Surface Pressure Data Research Articles

InSight Pressure Data Recalibration, and Its Application to the Study of Long-Term Pressure Changes on Mars.

Observations of the South Polar Residual Cap suggest a possible erosion of the cap, leading to an increase of the global mass of the atmosphere. We test this assumption by making the first comparison between Viking 1 and InSight surface pressure data, which were recorded 40 years apart. Such a comparison also allows us to determine changes in the dynamics of the seasonal ice caps between these two periods. To do so, we first had to recalibrate the InSight pressure data because of their unexpected sensitivity to the sensor temperature. Then, we had to design a procedure to compare distant pressure measurements. We propose two surface pressure interpolation methods at the local and global scale to do the comparison. The comparison of Viking and InSight seasonal surface pressure variations does not show changes larger than ±8 Pa in the CO2 cycle. Such conclusions are supported by an analysis of Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) pressure data. Further comparisons with images of the south seasonal cap taken by the Viking 2 orbiter and MARCI camera do not display significant changes in the dynamics of this cap over a 40 year period. Only a possible larger extension of the North Cap after the global storm of MY 34 is observed, but the physical mechanisms behind this anomaly are not well determined. Finally, the first comparison of MSL and InSight pressure data suggests a pressure deficit at Gale crater during southern summer, possibly resulting from a large presence of dust suspended within the crater.

High durability variable geometry turbine for commercial vehicle turbochargers

Abstract Transportation sector constitutes a major portion in the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions of the world. Reduction of GHG emission requires the development of highly efficient Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) which are downsized using turbochargers that provide compressed air for cleaner combustion. Variable Geometry (VG) turbochargers are widely accepted for this application because of the ability of VG turbine to function at wider flow range. This ensures the supply of compressed air at low engine speeds also. However, the interaction between stator vanes and turbine rotor has been a major issue in terms of High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) of such a turbocharger. Till now, a conservative design approach constrained the maximum rotation speed to below resonance speed for vibration mode 2. But, to achieve further downsizing it would be necessary to challenge higher rotation speeds. This paper will firstly introduce the tip-timing experiment and CFD-FEA simulations used to evaluate the HCF of VG turbine, and secondly it discusses the results of new VG turbine system which achieved safe operability even at vibration mode 3, both on simulation and experiment. The tip-timing experiment was conducted at 680°C on hot gas stand test bench with optical sensors installed circumferentially around the rotor tip. These measurements have been verified and validated with the safety factor calculated from blade surface pressure data obtained from transient rotor CFD simulations.

Estimation of Vs30 at the EarthScope Transportable Array Stations by Inversion of Low‐Frequency Seismic Noise

AbstractOne of the main sources of seismic noise below 0.05 Hz is the atmospheric pressure variation, especially when surface pressure variations are large. When surface broadband seismic stations are equipped with pressure sensors, there is high coherence between pressure and seismic signals at low frequencies. The amount of ground deformation under surface pressure variations reflects the characteristics of near‐surface elastic structure and allows us to estimate near‐surface shear‐modulus structure using an inversion method. In the inversion method, we have the surface observable η(f) = Sz/Sp, where f is a frequency between 0.01 and 0.05 Hz, and Sz and Sp are the power spectral densities of vertical seismic data and of surface pressure data. We derive depth sensitivity kernels for η(f) with which we invert for elastic moduli of the shallow structure. Between 0.01 and 0.05 Hz, sensitivity kernels typically have peaks at depths within the uppermost 100 m. Based on vertically heterogeneous 1‐D structures, we estimate Vs30 at 744 USArray Transportable Array stations. Vs30 is the time‐averaged shear‐wave velocity from the surface to the 30‐m depth. We compare our results with various surficial geology maps. Although Vs30 has high horizontal variability over a short distance on the scale of hundreds of meters, we find correlations between Vs30 and large‐scale geological structures, such as mapped units and surficial materials. We find good agreement between estimated Vs30 and mapped Quaternary sediment depths, where stations with thicker underlying sediment tend to have slower Vs30.

Atlantic tropical cyclones downscaled from climate reanalyses show increasing activity over past 150 years

Historical records of Atlantic hurricane activity, extending back to 1851, show increasing activity over time, but much or all of this trend has been attributed to lack of observations in the early portion of the record. Here we use a tropical cyclone downscaling model driven by three global climate analyses that are based mostly on sea surface temperature and surface pressure data. The results support earlier statistically-based inferences that storms were undercounted in the 19th century, but in contrast to earlier work, show increasing tropical cyclone activity through the period, interrupted by a prominent hurricane drought in the 1970s and 80 s that we attribute to anthropogenic aerosols. In agreement with earlier work, we show that most of the variability of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity over the last century was directly related to regional rather than global climate change. Most metrics of tropical cyclones downscaled over all the tropics show weak and/or insignificant trends over the last century, illustrating the special nature of North Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology.

