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Electromagnetic launchers (railguns) are set to replace traditional large caliber ship mounted cannons in the near future. The success of the railgun depends heavily upon a comprehensive understanding of beam behavior during periods of heavy dynamic loading. It is hypothesized that the combination of velocity transition effects, electromagnetic loading, and other non-linear or design specific effects contribute to areas of high stresses/strains over the length of the rail/beam during launch. This paper outlines the use of the Timoshenko beam model, a model which builds upon the traditional Bernoulli-Euler beam theory with the addition of shear deformation and rotary inertia effects, a necessity for high wave velocities. Real-world experimental setups are simplified and approximated by a series of linear springs and dampers for model prediction and validation. The Timoshenko beam model is solved using finite difference (FD) methods for the approximation of spatial derivatives and MATLAB ordinary differential equation (ODE) solvers. The model shows good convergence and precision over a large range of system parameters including load velocities, foundation stiffness values, and beam dimensions. Comparison to experimental strain data has validated model accuracy to an acceptable level. Accuracy is further enhanced with the inclusion of damping and non-linear or piecewise effects used to mimic experimental observations. The MATLAB software package presents a valid preliminary analysis tool for railgun beam and foundation design while offering advantages in ease of use, computation time, and system requirements when compared to traditional FEA tools. / Master of Science

Excessive water flow velocities can contribute to rapid failures of copper premise plumbing systems. This is the first fundamental study to scientifically isolate mechanistic impacts from distinct flow induced failure mechanisms that include concentration cell corrosion, cavitation, particle/bubble impingement and high velocity impingement. Concentration cell effects resulting from exposing different copper surfaces to different flow regimes created a strong electrochemical cell that caused rapid corrosion that persisted for periods lasting from hours to days in certain waters. Free chlorine appeared to inhibit this effect in a range of waters. Under typical water chemistries the resulting non-uniform attack diminished, presumably due to formation of a protective scale or rust layer. Consequently, concentration cell corrosion would not be a major contributor to damage from high flow rates in the range of fresh waters investigated. In experiments using an ultrasonic processor, implosion of vaporous cavitation bubbles against a copper surface caused dramatic pitting, considerable copper weight loss, and, in some cases, the development of pinhole leaks. Changes in water chemistry and the existence of a pre-existing protective scale layer had nearly no mitigating effects on copper cavitation damage. An exponential relationship was found between the initial copper pipe wall thickness and the time necessary to cause a leak via vaporous cavitation. On the basis of this relationship, a Type M tube would be expected to last 23 and 3000 times less than a Type K and L tube, respectively, when facing continual cavitation attack. However, it was not possible to re-create cavitation damage in any practical circumstance that was tested in copper pipes, even though it is strongly believed that cavitation can play a practical role in service failures. On the basis of the above results, it was hypothesized that brief intervals of cavitation could remove protective scale from portions of the copper pipe surface exposed to high turbulence. In this case, even if minimal damage from cavitation occurred directly, it could allow concentration cell corrosion to become a significant contributor to non-uniform corrosion damage. On the basis of preliminary testing, it appears that this idea has considerable merit. A combination of brief cavitation and waters that create strong concentration cell effects is expected to cause serious damage to copper pipe. These potential synergies are deserving of additional research. In experiments testing the effect of high velocity jets (17.5 ft/sec) impinging against submerged copper plates perpendicularly and longitudinally, plates in heated sea water were aggressively gouged and penetrated. It is believed that the copper plate damage resulted from a combination of mechanisms including concentration cell corrosion, cavitation implosion, and high velocity impingement. Impingement of sand on the surface of copper tube created very little damage. This was surprising given prior reports in the literature. / Master of Science

