Influence of Mechanical and Thermal Boundary Conditions on Stabilizing/Destabilizing Mechanisms in Evaporating Liquid Films

Liquid films, evaporating or non-evaporating, are ubiquitous in nature and technology. The dynamics of evaporating liquid films is a study applicable in several industries such as water recovery, heat exchangers, crystal growth, drug design etc. The theory describing the dynamics of liquid films crosses several fields such as engineering, mathematics, material science, biophysics and volcanology to name a few. Interfacial instabilities typically manifest by the undulation of an interface from a presumed flat state or by the onset of a secondary flow state from a primary quiescent state or both. To study the instabilities affecting liquid films, an evaporating/non-evaporating Newtonian liquid film is subject to a perturbation. Numerical analysis is conducted on configurations of such liquid films being heated on solid surfaces in order to examine the various stabilizing and destabilizing mechanisms that can cause the formation of different convective structures. These convective structures have implications towards heat transfer that occurs via this process. Certain aspects of this research topic have not received attention, as will be obvious from the literature review. Static, horizontal liquid films on solid surfaces are examined for their resistance to long wave type instabilities via linear stability analysis, method of normal modes and finite difference methods. The spatiotemporal evolution equation, available in literature, describing the time evolution of a liquid film heated on a solid surface, is utilized to analyze various stabilizing/destabilizing mechanisms affecting evaporating and non-evaporating liquid films. The impact of these mechanisms on the film stability and structure for both buoyant and non-buoyant films will be examined by the variation of mechanical and thermal boundary conditions. Films evaporating in zero gravity are studied using the evolution equation. It is found that films that are stable to long wave type instabilities in terrestrial gravity are prone to destabilization via long wave instabilities in zero gravity.

OUT-OF-STEP DETECTION BASED ON ZUBOV’S APPROXIMATION BOUNDARY METHOD

Disturbances in power systems may lead to electromagnetic transient oscillations due to mismatch of mechanical input power and electrical output power. Out-of-step conditions in power system are common after the disturbances where the continuous oscillations do not damp out and the system becomes unstable. Existing out-of-step detection methods are system specific as extensive off-line studies are required for setting of relays. Most of the existing algorithms also require network reduction techniques to apply in multi-machine power systems. To overcome these issues, this research applies Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) data and Zubov’s approximation stability boundary method, which is a modification of Lyapunov’s direct method, to develop a novel out-of-step detection algorithm. The proposed out-of-step detection algorithm is tested in a Single Machine Infinite Bus system, IEEE 3-machine 9-bus, and IEEE 10-machine 39-bus systems. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of detecting out-of-step conditions in multi-machine power systems without using network reduction techniques and a comparative study with an existing blinder method demonstrate that the decision times are faster. The simulation case studies also demonstrate that the proposed algorithm does not depend on power system parameters, hence it avoids the need of extensive off-line system studies as needed in other algorithms.

Long-Range Pollution Transport: Trans-Atlantic Mechanisms and Lagrangian Modeling Methods

Over the past several decades, it has become apparent that anthropogenic activities have resulted in the large-scale enhancement of the levels of many trace gases throughout the troposphere. More recently, attention has been given to the transport pathway taken by these emissions as they are dispersed throughout the atmosphere. The transport pathway determines the physical characteristics of emissions plumes and therefore plays an important role in the chemical transformations that can occur downwind of source regions. For example, the production of ozone (O3) is strongly dependent upon the transport its precursors undergo. O3 can initially be formed within air masses while still over polluted source regions. These polluted air masses can experience continued O3 production or O3 destruction downwind, depending on the air mass's chemical and transport characteristics. At present, however, there are a number of uncertainties in the relationships between transport and O3 production in the North Atlantic lower free troposphere. The first phase of the study presented here used measurements made at the Pico Mountain observatory and model simulations to determine transport pathways for US emissions to the observatory. The Pico Mountain observatory was established in the summer of 2001 in order to address the need to understand the relationships between transport and O3 production. Measurements from the observatory were analyzed in conjunction with model simulations from the Lagrangian particle dispersion model (LPDM), FLEX-PART, in order to determine the transport pathway for events observed at the Pico Mountain observatory during July 2003. A total of 16 events were observed, 4 of which were analyzed in detail. The transport time for these 16 events varied from 4.5 to 7 days, while the transport altitudes over the ocean ranged from 2-8 km, but were typically less than 3 km. In three of the case studies, eastward advection and transport in a weak warm conveyor belt (WCB) airflow was responsible for the export of North American emissions into the FT, while transport in the FT was governed by easterly winds driven by the Azores/Bermuda High (ABH) and transient northerly lows. In the fourth case study, North American emissions were lofted to 6-8 km in a WCB before being entrained in the same cyclone's dry airstream and transported down to the observatory. The results of this study show that the lower marine FT may provide an important transport environment where O3 production may continue, in contrast to transport in the marine boundary layer, where O3 destruction is believed to dominate. The second phase of the study presented here focused on improving the analysis methods that are available with LPDMs. While LPDMs are popular and useful for the analysis of atmospheric trace gas measurements, identifying the transport pathway of emissions from their source to a receptor (the Pico Mountain observatory in our case) using the standard gridded model output, particularly during complex meteorological scenarios can be difficult can be difficult or impossible. The transport study in phase 1 was limited to only 1 month out of more than 3 years of available data and included only 4 case studies out of the 16 events specifically due to this confounding factor. The second phase of this study addressed this difficulty by presenting a method to clearly and easily identify the pathway taken by only those emissions that arrive at a receptor at a particular time, by combining the standard gridded output from forward (i.e., concentrations) and backward (i.e., residence time) LPDM simulations, greatly simplifying similar analyses. The ability of the method to successfully determine the source-to-receptor pathway, restoring this Lagrangian information that is lost when the data are gridded, is proven by comparing the pathway determined from this method with the particle trajectories from both the forward and backward models. A sample analysis is also presented, demonstrating that this method is more accurate and easier to use than existing methods using standard LPDM products. Finally, we discuss potential future work that would be possible by combining the backward LPDM simulation with gridded data from other sources (e.g., chemical transport models) to obtain a Lagrangian sampling of the air that will eventually arrive at a receptor.