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At least 1,693 records · Page 94

Stiffness Properties for Dynamic Modeling of Composite Graphite-Epoxy Cylindrical Orthotropic Shells

Traditional composite lamination theory was used to predict composite graphite-epoxy laminate stiffnesses for comparison to quasi-experimental stiffnesses developed from cylindrical bottle pressure testing. Stiffness sensitivities were examined for variations in constituent materials and geometric properties. The material component interactions examined were the fiber longitudinal and transverse Young's modulus, the fiber shear modulus and primary Poisson's ratio, the resin Young's modulus, shear modulus, and Poisson's ratio. The geometric variation of the helical winding angle was also examined. Two computer programs were written to generate the data used to demonstrate the stiffness variations.

Tolbert, R. N.↗

Study of variable extinction of hot stars with circumstellar dust shells

Various projects on the topic of hot stars with circumstellar dust are reported. The surface temperature, wind speed, and interstellar reddening were determined for the variable WC7 star HD 193793. Circumstellar carbon monoxide molecules were detected around a hot star. The dust envelope of the star W90 in the young cluster NGC2264 is discussed, and the spectra of low-redshift and X-ray emitting quasars are mentioned.

Source record↗

Discovery of a shell around Alpha Lyrae

IRAS observations of Alpha Lyrae reveal a large infrared excess beyond 12 microns. The excess over an extrapolation of a 10,000 K blackbody is a factor of 1.3 at 25 microns, 7 at 60 microns, and 16 at 100 microns. The source of 60 microns emission has a diameter of about 20 arcsec. This is the first detection of a large infrared excess from a main-sequence star without significant mass loss. The most likely origin of the excess is thermal radiation from solid particles more than a millimeter in radius, located approximately 85 AU from Alpha Lyr and heated by the star to an equilibrium temperature of 85 K. These results provide the first direct evidence outside of the solar system for the growth of large particles from the residual of the prenatal cloud of gas and dust.

Aumann, H. H.↗

MgS grain component in circumstellar shells

In this letter, far-infrared spectrophotometry (30-55 microns) and photometry (53-200 microns) are presented which define, for the first time, the long wavelength limit of the previously unidentified 30 micron emission feature found in certain extreme carbon star spectra. The spectral similarities are sufficiently similar to those of solid MgS that MgS is proposed to be the band carrier. This is interpreted as the first direct evidence that chemical surface reactions occur on dust grains in circumstellar environments. The presence of MgS indicates that either the oxygen abundance is relatively low and/or the sulfur abundance is high in extreme carbon stars.

Goebel, J. H.↗

Qualitative properties of large buckled states of spherical shells

A system of 6th-order quasi-linear Ordinary Differential Equations is analyzed to show the global existence of axisymmetrically buckled states. A surprising nodal property is obtained which shows that everywhere along a branch of solutions that bifurcates from a simple eigenvalue of the linearized equation, the number of simultaneously vanishing points of both shear resultant and circumferential bending moment resultant remains invariant, provided that a certain auxiliary condition is satisfied.

Shih, K. G.↗

A mixed pseudospectral/finite difference method for the axisymmetric flow in a heated, rotating spherical shell

For a Spacelab flight, a model experiment of the earth's atmospheric circulation has been proposed. This experiment is known as the Atmospheric General Circulation Experiment (AGCE). In the experiment concentric spheres will rotate as a solid body, while a dielectric fluid is confined in a portion of the gap between the spheres. A zero gravity environment will be required in the context of the simulation of the gravitational body force on the atmosphere. The present study is concerned with the development of pseudospectral/finite difference (PS/FD) model and its subsequent application to physical cases relevant to the AGCE. The model is based on a hybrid scheme involving a pseudospectral latitudinal formulation, and finite difference radial and time discretization. The advantages of the use of the hybrid PS/FD method compared to a pure second-order accurate finite difference (FD) method are discussed, taking into account the higher accuracy and efficiency of the PS/FD method.

Macaraeg, M. G.↗

Selection principles and pattern formation in fluid mechanics and nonlinear shell theory

Wave theories of vortex breakdown were studied. A setting which involved dynamical systems and bifurcations of homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits in infinite-dimensional spaces was investigated. The determination of axisymmetric inviscid flows bifurcating from the primary flow lead to the study of a system of ordinary differential equations. The problem of rotating plane Couette flow was solved by means of the structure parameter approach.

Sather, Duane P.↗

Selection principles and pattern formation in fluid mechanics and nonlinear shell theory

Research accomplishments are summarized and publications generated under the contract are listed. The general purpose of the research was to investigate various symmetry breaking problems in fluid mechanics by the use of structure parameters and selection principles. Although all of the nonlinear problems studied involved systems of partial differential equations, many of these problems led to the study of a single nonlinear operator equation of the form F(w, lambda, gamma) = 0, (w is an element of H), (lambda is an element of R1), (gamma is an element of R1). Instead of varying only the load parameter lambda, as is often done in the study of such equations, one of the main ideas used was to vary the structure parameter gamma in such a way that stable solutions were obtained. In this way one determines detailed stability results by making use of the structure of the model equations and the known physical parameters of the problem. The approach was carried out successfully for Benard-type convection problems, Taylor-like problems for short cylinders, rotating Couette-Poiseuille channel flows, and plane Couette flows. The main focus of the research was on wave theory of vortex breakdown in a tube. A number of preliminary results for inviscid axisymmetric flows were obtained.

