Experimental and numerical investigation of Helmholtz resonators and perforated liners as attenuation devices in industrial gas turbine combustors

This paper reports upon developments in the simulation of the passive control of combustion dynamics in industrial gas turbines using acoustic attenuation devices such as Helmholtz resonators and perforated liners. Combustion instability in gas turbine combustors may, if uncontrolled, lead to large-amplitude pressure fluctuations, with consequent serious mechanical problems in the gas turbine combustor system. Perforated combustor walls and Helmholtz resonators are two commonly used passive instability control devices. However, experimental design of the noise attenuation device is time-consuming and calls for expensive trial and error practice. Despite significant advances over recent decades, the ability of Computational Fluid Dynamics to predict the attenuation of pressure fluctuations by these instability control devices is still not well validated. In this paper, the attenuation of pressure fluctuations by a group of multi-perforated panel absorbers and Helmholtz resonators are investigated both by experiment and computational simulation. It is demonstrated that CFD can predict the noise attenuation from Helmholtz resonators with good accuracy. A porous material model is modified to represent a multi-perforated panel and this perforated wall representation approach is demonstrated to be able to accurately predict the pressure fluctuation attenuation effect of perforated panels. This work demonstrates the applicability of CFD in gas turbine combustion instability control device design

Modulation of galactic cosmic rays during the unusual solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24

During the recent solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24 (solar minimum $P_{23/24}$) the intensity of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) measured at the Earth was the highest ever recorded since space age. It is the purpose of this paper to resolve the most plausible mechanism for this unusually high intensity. A GCR transport model in three-dimensional heliosphere based on a simulation of Markov stochastic process is used to find the relation of cosmic ray modulation to various transport parameters, including solar wind (SW) speed, distance of heliospheric boundary, magnitude of interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) at the Earth, tilt angle of heliospheric current sheet (HCS), values of parallel and perpendicular diffusion coefficients. We calculate GCR proton energy spectra at the Earth for the last three solar minima $P_{21/22}$, $P_{22/23}$, and $P_{23/24}$, with the transport parameters obtained from observations. Besides weak IMF magnitude and slow SW speed, we find that a possible low magnetic turbulence, which increases the parallel diffusion and reduces the perpendicular diffusion in the polar direction, might be an additional possible mechanism for the high GCR intensity in the solar minimum $P_{23/24}$.Comment: Accepted for publication in JGR space physic

Hadronic Transition chi(c1)(1P) to eta(c) plus two pions at the Beijing Spectrometer BES and the Cornell CLEO-c

Hadronic transitions of the chi(cj)(1P) states have not been studied yet. We calculate the rate of the hadronic transition chi(c1)(1P) to eta(c) plus two pions in the framework of QCD multipole expansion. We show that this process can be studied experimentally at the upgraded Beijing Spectrometer BES III and the Cornell CLEO-c.Comment: 6 pages RevTex4(two-column). Version published in Phys. Rev. D 75, 054019 (2007

Performance-vested Stock Options and Pay-Performance Sensitivity

The paper investigates the incentive effects of performance-vested stock options (PVSOs) in aligning management interests with shareholder wealth. Performance targets attached to option vesting would prevent executives from receiving rewards from outcomes that are unaffected by their effort.Such targets align executive pay more closely with shareholder wealth.The degree of interest alignment is measured by pay-performance sensitivity (PPS).Using data on 4,238 executive-level observations for 1,383 executive directors in the largest 244 UK non-financial firms from 1999 to 2004, we find that the presence of PVSO schemes in executive-compensation contracts is associated with higher PPS, consistent with the idea that stronger incentives are provided by PVSOs.The empirical evidence also shows that PVSOs outperform unconditional stock options (TSOs) in providing incentives, since higher PPS is associated with the presence of PVSOs. Moreover, the results testify the role of vesting-target difficulty of PVSOs in the pay-performance relation.Specifically, difficult targets are associated with lower PPS levels, implying that too difficult targets negatively affect managers' choice of effort, that relatively lower effort is to be expected, and that the interests of managers will diverge from the interests of shareholders.stock options;pay-performance sensitivity;equity incentive

The breakage prediction for hydromechanical deep drawing based on local bifurcation theory

A criterion of sheet metal localized necking under plane stress was established based on the bifurcation theory and the characteristics theory of differential equation. In order to be capable to incorporate the directional dependence of the plastic strain rate on stress rate, Ito-Goya’s constitutive equation which gave a one to one relationship between stress rate component and plastic strain rate component was employed. The hydromechanical deep drawing process of a cylindrical cup part was simulated using the commercial software ABAQUS IMPLICIT. The onset of breakage of the part during the forming process was predicted by combining the simulation results with the local necking criterion. The proposed method is applied to the hydro-mechanical deep drawing process for A2219 aluminum alloy sheet metal to predict the breakage of the cylindrical cup part. The proposed method can be applied to the prediction of breakage in the forming of the automotive bodies

A test of the power law relationship between gamma-ray burst pulse width ratio and energy expected in fireballs or uniform jets

Recently, under the assumption that the Doppler effect of the relativistically expanding fireball surface is important, Qin et al. showed that in most cases the power law relationship between the pulse width and energy of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)would exist in a certain energy range. We check this prediction with two GRB samples which contain well identified pulses. A power law anti-correlation between the full pulse width and energy and a power law correlation between the pulse width ratio and energy are seen in the light curves of the majority (around 65%) of bursts of the two samples within the energy range of BATSE, suggesting that these bursts are likely to arise from the emission associated with the shocks occurred on a relativistically expanding fireball surface. For the rest of the bursts, the relationships between these quantities were not predicted previously. We propose to consider other spectral evolutionary patterns or other radiation mechanisms such as a varying synchrotron or Comptonized spectrum to check if the observed relationships for these rest bursts can also be accounted for by the Doppler model. In addition, we find that the upper limits of the width ratio for the two samples do not exceed 0.9, in agrement with what predicted previously by the Doppler model. The plateau/power law/plateau and the peaked features predicted and detected previously by Qin et al. are generally observed, with the exceptions being noticed only in a few cases. According to the distinct values of two power law indices of FWHM and ratio and energy, we divide the bursts into three subsets which are located in different areas of the two indices plane. We suspect that different locations of the two indices might correspond to different mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS accepte

Trapping photons on the line: controllable dynamics of a quantum walk

We demonstrate a coined quantum walk over ten steps in a one-dimensional network of linear optical elements. By applying single-point phase defects, the translational symmetry of an ideal standard quantum walk is broken resulting in localization effect in a quantum walk architecture. We furthermore investigate how the level of phase due to single-point phase defects and coin settings influence the strength of the localization signature.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure