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At least 1,657 records · Page 92

High-Strain-Rate Compression Testing of Ice

In the present study a modified split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) was employed to study the effect of strain rate on the dynamic material response of ice. Disk-shaped ice specimens with flat, parallel end faces were either provided by Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) or grown at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH). The SHPB was adapted to perform tests at high strain rates in the range 60 to 1400/s at test temperatures of -10 and -30 C. Experimental results showed that the strength of ice increases with increasing strain rates and this occurs over a change in strain rate of five orders of magnitude. Under these strain rate conditions the ice microstructure has a slight influence on the strength, but it is much less than the influence it has under quasi-static loading conditions. End constraint and frictional effects do not influence the compression tests like they do at slower strain rates, and therefore the diameter/thickness ratio of the samples is not as critical. The strength of ice at high strain rates was found to increase with decreasing test temperatures. Ice has been identified as a potential source of debris to impact the shuttle; data presented in this report can be used to validate and/or develop material models for ice impact analyses for shuttle Return to Flight efforts.

Shazly, Mostafa↗

Development and Characterization of Improved NiTiPd High-Temperature Shape-Memory Alloys by Solid-Solution Strengthening and Thermomechanical Processing

The need for compact, solid-state actuation systems for use in the aerospace, automotive, and other transportation industries is currently motivating research in high-temperature shape-memory alloys (HTSMA) with transformation temperatures greater than 100 C. One of the basic high-temperature alloys investigated to fill this need is Ni(19.5)Ti(50.5)Pd30. Initial testing has indicated that this alloy, while having acceptable work characteristics, suffers from significant permanent deformation (or ratcheting) during thermal cycling under load. In an effort to overcome this deficiency, various solid-solution alloying and thermomechanical processing schemes were investigated. Solid-solution strengthening was achieved by substituting 5at% gold or platinum for palladium in Ni(19.5)Ti(50.5)Pd30, the so-called baseline alloy, to strengthen the martensite and austenite phases against slip processes and improve thermomechanical behavior. Tensile properties, work behavior, and dimensional stability during repeated thermal cycling under load for the ternary and quaternary alloys were compared. The relative difference in yield strength between the martensite and austenite phases and the dimensional stability of the alloy were improved by the quaternary additions, while work output was only minimally impacted. The three alloys were also thermomechanically processed by cycling repeatedly through the transformation range under a constant stress. This so-called training process dramatically improved the dimensional stability in these samples and also recovered the slight decrease in work output caused by quaternary alloying. An added benefit of the solid-solution strengthening was maintenance of enhanced dimensional stability of the trained material to higher temperatures compared to the baseline alloy, providing a greater measure of over-temperature capability.

Bigelow, Glen↗

Assessment of the Atmospheric Channel for Short (Ka-Band and Optical) Wavelengths

Atmospheric turbulence under clear sky conditions is an impairment of the atmospheric channel that greatly affects propagation of optical signal in the troposphere. The turbulence manifests itself in a number of forms within the optical domain, from the twinkling of a star in a clear night, to resolution degradation in a large aperture telescope. Therefore, a body of analytical, numerical, and experimental tools has been developed in optics to study, simulate, and control effects of atmospheric turbulence on an optical signal. Incidentally, there has been an increasing demand for high data rate returns from NASA missions which has led to envision utilizing a carrier signal in the Ka-Band range. The impact of atmospheric turbulence effects must be evaluated and considered for this frequency domain. The purpose of this work is to show that when the turbulence strength from the optical case to the KaBand ease is properly scaled, one can apply the same mathematical simulation developed for optical to predict turbulence effects within the Ka-Band domain. As a demonstration of this principle, we present how the scintillations of a Ka-Band downlink return of a deep space signal was successfully reproduced through wave-optics simulation.

optical communications↗

Comparison of Four Precipitation Forcing Datasets in Land Information System Simulations over the Continental U.S.

