Diaphragm gauge for measuring explosive impulse

The measurement of shock and stress waves under the action of explosion and impact loading has long been a concern of scientists and engineers. A number of methods have been developed over the years for measuring the physical parameters that are involved in the material dynamics resulting from an explosion. This work describes the development, calibration and validation of a passive copper diaphragm gauge aimed at measuring the impulse acting on it, resulting from an explosion in air. It is found that the diaphragm deformation (central deflection) can be used to measure the impulse, given the calibration curve. Once the gauge is calibrated, it can be used to measure the impulse acting on it in other media (water, soil, etc.). Such gauges are useful in measuring explosion induced impulses acting on structures. This usefulness is the result of the gauge simplicity and reproducibility. It can be used as a passive gauge or, when instrumented with strain gauges, as a passive and active (electronic) gauge.     

Time-Division Multilevel Multiplexing Communication Method

We propose a method that combines time division with multilevel signals in order to increase the channel capacity efficiently. This combined method enables increasing the bandwidth by a factor of , being the number of levels of the multilevel signal or alternatively enabling the transmission of independent channels, or any combination between both. This method increases bandwidth cost effectiveness and reduces the impact of fiber chromatic dispersion.     

GemCell: A generic platform for modeling multi-cellular biological systems

The mass and complexity of biological information requires computer-aided simulation and analysis to help scientists achieve understanding and guide experimentation. Although living organisms are composed of cells, actual genomic and proteomic data have not yet led to a satisfactory model of working cell in silico. We have set out to devise a user-friendly generic platform, GemCell, for Generic Executable Modeling of Cells, based on whole, functioning cells. Starting with the cell simplifies life, because all cells expresses essentially five generic types of behavior: replication, death, movement (including change of shape and adherence), export (secretion, signaling, etc.) and import (receiving signals, metabolites, phagocytosis, etc.). The details of these behaviors are specified in GemCell for particular kinds of cells as part of a database of biological specifics (the DBS), which specifies the cell properties and functions that depend on the cell’s history, state, environment, etc. The DBS is designed in an intuitive fashion, so users are able to easily insert their data of interest. The generic part of GemCell, built using Statecharts, is a fully dynamic model of a cell, its interactions with the environment and its resulting behavior, individually and collectively. Model specificity emerges from the DBS, so that model execution is carried out by the statecharts executing with the aid of specific data extracted from the DBS dynamically. Our long term goal is for GemCell to serve as a broadly applicable platform for biological modeling and analysis, supporting user-friendly in silico experimentation, animation, discovery of emergent properties, and hypothesis testing, for a wide variety of biological systems.     

Optical switching speed requirements for terabit/second packet overWDM networks

Optical dynamics requirement for packet-over-WDM networks is analyzed. Optimization among optical switching speed, global resource availability, and local queuing considerations is performed, yielding multiterabit/second throughput capability by employing submicrosecond switching technology     

Tunable optical filters for dense WDM networks

WDM is currently taking over as the leading technology in point-to-point transmission links. For optical implementation of WDM networks, logical functionalities such as wavelength (channel) selection should be carried out in the wavelength domain; thus, the development of dynamic optical devices is required. One key device is a tunable optical filter. Important features of such a filter include low insertion loss, narrow bandwidth, high sidelobe suppression, large dynamic range, fast tuning speed, a simple control mechanism, small size, and cost effectiveness. Here, an extensive overview of the different technologies used to produce tunable optical filters is presented. Among them, fiber filters such as fiber Bragg gratings and fiber Fabry Perot are the most commercialized, yet inherently limited in their dynamic speeds. For high demanding dynamics, micro-machined and acousto-optic filters can offer a good solution for microsecond tuning speeds. Faster tunable devices, in nanosecond tuning speeds, might emerge out of microresonators, electrooptic filters, and active DBR filters     

Analysis of the effect of thermal chirp on interferometric homodyne and heterodyne crosstalk in optical communication systems employing directly Modulated DFB lasers

A closed-form expression is derived for the probability density function (pdf) of the beat noise created by homodyne and heterodyne interferometric crosstalk in optical communication systems employing directly modulated distributed feedback lasers at bit rates between 155 Mb/s and 2.5 Gb/s. Thermal chirp is shown to be the predominant chirp mechanism affecting homodyne-crosstalk-induced penalty at bit rates up to 2.5 Gb/s. Theoretical calculations of the crosstalk-induced power penalty are verified experimentally.     

