Reversed flow in face seals.
Reversed laminar and turbulent flow in flat face seals, determining external fluid exchange across seal land using stream surfaces
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Reversed laminar and turbulent flow in flat face seals, determining external fluid exchange across seal land using stream surfaces
Ferromagnetic Ni band structure and Fermi surface including spin-orbit and exchange interactions obtained by Mueller interpolation scheme
The near monoenergetic beam of neutral helium and argon atoms impinged on a single crystal tungsten target, with the (100) face exposed to the beam. The target was mounted on a torsion balance. The rotation of this torsion balance was monitored by an optical lever, and this reading was converted to a measurement of the momentum exchange between the beam and the target. The tungsten target was flashed to a temperature in excess of 2000 C before every clean run, and the vacuum levels in the final chamber were typically between 0.5 and 1 ntorr. The momentum exchange for the helium-tungsten surface and the argon-tungsten surface combination was obtained over approximately a decade of incoming energy (for the argon gas) at angles of incidence of 0, 30, and 41 deg on both clean and dirty (gas covered) surfaces. The results exhibited a significant variation in momentum transfer between the data obtained for the clean and dirty surfaces. The values of normal momentum accommodation coefficient for the clean surface were found to be lower than the values previously reported.
Mirror structure in solar concentrator reduces heat loss by reflection and reradiation. Baffle reflects entering rays back and forth in solar-concentrator receiver until they reach heat exchanger. Similarly, infrared energy reradiated by heat exchanger is prevented from leaving receiver. Surfaces of baffle and inside wall of receiver are polished and highly reflective at solar and infrared wavelengths.
Biasing techniques and their application to the control of spacecraft potential is discussed. Normally when a spacecraft is operated with ion thrusters, the spacecraft will be 10-20 volts negative of the surrounding plasma. This will affect scientific measurements and will allow ions from the charge-exchange plasma to bombard the spacecraft surfaces with a few tens of volts of energy. This condition may not be tolerable. A proper bias system is described that can bring the spacecraft to or near the potential of the surrounding plasma.
The development of a pair of computer programs to calculate the radiation exchange view factors is described. The surface generation program is based upon current graphics capabilities and includes special provisions which are unique to the radiation problem. The calculational program uses a combination of contour and double area integration to permit consideration of radiation with obstruction surfaces. Examples of the surface generation and the calculation are given.
The University of Illinois design of the TABLET portable computer extends the freedom of pen and notepad with a machine that draws on the projected power of 21st century technology. Without assuming any new, major technological breakthroughs, it seeks to balance the promises of today's growing technologies with the changing role of computers in tomorrow's education, research, security, and commerce. It seeks to gather together in one basket the matured fruits of such buzzword technologies as LCD, GPS, CCD, WSI, and DSP. The design is simple, yet sleek. Roughly the size and weight of a notebook, the machine is a dark, featureless monolith with no moving parts. Through magneto-optics, a simple LaserCard provides exchangeable, mass data storage. Its I/O surface, in concert with built-in infrared and cellular transceivers, puts the user in touch with anyone and anything. The ensemble of these components, directed by software that can transform it into anything from a keyboard or notepad to an office or video studio, suggests an instrument of tremendous power and freedom.
Infrared surface temperatures from satellite sensors have been used to infer evaporation and soil moisture distribution over large areas. However, surface energy partitioning to latent versus sensible heat changes with surface vegetation cover and water availability. The hypothesis that the relationship between surface temperature and canopy density is sensitivite to seasonal changes in canopy resistance of conifer forests is presently tested. Surface temperature and canopy density were computed for a 20 x 25 km forested region in Montana, from the NOAA/AVHRR for 8 days during the summer of 1985. A forest ecosystem model, FOREST-BGC, simulated canopy resistance for the same period. For all eight days, surface temperatures had high association with canopy density, measured as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, implying that latent heat exchange is the major cause of spatial variations in surface radiant tmeperatures.
The thermal history of the earth is investigated using a parameterized model of mantle convection, that includes the effects of volatile exchange between the mantle and the surface reservoir and the softening of the mantle by the dissolved volatiles. The mantle degassing rate is taken to be directly proportional to the rate of seafloor spreading which depends on the mantle heat flow. It is shown that the dependence of the mantle viscosity on the volatile content has important effects on the thermal evolution of planetary interiors and the evolution of planetary atmospheres. Degassing is compensated by an increase in temperature, while regassing is compensated by a decrease in temperature. Reasonable degassing scenarios can account for an early rapid formation of the earth's atmosphere inferred from noble gas abundances.
