Level Set Based Simulations of Two-Phase Oil–Water Flows in Pipes

We simulate the axisymmetric pipeline transportation of oil and water numerically under the assumption that the densities of the two fluids are different and that the viscosity of the oil core is very large. We develop the appropriate equations for core-annular flows using the level set methodology. Our method consists of a finite difference scheme for solving the model equations, and a level set approach for capturing the interface between two liquids (oil and water). A variable density projection method combined with a TVD Runge–Kutta scheme is used to advance the computed solution in time. The simulations succeed in predicting the spatially periodic waves called bamboo waves, which have been observed in the experiments of [Bai et al. (1992) J. Fluid Mech. 240, 97–142.] on up-flow in vertical core flow. In contrast to the stable case, our simulations succeed in cases where the oil breaks up in the water, and then merging occurs. Comparisons are made with other numerical methods and with both theoretical and experimental results.     

On a mechanism of stabilizing turbulent free shear layers in cavity flows

Turbulent free shear flows are subject to the well-known Kelvin–Helmholtz type [Panton RL. Incompressible flow. John Wiley and Sons; 1984. p. 675] instability, and it is well-known that any free shear flow which approximates a thin vorticity layer will be unstable to a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies of disturbance. In fact, much of what constitutes flow control in turbulent free shear layers consists of feeding a prescribed destabilizing disturbance to these layers. The question in the control of free shear flows is not whether the shear layer will be stable, but whether you can influence how the layer becomes unstable. In most cases, since these flows are so receptive to forcing input, and naturally tend toward instability, large changes in flow conditions can be achieved with very small amplitude periodic inputs.

Recently, it has been discovered that turbulent free shear flows can also be stabilized using periodic forcing. This is, at first glance, counter-intuitive, considering our long history of considering these flows to be very unstable to forcing input. It is a phenomenon not described in modern fluid dynamic text books. The forcing required to achieve this effect (which we will call turbulent shear layer stabilization) is of a much higher amplitude and frequency than the more traditional type of shear layer flow control effect seen in the literature (which we will call turbulent shear layer destabilization).

A numerical study is undertaken to investigate the effect of frequency of pulsed mass injection on the nature of stabilization, destabilization and acoustic suppression in high speed cavity flows. An implicit, 2nd-order in space and time flow solver, coupled with a recently developed hybrid RANS-LES (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes-Large Eddy Simulation) turbulence model by Nichols and Nelson [Nichols RH, Nelson CC. Weapons bay acoustic predictions using a multi-scale turbulence model. In: Proceedings of the ITEA 2001 aircraft-stores compatibility symposium, March 2001], is utilized in a Chimera-based parallel format. This tool is used to numerically simulate both an unsuppressed cavity in resonance, as well as the effect of mass-addition pulsed jet flow control on cavity flow physics and ultimately, cavity acoustic levels.

Frequency (and in a limited number of cases, amplitude) of pulse is varied, from 0 Hz (steady) up to 5000 Hz. The change in the character of the flow control effect as pulsing frequency is changed is described, and linked to changes in acoustic levels. Limited comparison to 1/10th scale experiments is presented.

The observed local stabilization of the cavity turbulent shear layer, when subjected to high frequency pulsed blowing, is shown in simulation to be the result of a violent instability and breakdown of a pair of opposite sign vortical structures created with each high frequency “pulse”. This unique shear layer stabilization behavior is only observed in simulation above a certain critical pulsing frequency. Below this critical frequency, pulsing is shown in simulation to provide little benefit with respect to suppression of high cavity acoustic levels.     