Development of a Fast-Running Algorithm to Approximate Incident Blast Parameters Using Body-Mounted Sensor Measurements.

The Office of Naval Research sponsored the Blast Load Assessment-Sense and Test program to develop a rapid, in-field solution that could be used by team leaders, commanders, and medical personnel to make science-based stand-down decisions for service members exposed to blast overpressure. However, a critical challenge to this goal was the reliable interpretation of surface pressure data collected by body-worn blast sensors in both combat and combat training scenarios. Without an appropriate standardized metric, exposures from different blast events cannot be compared and accumulated in a service member's unique blast exposure profile. In response to these challenges, we developed the Fast Automated Signal Transformation, or FAST, algorithm to automate the processing of large amounts of pressure-time data collected by blast sensors and provide a rapid, reliable approximation of the incident blast parameters without user intervention. This paper describes the performance of the FAST algorithms developed to approximate incident blast metrics from high-explosive sources using only data from body-mounted blast sensors. Incident pressure was chosen as the standardized output metric because it provides a physiologically relevant estimate of the exposure to blast that can be compared across multiple events. In addition, incident pressure serves as an ideal metric because it is not directionally dependent or affected by the orientation of the operator. The FAST algorithms also preprocess data and automatically flag "not real" traces that might not be from blasts events (false positives). Elimination of any "not real" blast waveforms is essential to avoid skewing the results of subsequent analyses. To evaluate the performance of the FAST algorithms, the FAST results were compared to (1) experimentally measured pressures and (2) results from high-fidelity numerical simulations for three representative real-world events. The FAST results were in good agreement with both experimental data and high-fidelity simulations for the three case studies analyzed. The first case study evaluated the performance of FAST with respect to body shielding. The predicted incident pressure by FAST for a surrogate facing the charge, side on to charge, and facing away from the charge was examined. The second case study evaluated the performance of FAST with respect to an irregular charge compared to both pressure probes and results from high-fidelity simulations. The third case study demonstrated the utility of FAST for detonations inside structures where reflections from nearby surfaces can significantly alter the incident pressure. Overall, FAST predictions accounted for the reflections, providing a pressure estimate typically within 20% of the anticipated value. This paper presents a standardized approach-the FAST algorithms-to analyze body-mounted blast sensor data. FAST algorithms account for the effects of shock interactions with the body to produce an estimate of incident blast conditions, allowing for direct comparison of individual exposure from different blast events. The continuing development of FAST algorithms will include heavy weapons, providing a singular capability to rapidly interpret body-worn sensor data, and provide standard output for analysis of an individual's unique blast exposure profile.

Estimation and Investigation of Geopotential and Scale heights over Iseyin, Nigeria

In this study, the monthly averaged daily mean temperature, relative humidity and surface pressure data obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) during the period of thirty eight (1979 – 2016) years were used to estimate the monthly variation of geopotential and scale heights for Iseyin located in the South Western region of Nigeria. The variations of geopotential and scale heights with the meteorological parameters were investigated. The results revealed that the highest and lowest values of geopotential height were found in the months of March and July with 194.2424 m and 157.3922 m respectively while the highest and lowest values of scale height were found in the months of March and August with 8.8946×〖10〗^3 m and 8.7825×〖10〗^3 m respectively. Furthermore, it is obvious that high values of geopotential height were recorded during the dry season and low values during the rainy season; the scale height shows almost close observation. The variation of geopotential and scale heights with mean temperature depicts a direct relationship while the variation of geopotential and scale heights with atmospheric pressure depicts an inverse relationship. In addition, the variation of geopotential and scale heights with relative humidity shows that an almost opposite pattern of variation was observed in the months from May to October.

Tropospheric delay in microwave propagation in Nigeria

Satellite communication systems suffer from the systematic error of tropospheric delay. Accurate estimation of this delay is essential for communication budget and planning. This study investigates the tropospheric delay in three Nigeria cities: Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt using two different models (Saastominen and Hopfield). Three-year atmospheric data for surface pressure, relative humidity and temperature obtained at 5-min interval were acquired from the Tropospheric Data Acquisition Network (TRODAN) archives. Computed radio refractivity values showed distinct seasonal dependence in Abuja with low and high values during the dry and wet seasons respectively. The Hopfield model predicts higher hydrostatic delay values than the Saastominen model. In the non-hydrostatic delay, the two models converge to a single value at high temperature. Theorems were proposed with proofs to explain the relationship observed between the two models.