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids offer solutions to many engineering challenges. The success of MR fluid is apparent in many disciplines, ranging from the automotive and civil engineering communities to the biomedical engineering community. This well documented success of MR fluids continues to motivate current and future applications of MR fluid. One such application that has been considered recently is MR fluid devices for use in impact and other high velocity applications. In such applications, the fluid environment within the device may be well beyond the scope of our understanding for these fluids. To date, little has been done to explore the suitability of MR fluids in such high velocity and high shear applications. While future applications may expose the fluid to adverse flow conditions, we must also consider current and existing applications which expose the fluid to extreme flow environments. Consider, for example, an MR damper intended for automotive primary suspensions, in which shear rates may exceed 10^5 s^-1. Flow conditions within these dampers far exceed existing fluid behavior characterization. The aim of the current study is to identify the behavior of the fluid under these extreme operating conditions. Specifically, this study intends to identify the behavior of MR fluid subject to high rates of shear and high flow velocities. A high shear rheometer is built which allows for the high velocity testing of MR fluids. The rheometer is capable of fluid velocities ranging from 1 m/s to 37 m/s, with corresponding shear rates ranging from 0.14x10^5 s^-1 to 2.5x10^5 s^-1. Fluid behavior is characterized in both the off-state and the on-state. The off-state testing was conducted in order to identify the high shear viscosity of the fluid. Because the high shear behavior of MR fluid is largely governed by the behavior of the carrier fluid, the carrier fluid behavior was also identified at high shear. Experiments were conducted using the high shear rheometer and the MR fluid was shown to exhibit nearly Newtonian post-yield behavior. A slight thickening was observed for growing shear rates. This slight thickening can be attributed to the behavior of the carrier fluid, which exhibited considerable thickening at high shear. The purpose of the on-state testing was to characterize the MR effect at high flow velocities. As such, the MR fluid was run through the rheometer at various flow velocities and a number of magnetic field strengths. The term "dwell time" is introduced and defined as the amount of time the fluid spends in the presence of a magnetic field. Two active valve lengths were considered, which when coupled to the fluid velocities, generated dwell times ranging from 12 ms to 0.18 ms. The yield stress was found from the experimental measurements and the results indicate that the magnitude of the yield stress is sensitive to fluid dwell time. As fluid dwell times decrease, the yield stress developed in the fluid decreases. The results from the on-state testing clearly demonstrate a need to consider fluid dwell times in high velocity applications. Should the dwell time fall below the response time of the fluid, the yield stress developed in the fluid may only achieve a fraction of the expected value. These results imply that high velocity applications may be subject to diminished controllability for falling dwell times. Results from this study may serve to aid in the design of MR fluid devices intended for high velocity applications. Furthermore, the identified behavior may lead to further developments in MR fluid technology. In particular, the identified behavior may be used to develop or identify an MR fluid well suited for high velocity and high shear applications. / Ph. D.

Non-specific low back pain (LBP) is a major health problem affecting a substantial portion of the population. The current treatments offered for non-specific LBP are oftentimes unsuccessful because the acting mechanism(s) of most treatment options are unknown. Obtaining a better understanding about the acting mechanism behind existing treatment options is, therefore, essential for the improvement of non-specific LBP treatment and management. The objective of this study was to gain a more comprehensive understanding about the acting mechanism of high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulative therapy, specifically the impact that high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulative therapy may have on the active and passive spinal musculoskeletal stabilizing subsystems along with the resultant spinal stability for healthy participants. A pre-post intervention study design completed by six healthy participants was used to quantify changes in the above noted aspects of spinal stability using a series of tests performed both before and after six sessions of high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulative therapy. The tests included seated balancing tests, lower back range of motion tests, and stress relaxation test. The six sessions of high velocity low amplitude spinal manipulative therapy did not significantly affect any of the test measurements among our healthy participant group.

Metal on metal wear at high sliding speeds and high contact pressures results in the melting of one or both of the sliding solid bodies due to heat generated at the contact interface. Understanding the influence of sliding speeds, contact pressures and material properties on wear rates is important in developing predictive models for designing more efficient and effective engineering system components. Typical engineering applications subjected to these extreme conditions include ultrahigh speed machining, rocket sleds, large caliber cannon, and electromagnetic launchers. Sliding speeds on the order of 1,000 m/s and contact pressures in excess of 100 MPa are common in these applications and difficult to replicate in a laboratory environment. A unique wedge experiment using a minor caliber electromagnetic launcher has been developed and implemented to characterize wear deposition of a 6061-T6 aluminum sliding body on several different guider materials of varying mechanical and thermal properties at sliding speeds from 0 – 1,200 m/s and contact pressures from 100 – 225 MPa. Optical microscopy and 3D profilometry were used to characterize and quantify the slider wear. Three distinct wear regions, plasticity dominated, severe plastic deformation and melt lubrication were observed. Test results provided evidence that the aluminum slider contact interface was molten. Modeling of the experimental wear data showed a dependence on pressure and velocity and guider material properties, density and specific heat. A predictive wear model was developed for the melt lubrication region as a tool for designing components subjected to similar operating conditions.

