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The invention provides a system for removing target moieties from gas streams, the system comprising a supersonic expander coaxially positioned within an array of oblique shock inducers. Also provided is a method for removing target moieties from gas streams, the method comprising simultaneously subjecting the streams to supersonic expansion and oblique shock compression.
New techniques are advancing the frontier of high-pressure physics beyond 1 terapascal, leading to new discoveries and offering stringent tests for condensed-matter theory and advanced numerical methods. However, the ability to absolutely determine the pressure state remains challenging, and well-calibrated pressure-density reference materials are required. We conducted shockless dynamic compression experiments at the National Ignition Facility and the Z machine to obtain quasi-absolute, high-precision, pressure-density equation-of-state data for gold and platinum. We derived two experimentally constrained pressure standards to terapascal conditions. Establishing accurate experimental determinations of extreme pressure will facilitate better connections between experiments and theory, paving the way toward improving our understanding of material response to these extreme conditions.
In order for ceramic additive manufacturing (AM) to achieve its full potential, it is increasingly important to develop a more rigorous understanding of fundamental phenomena that govern the kinetics and thermodynamics of ceramic AM processes. In the case of additive build processes, such as direct ink write and ceramic extrusion, methods for densifying the resulting green-body product need to be considered to complement the efficiencies of ceramics AM, itself. One densification route, at least for monolithic components, built layer-by-layer, is offered by the recently developed cold sintering process, whereby high-density final product is achieved through addition of a small amount of liquid solvent and application of modest uniaxial compressive stress at relatively low temperature. In situ small-angle X-ray scattering methods and X-ray diffraction have been applied to characterize and quantify the pore morphology evolution during cold sintering for a model system: potassium di-phosphate, KH 2 PO 4 (KDP). It is shown that both temperature and applied stress affect the densification rate, but stress has a stronger effect on the evolving morphology. A regime with an approximate linear densification rate can be identified, yielding an effective densification activation energy of ≈90 kJ/mol.
The frequency of unintended releases in a compressed natural gas system is an important aspect of the system quantitative risk assessment. The frequencies for possible release scenarios, along with engineering models, are utilized to quantify the risks for compressed natural gas facilities. This report documents component leakage frequencies representative of compressed natural gas components that were estimated as a function of the normalized leak size. A Bayesian statistical method was used which results in leak frequency distributions for each component which represent variation and uncertainty in the leak frequency. The analysis shows that there is high uncertainty in the estimated leak frequencies due to sparsity in compressed natural gas data. These leak frequencies may still be useful in compressed natural gas system risk assessments, as long as this high uncertainty is acknowledged and considered appropriately.
The quasi-brittle response of cohesive-frictional materials in numerical simulations is commonly represented by softening plasticity or continuum damage models, either individually or in combination. However, classical models, particularly when coupled with non-associated plasticity, often suffer from ill-posedness and a lack of objectivity in numerical simulations. Moreover, the performance of the finite element method significantly degrades in simulations involving finite strains when mesh distortion reaches excessive levels. This represents a challenge for modeling cohesive-frictional materials, given their tendency to experience strongly localized deformations, such as those occurring during shear band dominated failure. Hence, accurate modeling of the response of cohesive-frictional solids is a demanding task. To address these challenges, we present an extension of the material point method (MPM) for the unified gradient-enhanced micropolar continuum, aiming at the analysis of finite localized inelastic deformations in cohesive-frictional materials. The generalized gradient-enhanced micropolar continuum formulation is employed to tackle challenges related to localization and softening material behavior, while the MPM addresses issues arising from excessive deformations. The method utilizes a B-spline formulation for the rigid background mesh to mitigate the well-known cell crossing errors of the MPM. To demonstrate the performance of the method, 2D and 3D numerical studies on localized failure in sandstone in plane strain compression and triaxial extension tests are presented. A comparison with finite element results confirms the suitability of the formulation. Moreover, an efficient numerical implementation of the formulation is presented, and it is demonstrated that the additional MPM specific overhead is negligible.
