The stability and turbulence characteristics of a vortex filament emanating from a single-bladed rotor in hover are investigated using proper orthogonal decomposition. The rotor is operated at a tip chord Reynolds number and a tip Mach number of 218,000 and 0.22, respectively, and with a blade loading of CT /σ = 0.066. In-plane components of the velocity field (normal to the axis of the vortex filament) are captured by way of 2D particle image velocimetry with corrections for vortex wander being performed using the Γ1 method. Using the classical form of POD, the first POD mode alone is found to encompass nearly 75% of the energy for all vortex ages studied and is determined using a grid of sufficient resolution as to avoid numerical integration errors in the decomposition. The findings reveal an equal balance between the axisymmetric and helical modes during vortex roll-up which immediately transitions to helical mode dominance at all other vortex ages. This helical mode is one of the modes of the elliptic instability. While the snapshot POD is shown to reveal similar features of the first few energetic modes, the classical POD is employed here owing to the easier interpretation of the Fourier-azimuthal modes. The spatial eigenfunctions of the first few Fourier-azimuthal modes associated with the most energetic POD mode are shown to be sensitive to the choice of the wander correction technique used. Higher Fourier-azimuthal modes are observed in the outer portions of the vortex and appeared not to be affected by the choice of the wander correction technique used. / text

Steel pipelines are widely used in offshore oil/gas facilities. To achieve economically feasible designs, regulatory codes permit utilization of the pipelines well past their elastic response limit. This requires thorough integrity check of the pipeline subject to large scale yielding (LSY). Engineering criticality assessments (ECA) are used to justify the integrity of a cracked pipeline against fracture failure. The currently used ECA crack driving force equation was developed for load-controlled components subject to very limited crack-tip plasticity. Moreover, fracture toughness data are extracted from deeply-cracked laboratory specimens that produce the lowest margin of toughness values. Therefore, the current framework can be overly conservative (or include non-uniform inaccuracies) for ECA of modern pipelines that undergo LSY and ductile crack growth prior to failure. The two main goals of this thesis are: (i) Development of an alternative crack driving force estimation scheme, (ii) Justification of the use of use of shallow-cracked single edge notch tensile (SENT) specimens for the ECA. Strain concentration in concrete coated pipelines, and effect of Lüders plateau on the fracture response are also investigated. A new reference strain J-estimation scheme is proposed and calibrated to 300 nonlinear parametric FE models, which takes advantage of the linear evolution of the J with LSY bending strains. The scheme is hence strain-based and needless of limit load solutions, providing additional accuracy and robustness. The near-tip stress and strain fields of cracked pipelines were also investigated and compared to those obtained from a K-T type formulation. It is shown that the J-Q constraint theory can satisfactorily characterize these fields up to extreme plastic bending levels. Similar J-Q trajectories were also observed in the SENT and pipeline models. Subsequently, FE models utilizing a voided plasticity material were used to parametrically investigate ductile crack growth and subsequent failure of pipelines subject to a biaxial stress state. Plastic strain and stress triaxiality fields ahead of the propagating crack, along with R-curves, were compared among SENT and pipeline models. It is concluded that the SENT specimen could be a viable option for ECA of such pipes based on the observed crack tip constraint similarity.

Collagen fibrils are the main constituent of the extracellular matrix surrounding eukaryotic cells. Even though the assembly and structure of collagen fibrils is well characterized, very little is known about the physico-chemical properties of their surface which is one of the key determinants of their biological functions. One way to obtain surface sensitive structural and chemical data is to take advantage of the near field nature of surface and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Using Ag and Au nanoparticles bound to collagen type I fibrils, as well as tips coated with a Ag nanoparticles and a thin layer of Ag, we obtained Raman spectra characteristic of the first layer of collagen molecules at the surface of the fibrils. The most frequent Raman peaks were attributed to aromatic residues such as phenylalanine and tyrosine. We also observed in several instances Amide I bands with a full width at half maximum of 10-30 cm-1. The assignment of these Amide I bands positions suggests the presence of collagen-helices as well as alpha-helices and beta-sheets at the fibril’s surface. As a step towards in vivo characterization of collagen fibrils, fascicles removed from tendons were also examined with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Multi-Object Adaptive Optics promises to be a useful tool for the upcoming class of Extremely Large Telescopes. Like current adaptive optics systems, MOAO systems compensate optical aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence, but with the added benefit of being able to compensate multiple portions of a telescope’s field at the same time. To ensure the success of the eventual MOAO systems built for the ELTs, several demonstrator instruments have been designed and tested on current telescopes. Raven is one of these demonstrators, designed by the University of Victoria Adaptive Optics Lab for the Subaru 8.2 meter telescope to feed the InfraRed Camera and Spectrograph. Raven corrects the light of two science targets using wavefront information from three natural guide stars, and a single laser guide star. The topic of this thesis is the design and implementation of Raven’s tip/tilt compensation system, used to stabilize the output image positions on IRCS’s 0.140” slit. Tip/tilt correction of the science targets is done using a combination of motorized pick-off arms, piezoelectric tip/tilt platforms, and deformable mirrors. Through digital filtering and calibration, it is shown that these actuators are able to collectively keep the output science images stationary during simulated laboratory observations. A performance reduction due to residual tip/tilt errors is expected to be less than 5%. Raven goes on-sky in mid-2014, and it will be the first MOAO instrument to attempt scientific observations. / Graduate / 0548 / 0606