Investigation of laminar separation bubble over a supercritical airfoil in an incompressible flow

Supercritical airfoils have an unknown behavior at incompressible flow regime and Reynolds numbers lower than those related to their design point at transonic condition. In this work, boundary layer transition is studied over a supercritical airfoil by means of hot-film and pressure measurements completed with numerical simulations. The experiments are performed at chord-based Reynolds number of [Formula: see text]and Mach number of [Formula: see text] at different angles of attack. Hot-film measurement over the upper surface of the supercritical airfoil is carried out and the transition points are computed using the standard deviation of the signals. The upper surface pressure is also recorded and a peak in its second derivative is presented as the transition point generated by the laminar separation bubble mechanism. Moreover, an appropriate time-frequency analysis is applied to the hot-film signals to get an insight into the spectral content and development of the transitional boundary layer structures. On the other hand, two numerical codes are employed and the transition points obtained from numerical simulations are compared with the experimental outcomes. Results express a rapid change of the bubble position over the upper surface, as the angle of attack is increased to the value of [Formula: see text]. Laminar separation bubble is observed in the surface pressure distribution data and is well identified using its second derivative along the streamwise direction. The spectral characteristics of the boundary layer are satisfactorily explored including the streamwise fluctuations within the laminar flow, intermittent behavior of the transitional zone and the wide range of the spectrum in turbulent flow, thanks to the time-frequency analysis. A promising agreement is observed between the transition points computed by both the numerical and experimental studies and confirms the accuracy of findings achieved by the second derivative of surface pressure data, hot-film measurements and the reliability of the employed numerical transition models for optimization studies.

Cholesterol modulates the interaction between paclitaxel and Langmuir monolayers simulating cell membranes

The composition of Langmuir monolayers used as cell membrane models is an essential factor for the interaction with biologically-relevant molecules, including pharmaceutical drugs. In this paper, we report the modulation of effects from the antineoplastic drug paclitaxel by the relative concentration of cholesterol in the Langmuir monolayers of ternary mixtures of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, sphingomyelin, and cholesterol. Since the dependence on cholesterol concentration for these monolayers simulating lipid rafts is non-monotonic, we analyzed the surface pressure and compressibility modulus data with the multidimensional projection technique referred to as interactive document mapping (IDMAP). The maximum expansion induced by paclitaxel in surface pressure isotherms was observed for 27% cholesterol, while the compressibility modulus decreased most strongly for the monolayer with 48% cholesterol. Therefore, the physiological action of paclitaxel may vary depending on whether it is associated with penetration in the membrane or with changes in the membrane elasticity.

An Experimental Investigation of the Vortex Merging over a Cranked-Delta Wing at Subsonic Speed

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of a cranked-delta wing model. It has been noted by various researches that in the vicinity of the take-off angles of attack, an instability in the longitudinal stability of aircraft equipped with cranked delta wings occurs where its origin is not well understood yet. To further study this phenomenon, a semi-span cranked delta wing model was designed and built. Surface pressure data for various angles of attack at low subsonic speeds, to better simulate take-off and landing conditions, were measured.

Effects of spin rate on the surface pressure distribution of a rotating model

A new experimental technique has been developed to measure the pressure distribution over the surface of a rotating model in a wind tunnel for various spin rates, free-stream Mach numbers, and angles of attack. In this method, all of the measuring instruments are placed inside the rotating model which eliminated previous operational limitations and technical problems associated with attempts to measure the Magnus effect. The validity and reliability of the measured data was verified by comparing the integrated surface pressure values and aerodynamic forces, with those directly measured from an internal strain gauge balance. From the acquired surface pressure data distribution of both local and total Magnus force on the model as well as the interpretation of the boundary layer and flow separation effects on the rotating model could be determined. The Magnus force distribution shows that the local Magnus force increases along the length of the model and the maximum local Magnus force occurs at the end of the projectile. The acquired experimental data were further compared with the numerical simulations and satisfactory results were achieved. This new experimental technique can be easily applied to a variety of model configurations testing at different Mach numbers, spin rates, angles of attack, etc.

