Transonic wind tunnel for investigation of turbomachinery blades

The design of a two-stream wind tunnel was undertaken to allow the simulation and study of certain features of the flow field around the blades of high-speed axial-flow turbomachineries. The mixing of the two parallel streams with designed Mach numbers respectively equal to 1.4 and 0.7 will simulate the transonic Mach number distribution generally obtained along the tips of the first stage blades in large bypass-fan engines.

The GALCIT hypersonic compressor plant will be used as an air supply for the wind tunnel, and consequently the calculations contained in the first chapter are derived from the characteristics and the performance of this plant.

The transonic part of the nozzle is computed by using a method developed by K. O. Friedrichs. This method consists essentially of expanding the coordinates and the characteristics of the flow in power series. The development begins with prescribing, more or less arbitrarily, a Mach number distribution along the centerline of the nozzle. This method has been programmed for an IBM 360 computer to define the wall contour of the nozzle.

A further computation is carried out to correct the contour for boundary layer buildup. This boundary layer analysis included geometry, pressure gradient, and Mach number effects. The subsonic nozzle is calculated {including boundary layer buildup) by using the same computer programs. Finally, the mixing zone downstream of the splitter plate was investigated to prescribe the wall contour correction necessary to ensure a constant-pressure test section.

Investigation of strong earthquake ground motion

The pattern of energy release during the Imperial Valley, California, earthquake of 1940 is studied by analysing the El Centro strong motion seismograph record and records from the Tinemaha seismograph station, 546 km from the epicenter. The earthquake was a multiple event sequence with at least 4 events recorded at El Centro in the first 25 seconds, followed by 9 events recorded in the next 5 minutes. Clear P, S and surface waves were observed on the strong motion record. Although the main part of the earthquake energy was released during the first 15 seconds, some of the later events were as large as M = 5.8 and thus are important for earthquake engineering studies. The moment calculated using Fourier analysis of surface waves agrees with the moment estimated from field measurements of fault offset after the earthquake. The earthquake engineering significance of the complex pattern of energy release is discussed. It is concluded that a cumulative increase in amplitudes of building vibration resulting from the present sequence of shocks would be significant only for structures with relatively long natural period of vibration. However, progressive weakening effects may also lead to greater damage for multiple event earthquakes.

The model with surface Love waves propagating through a single layer as a surface wave guide is studied. It is expected that the derived properties for this simple model illustrate well several phenomena associated with strong earthquake ground motion. First, it is shown that a surface layer, or several layers, will cause the main part of the high frequency energy, radiated from the nearby earthquake, to be confined to the layer as a wave guide. The existence of the surface layer will thus increase the rate of the energy transfer into the man-made structures on or near the surface of the layer. Secondly, the surface amplitude of the guided SH waves will decrease if the energy of the wave is essentially confined to the layer and if the wave propagates towards an increasing layer thickness. It is also shown that the constructive interference of SH waves will cause the zeroes and the peaks in the Fourier amplitude spectrum of the surface ground motion to be continuously displaced towards the longer periods as the distance from the source of the energy release increases.

A mathematical and experimental investigation of microcycle spectral estimates of semiconductor flicker noise

The experimental portion of this thesis tries to estimate the density of the power spectrum of very low frequency semiconductor noise, from 10^-6.3 cps to 1. cps with a greater accuracy than that achieved in previous similar attempts: it is concluded that the spectrum is 1/f^α with α approximately 1.3 over most of the frequency range, but appearing to have a value of about 1 in the lowest decade. The noise sources are, among others, the first stage circuits of a grounded input silicon epitaxial operational amplifier. This thesis also investigates a peculiar form of stationarity which seems to distinguish flicker noise from other semiconductor noise.

In order to decrease by an order of magnitude the pernicious effects of temperature drifts, semiconductor "aging", and possible mechanical failures associated with prolonged periods of data taking, 10 independent noise sources were time-multiplexed and their spectral estimates were subsequently averaged. If the sources have similar spectra, it is demonstrated that this reduces the necessary data-taking time by a factor of 10 for a given accuracy.

