Icing on aircraft wings is one of the leading causes of aircraft crashes. It is mainly caused due to accumulation of ice or snow on the wing surface due to impact with supercooled droplets when passing through clouds at high altitudes, causing loss of lift obtained by the wings. It was found that droplet impact characteristics are dependent on droplet size, surface roughness, surface material hydrophobicity, and droplet impact velocity. As a continuation of the study of droplet impact contact characteristics by varying surface roughness and impact velocity, this study focuses on droplets impacting the vibrating surface at frequencies between 2-7 kHz. Atomization (water drop splitting into smaller droplets and ejecting from the surface) has been observed at different rates for all frequencies. The first set of data is collected by keeping roughness constant and increasing the amplitude of the vibration to observe the critical amplitude at which atomization is initiated. The surface roughness is varied for the second set of experiments. The data is quantified using image processing of the high-speed videos to obtain the rate of ejection for each case. / Master of Science / Icing on aircraft wings is among the leading causes of crashes, which involves small freezing water drops sticking to the wing surface thus reducing the lift. This study is an investigation to experimentally observe how small water droplets interact with surfaces vibrating at high frequencies when impacted. Surface roughness, materials, droplet velocities, and frequency of vibration have been varied and the droplet was captured using high-speed photography to study their effect on the aforementioned interaction. Glass, PET-G. and aluminum having specific roughness were fabricated using laser and chemical etching. Atomization (water drop splitting into smaller droplets and ejecting from the surface) has been observed at different rates for all frequencies. A relation between the amplitude of the vibration and the rate of atomization was found. The effect of varying frequencies and surface roughness has also been documented.

This thesis investigates the implementation of a passive isolator with a pressurized air cushion for spacecraft payloads in mission architectures implementing in-space assembly technologies. A pressurized air bed capable of briefly surviving the space environment for cargo delivery was prototyped and experimentally evaluated for launch vehicle vibration dynamics resulting in a 72%, 93%, and 88% reduction in experienced GRMS loads for the X-Axis, Y-Axis, and Z-Axis, respectively. A preliminary Total Mass Loss evaluation of the Low-Density Polyethylene Film utilized for the air bed resulted in a mass loss of 0.7%, indicating that commercial off-the-shelf films might require minimal modification for flight readiness. An analytical model of a planar rectangular payload experiencing free vibrations with a Winkler foundation is generated and compared to the experimental results, showing a potential way for characterizing and designing such a foundation to reduce experienced vibrations. These preliminary results show a potential path for a non-cost-prohibitive method for space payloads to reduce loads experienced during launch as inspired by the successful hosted payloads program aboard the International Space Station.