Multi-Object Adaptive Optics promises to be a useful tool for the upcoming class of Extremely Large Telescopes. Like current adaptive optics systems, MOAO systems compensate optical aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence, but with the added benefit of being able to compensate multiple portions of a telescope’s field at the same time. To ensure the success of the eventual MOAO systems built for the ELTs, several demonstrator instruments have been designed and tested on current telescopes. Raven is one of these demonstrators, designed by the University of Victoria Adaptive Optics Lab for the Subaru 8.2 meter telescope to feed the InfraRed Camera and Spectrograph. Raven corrects the light of two science targets using wavefront information from three natural guide stars, and a single laser guide star. The topic of this thesis is the design and implementation of Raven’s tip/tilt compensation system, used to stabilize the output image positions on IRCS’s 0.140” slit. Tip/tilt correction of the science targets is done using a combination of motorized pick-off arms, piezoelectric tip/tilt platforms, and deformable mirrors. Through digital filtering and calibration, it is shown that these actuators are able to collectively keep the output science images stationary during simulated laboratory observations. A performance reduction due to residual tip/tilt errors is expected to be less than 5%. Raven goes on-sky in mid-2014, and it will be the first MOAO instrument to attempt scientific observations. / Graduate / 0548 / 0606

A rapidly melting ice sheet produces a distinctive geometry of sea level (SL) change. Thus, a network of SL observations may, in principle, be used to infer sources of meltwater flux. We outline a new method, based on a Kalman smoother, for using tide gauge observations to estimate the individual sources of global SL change. The Kalman smoother technique iteratively calculates the maximum likelihood estimate of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheet melt rates at each time step, and it allows for data gaps while also permitting the estimation of non-linear trends. We have also implemented a fixed multi-model Kalman filter that allows us to rigorously account for additional contributions to SL changes, such as glacial isostatic adjustment and thermal expansion. We report on a series of detection experiments based on synthetic SL data that explore the feasibility of extracting source information from SL records before applying the new methodology to historical tide gauge records. In the historical tide gauge study we infer a global mean SL rise of ~1.5 ± 0.5 mm/yr up to 1970, followed by an acceleration to a rate of ~2.0 ± 0.5 mm/yr in 2008. In addition to its connection to SL, Greenland and its large ice sheet act as a barrier to storm systems traversing the North Atlantic. As a result of the interaction with Greenland, low-pressure systems located in the Irminger Sea, between Iceland and Greenland, often produce strong low-level winds. Through a combination of modeling and the analysis of rare in-situ observations, we explore the evolution of a lee cyclone that resulted in three high-speed-wind events in November 2004. Understanding Greenland’s role in these events is critical in our understanding of local weather in this region.

Plastic hypodermic needles are a potential solution to the problem of disease spread through needle reuse. Plastics could be used to potentially reduce needle reuse as they are easier to destroy than steel. A key issue in their acceptance is the force required to penetrate a patient; a smaller force is associated with less pain. The effect that needle parameters have on the penetration force is studied in an effort to better understand how to reduce penetration forces and increase the success of penetrations for plastic needles. These parameters - geometry, tip radius, diameter, material, and lubricant - are studied through penetration, buckling, and coefficient of friction testing. The tests are conducted on steel needles, which serve as a control group, as well as two varieties of plastic needles. The outcome is a quantitative understanding of the effect that the various parameters have on penetration force, which is used to inform plastic needle design.

The high stiffness to weight ratio and fatigue resistance make carbon fibre composites suitable for both military and large civil aircraft. The limited ability of current numerical methods to capture the complex growth of damage in laminated composites leads to a conservative design approach applied in today??s composite aircraft structures. The aim of the presented research was to develop an improved methodology for the failure prediction of laminated composites containing delaminations located between arbitrary layers in the laminate, and to extend the investigations to composite structures subjected to barely visible impact damage (BVID). The advantages of fracture mechanics-based methodologies to predict interlaminar failure in composite structures were identified, from which the crack tip element (CTE) approach and the virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) were selected for assessment. Extensive validation of these fracture mechanics methods is presented on a number of composite structures ranging from coupons to large stiffened panels. It was shown that the VCCT was relatively insensitive to the crack front mesh size, whilst predictions using the CTE methodology were significantly influenced by the element size. Based on the obtained results modelling guidelines for the VCCT and CTE were established. Significant contribution of this research to the field of the analysis of composite structures was the development of a novel test method for the evaluation of embedded single and multi-level delaminations. The test procedure of the single delamination specimen was proposed as an analogous test to conventional compression experiments. The transverse test overcame the inherent problems of in-plane compression testing and produced less scatter of experimental measurements. Quantitative analysis of numerical results employing the validated finite element modelling approaches showed that the failure load and location were in agreement with experiments. Furthermore, new modelling techniques for composite structures containing BVID proposed in this research produced good correlation with test data from the compression after impact (CAI) test. The study of BVID provided a significant contribution toward the knowledge of the applicability of implicit FE solvers to predict failure of CAI specimens as well as the criticality of centrally impacted specimens.

