Combined use of dimensional analysis and modern experimental design methodologies in hydrodynamics experiments

In this paper, a combined use of dimensional analysis (DA) and modern statistical design of experiment (DOE) methodologies is proposed for a hydrodynamics experiment where there are a large number of variables. While DA is well-known, DOE is still unfamiliar to most ocean engineers although it has been shown to be useful in many engineering and non-engineering applications. To introduce and illustrate the method, a study concerning the thrust of a propeller is considered. Fourteen variables are involved in the problem and after dimensional analysis this reduces to 11 dimensionless parameters. Then, a two-level fractional factorial design was used to screen out parameters that do not significantly contribute to explaining the dependent dimensionless parameter. With the remaining five statistically significant dimensionless parameters, various response surface methodologies (RSM) were used to obtain a functional relationship between the dependent dimensionless thrust coefficient, and the five dimensionless parameters. The final model was found to be of reasonable accuracy when tested against results not used to develop the model. The methodologies presented in the paper can be similarly applied to systems with a large number of control variables to systematically derive approximate mathematical models to predict the responses of the system economically and accurately.     

Laboratory study of shear strength response of Chlef natural sand: Effect of saturation

Abstract

The study of the unsaturated soils is a very complex field to which several researches in laboratory and on site are directed these last years. An experimental study aims to quantify the influence of the Skempton coefficient B characterizing the degree of saturation on the behavior of the granular sand to the liquefaction resistance of sand. The study is based on undrained triaxial tests performed on natural Chlef sand carried out at an initial relative density Dr = 50% under a confining pressure of 50, 100 and 200?kPa for Skempton coefficient B?=?10 to 92%. The results of the tests show that an increase of confining pressure leads to an increase of the shear stress of the samples. For the lower value of the degree of saturation results of our findings indicate an increase of the resistance to liquefaction; our results are in good agreement with others observed in several research projects conducted with other sands. The increase of Skempton coefficient B induces an increase of pore water pressure and a decrease of the shear strength. The pore pressure (u) increases with an exponential manner with the increase of the degree of saturation; while the residual shear strength (Rs) decreases with logarithmic manner with the increase of degree of saturation (B).     

Mechanical response of saturated and unsaturated gravels of different sizes in drained triaxial testing

Acta Geotechnica - During the construction of pavements, gravelly soil is used as the main material in the base and sub-base layers. Predicting the deformation behaviour of gravelly soil has been...     

Finite strain analysis for deformed Neoproterozoic rock associations of the Al Amar fault zone,Eastern Arabian Shield,Saudi Arabia

Arabian Journal of Geosciences - In this work, quantitative analysis of coastal zone landform morphology is carried out through the integration of landscape index, remote sensing (RS) and...     

Study of X-ray transients with Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) onboard AstroSat

Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) onboard AstroSat is an X-ray sky monitor in the energy range 2.5–10 keV. SSM scans the sky for X-ray transient sources in this energy range of interest. If an X-ray transient source is detected in outburst by SSM, the information will be provided to the astronomical community for follow-up observations to do a detailed study of the source in various other bands. SSM instrument, since its power-ON in orbit, has observed a number of X-ray sources. This paper discusses observations of few X-ray transients by SSM. The flux reported by SSM for few sources during its Performance Verification phase (PV phase) is studied and the results are discussed.     

A morphological evaluation of Chrysaora chinensis of Peninsular Malaysia and distinguishing its populations using geometric morphometrics

The morphology of seven specimens of Chrysaora chinensis (Scyphomedusae, Semaestomae) obtained from four sites off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia was examined. Morphological characteristics of C. chinensis that encompasses structures such as the bell, tentacles, oral arms, stomach, manubrium, radial canals and gonads were described in detail. A total of 107 specimens that represented C. chinensis populations of four coastal areas of Peninsular Malaysia (East-Central, East-North, West-Central, and West-North) were also analysed for shape variation using geometric morphometric analysis. Procrustes superimposition, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Canonical Variate Analysis (CVA) were applied to the images of gastrovascular pouches of C. chinensis to extract the shape information. Independent contrasts were used for comparisons between shapes. There were no significant differences in shape variation between all the specimens based on the PCA results. However, CVA results showed shape variations between specimens taken from the four areas of Peninsular Malaysia, especially with higher magnitudes of Mahalanobis distances between the east and west coast areas, including between East-Central and East-North, but lower magnitudes were detected between the West-Central and West-North.     

