose estimation using Bayesian filtering and Kinect motion priors

Traditional approaches to upper body pose estimation using monocular vision rely on complex body models and a large variety of geometric constraints. We argue that this is not ideal and somewhat inelegant as it results in large processing burdens, and instead attempt to incorporate these constraints through priors obtained directly from training data. A prior distribution covering the probability of a human pose occurring is used to incorporate likely human poses. This distribution is obtained offline, by fitting a Gaussian mixture model to a large dataset of recorded human body poses, tracked using a Kinect sensor. We combine this prior information with a random walk transition model to obtain an upper body model, suitable for use within a recursive Bayesian filtering framework. Our model can be viewed as a mixture of discrete Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, in that states behave as random walks, but drift towards a set of typically observed poses. This model is combined with measurements of the human head and hand positions, using recursive Bayesian estimation to incorporate temporal information. Measurements are obtained using face detection and a simple skin colour hand detector, trained using the detected face. The suggested model is designed with analytical tractability in mind and we show that the pose tracking can be Rao-Blackwellised using the mixture Kalman filter, allowing for computational efficiency while still incorporating bio-mechanical properties of the upper body. In addition, the use of the proposed upper body model allows reliable three-dimensional pose estimates to be obtained indirectly for a number of joints that are often difficult to detect using traditional object recognition strategies. Comparisons with Kinect sensor results and the state of the art in 2D pose estimation highlight the efficacy of the proposed approach.