Over the last forty or so years interest in the study of wing-tip vortices has increased, primarily due to the introduction of larger passenger aircraft and their subsequent interaction with smaller aircraft. The vortices generated by these larger aircraft present a problem in two main areas; the wake hazard problem, where other aircraft can be subjected to the large tangential velocities of the vortex, and the interaction with ground based features of vortices created during landing and take-off. The first of these is particularly dangerous close to the ground when aircraft are in a high lift configuration at take-off and landing. As the vortices effectively scale with aircraft wing span, significant encounters between large vortices and smaller aircraft have been documented over the years. An example of one such documented wake vortex interaction incident can be found in Ogawa. In this study, the system of vortices are described as classical Batchelor vortices (or linear superpositions thereof) which are then subjected to small perturbations. By discretising the domain and solving for the eigenvalues of the system it is possible to ascertain the stability characteristics of the flow as a function of the system parameters which include the axial wave-number, the spacing of the vortices, their cross-flow decay rate and their axial strength. We first consider the inviscid instability of multiple tip vortices, an approximation which is valid in the limit of large Reynolds numbers. In this limit the stability of the flow is dominated by the axial component of the basic vortex flow. The governing equations of continuity and momentum are reduced to a second order partial differential equation (PDE). This equation is solved numerically to determine which vortex configurations produce the greatest instability growth rate. These results are extended to consider the effect of compressibility on the inviscid instability. Finally we consider the effects of viscosity on the stability of the full Batchelor similarity solution which results in a second order PDE in four dependent variables. The stability equations are solved both globally (for the entire eigenspectra) and locally (for a single eigenvalue in a pre-determined region) using codes that run in both serial and parallel form. The numerical methods are based on pseudospectral discretisation (Chebyshev polynomials for Cartesian and radial directions and Fourier for azimuthal) in the global scheme, the eigenvalues being recovered either with a QZ algorithm or a shift-and-invert Arnoldi algorithm. For the local scheme, fourth order centred finite-diffences are used in conjunction with an iterative eigenvalue recovery method. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1383207 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Mathematical Sciences, 2010

Over the last forty or so years interest in the study of wing-tip vortices has increased, primarily due to the introduction of larger passenger aircraft and their subsequent interaction with smaller aircraft. The vortices generated by these larger aircraft present a problem in two main areas; the wake hazard problem, where other aircraft can be subjected to the large tangential velocities of the vortex, and the interaction with ground based features of vortices created during landing and take-off. The first of these is particularly dangerous close to the ground when aircraft are in a high lift configuration at take-off and landing. As the vortices effectively scale with aircraft wing span, significant encounters between large vortices and smaller aircraft have been documented over the years. An example of one such documented wake vortex interaction incident can be found in Ogawa. In this study, the system of vortices are described as classical Batchelor vortices (or linear superpositions thereof) which are then subjected to small perturbations. By discretising the domain and solving for the eigenvalues of the system it is possible to ascertain the stability characteristics of the flow as a function of the system parameters which include the axial wave-number, the spacing of the vortices, their cross-flow decay rate and their axial strength. We first consider the inviscid instability of multiple tip vortices, an approximation which is valid in the limit of large Reynolds numbers. In this limit the stability of the flow is dominated by the axial component of the basic vortex flow. The governing equations of continuity and momentum are reduced to a second order partial differential equation (PDE). This equation is solved numerically to determine which vortex configurations produce the greatest instability growth rate. These results are extended to consider the effect of compressibility on the inviscid instability. Finally we consider the effects of viscosity on the stability of the full Batchelor similarity solution which results in a second order PDE in four dependent variables. The stability equations are solved both globally (for the entire eigenspectra) and locally (for a single eigenvalue in a pre-determined region) using codes that run in both serial and parallel form. The numerical methods are based on pseudospectral discretisation (Chebyshev polynomials for Cartesian and radial directions and Fourier for azimuthal) in the global scheme, the eigenvalues being recovered either with a QZ algorithm or a shift-and-invert Arnoldi algorithm. For the local scheme, fourth order centred finite-diffences are used in conjunction with an iterative eigenvalue recovery method. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1383207 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Mathematical Sciences, 2010