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<p>The goal of this thesis is to perform a simple theoretical analysis of the problem of two optical cavities coupled by a common mirror which is movable. The mirror position controls the electromagnetic mode structure of the double cavity. Modes can be transferred from one side to the other by moving the mirror, thereby allowing deterministic and on-demand transfer of photons between two cavities. By mapping the Maxwell wave equation onto the Schr\"{o}dinger wave equation, we are able to make use of the Landau-Zener result for the transition probability at an avoided crossing to obtain the conditions for adiabatic transfer.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

Creating chaotic advection is the most efficient strategy to achieve mixing in a microscale or in a very viscous fluid, and it has many important applications in microfluidic devices, material processing and so on. In this paper, we present a quantitative long-term theory of resonant mixing in 3-D near-integrable flows. We use the flow in the annulus between two coaxial elliptic counter-rotating cylinders as a demonstrative model. We illustrate that such resonance phenomena as resonance and separatrix crossings accelerate mixing by causing the jumps of adiabatic invariants. We calculate the width of the mixing domain and estimate a characteristic time of mixing. We show that the resulting mixing can be described in terms of a single diffusion-type equation with a diffusion coefficient depending on the averaged effect of multiple passages through resonances. We discuss what must be done to accommodate the effects of the boundaries of the chaotic domain. / Mechanical Engineering

The initiation and propagation of adiabatic shear bands is analyzed numerically for an impulsively loaded thick-walled steel tube. A circumferential V-notch located at the outer surface of the center of the tube provides a stress concentration. The material is modeled as strain hardening, strain-rate hardening and thermal softening. The dynamic loading conditions considered are pure torsion, axial pressure combined with torsion, and internal pressure combined with torsion. Because of the stress concentration, a shear band will first initiate in an element adjoining the notch tip and propagate radially inwards through the thickness of the tube. The speed of propagation and the amount of energy required to drive a shear band through the material are calculated. The effects of the pressure preload and the depth of the notch are studied. Also, the influence of thermal softening is investigated by modeling it after a relation proposed by Zhou et al. <i>[Vita removed July 18, 2008 CK/GMc 2/2/2012]<i> / Master of Science

To prevent melting of turbine blades, numerous cooling schemes have been developed to cool the blades using cooler air from the compressor. Unfortunately, the clearance gap between adjacent hub sections allows coolant to leak into the hub region. Coolant flow also leaks into the hub region through gaps between individual stages. The results of a combined experimental and computational study of cooling along the hub of a first stage turbine blade caused by leakage flows are discussed in detail. Additionally, this study examines a novel cooling feature, called a microcircuit, which combines internal convective cooling with external film cooling. For the experimental investigation, scaled up blades were tested in a low speed wind tunnel. Adiabatic effectiveness measurements were made with infrared thermography of the entire hub region for a range of leakage flow conditions. For the computations, a commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT 6.0, was used to simulate the various flows. Results show that featherseal leakage flows provide small cooling benefits to the hub. Increases in featherseal flow provide no additional cooling to the hub region. Unlike the featherseal, leakage flows from the front rim provide ample cooling to the hub region, especially the leading edge of the blade passage. None of the leakage flows provide significant cooling to the pressure side region of the hub or trailing edge suction side. With the addition of the hub microcircuits, there is improved hub cooling of the suction side of the blades. Though the coolant exit uniformity was low and affected by the featherseal flow, the microcircuits were shown to provide more cooling along the hub region. Good agreements were observed between the computational and experimental results, though computations over-predicted front rim cooling and microcircuit uniformity. / Master of Science

Description of the interaction of a shallow-water wave with variable topography is a classical and fundamental problem of fluid mechanics. The behaviour of linear waves and isolated solitary waves propagating over an uneven bottom is well understood. Much less is known about the propagation of nonlinear wavetrains over obstacles. For shallow-water waves, the nonlinear wavetrains are often generated in the form of undular bores, connecting two different basic flow states and having the structure of a slowly modulated periodic wave with a solitary wave at the leading edge. In this thesis, we examine the propagation of shallow-water undular bores over a nonuniform environment, and also subject to the effect of weak dissipation (turbulent bottom friction or volume viscosity). The study is performed in the framework of the variable-coefficient Korteweg-de Vries (vKdV) and variable-coefficient perturbed Korteweg-de Vries (vpKdV) equations. The behaviour of undular bores is compared with that of isolated solitary waves subject to the same external effects. We show that the interaction of the undular bore with variable topography can result in a number of adiabatic and non-adiabatic effects observed in different combinations depending on the specific bottom profile. The effects include: (i) the generation of a sequence of isolated solitons -- an expanding large-amplitude modulated solitary wavetrain propagating ahead of the bore; (ii) the generation of an extended weakly nonlinear wavetrain behind the bore; (iii) the formation of a transient multi-phase region inside the bore; (iv) a nonlocal variation of the leading solitary wave amplitude; (v) the change of the characteristics wavelength in the bore; and (vi) occurrence of a ``modulation phase shift" due to the interaction. The non-adiabatic effects (i) -- (iii) are new and to the best of our knowledge, have not been reported in previous studies. We use a combination of nonlinear modulation theory and numerical simulations to analyse these effects. In our work, we consider four prototypical variable topography profiles in our study: a slowly decreasing depth, a slowly increasing depth , a smooth bump and a smooth hole, which leads to qualitatively different undular bore deformation depending on the geometry of the slope. Also, we consider (numerically) a rapidly varying depth topography, a counterpart of the ``soliton fission" configuration. We show that all the effects mentioned above can also be observed when the undular bore propagates over a rapidly changing bottom . We then consider the modification of the variable topography effects on the undular bore by considering weak dissipation due to turbulent bottom friction or volume viscosity. The dissipation is modelled by appropriate right-hand side terms in the vKdV equation. The developed methods and results of our work can be extended to other problems involving the propagation of undular bores (dispersive shock waves in general) in variable media.