Coherent vortex-dominated structures in the wake are ubiquitous in natural and engineered flows. The well-known 'von Karman street', in which two rows of counter-rotating vortices develop on the leeward side of a solid body immersed in a fluid, is only one such vortex-based structure in the wake. Recent work on fluid-structure interaction has shown that several other types of vortex structures can arise in natural and engineered systems. The production of these vortex structures downstream often mark the onset of qualitative and/or quantitative changes in the forces exerted on the vortex-shedding body upstream, and can be used as diagnostic tools for engineering structures undergoing Vortex-Induced Vibrations. This dissertation presents a two-part study of vortex dynamics in the laminar wakes of bluff bodies. The first part consists of a series of experiments on a transversely oscillating circular cylinder in a uniform flow field at Re≲250. These experiments were carried out in a gravity-driven soap film channel, which provides a `two-dimensional laboratory' for hydrodynamics experiments under certain conditions. In these experiments, we generated a `map' of the vortex patterns that arise in the wake as a function of the (nondimensional) frequency and amplitude of the cylinder's motion. Our results show that the '2P mode' of vortex shedding can robustly occur in the two-dimensional wake of an oscillating cylinder, contrary to what has been reported in the literature. By making small changes to the meniscus region of the soap film, we have explored possible mechanisms that can explain why the `P+S mode' of vortex shedding is usually reported to be more prevalent than the '2P mode' at low Reynolds number, when the flow is two-dimensional. In doing so, we have found that small modifications to the cylinder on the order of the boundary layer thickness can make a significant difference to the vortex shedding process. In the second part, we develop a generalized form of von Karman's drag law for N-vortex streets: periodic wakes in which the vortices are arranged in regularly-repeating patterns with N>2 vortices per period. The original form of von Karman's drag law then reduces to a special case of this generalized form, which has the potential to model several kinds of vortex-dominated wakes that have been reported in the literature. In this work, we show how this generalized drag law can be used to model '2P' and 'P+S' wakes in both `drag' and `thrust' form. As a contribution to the study of three-dimensional wakes, we also studied a periodic array of vortex rings, which are often used to represent the wakes of marine organisms like jellyfish and squid. We described the problem mathematically using a newly-developed Green's function, and comprehensively examine the fluid physics of such an array of vortex rings as a function of the non-dimensional parameters that govern this phenomenon. In the process, we have discovered a new type of topology that arises in this flow, which may have connections with the `optimal vortex formation length' of vortex rings. / Doctor of Philosophy / The interaction of solid objects with fluids such as water and air, often termed Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI), gives rise to a wide variety of natural phenomena. Understanding FSI is important as an avenue of scientific interest as well as for engineering applications. In this dissertation, we are interested in the subset of FSI phenomena known as wakes: the fluid flow that is left behind when a solid moves rapidly through quiescent fluid, or when water or air flows rapidly past a stationary obstacle. In such situations, the flow is often rapidly rotating, taking the form of vortices or eddies, i.e., concentrated regions of rotating fluid. These eddies, or vortices, can be described mathematically using simple differential equations, and are the subject of the field of vortex dynamics, which is a branch of fluid mechanics. In the first part of this thesis, we have made contributions to the experimental study of FSI and wakes by making use of an experimental technique known as a gravity-driven soap film channel. In these experiments, a 'soap film', i.e., the surface of a soap bubble, is stretched out over a longitudinal channel formed by nylon wires and held taut in a rectangular shape. This rectangular film of soap is only a few micrometers thick, and is continuously fed by soap solution from the top and drained at the bottom, resulting in a steadily-flowing 'channel' of two-dimensional flow. In this experimental setup, we introduce a circular acrylic cylinder to serve as the archetypal 'obstacle' to fluid flow and oscillate it at a range of frequencies and amplitudes while using a high-speed camera to visualize the flow. This gives rise to a fascinating set of qualitatively distinct vortex patterns in the wake, with the structure depending on the selected frequency and amplitude of cylinder oscillation. In the second part of this thesis, we have developed mathematical models of two-dimensional wakes using a system of point vortices and of three-dimensional wakes using a system of circular vortex rings. We show how these idealized mathematical models of rotating flow, i.e., point vortices and vortex rings, can be used as building blocks for physically-plausible models of actually-occurring wakes, including those which were observed in the first part of this work. For two-dimensional wakes, we use Newton's laws applied to a fluid to determine the forces being exerted on a solid body, immersed in a fluid, whose wake takes the form of regularly-repeating vortices known as 'vortex streets'. This allows us to give, for the first time, theoretical predictions of the drag or thrust force associated with vortex streets such as those observed in our experiments.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

We examined the formation of Intrinsically Localized Modes (ILMs) for a pair of harmonic phonons along the direction [111] of the Sodium Iodide (NaI) crystalline lattice. The tendency for ILMs to form at a certain center-of-mass momentum ▁q and corresponding relative momentum vector ▁k is attributed to the van-Hove singularities condition in the non-interaction two-phonon density of states continuum. We observed that, as ▁q converges to the high-symmetry point L=▁q (π/a,π/a,π/a) of the Brillouin zone, the relative momentum vector ▁k remains invariant at ▁k (π/2,π/2,π/2) for a certain threshold value of ▁q, and coalesces at the upper-edge of the two-phonon density of states spectrum with high degeneracy in the two-phonon critical energy. We conclude that the excitation spectra of the pairs of harmonic phonon excitations become energetically degenerate past the threshold ▁q value towards L at the invariant vector ▁k, announcing the strong presence of ILMs. The calculated ILMs were observed at critical energies of 20.0 meV and 25.0 meV for the spring coupling constants ratios K_2/K_1 ≈0.598 and K_2/K_1 ≈0.202 respectively. Reports of Inelastic Neutron Scattering experiments have identified one-phonon breather excitations energy of 10.2 meV at elevated temperatures of 555 K. The formation of ILMs, or multi-phonon bound states, is expected to arise as a result of the anharmonic interactions that lift these degeneracies to enhance the formation of ILMs. / Physics

The magnetic properties of ultrathin magnetic films can be investigated in situ by the temperature dependent magnetic ac susceptibility x(T) using an optical technique - the surface magneto-optic Kerr effect (SMOKE). The performance of the ac susceptibility measurements depends primarily on the optical setup used to detect the Kerr effect and on the mechanical stability of the system. Modifications to the optical setup and the sample holder have significantly reduced the influence of noise due to mechanical vibrations. It has been found that the signal-to-noise ratio has been improved by at least a factor of 2.5 with respect to the previous setup, giving a detection limit of 15 nrad/Oe. This improvement makes measurements on antiferromagnetic ultrathin films feasible. Their susceptibility response has been estimated to be around 20-30 nrad/Oe. As a test study for the performance of the improved setup, transverse susceptibility measurements on 2 ML Fe/W(110) ferromagnetic ultrathin films are presented. These transverse susceptibility signals show interesting features. They have a narrow linewidth and are larger than expected from anisotropy considerations and other work. Also, it has been found that the in-plane and out-of-plane transverse susceptibilities arise from different mechanisms. Several scenarios that might explain the origin, size and shape of the observed signals are discussed. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)