Fail-safe tele/autonomous robotic system makes it unnecessary for human technicians to enter nuclear-fuel-reprocessing facilities and other high-radiation or otherwise hazardous industrial environments. Used to carry out experiments as exchanging equipment modules, turning bolts, cleaning surfaces, and grappling turning objects by use of mixture of autonomous actions and teleoperation with either single arm or two cooperating arms. System capable of fully autonomous operation, teleoperation or shared control.
The Viking Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer failed to detect organic compounds on Mars, and both the Viking Labeled Release and the Viking Gas Exchange experiments indicated a reactive soil surface. These results have led to the widespread belief that there are oxidants in the martian soil. Since H2O2 is produced by photochemical processes in the atmosphere of Mars, and has been shown in the laboratory to reproduce closely the Viking LR results, it is a likely candidate for a martian soil oxidant. Here, we report on the results of a coupled soil/atmosphere transport model for H202 on Mars. Upon diffusing into the soil, its concentration is determined by the extent to which it is adsorbed and by the rate at which it is catalytically destroyed. An analytical model for calculating the distribution of H202 in the martian atmosphere and soil is developed. The concentration of H202 in the soil is shown to go to zero at a finite depth, a consequence of the nonlinear soil diffusion equation. The model is parameterized in terms of an unknown quantity, the lifetime of H202 against heterogeneous catalytic destruction in the soil. Calculated concentrations are compared with a H202 concentration of 30 nmoles/cu cm, inferred from the Viking Labeled Release experiment. A significant result of this model is that for a wide range of H202 lifetimes (up to 105 years), the extinction depth was found to be less than 3 m. The maximum possible concentration in the top 4 cm is calculated to be approx. 240 nmoles/cu cm, achieved with lifetimes of greater than 1000 years. Concentrations higher than 30 nmoles/cu cm require lifetimes of greater than 4.3 terrestrial years. For a wide range of H202 lifetimes, it was found that the atmospheric concentration is only weakly coupled with soil loss processes. Losses to the soil become significant only when lifetimes are less than a few hours. If there are depths below which H202 is not transported, it is plausible that organic compounds, protected from an oxidizing environment, may still exist. They would have been deposited by meteors, or be the organic remains of past life.
The BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study Trace Gas Biogeochemistry (BOREAS TGB-5) team collected several data sets related to the effects of fire on the exchange of trace gases between the surface and the atmosphere. This raster format data set covers the province of Manitoba between 1980 and 1991. The data were gridded into the Albers Equal-Area Conic (AEAC) projection from the original vector data. The original vector data were produced by Forestry Canada from hand-drawn boundaries of fires on photocopies of 1:250,000-scale maps. The locational accuracy of the data is considered fair to poor. When the locations of some fire boundaries were compared to Landsat TM images, they were found to be off by as much as a few kilometers. This problem should be kept in mind when using these data. The data are stored in binary, image format files.
The BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study Trace Gas Biogeochemistry (BOREAS TGB-5) team collected several data sets related to the effects of fire on the exchange of trace gases between the surface and the atmosphere. This vector format data set covers the province of Manitoba between 1980 and 1991 and was produced by Forestry Canada from hand-drawn boundaries of fires on photocopies of 1:250,000 scale maps. The locational accuracy of the data is considered fair to poor. When the locations of some fire boundaries were compared to Landsat TM images, they were found to be off by as much as a few kilometers.
This proposal is focused on using Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) data and numerical models to address issues of atmospheric mixing of volatiles and aerosols, on defining the mean state of the atmosphere and the degree of variability, and on the processes which exchange volatiles and aerosols between the surface and atmosphere. Specifically, five areas of research were defined: In the first, we proposed to use TES data to examine the general circulation of the atmosphere both through retrieval of the residual circulation, and by comparison of the TES data with a Mars General Circulation Model (GCM). In the second, we proposed to look at synoptic and mesoscale atmospheric mixing processes (baroclinic storms, etc.) by combining TES and MOC Wide Angle data, and by employing a Mars Mesoscale Model. In the third section, we proposed to examine the record of the Martian atmospheric state provided by MGS, Viking, and Mariner 9 - as well as published ground-based observations - in order to assess the nature of interannual variability. In the forth section, we proposed to compare numerical models of the Martian water and dust cycles with TES and MOC data, specifically looking at water ice cloud distributions, dust distribution, etc. In the fifth section, we propose to use the mesoscale model to study the Mars Pathfinder Lander data. This work has now concluded its final of three years.