The NASA Short ]term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center in Huntsville, AL is running a real ]time configuration of the NASA Land Information System (LIS) with the Noah land surface model (LSM). Output from the SPoRT ]LIS run is used to initialize land surface variables for local modeling applications at select National Weather Service (NWS) partner offices, and can be displayed in decision support systems for situational awareness and drought monitoring. The SPoRT ]LIS is run over a domain covering the southern and eastern United States, fully nested within the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Stage IV precipitation analysis grid, which provides precipitation forcing to the offline LIS ]Noah runs. The SPoRT Center seeks to expand the real ]time LIS domain to the entire Continental U.S. (CONUS); however, geographical limitations with the Stage IV analysis product have inhibited this expansion. Therefore, a goal of this study is to test alternative precipitation forcing datasets that can enable the LIS expansion by improving upon the current geographical limitations of the Stage IV product. The four precipitation forcing datasets that are inter ]compared on a 4 ]km resolution CONUS domain include the Stage IV, an experimental GOES quantitative precipitation estimate (QPE) from NESDIS/STAR, the National Mosaic and QPE (NMQ) product from the National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the North American Land Data Assimilation System phase 2 (NLDAS ]2) analyses. The NLDAS ]2 dataset is used as the control run, with each of the other three datasets considered experimental runs compared against the control. The regional strengths, weaknesses, and biases of each precipitation analysis are identified relative to the NLDAS ]2 control in terms of accumulated precipitation pattern and amount, and the impacts on the subsequent LSM spin ]up simulations. The ultimate goal is to identify an alternative precipitation forcing dataset that can best support an expansion of the real ]time SPoRT ]LIS to a domain covering the entire CONUS.

Case, Jonathan L.↗

A Decision Tool that Combines Discrete Event Software Process Models with System Dynamics Pieces for Software Development Cost Estimation and Analysis

The development process for a large software development project is very complex and dependent on many variables that are dynamic and interrelated. Factors such as size, productivity and defect injection rates will have substantial impact on the project in terms of cost and schedule. These factors can be affected by the intricacies of the process itself as well as human behavior because the process is very labor intensive. The complex nature of the development process can be investigated with software development process models that utilize discrete event simulation to analyze the effects of process changes. The organizational environment and its effects on the workforce can be analyzed with system dynamics that utilizes continuous simulation. Each has unique strengths and the benefits of both types can be exploited by combining a system dynamics model and a discrete event process model. This paper will demonstrate how the two types of models can be combined to investigate the impacts of human resource interactions on productivity and ultimately on cost and schedule.

Mizell, Carolyn Barrett↗

Microscopic description of anisotropic low-density dipolar Bose gases in two dimensions

A microscopic description of the zero-energy two-body ground state and many-body static properties of anisotropic homogeneous gases of bosonic dipoles in two dimensions at low densities is presented and discussed. By changing the polarization angle with respect to the plane, we study the impact of the anisotropy, present in the dipole-dipole interaction, on the energy per particle, comparing the results with mean-field predictions. We restrict the analysis to the regime where the interaction is always repulsive, although the strength of the repulsion depends on the orientation with respect to the polarization field. We present a series expansion of the solution of the zero-energy two-body problem, which allows us to find the scattering length of the interaction and to build a suitable Jastrow factor that we use as a trial wave function for both a variational and diffusion Monte Carlo simulation of the infinite system. We find that the anisotropy has an almost negligible impact on the ground-state properties of the many-body system in the universal regime where the scattering length governs the physics of the system. We also show that scaling in the gas parameter persists in the dipolar case up to values where other isotropic interactions with the same scattering length yield different predictions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Fundamental Behavior of ENSO Phase Locking

