This study aims to explore the use of an ultrasonic micro-nozzle plate, made of piezoelectric ceramic material, as a core material to establish a set of spray cooling system for high power LED. The system uses a single nozzle plate to implement a cooling test for 4 high power LEDs (2 ¡Ñ 2). The total input power was 4 W, 12 W and 20 W, and working medium was DI water. In order to understand the performance variance introduced by utilizing nozzle plates with differing nozzle diameters (dj = 7, 35 £gm) across various nozzle exit to test distance (z = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 mm). By using micrometer resolution particle image velocimetry (£gPIV) to observe the spray flowfield inside the chamber, and using thermocouples to measure the temperature of LED slug and thermal resistance was used to calculate the LED junction temperature , Tj, for analyzing the influence of flowfield change spread in chamber on its cooling performance. The possibility of an LED spray cooling system is also explored.

The metal halide lamp has become an attractive lighting source because of its compact size, good color rendering, long lamp life, and high luminous efficacy. As a member of high-intensity discharge lamps, it has a negative incremental resistance, which claims the necessity of a ballast circuitry. Similar to other gas discharge lamps, the operating performance can be further improved when driven by a high-frequency electronic ballast. However, there are some obstacles in ballasting the metal halide lamp with the high-frequency inverter. For a cold lamp, an ignition voltage up to several kVs is required for breaking down the electrodes during starting period. The breakdown voltage and the equivalent lamp resistance may vary from time to time and lamp to lamp, and is sensitive to the used time. Furthermore, the ignition voltage for restarting a hot lamp can be ten times that for a cold lamp. On the other hand, the lamp driven by a high-frequency electronic ballast may suffer from acoustic resonance. All these make it difficult in the design of an electronic ballast, especially for the applications with hot restarting. In this dissertation, the operating characteristics for both starting transient and steady-state of the metal halide lamp are first investigated. Then, a simple method by measuring the lamp voltage is proposed to detect the happening of acoustic resonance. Based on the investigated results, several electronic ballasts are designed for driving metal halide lamps with capabilities of wide input voltage range, high input power factor, hot restarting, fast transition. In addition, an inverter circuit is configured for ballasting multiple lamps. A buck-boost power-factor-correction circuit is integrated into the load resonant inverter to achieve a high power factor, fast transition, and constant power operation. The extremely high ignition voltage for hot restarting is generated by an auxiliary ignitor. The electronic ballast is precisely operated at the specific frequency at which acoustic resonance will not occur. In addition to these features, a protection circuit is included to prevent from high voltage and/or current stresses on circuit components in case that the lamp fails to be started up or comes to the end of its life-time. For the ballast with multiple lamps, the load circuits with abnormal lamps can be isolated from the others which are under normal operation. Prototypes of the proposed circuits are built and tested. Experimental results present the satisfactory performances.

Light-emitting diodes (LED) illumination takes considerable applications in nowadays daily lives due to the improvement on efficiency of the LED modules. The connections between the reliability and the lifetime, power efficiency, optical spectrum, and structure design of the LED modules are the major research topics. In this study, high-power LED modules encapsulated with different lens shapes after a thermal-aging test were studied experimentally and numerically. The results showed that the LED modules encapsulated with a hemispherical-shaped plastic lens exhibited a better lifetime due to their better thermal dissipation than those with cylindrical- or elliptical-shaped plastic lenses. In the case of 80¢J aging test, the lifetime of hemispherical-shaped lens was 1.5 times better than the cylindrical- or elliptical-shaped lenses. Decay of radiation pattern and optical spectrum of high-power LED modules fabricated by different manufacturers after a thermal-aging test were investigated experimentally and numerically. The results showed that the radiation pattern of the LED modules at the two view angles of ¡Ó (15o~75o) decreased more than the other angles as aging time increased. Due to the degradation of lens material after thermal aging, the center wavelength of the LED spectrum shifted 5 nm. Furthermore, the radius curvature of plastic lens was observed 6-70 £gm contraction as aging times increased. Both experimental and simulated results clearly indicated that improving the lens structure and lens material is essential to extend the operating life of the high-power LED modules. High-power phosphor-converted white-light-emitting diodes (PC-LEDs) with selected concentration and thickness of Ce:YAG phosphor-doped silicones were investigated to study the thermal degradation effect of the Ce:YAG phosphor-silicone layer. The experimental results showed that the lumen loss, chromaticity (CIE shift), and spectrum intensity reduction increased as the concentration of Ce:YAG phosphor doped silicone increased. We showed that 94% lumen loss was attributed to 5.5 wt% Ce:YAG doping and only 6% of the lumen loss was due to a 1mm thickness of silicone degradation. From practical points of view, we found that a lower doping concentration of the Ce:YAG phosphor in thin silicone is a better choice in terms of having less thermal degradation for use in packaging of the high-power PC-LEDs modules and is essential to extend the operating lifetime of the phosphor-based white LED modules.