Goodness-of-fit tests for logistic regression models when data are collected using a complex sampling design

Logistic regression models are frequently used in epidemiological studies for estimating associations that demographic, behavioral, and risk factor variables have on a dichotomous outcome, such as disease being present versus absent. After the coefficients in a logistic regression model have been estimated, goodness-of-fit of the resulting model should be examined, particularly if the purpose of the model is to estimate probabilities of event occurrences. While various goodness-of-fit tests have been proposed, the properties of these tests have been studied under the assumption that observations selected were independent and identically distributed. Increasingly, epidemiologists are using large-scale sample survey data when fitting logistic regression models, such as the National Health Interview Survey or the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Unfortunately, for such situations no goodness-of-fit testing procedures have been developed or implemented in available software. To address this problem, goodness-of-fit tests for logistic regression models when data are collected using complex sampling designs are proposed. Properties of the proposed tests were examined using extensive simulation studies and results were compared to traditional goodness-of-fit tests. A Stata ado function svylogitgof for estimating the F-adjusted mean residual test after svylogit fit is available at the author's website http://www.people.vcu.edu/~kjarcher/Research/Data.htm.     

Exact Low-Rank Matrix Completion from Sparsely Corrupted Entries Via Adaptive Outlier Pursuit

Recovering a low-rank matrix from some of its linear measurements is a popular problem in many areas of science and engineering. One special case of it is the matrix completion problem, where we need to reconstruct a low-rank matrix from incomplete samples of its entries. A lot of efficient algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem and they perform well when Gaussian noise with a small variance is added to the given data. But they can not deal with the sparse random-valued noise in the measurements. In this paper, we propose a robust method for recovering the low-rank matrix with adaptive outlier pursuit when part of the measurements are damaged by outliers. This method will detect the positions where the data is completely ruined and recover the matrix using correct measurements. Numerical experiments show the accuracy of noise detection and high performance of matrix completion for our algorithms compared with other algorithms.     

A mixed-species microarray for identification of food spoilage bacilli

Failure of food preservation is frequently caused by thermostable spores of members of the Bacillaceae family, which show a wide spectrum of resistance to cleaning and preservation treatments. We constructed and validated a mixed-species genotyping array for 6 Bacillus species, including Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus sporothermodurans, Bacillus cereus and Bacillus coagulans, and 4 Geobacillus species, including Geobacillus stearothermophilus, Geobacillus thermocatenulatus, Geobacillus toebii and Geobacillus sp., in order to track food spoilage isolates from ingredient to product. The discriminating power of the array was evaluated with sets of 42 reference and 20 test strains. Bacterial isolates contain a within-species-conserved core genome comprising 68-88% of the entire genome and a non-conserved accessory genome comprising 7-22%. The majority of the core genome markers do not hybridise between species, thus they allow for efficient discrimination at the species level. The accessory genome array markers provide high-resolution discrimination at the level of individual isolates from a single species. In conclusion, the reported mixed-species microarray contains discriminating markers that allow rapid and cost-effective typing of Bacillus food spoilage bacteria in a wide variety of food products.     

Efficient Huber-Markov edge-preserving image restoration.

The regularization of the least-squares criterion is an effective approach in image restoration to reduce noise amplification. To avoid the smoothing of edges, edge-preserving regularization using a Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF) model is often used to allow realistic edge modeling and provide stable maximum a posteriori (MAP) solutions. However, this approach is computationally demanding because the introduction of a non-Gaussian image prior makes the restoration problem shift-variant. In this case, a direct solution using fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) is not possible, even when the blurring is shift-invariant. We consider a class of edge-preserving GMRF functions that are convex and have nonquadratic regions that impose less smoothing on edges. We propose a decomposition-enabled edge-preserving image restoration algorithm for maximizing the likelihood function. By decomposing the problem into two subproblems, with one shift-invariant and the other shift-variant, our algorithm exploits the sparsity of edges to define an FFT-based iteration that requires few iterations and is guaranteed to converge to the MAP estimate.     