El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events tend to peak at the end of the calendar year, a phenomenon called ENSO phase locking. This phase locking is a fundamental ENSO property that is determined by its basic dynamics. The conceptual ENSO recharge oscillator (RO) model is adopted to examine the ENSO phase-locking behavior in terms of its peak time, strength of phase locking, and asymmetry between El Niño and La Niña events. The RO model reproduces the main phase-locking characteristics found in observations, and the results show that the phase locking of ENSO is mainly dominated by the seasonal modulation of ENSO growth/decay rate. In addition, the linear/nonlinear mechanism of ENSO phase preference/phase locking is investigated using RO model. The difference between the nonlinear phase-locking mechanism and linear phase-preference mechanism is largely smoothed out in the presence of noise forcing. Further, the impact on ENSO phase locking from annual cycle modulation of the growth/decay rate, stochastic forcing, nonlinearity, and linear frequency are examined in the RO model. The preferred month of ENSO peak time depends critically on the phase and strength of the seasonal modulation of the ENSO growth/decay rate. Furthermore, the strength of phase locking is mainly controlled by the linear growth/decay rate, the amplitude of seasonal modulation of growth/decay rate, the amplitude of noise, the SST-dependent factor of multiplicative noise, and the linear frequency. The asymmetry of the sharpness of ENSO phase locking is induced by the asymmetric effect of state-dependent noise forcing in El Niño and La Niña events.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Modeling the distribution of Mg II absorbers around galaxies using background galaxies and quasars

We present joint constraints on the distribution of Mg II absorption around high redshift galaxies obtained by combining two orthogonal probes, the integrated Mg II absorption seen in stacked background galaxy spectra and the distribution of parent galaxies of individual strong Mg II systems as seen in the spectra of background quasars. We present a suite of models that can be used to predict, for different two- and three-dimensional distributions, how the projected Mg II absorption will depend on a galaxy's apparent inclination, the impact parameter b and the azimuthal angle between the projected vector to the line of sight and the projected minor axis. In general, we find that variations in the absorption strength with azimuthal angles provide much stronger constraints on the intrinsic geometry of the Mg II absorption than the dependence on the inclination of the galaxies. In addition to the clear azimuthal dependence in the integrated Mg II absorption that we reported earlier in Bordoloi et al., we show that strong equivalent width Mg II absorbers (W{sub r} (2796) ≥ 0.3 Å) are also asymmetrically distributed in azimuth around their host galaxies: 72% of the absorbers in Kacprzak et al., and 100% of the close-in absorbers within 35 kpc of the center of their host galaxies, are located within 50° of the host galaxy's projected semi minor axis. It is shown that either composite models consisting of a simple bipolar component plus a spherical or disk component, or a single highly softened bipolar distribution, can well represent the azimuthal dependencies observed in both the stacked spectrum and quasar absorption-line data sets within 40 kpc. Simultaneously fitting both data sets, we find that in the composite model the bipolar cone has an opening angle of ∼100° (i.e., confined to within 50° of the disk axis) and contains about two-thirds of the total Mg II absorption in the system. The single softened cone model has an exponential fall off with azimuthal angle with an exponential scale length in opening angle of about 45°. We conclude that the distribution of Mg II gas at low impact parameters is not the same as that found at high impact parameters. At larger impact parameters beyond 40 kpc, there is evidence for a much more symmetric distribution, significantly different from that closer in to the galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

An Investigation of the Formation and Line Properties of MgH in 3D Hydrodynamical Model Stellar Atmospheres

Studies of the isotopic composition of magnesium in cool stars have so far relied upon the use of 1D model atmospheres. Since the isotopic ratios derived are based on asymmetries of optical MgH lines, it is important to test the impact from other effects affecting line asymmetries, like stellar convection. Here, we present a theoretical investigation of the effects of including self-consistent modeling of convection. Using spectral syntheses based on 3D hydrodynamical CO{sup 5}BOLD models of dwarfs (4000 K ≲ T {sub eff} ≲ 5160 K, 4.0 ≤ logg ≤ 4.5, −3.0⩽[Fe/H]⩽−1.0) and giants (T {sub eff} ∼ 4000 K, logg = 1.5, −3.0⩽[Fe/H]⩽−1.0), we perform a detailed analysis comparing 3D and 1D syntheses. We describe the impact on the formation and behavior of MgH lines from using 3D models, and perform a qualitative assessment of the systematics introduced by the use of 1D syntheses. Using 3D model atmospheres significantly affect the strength of the MgH lines, especially in dwarfs, with 1D syntheses requiring an abundance correction of up to +0.69 dex, with the largest for our 5000 K models. The corrections are correlated with T {sub eff} and are also affected by the metallicity. The shape of the strong {sup 24}MgH component in the 3D syntheses is poorly reproduced in 1D. This results in 1D syntheses underestimating {sup 25}Mg by up to ∼5 percentage points and overestimating {sup 24}Mg by a similar amount for dwarfs. This discrepancy increases with decreasing metallicity. {sup 26}Mg is recovered relatively well, with the largest difference being ∼2 percentage points. The use of 3D for giants has less impact, due to smaller differences in the atmospheric structure and a better reproduction of the line shape in 1D.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

