Physics Commons^™

Impact Of Spallation And Internal Radiation On Fibrous Ablative Materials, Raghava Sai Chaitanya Davuluri

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Space vehicles are equipped with Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) that encounter high heat rates and protect the payload while entering a planetary atmosphere. For most missions that interest NASA, ablative materials are used as TPS. These materials undergo several mass and energy transfer mechanisms to absorb intense heat. The size and construction of the TPS are based on the composition of the planetary atmosphere and the impact of various ablative mechanisms on the flow field and the material. Therefore, it is essential to quantify the rates of different ablative phenomena to model TPS accurately. In this work, the impact of …

Effects Of Aperiodicity And Frustration On The Magnetic Properties Of Artificial Quasicrystals, Barry Farmer

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

Quasicrystals have been shown to exhibit physical properties that are dramatically different from their periodic counterparts. A limited number of magnetic quasicrystals have been fabricated and measured, and they do not exhibit long-range magnetic order, which is in direct conflict with simulations that indicate such a state should be accessible. This dissertation adopts a metamaterials approach in which artificial quasicrystals are fabricated and studied with the specific goal of identifying how aperiodicity affects magnetic long-range order. Electron beam lithography techniques were used to pattern magnetic thin films into two types of aperiodic tilings, the Penrose P2, and Ammann-Beenker tilings. SQUID …

A Detection And Data Acquisition System For Precision Beta Decay Spectroscopy, Aaron P. Jezghani

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

Free neutron and nuclear beta decay spectroscopy serves as a robust laboratory for investigations of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Observables such as decay product angular correlations and energy spectra overconstrain the Standard Model and serve as a sensitive probe for Beyond the Standard Model physics. Improved measurement of these quantities is necessary to complement the TeV scale physics being conducted at the Large Hadron Collider. The UCNB, ⁴⁵Ca, and Nab experiments aim to improve upon existing measurements of free neutron decay angular correlations and set new limits in the search for exotic couplings in beta decay. To …

Orbital Stability Results For Soliton Solutions To Nonlinear Schrödinger Equations With External Potentials, Joseph B. Lindgren

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

For certain nonlinear Schroedinger equations there exist solutions which are called solitary waves. Addition of a potential $V$ changes the dynamics, but for small enough $||V||_{L^\infty}$ we can still obtain stability (and approximately Newtonian motion of the solitary wave's center of mass) for soliton-like solutions up to a finite time that depends on the size and scale of the potential $V$. Our method is an adaptation of the well-known Lyapunov method.

For the sake of completeness, we also prove long-time stability of traveling solitons in the case $V=0$.

A Physics-Based Approach To Modeling Wildland Fire Spread Through Porous Fuel Beds, Tingting Tang

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Wildfires are becoming increasingly erratic nowadays at least in part because of climate change. CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-based models with the potential of simulating extreme behaviors are gaining increasing attention as a means to predict such behavior in order to aid firefighting efforts. This dissertation describes a wildfire model based on the current understanding of wildfire physics. The model includes physics of turbulence, inhomogeneous porous fuel beds, heat release, ignition, and firebrands. A discrete dynamical system for flow in porous media is derived and incorporated into the subgrid-scale model for synthetic-velocity large-eddy simulation (LES), and a general porosity-permeability model is …