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We have performed a series of experiments developing the techniques of volumetric, isochoric heating of matter to high energy density states, and the subsequent probing of the release isentrope. Using ultrafast, ultra intense laser systems with pulse lengths from 100fs - 1ps and pulse energies between 2 J and 100 J, we generated strong secondary radiation, in the form of K[subscript alpha] x-rays and directed proton beams, which we used to rapidly heat a foil sample to temperatures from ~ 1 eV to ~ 25 eV at solid density, thus entering the strongly coupled, partially ionized regime of warm dense matter, in which the equation of state is poorly understood. The first set of experiments examines the possibility of using laser generated K[subscript alpha] x-rays in isochoric heating experiments and concludes that this technique will require the use of higher energies and higher Z materials than were used in this thesis to achieve warm dense matter conditions. In the second set of experiments, we used an ultrafast, lasergenerated proton beam with a temperature of ~ 2 MeV and cutoff energy of ~ 40 MeV to volumetrically and isochorically heat a sample foil to > 20 eV. With singleshot diagnostics, we measured the evolution of the temperature with 3:3 ps resolution over the _rst 35 ps of expansion by streaked optical pyrometry, and measured the evolution of the target expansion over the same timescale with sub-ps resolution by chirped pulse interferometry. In this way we were able to verify the equation of state and ion-balance in the SESAME equation of state tables with a Saha ionization model and distinguish this as more accurate than other, simpler models. This thesis establishes an experimental framework for acquiring equation of state data in the regime of warm dense matter that is distinct and complimentary to that acquired by the techniques of shock heating. / text

Understanding material behavior under extreme conditions is an important area of research in physics and material science. One method to study the behavior of materials under these conditions is to drive a strong shock wave through a material and watch its response. In many cases the material response is complicated by phase transitions such as lattice restructuring (Barker 1975; Mabire and Hereil 2000; Swift, Tierney et al. 2005) and melting (Asay 1975; Elias, Chapron et al. 1988; Werdiger, Eliezer et al. 1999; Mabire and Hereil 2000; Swift, Tierney et al. 2005). To study these dynamics we are using lasers in high time resolution pump-probe experiments to develop a real time diagnostic on the phase of a shocked material. This technique enables probing of the entire phase history of a material as it shock compresses and releases. In addition to linear reflectivity and ultra-fast 2D displacement interferometry, we developed a melting diagnostics based on the non-linear optical technique of third harmonic generation (THG) using a circularly polarized laser pulse. This diagnostic resolves the less than 300 fs melting transition of laser excited Si and GaAs, and it also detects a response in shock compressed silicon. Our results show that Si remains crystalline during compression of an elastic 100 kbar shock wave. Results from Si shocked to higher pressures (> 300 kbar) indicate a decrease in THG, suggesting some level of disordering or unexplained phase change. / text

This thesis was motivated by the promise that some physical aspects of astrophysical jets and collimation processes can be scaled to laboratory parameters through hydrodynamic scaling laws. The simulation of astrophysical jet phenomena with laser-produced plasmas was attractive because the laser-target interaction can inject energetic, repeatable plasma into an external environment. Novel laboratory simulations of astrophysical jets involved constructing and using the YOGA laser, giving a 1064 nm, 8 ns pulse laser with energies up to 3:7 - 0:2 J. Laser-produced plasmas were characterized using Schlieren, interferometry and ICCD photography for their use in simulating jet and magnetosphere physics. The evolution of the laser-produced plasma in various conditions was compared with self-similar solutions and HYADES computer simulations. Millimeter-scale magnetized collimated out-flows were produced by a centimeter scale cylindrically symmetric electrode conguration triggered by a laser-produced plasma. A cavity with a flared nozzle surrounded the center electrode and the electrode ablation created supersonic uncollimated flows. This flow became collimated when the center electrode changed from an anode to a cathode. The plasma jets were in axially directed permanent magnetic fields with strengths up to 5000 Gauss. The collimated magnetized jets were 0.1-0.3 cm wide, up to 2.0 cm long, and had velocities of ~ 4:0 x 10⁶ cm/s. The dynamics of the evolution of the jet were compared qualitatively and quantitatively with fluxtube simulations from Bellan's formulation [6] giving a calculated estimate of ~ 2:6 x 10⁶ cm=s for jet evolution velocity and evidence for jet rotation. The density measured with interferometry was 1.9 ± .2 x 10¹⁷ cm⁻³ compared with 2.1 x10¹⁶ cm⁻³ calculated with Bellan's pressure balance formulation [6]. Kinks in the jet column were produced consistent with the Kruskal-Shafranov condition which allowed stable and symmetric jets to form with the background magnetic fields. The Euler number for the laboratory jet was 9 compared with an estimate of 40 for young stellar object jets [135] which demonstrated adequate scaling between the two frames. A second experiment was performed concerning laboratory simulations of magnetospheres with plasma winds impinging on permanent magnetic dipoles. The ratio of the magnetopause measured with ICCD photography to the calculated magnetopause standoff distance was ~2. / text