Nitric oxide reduction at noble metal electrodes: a voltammetric study in acid solution

Features of the electrochemical reduction of nitric oxide on platinum, palladium, rhodium and ruthenium in aqueous perchloric acid solutions (0.33–1.0 M) are compared. The results from voltammetric studies (ie linear potential sweep and rotating disc electrode) using the bulk metal electrodes are described and compared with residual current voltage plots in acid electrolyte alone. In general, three nitric oxide reduction peaks are observed on the metals. The most anodic peak, at ca E = 0.15 V vs sce is attributed to the one-electron reduction of nitric oxide to an adsorbed NOH intermediate on a bare metal surface (ie one free of oxides or adsorbed hydrogen). The other two peaks occur in potential regions where adsorbed hydrogen is present on the metal surface (ca E = 0.0 and −0.20 V, respectively). The co-adsorbed hydrogen complicates the analysis and precludes an unambiguous interpretation of these two peaks. However, they apparently reflect nitric oxide reduction to nitrogen, hydroxylamine and/or ammonia. In a cathodic scan on the rhodium electrode, a current plateau is seen instead of the first (most anodic) peak, a probable consequence of oxide film formation with subsequent chemical complications. On the ruthenium electrode the first two (most anodic) peaks are not observed probably due to a relatively stable oxide layer. Reaction selectivities at metal black gas diffusion cathodes operating in an electrogenerative (ie galvanic) mode with perchloric acid electrolyte are compared with the voltammetric results at the corresponding bulk electrodes. Dinitrogen formation is observed on the platinum and rhodium black electrodes as suggested from voltammetric results. A series-parallel reaction sequence is proposed to explain the results. Limitations of using simple voltammetric techniques for predicting behavior of large scale preparative electrochemical reactors are discussed.     

A study of ceramic addition in end termination of multilayer ceramics capacitors with cofiring process

The silver paste with ceramics addition as end termination was performed on multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) based on ZnO–B₂O₃ + Zn_0.95Mg_0.05TiO₃ + 0.25TiO₂ ceramic (ZnBO-ZMT′) with Ag95–Pd05 internal electrodes. A green sheet was prepared by tape casting using the ZnBO-ZMT′ powders. Ag95–Pd05 was attached on the green sheet as an internal electrode. After lamination, the green chips were pre-sintered at 800 °C for 1 h, then samples were dipped the external electrodes and were cofired together at 900 °C for 2 h. There is no extra curing process, so the production cost may be cut down and thermal shock of the MLCCs may be reduced. To improve the mismatch between end termination and dielectric body during sintering, the silver paste with different amounts of ceramics, e.g., 20, 30 and 40 wt.%, was added in this study. The mechanical and electrical properties of the MLCCs were investigated subsequently. The results showed that end termination with 40 wt.% ceramic addition has good performances on mechanical properties of MLCC, but equivalent series resistance (ESR) is a little bit higher compared to end termination with 20 and 30 wt.% ceramic addition.     

Three-Dimensional Visualization of Transgenic Tobacco Leaves

We have done a three-dimensional visualization of transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) leaves for the study of chloroplast gene expression and regulation. The aim was to visualize tobacco leaves shot with tungsten particles. These tungsten particles were coated with the foreign DNA and shot into the leaf using the biolistic technique of DNA insertion. The visualization can be used to examine the leaves to gauge the efficiency of the shooting process, i.e.,to see what parts of the leaves have been effectively penetrated by the DNA-coated tungsten particles and also to judge the depth of penetration. The image data for the 3D visualization was collected at planes 10 microns apart, using a prototype version of a High Numerical Aperture Reflecting Microscope. The raw image data collected from the microscope was restored using the Row Action Projection (RAP) algorithm and the Partial Minimization and Constrained Iteration (PCMI) algorithm. These restored images were then used for 3D visualization using the Visualization Toolkit.     

Toughening of AT-Resins with a Polyphenylquinoxaline

Acetylene terminated (AT) resins are addition-curable thermoset materials which do not generate volatiles during cure and therefore can be fabricated into void-free structures. They retain good thermal and mechanical properties even after exposure to high humidity environments. Their use as composite matrix resins and adhesives has shown promise. These resins, however, are brittle. Molecular structure modifications and blending with thermoplastic modifiers have been used to improve their toughness. In this work, improvement in toughness has been sought through the use of a polyphenylquinoxaline (PPQ) modifier. The blended systems showed improvements in toughness, thermooxidative stability, and lap shear strength over the original AT-resins.