Wave formation mechanism in magnetic pulse welding

Wavy interface morphology is observed in Magnetic Pulse Welding (MPW) similarly to that of the Explosion Welding process (EXW). It is recognized that interfacial waves are formed in a periodic manner and have well defined wavelength and amplitude. The phenomenon of wave formation in EXW has been subjected to extensive investigations in which empirical and numerical models have been published. In the present study, a wave formation mechanism for MPW is presented. This wave-creation mechanism was studied by evaluating the influence of sample geometry on wave morphology using stereoscopic optical microscopy. It was found that interfacial waves are formed in a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability mechanism. Reflected shock waves interact with the welding collision point at the weld interface, where interferences are the source for the wave's initiation. The collision energy, impact angle, and the geometry of the joint, were found to have the most significant influence on the waves' characteristics. An empirical relationship between interfacial wavelength and the free moving distance of the shock waves in the welded tubular parts was found.     

Computational study of shock‐wave interaction with solid obstacles using immersed boundary methods

In this study, an immersed boundary (IB) method based on a direct forcing is coupled with a high‐order weighted‐essentially non‐oscillatory (WENO) scheme to simulate fluid–solid interaction (FSI) problems with complex geometries. The IB is a general simulation method for FSI, whereas the WENO is an efficient scheme for fluid flow simulations and shock waves, and both of them work on regular cartesian grids. The effectiveness and the accuracy of the coupled scheme are first analyzed on well‐documented supersonic test problems for a wide range of Mach numbers. The results are in good agreement with both analytical and experimental data. A comprehensive analysis of the interaction of the moving shock through an array of cylinder matrix is then conducted by varying the number of cylinders in the matrix block while keeping the same opening passage. The relaxation length between two adjacent columns of cylinders is kept identical to study uniquely the effect of surface‐to‐volume ratio of the obstacle matrix. It is shown that the configuration with higher surface‐to‐volume ratio produces more post‐shock flow instabilities downstream of the matrix block. The complex shock/shock and shock/vortex interactions are well resolved by the present computation. It is being observed that after the passage of the shock through the cylinder matrix, eddies of different length scales are generated, but the later stage of shock/vortex and shocklet/vortexlet interactions are different for the two cases. The analysis of the PSD of the total kinetic energy globally conforms to Richardson's inviscid cascade. An intermittent peaked PDF of downstream instantaneous vorticity field is obtained in the limit of Re → ∞ . The baroclinic production of vorticity is found to be feeble as previously founded by Sun and Takayama (J. Fluid Mech. 2003; 478 :237–256). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of absorption on image quality through a particulate medium

A new approach to studying the effects of absorption by aerosols and molecular particulates of electromagnetic radiation is presented. In contradiction to the conventional concept that absorption gives rise to constant attenuation, it is shown here that the particulate-absorbed irradiance is spatial frequency dependent. An analytically corrected model of the aerosol modulation transfer function and the aerosol mutual coherence function is presented. An important application of this model is in thermal imaging, in which particulate-absorption effects are very significant.     

A nonlinear electrical equalizer with decision feedback for OOK optical communication systems

In this paper we introduce a nonlinear equalizer using the Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with decision feedback equalizer (DFE) for electronic dispersion compensation in optical communication systems with on-off-keying and a direct detection receiver. The RBF method introduces a non-linear equalization technique suitable for optical communication direct detection systems that include nonlinear transformation at the photodetector. A bit error rate performance comparison shows that the RBF with DFE out performs the RBF without DFE and achieves similar results provided by maximum likelihood sequence estimator.