Emerging tensor network techniques for solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs), known for their ability to break the curse of dimensionality, deliver new mathematical methods for ultra-fast numerical solutions of high-dimensional problems. Here, we introduce a Tensor Train (TT) Chebyshev spectral collocation method, in both space and time, for the solution of the time-dependent convection-diffusion-reaction (CDR) equation with inhomogeneous boundary conditions, in Cartesian geometry. Previous methods for numerical solution of time-dependent PDEs often used finite difference for time, and a spectral scheme for the spatial dimensions, which led to a slow linear convergence. Spectral collocation space-time methods show exponential convergence; however, for realistic problems they need to solve large four-dimensional systems. We overcome this difficulty by using a TT approach, as its complexity only grows linearly with the number of dimensions. We show that our TT space-time Chebyshev spectral collocation method converges exponentially, when the solution of the CDR is smooth, and demonstrate that it leads to a very high compression of linear operators from terabytes to kilobytes in TT-format, and a speedup of tens of thousands of times when compared to a full-grid space-time spectral method. These advantages allow us to obtain the solutions at much higher resolutions.
This paper introduces a computational framework to incorporate flexible regularization techniques in ensemble Kalman methods, generalizing the iterative alternating scheme to nonlinear inverse problems. The proposed methodology approximates the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of a hierarchical Bayesian model characterized by a conditionally Gaussian prior and generalized gamma hyperpriors. Suitable choices of hyperparameters yield sparsity-promoting regularization. We propose an iterative algorithm for MAP estimation, which alternates between updating the unknown with an ensemble Kalman method and updating the hyperparameters in the regularization to promote sparsity. Here, the effectiveness of our methodology is demonstrated in several computed examples, including compressed sensing and subsurface flow inverse problems.
Single-shot two-dimensional (2D) phase retrieval (PR) can recover the phase shift distribution within an object from a single 2D x-ray phase contrast image (XPCI). Two competing XPCI imaging modalities often used for single-shot 2D PR to recover material properties critical for predictive performance capabilities are: speckle-based (SP-XPCI) and propagation-based (PB-XPCI) XPCI imaging. However, PR from SP-XPCI and PB-XPCI images are, respectively, limited to reconstructing accurately slowly and rapidly varying features due to noise and differences in their contrast mechanisms. Herein, we consider a combined speckle- and propagation-based XPCI (SPB-XPCI) image by introducing a mask to generate a reference pattern and imaging in the near-to-holographic regime to induce intensity modulations in the image. We develop a single-shot 2D PR method for SPB-XPCI images of pure phase objects without imposing restrictions such as object support constraints. It is compared against PR methods inspired by those developed for SP-XPCI and PB-XPCI on simulated and experimental images of a thin glass shell before and during shockwave compression. Reconstructed phase maps show improvements in quantitative scores of root-mean-square error and structural similarity index measure using our proposed method.
There is an increasing demand for electric vehicle batteries with higher energy densities that can be manufactured with low cost utilizing environmentally friendly processes. Lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxides (NCM), such as LiNi(0.5)Co(0.2)Mr(0.3)O(2) (NCM523), are commonly used in commercial lithium ion batteries for electric vehicle applications. These cathodes are typically fabricated using environmentally hazardous, energy intensive, and time-consuming solvent-based slurry casting processes. Polymeric binders, also required for cathode preparation, add weight and can undergo parasitic reactions during battery cycling. Here we report a facile, solvent-free, binder-free, and rapid cold-press electrode fabrication process to prepare high mass loading NCM cathodes within minutes. This process is enabled by the use of holey graphene, a unique lightweight, compressible carbon nanomaterial that serves as both a binder and an electrically conductive matrix. NCM cathodes fabricated by this method are stable and exhibit good active material utilization. A significant advantage for the dry-press process is that the electrode mass loadings can be readily increased simply by adding more composite powder to the compression molding die, resulting in improved areal capacities that are attractive for applications requiring high energy per unit footprint. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Error-bounded lossy compression is critical to the success of extreme-scale scientific research because of ever-increasing volumes of data produced by today's high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Not only can error-controlled lossy compressors significantly reduce the I/O and storage burden but they can retain high data fidelity for post analysis. Existing state-of-the-art lossy compressors, however, generally suffer from relatively low compression and decompression throughput (up to hundreds of megabytes per second on a single CPU core), which considerably restrict the adoption of lossy compression by many HPC applications especially those with a fairly high data production rate. In this paper, we propose a highly efficient lossy compression approach based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) under the state-of-the-art lossy compression model SZ. Our contributions are fourfold. (1) We adopt a wavefront memory layout to alleviate the data dependency during the prediction for higher-dimensional predictors, such as the Lorenzo predictor. (2) We propose a co-design framework named WAVESZ based on the wavefront memory layout and the characteristics of SZ algorithm and carefully implement it by using high-level synthesis. (3) We propose a hardware-algorithm co-optimization method to improve the performance. (4) We evaluate our proposed WAVESZ on three real-world HPC simulation datasets from the Scientific Data Reduction Benchmarks and compare it with other state-of-the-art methods on both CPUs and FPGAs. Experiments show that our WAVESZ can improve SZ's compression throughput by 6.9x similar to 8.7x over the production version running on a state-of-the-art CPU and improve the compression ratio and throughput by 2.1x and 5.8x on average, respectively, respectively, compared with the state-of-the-art FPGA design.
In the present work, we investigate the isothermal annealing process of Cu 64 Zr 36 metallic glass (MG) by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and characterize the compression properties under different temperatures and compressive rates. The pair distribution functions, the bond-orientational order, and the cluster-type index method are modeled and analyzed to characterize changes in the structure. Results of the modeling and analysis reveal that the MgZn 2 -type Laves, MgCu 2 -type Laves and five-fold local symmetry structures can be formed during the isothermal holding at 950 K. Study on the compression properties shows that at a fixed strain rate, the yield strength and yield drop all increase with decreasing temperature. At a fixed temperature, however, the increase of the strain rate leads to a noticeable increase in the yield strength at 600 K, but has little effect on yield strength at 10 K. Moreover, the modeling and analysis of the structure at a temperature of 10 K and strain-rate of 5 × 10 7 s -1 demonstrate that the order-disorder transformation initiates the shear band.
Most conventional production processes for graphene are time-consuming, solvent-intensive, and energetically demanding. To circumvent these limitations for mass production, flash Joule heating (FJH) has been shown to be an effective method to synthesize graphene. Here, methods for optimizing production of graphene from rubber waste feedstocks are shown. Through careful control of system parameters, such as pulse voltage and pulse time, turbostratic flash graphene (tFG) can be produced from rubber waste. It is characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis. Here, the resulting tFG can be easily exfoliated and dispersed into various solvents because of its turbostratic arrangement. Addition of tFG into Portland cement results in a significant increase in the compressive strength of the composite. From a materials perspective, FJH offers a facile and inexpensive method for producing high quality tFG from rubber waste materials, which would otherwise be disposed of in landfills or burned for fuel. FJH allows for upcycling of low-value rubber waste into high-value carbon nanomaterials for use as reinforcing additives.
Ever deeper wells are drilled worldwide to pump potable groundwater. Recent studies argue that overpumping compresses clays and releases reactive dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which in turn drives a series of microbial reactions that affect groundwater potability including arsenic concentrations. Here, we use a novel method to measure the radiocarbon ages of microbial RNA to determine the source of reactive or metabolizable DOC and argue against the compression of clays as the sole source of carbon. We show that microbial RNA (5,230; 5,550; 6,250 yr; n = 3 wells), DOC (280-10,800 yr; n = 13), and methane (modern to 6,240 yr; n = 3), from an overpumped deep aquifer in Bangladesh are much younger than the overlying clay layers deposited during the Pleistocene over 12,000 years ago. Mass-balance indicates that at least half of the carbon incorporated into RNA has to come from reactive DOC or methane that is advected downward via vertical recharge. This metabolism of advected organic carbon could have implications for the quality of water pumped from deep aquifers.