A new approach to modeling aerosol effects on East Asian climate: Parametric uncertainties associated with emissions, cloud microphysics, and their interactions

In this paper, we adopt a parametric sensitivity analysis framework that integrates the quasi-Monte Carlo parameter sampling approach and a surrogate model to examine aerosol effects on the East Asian Monsoon climate simulated in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5). A total number of 256 CAM5 simulations are conducted to quantify the model responses to the uncertain parameters associated with cloud microphysics parameterizations and aerosol (e.g., sulfate, black carbon (BC), and dust) emission factors and their interactions. Results show that the interaction terms among parameters are important for quantifying the sensitivity of fields of interest, especially precipitation, to the parameters. The relative importance of cloud-microphysics parameters and emission factors (strength) depends on evaluation metrics or the model fields we focused on, and the presence of uncertainty in cloud microphysics imposes an additional challenge in quantifying the impact of aerosols on cloud and climate. Due to their different optical and microphysical properties and spatial distributions, sulfate, BC, and dust aerosols have very different impacts on East Asian Monsoon through aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. The climatic effects of aerosol do not always have a monotonic response to the change of emission factors. The spatial patterns of both sign and magnitude of aerosol-induced changes in radiative fluxes, cloud, and precipitation could be different, depending on the aerosol types, when parameters are sampled in different ranges of values. We also identify the different cloud microphysical parameters that show the most significant impact on climatic effect induced by sulfate, BC and dust, respectively, in East Asia.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Engineering mechanical and thermomechanical performance in additive manufacturing–Compression molded composites through multiplexed extrusion

Traditional extrusion-based additive manufacturing is limited to single material systems, restricting the multifunctional properties of composites. For this work to overcome this limitation, multiplexed additive manufacturing–compression molding (AM-CM) was employed to fabricate multi-material thermoplastic composites with spatially tailored architectures. Neat acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and 20 wt% carbon-fiber reinforced ABS (CF-ABS) were co-extruded through a core–sheath nozzle to produce hybrid composites with neat ABS as sheath (30-50 wt%) and CF-ABS as core (50 – 70 wt%). The results show that the hybrid composites have balance of mechanical and thermomechanical performance. The tensile strength and modulus of hybrid composites exhibited a 61–95% and 173–473% increase compared to neat ABS with increases in CF-ABS content whereas the impact resistance improved by 41% compared to CF-ABS at 50 wt% ABS. Additionally, hybrid composites showed significant reduction (54 - 70%) in creep strain at 100 °C compared to neat ABS. These findings demonstrate that multiplexed AM-CM enables tunable structure–property relationships, reducing CF-ABS usage up to 50 wt% while maintaining balanced stiffness, toughness, and creep resistance.