Sather, Duane P.↗

Plates and shells containing a surface crack under general loading conditions

The severity of the underlying assumptions of the line-spring model (LSM) are such that verification with three-dimensional solutions is necessary. Such comparisons show that the model is quite accurate, and therefore, its use in extensive parameter studies is justified. Investigations into the endpoint behavior of the line-spring model have led to important conclusions about the ability of the model to predict stresses in front of the crack tip. An important application of the LSM was to solve the contact plate bending problem. Here the flexibility of the model to allow for any crack shape is exploited. The use of displacement quantities as unknowns in the formulation of the problem leads to strongly singular integral equations, rather than singular integral equations which result from using displacement derivatives. The collocation method of solving the integral equations was found to be better and more convenient than the quadrature technique. Orthogonal polynomials should be used as fitting functions when using the LSM as opposed to simpler functions such as power series.

Joseph, Paul F.↗

Space-laboratory and numerical simulations of thermal convection in a rotating hemispherical shell with radial gravity

The flight of the Spacelab 3 microgravity laboratory onboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in May 1985 enabled electroconvection experiments to be conducted using the goephysical fluid flow cell instrument. Experimental results are presented which illustrate the variety of convection achieved by varying the imposed radial and latitudinal temperature gradients, rotation rates, and the strength of the electrostatic gravity. These results are compared with those obtained from nonlinear three-dimensional simulations and good agreement is found.

Hart, John E.↗

Damped response of shells by a constrained viscoelastic layer

Vibration absorbers are introduced into an asymmetric configuration of thin cylinders and tori enclosing an acoustic medium. The absorbers consist of thin axial strips bonded to the cylinder with a thin viscoelastic layer. The constrained layer dissipates the energy of relative motions between strip and cylinder. The absorber is most effective on response modes with two or more circumferential waves. The use of transfer matrices is extended to the coupled cylinder-absorber system.

El-Raheb, M.↗

Refractory grain processing in circumstellar shells Diagnostic infrared signatures

Recent advances in infrared speckle interferometry reported by Ridgway, et al. (1986) have made possible the determination of the temperatures at the inner radius of certain dusty outflows. When combined with recent data on the thermal annealing and hydrous alteration rates of amorphous magnesium silicate grains, this information allows one to predict that grains heated to high temperatures around stars such as NML Cygnus will be more crystalline than will cooler grains around stars like IRC +10420. In 1985, Jura and Morris (1985) showed that water vapor can condense on previously nucleated refractory grains in some stellar outflows. Stochastic heating events might provide sufficient energy to produce hydrated silicates from orginally amorphous grains provided that the loss of water from such materials does not occur too rapidly. Observable consequences of both types of grain processing are discussed.

Nuth, Joseph A., III↗

Cosmological shells and blast waves

It is argued that cosmic explosions could have produced significant amounts of large-scale structure in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Observations appear to indicate the presence of bubblelike structures with radii suggesting that positive energy perturbations were more prevalent than negative energy perturbations, since the latter would produce a prevalence of clusterlke irregularities. Energy input from processes occurring during galaxy formation and releasing about 10 to the 61st-62nd ergs per event would not overly disturb the CMB. The merging of bubbles typically resulting in bubbles with radii of roughly (10-20)/h x Mpc also would not affect the CMB. If much larger bubbles of radii 50-100 Mpc exist, a different energy input is likely to be the cause.

Ostriker, Jeremiah P.↗

Nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic waves in a steady zonal circulation for a shallow fluid shell on the surface of a rotating sphere

This paper considers two-dimensional nonlinear MHD waves of large horizontal spatial scales for a thin magnetofluid layer on the surface of a rotating sphere. The 'shallow fluid' hydrodynamic equations are generalized to include the effects of magnetic fields, and it is shown that the resulting MHD equations can be reduced to a single scalar equation for a stream function involving several free functions. For special choices of these free functions, two kinds of finite-amplitude MHD waves are obtained, propagating in the azimuthal direction relative to the uniformly rotating background atmosphere in the presence of a background zonal magnetic field and a steady differential zonal flow. These two kinds of MHD waves are fundamentally due to the joint effects of the uniform rotation of the background atmosphere and background magnetic field; the first is an inertial wave of the Rossby (1939) and Haurwitz (1940) type, modified by the presence of the background zonal magnetic field, while the second is a magnetic Alfven-like wave which is modified by the uniform rotation of the background atmosphere.

Lou, Y. Q.↗

Viscous relaxation of a compressible spherical shell

Analytical solutions for analyzing viscous relaxation of a compressible mantle to surface loading are developed. Two different models are considered: one in which the density step of the core-mantle boundary is held fixed and the other in which the mass of the earth remains invariant with respect to variations of equation of state parameters. For thermodynamic parameters characteristic of the mantle, relaxation times of the fundamental and first overtone modes change by no more than about 30 percent for degree less than four. For a given initial depression, the ratio between the velocity in the lower mantle and that at the surface is bigger for incompressible models than for compressible models. Eigenfunctions between the two models also differ in appearance throughout the mantle, with the incompressible ones being larger for the second model. These results would suggest that the resolution of mantle viscosity may be impaired by the smaller excitation in the lower mantle due to effects of mantle compressibility.

Li, Guoying↗