In view of the measured high temperature sensitivity of the noise sources, it was necessary to combine the passive attenuation of a special-material container with active control. The noise sources were placed in a copper-epoxy container of high heat capacity and medium heat conductivity, and that container was immersed in a temperature controlled circulating ethylene-glycol bath.

Other spectra of interest, estimated from data taken concurrently with the semiconductor noise data were the spectra of the bath's controlled temperature, the semiconductor surface temperature, and the power supply voltage amplitude fluctuations. A brief description of the equipment constructed to obtain the aforementioned data is included.

The analytical portion of this work is concerned with the following questions: what is the best final spectral density estimate given 10 statistically independent ones of varying quality and magnitude? How can the Blackman and Tukey algorithm which is used for spectral estimation in this work be improved upon? How can non-equidistant sampling reduce data processing cost? Should one try to remove common trands shared by supposedly statistically independent noise sources and, if so, what are the mathematical difficulties involved? What is a physically plausible mathematical model that can account for flicker noise and what are the mathematical implications on its statistical properties? Finally, the variance of the spectral estimate obtained through the Blackman/Tukey algorithm is analyzed in greater detail; the variance is shown to diverge for α ≥ 1 in an assumed power spectrum of k/|f|^α, unless the assumed spectrum is "truncated".

An investigation of the reaction negative K¯p → K¯π⁺ at P_(lab) = 2 Gev/c

The reaction K^-p→K^-π⁺n has been studied for incident kaon momenta of 2.0 GeV/c. A sample of 19,881 events was obtained by a measurement of film taken as part of the K-63 experiment in the Berkeley 72 inch bubble chamber.

Based upon our analysis, we have reached four conclusions. (1) The magnitude of the extrapolated Kπ cross section differs by a factor of 2 from the P-wave unitarity prediction and the K⁺n results; this is probably due to absorptive effects. (2) Fits to the moments yield precise values for the Kπ S-wave which agree with other recent statistically accurate experiments. (3) An anomalous peak is present in our backward K^-p→(π+n) K^- u-distribution. (4) We find a non-linear enhancement due to interference similiar to the one found by Bland et al. (Bland 1966).

Investigation on the static recording characteristic of super-resolution near-field structure with antimony mask layer

Static recording characteristic of super-resolution near-field structure with antimony (Sb) is investigated in this paper. The recording marks are observed by a scanning electron microscopy (SEM), a high-resolution optical microscopy with a CCD camera and an atomic force microscopy (AFM). The super-resolution mechanism is also analyzed based on these static recording marks. Results show that the light reaching on recording layer is composed of two parts, one is the linear transmissive light (propagating field) and the other is the nonlinear evanescent light in the optical near field. The evanescent light may be greatly enhanced in the center of the spot because Sb will transit from a semiconductor to a metal when it is melted under the high laser power irradiation. This local melted area in the spot center may be like a metal tip in the optical near field that can collect and enhance the information that is far beyond the diffraction limit, which leads to the super-resolution recording and readout. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Theoretical investigation on the one- and two-photon absorption properties for a series of symmetrical charge transfer fluorene-phenylene and fluorene-thiophene derivatives

One- and two-photon absorption properties of a series of fluorene derivatives with symmetrical charge transfer D-IT-D and A-IT-A structural motifs have been theoretically investigated with ZINDO/S method. The optimized structures and the characterization of frontier molecular orbitals were obtained by using AMI calculations. Two-photon absorption properties of molecules have been studied using three-state model. The calculation results have shown that fluorene-thiophene derivatives exhibit larger two-photon absorption cross-section as compared with other studied molecules. To illustrate the results, the crucial effects of thiophene ring on fluorenethiophene derivatives and the net charge changes on the pi-conjugated bridges are analyzed theoretically. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.