Thermochemical non-equilibrium effects on aerothermodynamic prediction of laminar double-cone flow

Hypersonic non-equilibrium air flows over a laminar double-cone configuration are numerically investigated. In this paper, the effects of thermochemical non-equilibrium gas, chemical non-equilibrium gas, and thermally perfect gas models on the prediction of the wall-surface heat transfer and pressure are investigated. Comparing to the high-enthalpy experimental data, the results of simulations indicate that all models have a similar tendency, and underpredict the length of the separation region, while the heat transfer peaks are overpredicted. The experimental data for surface pressure and heat transfer is insensitive to the choice of the thermally perfect gas model and non-equilibrium thermochemistry models. Quantitatively, the thermochemical non-equilibrium gas and thermally perfect gas models predict the same separation and reattachment locations within the uncertainty in the simulation, but the chemical non-equilibrium gas model predicts a smaller separation region.

A priori zenith wet delays in the analysis of VLBI CONT sessions

Tropospheric delay is one of the major sources of error in VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) analysis. The principal component of this error can be accurately computed through reliable surface pressure data —hydrostatic delay— yet there is also a small but volatile component —wet delay— which is difficult to be modelled a priori. In VLBI analysis, troposphere delay is typically modelled in the theoretical delays using Zenith Hydrostatic Delays (ZHD) and a dry mapping function. Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) is not modelled but estimated in the analysis process. This work studies inter alia the impact of including external GNSS estimates to model a priori ZWD in VLBI analysis, as well as other models of a priori ZWD.In a first stage, two different sources of GNSS troposphere products are compared to VLBI troposphere estimates in a period of 5 years. The solution with the best agreement to VLBI results is injected in the VLBI analysis as a priori ZWD value and is compared to other options to model a priori ZWD. The dataset used for this empirical analysis consists of the six CONT campaigns.It has been found that modelling a priori ZWD has no significant impact either on baseline length and coordinates repeatabilities. Nevertheless, modelling a priori ZWD can change the magnitude of the estimated coordinates a few millimeters in the up component with respect to the non-modelling approach. In addition, the influence of a priori ZWD on Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) and troposphere estimates —Zenith Total Delays (ZTD) and gradients—has also been analysed, resulting in a small but significant impact on both geodetic products.

A field study on the aerodynamics of freight trains

A novel full-scale field test was undertaken to assess the aerodynamic performance of shipping containers loaded on inter-modal freight trains. The aerodynamic performance of an instrumented 48 ​ft container, located 185 ​m downstream of the locomotive, is assessed in the context of surface pressure, weather station, and GPS data sets. Previous studies on the aerodynamics of trains have been largely limited to low-resolution, reduced-order and scaled; field, numerical and wind-tunnel studies; respectively. The objective here was to determine the capacity of this novel field-based method to assess the aerodynamic performance of full-scale train containers for a large range of operating conditions. For low wind conditions, where the yaw angle is predicted to be low, measured surface pressure distributions on the front and base of the container are similar to that of past work however the magnitude of the drag coefficient was much lower, by up to 65%. This suggests that previous studies are yet to fully detail the drag profile of containers located at large downstream distance. Observed asymmetry of the pressure distribution on the front of the container are generally consistent with wind conditions measured at nearby weather stations and can be used as a proxy to determine the wind yaw angle at the train.

Propeller locations study of a generic delta wing UAV model

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the effects of propeller locations on the aerodynamic characteristics of a generic 55° swept angle sharp-edged delta wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) model.Design/methodology/approachA generic delta-winged UAV model has been designed and fabricated to investigate the aerodynamic properties of the model when the propeller is placed at three different locations. In this research, the propeller has been placed at three different positions on the wing, namely, front, middle and rear. The experiments were conducted in a closed-circuit low-speed wind tunnel at speeds of 20 and 25 m/s corresponding to 0.6 × 106 and 0.8 × 106 Reynolds numbers, respectively. The propeller speed was set at constant 6,000 RPM and the angles of attack were varied from 0° to 20° for all cases. During the experiment, two measurement techniques were used on the wing, which were the steady balance measurement and surface pressure measurement.FindingsThe results show that the locations of the propeller have significant influence on the lift, drag and pitching moment of the UAV. Another important observation obtained from this study is that the location of the propeller can affect the development of the vortex and vortex breakdown. The results also show that the propeller advance ratio can also influence the characteristics of the primary vortex developed on the wing. Another main observation was that the size of the primary vortex decreases if the propeller advance ratio is increased.Practical implicationsThere are various forms of UAVs, one of them is in the delta-shaped planform. The data obtained from this experiment can be used to understand the aerodynamic properties and best propeller locations for the similar UAV aircrafts.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, the surface pressure data available for a non-slender delta-shaped UAV model is limited. The data presented in this paper would provide a better insight into the flow characteristics of generic delta winged UAV at three different propeller locations.