Student Number : 9900772K - MSc research project - School of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / The hydration of cement is an exothermic reaction, which begins almost immediately upon contact with water. This produces a large amount heat that subsequently raises the temperature of the concrete mixture, creating a temperature gradient across the member. The temperature rise associated with hydration induces thermo-mechanical stresses. These stresses can cause damage to the structure, affecting the durability and in extreme cases the functionality of the structure. If the maximum rate of heat evolution experienced can be minimised through the selection of the constituents of a concrete mixture, then the thermal stresses that develop in the concrete can be reduced. The main aim of this research is to develop a knowledge of how the heat evolution characteristics of concrete are affected by changing certain concrete mixture parameters and ingredients. The focus is on the addition of three different cement extenders and varying the water/cement ratio. This will be a step towards the development of a model for predicting the thermal properties of concrete. As a part of this investigation, a prediction model for the change in heat rate in concrete was developed. The model is intended to predict the contribution of the individual clinker crystallographic phases in cement and the heat liberated in concrete during hydration.

<p>Thermonuclear fusion is a promising energy source for the future. If an economically efficient thermonuclear reactor would be built it has to be a cheap, safe, and highly productive electric power plant, or, a heating plant.</p><p>The emphasis of this thesis is on the single cell mirror trap with a marginally stable minimum B vacuum magnetic field, the straight field line mirror field, which provides MHD stability of the system, absence of the radial drift even to the first order in plasma β , and a reduced magnetic flux tube ellipticity. Strong density depletion at the mirrors is proposed as a mean to build up a strong potential barrier for the electrons and thereby increase the electron temperature. Conditions to obtain an energy gain factor Q>10 are briefly analyzed. Current coils which could generate the derived magnetic field are proposed. A sloshing ion distribution function is constructed for the three dimensional ‘straight line mirror field’. The gyro centre Clebsch coordinates are found to be a new pair of motional invariants for this magnetic field. The gyro centre Clebsch coordinate invariants can be used to obtain complete solutions of the Vlasov equation, including the diamagnetic drift. These solutions show that the equilibria satisfy the locally omniginuity criterion to the first order in β .</p><p>Contributions of the plasma diamagnetism to the magnetic flux tube ellipticity are studied for the straight field line mirror vacuum magnetic field and a sloshing ion distribution. Computations employing ray tracing have shown that there is a modest increase in the ellipticity, but the effect is small if β <0.2 .</p><p>Adiabatic charged particle motion in general field geometry has been studied. A set of four independent stationary invariants, the energy, the magnetic moment, the radial drift invariant, and the bounce average parallel velocity is proposed to describe adiabatic equilibria. </p>

Thermonuclear fusion is a promising energy source for the future. If an economically efficient thermonuclear reactor would be built it has to be a cheap, safe, and highly productive electric power plant, or, a heating plant. The emphasis of this thesis is on the single cell mirror trap with a marginally stable minimum B vacuum magnetic field, the straight field line mirror field, which provides MHD stability of the system, absence of the radial drift even to the first order in plasma β , and a reduced magnetic flux tube ellipticity. Strong density depletion at the mirrors is proposed as a mean to build up a strong potential barrier for the electrons and thereby increase the electron temperature. Conditions to obtain an energy gain factor Q&gt;10 are briefly analyzed. Current coils which could generate the derived magnetic field are proposed. A sloshing ion distribution function is constructed for the three dimensional ‘straight line mirror field’. The gyro centre Clebsch coordinates are found to be a new pair of motional invariants for this magnetic field. The gyro centre Clebsch coordinate invariants can be used to obtain complete solutions of the Vlasov equation, including the diamagnetic drift. These solutions show that the equilibria satisfy the locally omniginuity criterion to the first order in β . Contributions of the plasma diamagnetism to the magnetic flux tube ellipticity are studied for the straight field line mirror vacuum magnetic field and a sloshing ion distribution. Computations employing ray tracing have shown that there is a modest increase in the ellipticity, but the effect is small if β &lt;0.2 . Adiabatic charged particle motion in general field geometry has been studied. A set of four independent stationary invariants, the energy, the magnetic moment, the radial drift invariant, and the bounce average parallel velocity is proposed to describe adiabatic equilibria.