Additive manufacturing↗

Heating and current drive actuators study for FNSF in the ion cyclotron and lower hybrid range of frequency

This paper addresses considerations for the radio frequency (RF) heating and current drive actuators on the Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF), focusing on the Lower Hybrid Range of Frequency (LHRF) and Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequency (ICRF). FNSF will require long (~months), steady-state pulses to fulfill its mission of high neutron fluence operation for the qualification of fusion nuclear technologies prototypical for a power plant. RF actuators are uniquely capable of sustaining the plasma without requiring large line-of-sight penetrations through the breeding blanket, which mitigates the impact on tritium breeding and neutron shielding. The technology for generation and transmission of RF waves in the LHRF and ICRF are fully mature, however the lifetime of plasma-facing antenna components in the reactor environment remains a significant technology gap. Moving the location of RF actuators from the low field side (LFS) to the high field side (HFS) of the tokamak reduces fluxes of turbulent plasma and energetic particles to the antenna. Compact HFS antenna designs are able to fit within the blanket sectors with minimal impact on overall dimensions. However, material choices for antenna structures represent a significant challenge. Existing materials are unable to simultaneously meet the requirements for high conductivity, high strength, high temperature, and low activation. Pathways forward with respect to materials development are identified.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Observations of modal coupling due to bolted joints in an experimental benchmark structure

The goal of this paper is to present a set of measurements from a benchmark structure containing two bolted joints to support future efforts to predict the damping due to the joints and to model nonlinear coupling between the first two elastic modes. Bolted joints introduce nonlinearities in structures, typically causing a softening in the natural frequency and an increase in damping because of frictional slip between the contact interfaces within the joint. These nonlinearities pose significant challenges when characterizing the response of the structure under a large range of load amplitudes, especially when the modal responses become coupled, causing the effective damping and natural frequency to not only depend on the excitation amplitude of the targeted mode, but also the relative amplitudes of other modes. In this work, two nominally identical benchmark structures, known in some prior works as the S4 beam, are tested to characterize their nonlinear properties for the first two elastic modes. Detailed surface measurements are presented and validated through finite element analysis and reveal distinct contact interactions between the two sets of beams. The free-free test structures are excited with an impact hammer and the transient response is analyzed to extract the damping and frequency backbone curves. A range of impact amplitudes and drive points are used to isolate a single mode or to excite both modes simultaneously. Differences in the nonlinear response correlate with the relative strength of the modes that are excited, allowing one to characterize mode coupling. Each of the beams shows different nonlinear properties for each mode, which is attributed to the different contact pressure distributions between the parts, although the mode coupling relationship is found to be consistent between the two. Lastly, the test data key finding are presented in this paper and the supporting data is available on a public repository for interested researchers.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Buffered Coordination Modulation as a Means of Controlling Crystal Morphology and Molecular Diffusion in an Anisotropic Metal-Organic Framework

We know significant advances have been made in the synthesis of chemically selective environments within metal-organic frameworks, yet materials development and industrial implementation have been hindered by the inability to predictively control crystallite size and shape. One common strategy to control crystal growth is the inclusion of coordination modulators, which are molecular species designed to compete with the linker for metal coordination during synthesis. However, these modulators can simultaneously alter the pH of the reaction solution, an effect that can also significantly influence crystal morphology. Herein, noncoordinating buffers are used to independently control reaction pH during metal-organic framework synthesis, enabling direct interrogation of the role of the coordinating species on crystal growth. We demonstrate the efficacy of this strategy in the synthesis of low-dispersity single-crystals of the framework Co 2 (dobdc) (dobdc 4- = 2,5-dioxido-1,4-benzenedicarboxylate) in a pH 7-buffered solution using cobalt(II) acetate as the metal source. Density functional theory calculations reveal that acetate competitively binds to Co during crystallization, and by using a series of cobalt(II) salts with carboxylate anions of varying coordination strength, it is possible to control crystal growth along the c -direction. Finally, we use zero length column chromatography to show that crystal morphology has a direct impact on guest diffusional path length for the industrially important hydrocarbon m -xylene. Together, these results provide molecular-level insight into the use of modulators in governing crystallite morphology and a powerful strategy for the control of molecular diffusion rates within metal-organic frameworks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Atomistic study of silicon alloying in the spallation behavior of nanocrystalline aluminum systems