The research work performed in this thesis has been carried out at the Production Tech-nology Centre where the Thermal Spray research group of University West has its work-shop and labs. This research work has been performed in collaboration with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, India. First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Nicolaie Markocsan and Dr. Nicholas Curry for their guidance, great support and valuable suggestions without which this work could not have been possible. I would also like to thanks Prof. Per Nylén for keeping faith in me and providing me an opportunity to work at PTC, which is a great place to perform research. It is my pleasure being their student and I wish I would keep learning from all of them, both on academic and personal grounds. I would also like to thank my colleagues at PTC Mr. Mohit Gupta and Mr. Stefan Björklund, for their help and support during this work. I would like to acknowledge the H.C. Starck Company for its financial support for the pro-ject; Dr. Filofteia-Laura TOMA at Fraunhofer IWS, Dresden to help us in spraying suspen-sion sprayed YSZ top coats, G Shivkumar from ARCI to help us in spraying solution pre-cursor sprayed top coats and Toni Bogdanoff, Jönköping University to help us in conduct-ing the LFA experiment

<p>A uniaxial High-Velocity Compaction (HVC) process for polymer powder using a cylindrical, hardened steel die and a new technique with relaxation assist was tested with a focus on the compactibility characteristics and surface morphology of the compacted materials using various heights of relaxation assist device with different compacting profiles.</p><p>Relaxation assist device was presented as a new technique to reduce springback, pull-out phenomenon and to improve the compaction process.</p><p>The basic phenomena associated with HVC are explained and the general energy principle is introduced to explain pull-out phenomenon during the decompacting stage. In this study, polyamide-11 powders with different particle size distributions have been compacted with the application of different compaction profiles, e.g. different energies and velocities. It was found that the relative green density is influenced more by the pre-compacting (primary compaction step) than by the post-compacting (secondary compaction step).</p><p>Experimental results for different compaction profiles were presented showing the effect of varying the opposite velocity during the decompacting stage and how to improve the homogeneous densification between the upper and lower surface and the evenness of the upper surface of the compacted powder bed by using relaxation assists, and the influences of the relaxation assist device on the process characteristics. It was found that the relaxation assist improves the compaction of the polymer powder by locking the powder bed in the compacted form. In addition, the relative times of the compacting stage, decompacting stage and the reorganisation of the particles can be controlled by altering the height of the relaxation assist. It was found that the high-velocity compaction process is an interruption process and that the delay times between the pressure waves can be reduced by increasing the height of the relaxation assist device. Furthermore, the first gross instantaneous springback and the total elastic springback are reduced.</p><p>Two bonding strain gauges and a high-speed video camera system were used to investigate the springback phenomenon during the compaction process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and image computer board Camera (IC-PCI Imaging Technology) were used to the study the morphological characteristics, the limit of plastic deformation and particle bonding by plastic flow at contact points, and pull-out phenomena.</p> / QC 20100506