A numerical study on deblending of land simultaneous shooting acquisition data via rank-reduction filtering and signal enhancement applications

We propose a workflow of deblending methodology comprised of rank-reduction filtering followed by a signal enhancing process. This methodology can be used to preserve coherent subsurface reflections and at the same time to remove incoherent and interference noise. In pseudo-deblended data, the blending noise exhibits coherent events, whereas in any other data domain (i.e. common receiver, common midpoint and common offset), it appears incoherent and is regarded as an outlier. In order to perform signal deblending, a robust implementation of rank-reduction filtering is employed to eliminate the blending noise and is referred to as a joint sparse and low-rank approximation. Deblending via rank-reduction filtering gives a reasonable result with a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. However, for land data acquired using unconstrained simultaneous shooting, rank-reduction–based deblending applications alone do not completely attenuate the interference noise. A considerable amount of signal leakage is observed in the residual component, which can affect further data processing and analyses. In this study, we propose a deblending workflow via a rank-reduction filter followed by post-processing steps comprising a nonlinear masking filter and a local orthogonalization weight application. Although each application shows a few footprints of leaked signal energy, the proposed combined workflow restores the signal energy from the residual component achieving significantly signal-to-noise ratio enhancement. These hierarchical schemes are applied on land simultaneous shooting acquisition data sets and produced cleaner and reliable deblended data ready for further data processing.     

Motion of artificial satellites in the set of Eulerian redundant parameters (III)

In this paper, the classical and generalized Sundman time transformations are used to establish new generating set of differential equations of motion in terms of the Eulerian redundant parameters. The implementation of this set on digital computers for the commonly used independent variables is developed once and for all. Motion prediction algorithms based on these equations are developed in a recursive manner for the motions in the Earth's gravitational field with axial symmetry whatever the number of the zonal harmonic terms may be. Applications for the two types of short and long term predictions are considered for the perturbed motion in the Earth's gravitational field with axial symmetry with zonal harmonic terms up to J ₃₆ . Numerical results proved the very high efficiency and flexibility of the developed equations.     

Petroleum Exploration in the Yemeni Red Sea and Offshore Area (Tihama Basin)

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Thallium: A potential guide to mineral deposits

Several recent studies have suggested that rocks associated with mineral deposits of hydrothermal origin are generally enriched in Rb. TI is similar in its geochemical characteristics to Rb, but its use as a potential guide to ore deposits has not been suggested. Although TI has the same size and valency as Rb, it is concentrated more in residual melts than Rb and K because the TI-O bond is more covalent and weaker than either the Rb-O or K-O bonds.A new method which is rapid and precise has been developed by one of the authors for the determination of TI in geological materials at the ppb level. About 350 rocks from 4 mineralized areas in northeastern Washington and central Montana were analyzed for TI by this method. Most of these rocks were also analyzed for SiO₂, A1₂O₃,Fe₂O₃, MgO, CaO, Na₂O, K₂O, TiO₂, P₂O₅, MnO, Ag, As, Au, Ba, Co, Cu, F, Li, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sr, Sb, Sn, Sr, Te, U, W, and Zn. The ore deposits of the areas studied include the gold-silver deposits of the Republic district, the uranium deposit of the Midnite mine, the coppermolybdenum deposit of Mount Tolman, and the gold deposits of the North Moccasin mining district.In all the mineralized areas there is significantly more TI in hydrothermally altered rocks than in unaltered rocks. The very high abundance of TI in the altered rocks of the North Moccasin gold district, and the significant positive correlations of TI and K and TI and Rb in the mineralized rocks of the other three areas suggest that TI was concentrated in hydrothermal fluids. In altered rocks the average K/Rb and K/TI ratios are lower, and the Rb/Sr and TI/Sr ratios are higher.Often the abundance of TI and the K/TI and TI/Sr ratios are more useful in delineating mineralized areas than the abundance of Rb and the K/Rb and Rb/Sr ratios. The ternary relationships between TI and several other elements, especially Rb, K, Ba, and Sr, show mineralized rocks to fall near the TI apices or near the TI-Rb or TI-K boundaries.