Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Ramsey, V. W..
Modifications based on aerodynamic concepts would raise efficiency of wind-wheel electric-power generator. Changes smooth airflow, to increase power output, without increasing size of wheel. Significant improvements in efficiency anticipated without any increase in size or number of moving parts and without departing from simplicity of original design.
An equation is derived for acoustic scattering from the velocity and temperature fields of a drifting blob of air turbulence. The equation is solved for scattering from the mean and turbulent portions of both fields, and the time autocorrelation and power spectral density of the received signal are calculated. The mean velocity and temperature fields, as well as the corresponding turbulence intensity distributions, are allowed to be spatially nonuniform. The turbulent fields are required to be only locally homogeneous and locally stationary. It is shown that the common practice of representing antenna patterns by either truncating the flow or tapering the strength of the flow is, at least in the case of the transmitting pattern, not a bad approximation. Spectral broadening of the receiver signal due to convection of the small scattering eddies by macroeddies and by the mean flow in modeled, and the broadening by macroeddy convection is seen to render negligible the broadening which arises from the drift of the target flow through the antenna beam. The analysis reveals that only for target flows having a high degree of spatial uniformity and/or symmetry does the received positive-frequency power spectral density turn out to be symmetrical about a center frequency.
With the aid of the Born approximation, the time autocorrelation and power spectral density are calculated for the received acoustic signal scattered from velocity fluctuations in a turbulent aircraft trailing vortex. The turbulence is required to be globally stationary, but only locally homogeneous. The treatment includes the effects of spectral broadening due to convection of the scattering eddies by a spatially varying mean flow and by macroeddies. The 3 db bandwidth of the received signal is related to the scattering angle and the core Mach number of the vortex. A primary feature of the analysis is that it provides a method for inferring the radial intensity distribution of turbulence in a vortex. The analysis technique is also applicable to scattering from other turbulent flows where significant variations of turbulence level occur over distances on the order of the macroeddy size.