The story of a typical spiral galaxy like the Milky Way is a tale of the transformation of metal-poor hydrogen gas to heavier elements through nuclear burning in stars. This gas is thought to arrive in early times during the assembly phase of a galaxy and at late times through a combination of hot and cold “flows” representing external evolutionary processes that continue to the present. Through a somewhat still unclear mechanism, the atomic hydrogen is converted to molecules that collect into clouds, cool, condense, and form stars. At the end of these stars’ lives, much of their constituent gas is returned to the galaxy to participate in subsequent generations of star formation. In earlier times in the history of the universe, frequent and large galaxy mergers brought additional gas to further fuel this process. However, major merger activity began an ongoing decline several Gyr ago and star formation is now diminishing; the universe is in transitioning to an era in which the structural evolution of disk galaxies is dominated by slow, internal (“secular”) processes. In this evolutionary regime, stars and the gas from which they are formed participate in resonant gravitational interactions within disks to build ephemeral structures such as bars, rings, and small scale-height central bulges. This regime is expected to last far into the future in a galaxy like the Milky Way, punctuated by the periodic accretion of dwarf satellite galaxies but lacking in the “major” mergers that kinematically scramble disks into ellipticals. This thesis examines details of the story of gas from infall to structure-building in three major parts. The High- and Intermediate-Velocity Clouds (HVCs/IVCs) are clouds of H i gas at velocities incompatible with simple models of differential Galactic rotation. Proposed ideas explaining their observed properties and origins include (1) the infall of low-metallicity material from the Halo, possibly as cold flows along filaments of a putative “Cosmic Web”; (2) gas removed from dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way via some combination of ram pressure stripping and tidal disruption; and (3) the supply and return feeds of a “Galactic Fountain” cycling gas between the Disk and Halo. Numerical values of their observed properties depend strongly on the Clouds’ distances. In Chapter 2, we summarize results of an ongoing effort to obtain meaningful distances to a selection of HVCs and IVCs using the absorption-line bracketing method. We find the Clouds are not at cosmological distances, and with the exception of the Magellanic Stream, they are generally situated within a few kiloparsecs of the Disk. The strongest discriminator of the above origin scenarios are the heavy element abundances of the Clouds, but to date few reliable Cloud metal- licities have been published. We used archival UV spectroscopy, supplemented by new observations with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope and H I 21 cm emission spectroscopy from a variety of sources to compute elemental abundances relative to hydrogen for 39 HVC/IVC components along 15 lines of sight. Many of these are previously unpublished. We find support for all three origin scenarios enumerated above while more than doubling the number of robust measurements of HVCs/IVCs in existence. The results of this work are detailed in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 we present the results of a spectroscopic study of the high-mass protostellar object NGC 7538 IRS 9 made with the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES), a sensitive, high spectral resolution, mid-infrared grating spectrometer and compare our observations to published data on the nearby object NGC 7538 IRS 1. Forty-six individual lines in vibrational modes of the molecules C₂H₂, CH₄, HCN, NH₃ and CO were detected, including two isotopologues (¹³CO, ¹²C¹⁸O) and one combination mode ([nu]₄+[nu]₅ C₂H₂). Fitting synthetic spectra to the data yielded the Doppler shift, excitation temperature, Doppler b parameter, column density and covering factor for each molecule observed; we also computed column density upper limits for lines and species not detected, such as HNCO and OCS. We find differences among spectra of the two objects likely attributable to their differing radiation and thermal environments. Temperatures and column densities for the two objects are generally consistent, while the larger line widths toward IRS 9 result in less saturated lines than those toward IRS 1. Finally, we compute an upper limit on the size of the continuum-emitting region (~2000 AU) and use this constraint and our spectroscopy results to construct a schematic model of IRS 9. In Chapters 5 and 6, we describe studies of the bright, nearby, edge-on spiral galaxies NGC 4565 and NGC 5746, both previously classified as type Sb spirals with measured bulge-to-total luminosity ratios B/T ≃ 0.4. These ratios indicate merger-built, “classical” bulges but in reality represent the photometric signatures of bars seen end-on. We performed 1-D photometric decompositions of archival Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey images spanning a range of wavelengths from the optical to near-infrared that penetrate the thick midplane dust in each galaxy. In both, we find high surface brightness, central stellar components that are clearly distinct from the boxy bar and from the disk; we interpret these structures as small scale height “pseudobulges” built from disk material via internal, resonant gravitational interactions among disk material − not classical bulges. The brightness profiles of the innermost component of each galaxy is well fitted by a Sersic function with major/minor axis Sersic indices of n = 1.55±0.07 and 1.33±0.12 for NGC 4565 and n = 0.99±0.08 and 1.17 ± 0.24 for NGC 5746. The true “bulge-to-total” ratios of these galaxies are considerably smaller than once believed: 0.061+0.009 and 0.136 ± 0.019, −0.008, respectively. Therefore, more galaxies than we thought contain little or no evidence of a merger-built classical bulge. We argue further that a classical bulge cannot hide behind the dust lane of either galaxy and that other structures built exclusively through secular evolution processes such as inner rings, both revealed through the infrared imagery, argue strongly against any merger violence in the recent past history of these objects. From a formation point of view, NGC 4565 and NGC 5746 are giant, pure-disk galaxies, and we do not understand how such galaxies form in a ΛCDM universe. This presents a challenge to our picture of galaxy formation by hierarchical clustering because it is difficult to grow galaxies as large as these without making big, classical bulges. We summarize the work presented in this thesis in Chapter 7 and conclude with speculations about the future direction of research in this field. / text