Here, the effect of concentration of the alloying element silicon (Si) on the shock and spall response of aluminum (Al) is studied using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Silicon is distributed as individual grains and as grain boundaries and the dynamic response under shock is studied for an impact velocity of 1000 m/s. A general trend observed here is that the spallation is almost exclusively intergranular and limited to Al-Si interfaces. The spall strengths are observed to a) decrease with an increase in alloying of Si as grains and b) show little increase for up to 50% grain boundary segregation. An increase in grain size of the whole system showed negligible differences in spall strength, highlighting the significance of concentration of the alloying species rather than its grain size. These results provide an atomistic understanding of light-weight metallic systems under shock compression and pave the way for designing multiphase metal matrix alloys and composites for defense/armor applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Making dark matter out of light: Freeze-in from plasma effects

Dark matter (DM) could couple to particles in the Standard Model (SM) through a light vector mediator. In the limit of small coupling, this portal could be responsible for producing the observed DM abundance through a mechanism known as freeze-in. Furthermore, the requisite DM-SM couplings provide a concrete benchmark for direct and indirect searches for DM. We present updated calculations of the relic abundance for DM produced by freeze-in through a light vector mediator. We identify an additional production channel: the decay of photons that acquire an in-medium plasma mass. These plasmon decays are a dominant channel for DM production for sub-MeV DM masses, and including this channel leads to a significant reduction in the predicted signal strength for DM searches. Accounting for production from both plasmon decays and annihilations of SM fermions, the DM acquires a highly nonthermal phase-space distribution which impacts the cosmology at later times; these cosmological effects will be explored in a companion paper.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Adiabatic Heating in Modular Plasticity Models

Plastic deformations in metals are dissipative. Some fraction of the dissipated mechanical energy (plastic work) is converted into thermal energy and serves as a heat source. In cases where the heat cannot be readily transferred to the environment, the local temperature will increase thereby producing variations in mechanical behaviors associated with temperature-dependent properties (e.g. thermal softening due to decreasing yield strengths). This issue is often referred to as "adiabatic heating as an adiabatic temperature condition corresponds to the limiting case where no heat transfer takes place. The impact of converting plastic work into heat on the mechanical response of metals has been long studied. Nonetheless, it still remains an issue. For instance, with respect to ductile failure, the second Sandia Fracture Challenge noted that accounting for plastic heat generation was necessary for predictions under dynamic loading conditions. Furthermore, both experimental and modeling efforts continue to be pursued to better describe and understand the effect of plastic work conversion into heat on structural responses. Noting the need for capturing plastic work conversion into heat in structural analyses, a simple and fairly traditional representation of these responses has been added into existing modular plasticity models in the Library of Advanced Materials for Engineering (LAME). Here, these capabilities are briefly described with the underlying theory and numerical implementation discussed in Sections 2 and 3, respectively. Examples of syntax are given in Section 4 and some verification exercises are found in Section 5. Simple structural analyses are presented in Section 6 to briefly highlight the impact of these features and concluding thoughts are given.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Impact of Pulsar and Fallback Sources on Multifrequency Kilonova Models

We explore the impact of pulsar electromagnetic dipole and fallback accretion emission on the luminosity of a suite of kilonova models. The pulsar models are varied over pulsar magnetic field strength, pulsar lifetime, ejecta mass, and elemental abundances; the fallback models are varied over fallback accretion rate and ejecta mass. For the abundances, we use Fe and Nd as representatives of the wind and dynamical ejecta, respectively. We simulate radiative transfer in the ejecta in either 1D spherical or 2D cylindrical spatial geometry. For the grid of 1D simulations, the mass fraction of Nd is 0, 10 –4 , or 10 –3 , and the rest is Fe. Our models that fit the bolometric luminosity of AT 2017gfo (the kilonova associated with the first neutron star merger discovered in gravitational waves, GW170817) do not simultaneously fit the B , V , and I time evolution. Here, we find that the trends of the evolution in B and V magnitudes are better matched by the fallback model relative to the pulsar model, implying the time-dependence of the remnant source influences the color evolution. Further exploration of the parameter space and model deficiencies is needed before we can describe AT 2017gfo with a remnant source.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