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In high-energy-density shock compression experiments, the desired state of compression is typically achieved by passing shock waves through a sequence of different materials. Here, a theoretical approach for transiently strengthening such shocks passing through interfaces of experimentally relevant impedance ratios is examined. A semi-analytical method based on characteristics analysis is used to solve the problem of a shock passing from one material to another through an intermediate region of non-uniform impedance; by appropriately designing this region, a greater shock strength can be achieved in the second material for a finite duration than in the absence of this region. When a shock passes into a material of higher impedance, the shock strengthening increases to a maximum before decreasing to an asymptotic value as the strength of the incident shock is increased. For shocks passing into materials of decreasing impedance, the shock strengthening increases monotonically as the strength of the incident shock is increased when the impedance ratio is above a critical threshold. Incorporating multiple intermediate materials can further increase the strength of the transmitted shock, with an exponential discretization of intermediate material impedances being the most effective distribution for strengthening strong shocks. The results suggest that up to 25% and 9% increases in pressure behind the leading shock can be achieved for materials of increasing and decreasing impedance, respectively. The technique is applied to the design of laser-driven dynamic compression experiments, and the results of the analysis are verified via comparison to simulations performed with the HYADES hydrodynamics code.
Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) have theoretically ideal properties for bio-based composite applications; however, the incorporation of these materials into polymers is made challenging by the strong binding of water to CNFs and the irreversible agglomeration of CNFs during drying. Previous methods used “contact dewatering”, wherein the addition of wood flour (WF) to CNFs facilitated the mechanical removal of water from the system via cold pressing, which showed potential in producing dried CNF fibrils attached to wood fibers for biocomposite applications. In this work, the viability of contact dewatering with poly(lactic) acid (PLA) powder for PLA/CNF composites was evaluated. The energy efficiency of dewatering, preservation of nanoscale CNF morphology, and mechanical properties were examined by mixing wet CNFs with pulverized PLA at various loading levels, pressing water out of the system, and compression molding and shear mixing composites for testing. The most impressive results from this dewatering method were the preservation of micron-to-nanoscale fibers with high aspect ratios in PLA-CNF composites; increased strength and modulus of 1.7% and 4.2%, respectively, compared to neat PLA; equivalent or better properties than spray-dried nanocellulose at similar loading levels; and an 11-194x reduction in drying energy compared to spray-drying CNFs.
After friction stir welding/processing (FSW/P), an exit hole remains at the end of the run, which can be the weakest region of the welded/processed workpiece. In addition, tensile residual stress around the exit hole resulting from heating during FSW/P facilitates incipient crack initiating from the exit hole under external loading. Current solutions include removing or repairing the exit hole, which are time-consuming and costly. Here, we propose a novel method to reinforce the exit hole by applying an additional FSW/P pass around it, in a way that replaces preexisting tensile residual stress with compressive residual stress. Under external loading, there is no evident strain accumulation around the exit hole, and the workpiece ultimately fails along the FSW/P heat affected zone. This method provides a more convenient way to reinforce the exit hole than the current exit-hole repair or removal methods for industrial applications.
We report Civil infrastructure is made primarily of concrete structures or components and therefore understanding durability and fracture behavior of concrete is of utmost importance. Concrete contains an interfacial transition zone (ITZ), a porous region surrounding the aggregates, that is often considered to be the weakest region in the concrete. The ITZ is poorly characterized and property estimates for the ITZ differ considerably. In this simulation study, representative concrete mesostructures are produced by packing coarse aggregates with realistic geometries into a mortar matrix. A meshless numerical method, peridynamics, is utilized to simulate the mechanical response including fracture under uniaxial compression and tension. The sensitivity of the stiffness and fracture toughness of the samples to the ITZ properties is computed, showing strong relationships between the ITZ properties and the effective modulus and effective yield strength of the concrete. These results provides insight into the influence of the poorly characterized ITZ on the stiffness and strength of concrete. This work showcases the applicability of peridynamics to concrete systems, matching experimental strength and modulus values. Additionally, relationships between the ITZ’s mechanical properties and the overall concrete strength and stiffness are presented to enable future design decisions.