In this research, in order to realize such nanolaminated magnetic cores for high frequency and high power conversion, the following key tasks have been accomplished: 1) electrodeposition of metallic alloy materials such as NiFe, CoNiFe, and anisotropic CoNiFe; 2) development of new fabrication technologies to realize nanolaminated cores based on metallic alloy electrodeposition; 3) reliable characterization of the structural, magnetic, and electrical properties of the nanolaminated metallic alloy cores; 4) development of microfabricated inductor windings to integrate the nanolaminated cores; 5) demonstration of high-frequency and high-flux ultracompact DC-DC power conversion using inductors integrated with nanolaminated metallic alloy cores. By achieving these tasks, nanolaminated cores comprising tens to hundreds of layers of metallic alloy films (Ni80Fe20 and Co44Ni37Fe19) has been developed. The fabricated nanolaminated core consists of sufficiently thin nanolaminations (100 – 1000 nm) that can suppress eddy currents in the MHz range, while simultaneously achieving the overall magnetic thickness (35 – 2000 µm) such that substantial power can be handled. The nanolaminated metallic alloy cores were further integrated into microfabricated inductors using CMOS-compatible fabrication processes. Finally, an ultracompact DC-DC buck converter with the nanolaminated metallic alloy cores has been developed on PCB having footprint of 14 × 7.1 mm2. The input voltage of the converter varied from 30 to 70 V and the output voltage was fixed at 20 V. The converter operated with output power of approximately 11 W and the switching frequencies of 0.7 – 1.4 MHz, demonstrating conversion efficiency of 94.2% at 30 V input and 80.8% at 60 V input.

Σκοπός της διπλωματικής εργασία είναι η μελέτη και μοντελοποίηση ενός δορυφορικού καναλιού. Το δορυφορικό κανάλι, όπως κάθε κανάλι είναι ένα μη-γραμμικό σύστημα που χαρακτηρίζεται από ποικίλους και απρόβλεπτους παράγοντες που αλλοιώνουν την αρχική πληροφορία. Οι καιρικές συνθήκες που επικρατούν σε μια περιοχή για παράδειγμα επηρεάζουν το κανάλι προκαλώντας μεταβολή της ισχύος με τυχαίο τρόπο, γεγονός το οποίο δυσκολεύει την πρόβλεψη της συμπεριφοράς του. Για το λόγο αυτό έγινε προσπάθεια ανάπτυξης ενός δυναμικού μοντέλου που θα μπορεί να εξομοιώνει τη συμπεριφορά ενός τέτοιου καναλιού, δίνοντας τις πιθανές καταστάσεις στις οποίες μπορεί να βρεθεί. Συγκεκριμένα τα φαινόμενα τα οποία μελετήθηκαν είναι η εξασθένιση λόγω βροχής, η απορρόφηση από υγρασία και οξυγόνο και η τροποσφαιρική σκέδαση. Η κατασκευή του μοντέλου έγινε με τη χρήση και επεξεργασία μετεωρολογικών δεδομένων από την Ε.Μ.Υ. Επίσης, έγινε προσπάθεια μοντελοποίησης του ενισχυτή ισχύος (TWTA) ο οποίος συναντάται τόσο στο δορυφόρο όσο και κεντρικό σταθμό βάσης στη γη. / The objective of this project is the study and the modeling of a satellite channel. The satellite channel, as any satellite channel, is a non-linear system that is characterized by multiple and unpredictable factors that alter the initial information. The weather conditions that exist in an region affect the channel causing random power fluctuations and result in unpredictable performance. Thus, a dynamic model has been developed that simulates the performance of such a channel by predicting possible conditions that can arise. More specifically, the phenomena that have been studied is the rain attenuation, gaseous absorption and the tropospheric scintillation. The model was implemented through the use and analysis of meteorological data taken from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service. In addition, a high power amplifier (TWTA) that can be found both in the satellite and the central base station.

No description available.