Investigation of the Influence of Pseudoinverse Matrix Calculations on Multibody Dynamics Simulations by Means of the Udwadia-Kalaba Formulation

The formulation of the dynamic equations of motion proposed by Udwadia-Kalaba is discussed from the point of view of numerical efficiency. Since this formulation requires the computation of a pseudoinverse matrix, it has investigated the influence of the method of pseudoinverse computation on the dynamic simulation of an overconstrained linkage. Finally, it has been proposed that a new dynamic equation which explicitly computes accelerations also in the case of mathematical models with rank deficient Jacobian and mass matrices.     

Catalytic performance of silica-aluminas synthesised with the help of chitosan biopolymer

Mesoporous amorphous silica-aluminas were synthesised with standard aluminium and silicon sources by means of the formation of inorganic–organic composites with the addition of chitosan biopolymer, and compared to analogous catalysts synthesised conventionally. Some catalysts were subjected to hydrothermal treatment. The resulting specific surface areas were from 480 to 573 m²/g in the untreated samples and 300–430 m²/g in the hydrotreated catalysts, average pore sizes ranging from 32 to 100 Å with sharp, unimodal distributions. The chitosan materials showed higher specific surface areas and larger pore sizes than those of their non-chitosan counterparts. The most important differences in the acidic properties were in the relationships between tetrahedral and octahedral aluminium atoms, the chitosan materials having higher relative amounts of tetrahedral aluminium than the conventional silica-aluminas. Evidences of stabilization in the physical and chemical properties were observed in the chitosan-containing catalysts. The catalytic performance was evaluated with the conversion of tri-isopropylbenzene at 400 °C, to assess activity and accessibility, and cyclohexene at 300 °C, to assess hydrogen transfer properties. The highest activity and accessibility was observed in the hydrotreated, chitosan-containing catalyst, while hydrogen transfer capabilities were similar to those of medium unit cell sizes, equilibrium commercial FCC catalysts.     

Josephson effects in Nb3Sn microbridges

We have studied Josephson effects in long narrow Nb3Sn microbridges at temperatures up to 17 K. These microbridges are formed by photolithographic techniques and subsequently subjected to controlled electrical discharges to modify the intrinsic Tcof the bridge region. The bridges exhibit 10 GHz micro wave steps in their I-V characteristics whose amplitudes are in excellent agreement with the Resistively Shunted Junction (RSJ) model. I-V characteristics (with and without microwaves) can be fit assuming an effective temperature approximately 15 K above the bath temperature. We have also investigated in detail structures in the I-V characteristics in the absence of microwaves. We show experimentally that phase-slip centers are induced at weak superconducting positions along the bridge when the S-N boundary of an expanding hot spot reaches within a thermal healing distance. The critical current of the phase-slip center thus formed exhibits a temperature dependence (1-T/Tc)^1/2instead of the usual mean field result (1-T/Tc)^3/2.     

Grating diffraction and Wood's anomalies at two-dimensionally periodic impedance surfaces

We address the problem of plane-wave scattering and Wood's anomalies at two-dimensional (2-D) periodic surfaces by employing a simplified grating model given by a planar surface whose impedance varies sinusoidally along two orthogonal directions. We obtain a rigorous solution to the corresponding boundary-value problem in terms of an infinite set of coupled recurrence equations. When truncated for computational purposes, this solution is in the form of a banded matrix, which we solve by direct methods and also by a highly efficient iterated matrix procedure. Numerical results are presented for symmetric and nonsymmetric incidence cases, and we show that certain diffracted fields do not depolarize in the former case. The expected Wood's anomalies of both Rayleigh and leaky-wave types are confirmed, and their location in wavelength space is numerically demonstrated for 2-D periodic configurations.     

GeoPDEs: A research tool for Isogeometric Analysis of PDEs

GeoPDEs (http://geopdes.sourceforge.net) is a suite of free software tools for applications on Isogeometric Analysis (IGA). Its main focus is on providing a common framework for the implementation of the many IGA methods for the discretization of partial differential equations currently studied, mainly based on B-Splines and Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS), while being flexible enough to allow users to implement new and more general methods with a relatively small effort. This paper presents the philosophy at the basis of the design of GeoPDEs and its relation to a quite comprehensive, abstract definition of IGA.     

Analysis of the gate current as a suitable indicator for FET degradation under nonlinear dynamic regime

Electron device degradation, although not directly accounted for, represents a key issue in microwave circuit design. This is especially true when the particular applications involved (e.g., satellite, military, consumer) do not allow or strongly discourage any kind of maintenance. As a matter of fact, in order to account for device degradation in circuit design, a suitable electron device model is needed which is able to predict the performance degradation as a function of the actual electrical regime involved in the device operation. Such a kind of model is not available in literature. In this paper, quantitative results are provided for device degradation indicators which correlate DC and RF stress experiments. These results can be considered an important step toward the definition of a nonlinear model accounting for device degradation.