It has been discovered recently that soils from certain regions of the Chilean Atacama Desert have some characteristics that are similar to the surface materials tested by the Viking Landers. Navarro-Gonzalez et al. demonstrated that the quantity and diversity of heterotrophic bacteria increase as a function of local water availability in the Atacama, and that for some soil samples collected in the driest regions, no culturable bacteria could be isolated. Additionally, Navarro-Gonzalez et al. reported that pyrolysis-GCMS analysis of soils collected from these regions revealed extremely low levels of organic matter. Although the mechanism resulting in the low level of organics in these regions was not established by Navarro-Gonzalez, the condition of organic-depleted, near-sterile soil offers an interesting Earth analog of the martian surface material, as the Viking Gas Exchange (GEx) experiment and Labeled Release (LR) experiment were unable to demonstrate the presence of culturable bacteria, and the Viking pyrolysis- GCMS was unable to detect organic compounds.
A main caveat in the interpretation of observed changes in atmospheric (Delta)C-l4 during the last 50,000 years is the unknown variability of the carbon cycle, which together with changes in the C-14 production rates determines the C-14 dynamics. A plausible scenario explaining glacial/interglacial dynamics seen in atmospheric CO2 and (delta)C-13 was proposed recently (Kohler et al., 2005a). A similar approach that expands its interpretation to the C-14 cycle is an important step toward a deeper understanding of (Delta)C-14 variability. This approach is based on an ocean/atmosphere/biosphere box model of the global carbon cycle (BICYCLE) to reproduce low-frequency changes in atmospheric CO2 as seen in Antarctic ice cores. The model is forced forward in time by various paleoclimatic records derived from ice and sediment cores. The simulation results of our proposed scenario match a compiled CO2 record from various ice cores during the last 120,000 years with high accuracy (r(sup 2) = 0.89). We analyze scenarios with different C-14 production rates, which are either constant or based on Be-10 measured in Greenland ice cores or the recent high-resolution geomagnetic field reconstruction GLOPIS-75 and compare them with the available (Delta)C-14 data covering the last 50,000 years. Our results suggest that during the last glacial cycle in general less than 110%0o f the increased atmospheric (Delta)C-14 is based on variations in the carbon cycle, while the largest part (5/6) of the variations has to be explained by other factors. Glacial atmospheric (Delta)C-14 larger than 700% cannot not be explained within our framework, neither through carbon cycle-based changes nor through variable C-14 production. Superimposed on these general trends might lie positive anomalies in atmospheric (Delta)C-14 of approx. 50% caused by millennial-scale variability of the northern deep water production during Heinrich events and Dansgaard/Oeschger climate fluctuations. According to our model, the dominant processes that increase glacial (Delta)C-14 are a reduced glacial ocean circulation (+ approx.40%0), a restricted glacial gas exchange between the atmosphere and the surface ocean through sea ice coverage (+ approx. 20%), and the enrichment of dissolved inorganic carbon with C-14 in the surface waters through isotopic fractionation during higher glacial marine export production caused by iron fertilization (+ approx.10%).
We have been modeling landscape evolution on the Galilean satellites driven by volatile transport. Our work directly addresses some of the most fundamental issues pertinent to deciphering icy Galilean satellite geologic histories by employing techniques currently at the forefront of terrestrial, martian, and icy satellite landscape evolution studies [e.g., 1-6], including modeling of surface and subsurface energy and volatile exchanges, and computer simulation of long-term landform evolution by a variety of processes. A quantitative understanding of the expression and rates of landform erosion, and of volatile redistribution on landforms, is especially essential in interpreting endogenic landforms that have, in many cases, been significantly modified by erosion [e.g., 7-9].
Two documents describe a prototype system of electrometers for measuring electrostatic fields and electrostatic responses of soils on Mars and the Moon. The electrodes of this electrometer are embedded in a wheel of an exploratory robotic vehicle, utilizing the wheel motion to bring the electrodes into proximity or contact with the soil. Each electrode resides in one of two types of sensor modules: electric-field (ELF) or triboelectric (TRIBO). In either type, what is measured is simply the electric charge induced on the electrode by exposure to the external distribution of electrostatic charge. In an ELF module, the electrode is bare and recessed radially from the wheel surface. The ELF sensor provides a measure of the charge on a small patch of undisturbed soil as the wheel rolls forward. In a TRIBO module, the electrode is only slightly recessed and covered with a polymeric insulator flush with the wheel surface. Through contact electrification, the insulator exchanges charge with the soil. There are five TRIBO sensors, each containing an insulator made of a different polymer. The charge data gathered by the five TRIBO sensors can be used to determine how the soil fits into a triboelectric series.