Surface Pressure Data for Well-Test Analysis at a Joint Venture Gas Project in Sichuan

Surface Pressure Data for Well-Test Analysis at a Joint Venture Gas Project in Sichuan

Sitting Posture Recognition Using a Spiking Neural Network

To increase the quality of citizens' lives, we designed a personalized smart chair system to recognize sitting behaviors. The system can receive surface pressure data from the designed sensor and provide feedback for guiding the user towards proper sitting postures. We used a liquid state machine and a logistic regression classifier to construct a spiking neural network for classifying 15 sitting postures. To allow this system to read our pressure data into the spiking neurons, we designed an algorithm to encode map-like data into cosine-rank sparsity data. The experimental results consisting of 15 sitting postures from 19 participants show that the prediction precision of our SNN is 88.52%.

Aerodynamic damping investigations of light dynamic stall on a pitching airfoil via modal analysis

This study presents an investigation of the aerodynamic damping of light dynamic stall phenomena on a pitching NACA 0012 airfoil via Dynamic Modal Decomposition (DMD) and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) techniques. DMD analysis predicts a dominant mode having the same frequency of the pitching excitation and contributing all of the aerodynamic damping of the system. The temporal orthogonality of the DMD technique renders all other DMD modes orthogonal to both the dominant DMD mode as well as the pitching motion, resulting in zero aerodynamic work due to these DMD modes. However, the lack of temporal orthogonality of POD modes implies several modes contributing to the aerodynamic damping of the system. The leading-edge suction and the trailing-edge vortex were considered the most energetic features by the two most dominant POD modes and was also observed as the most significant spatial feature in the dominant DMD mode shape. A recently developed Hilbert transform-based methodology was extended here for computing chord-wise intra-cycle aerodynamic damping distribution. This method shows large variations of the intra-cycle aerodynamic damping distribution obtained from DDES surface pressure data over the cycle, which poses a challenge to extract meaningful information for possible flow control applications. However, the dominant DMD modal aerodynamic damping distribution shows no intra-cycle variations and predicts negative damping hot-spots near the leading and trailing edges of the chord. Such conclusions are significantly different than observed for an attached flow case or observed in a related study considering a deep dynamic stall regime at lower Reynolds number.

Closed-Loop Flow Separation Control Using the Deep Q Network over Airfoil

The effectiveness of closed-loop flow control using a deep Q network (DQN), such as deep reinforcement learning algorithm, was experimentally researched for a NACA0015 airfoil. The system used a dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator as the flow control device, and the experiment was conducted at the chord Reynolds number of . The closed-loop control system selected a nondimensional burst frequency of the actuator by analyzing the time series of the surface pressure data. The neural network of the DQN was sequentially trained at the angles of attack of 12 and 15 deg. As a result, the closed-loop control successfully generated a higher control gain compared with the open-loop control using a fixed burst frequency. Particularly, at 15 deg there was a significant control gain that could not be obtained by the open-loop control. The closed-loop control keeps the flow attached and preserves it for a longer time by periodically switching the actuator on and off.

An Array of Ringing Global Free Modes Discovered in Tropical Surface Pressure Data

AbstractWe used newly available ERA5 hourly global data to examine the variations of atmospheric circulation on global scales and high frequencies. The space–time spectrum of surface pressure displays a typical red background spectrum but also a striking number of isolated peaks. Some peaks represent astronomically forced tides, but we show that most peaks are manifestations of the ringing of randomly excited global-scale resonant modes, reminiscent of the tones in a spectrum of a vibrating musical instrument. A few such modes have been tentatively identified in earlier observational investigations, but we demonstrate the existence of a large array of normal mode oscillations with periods as short as 2 h. This is a powerful and uniquely detailed confirmation of the predictions of the theory of global oscillations that has its roots in the work of Laplace two centuries ago. The delineation of the properties of the modes provides valuable diagnostic information about the atmospheric circulation. Notably the amplitudes and widths of the normal mode spectral peaks contain information on the forcing mechanisms and energy dissipation for the modes, and the simulation of these properties for each of the many modes we have identified can serve as tests for global climate and weather prediction models.