NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF CIRCULAR PLATES ON AN ELASTIC BASE WITH VARIABLE BED COEFFICIENT

The paper presents the results of a study of the stress-strain state of a circular plate of constant cylindrical stiffness, which lies on a variable elastic foundation and is under the influence of a continuously distributed transverse load. Twelve variants of calculation are considered ‒ six for a steel round plate and six more ‒ for a concrete round plate under two conditions of fixing and three different laws of variation of the bed coefficient. To solve the problem, the finite element method implemented in the LIRA-SAPR software package is used. It is noted that in the case when the bedding coefficient is a variable value depending on the coordinate in which the foundation settlement is determined, the analytical approach leads to the need to solve the corresponding differential equations with variable coefficients. Therefore, calculations of circular and annular plates lying on a variable elastic foundation by means of analytical solutions of differential equations are extremely rare in scientific periodicals and are of a private nature. An effective method for the analytical solution of differential equations with variable coefficients for a number of problems in mechanics was proposed by one of the authors of the article, however, the application of the method to the calculation of a circular plate on an elastic foundation with a variable bed coefficient requires verification, therefore, here we consider the features of the finite element analysis of such a plate under different boundary conditions and different laws of variation of the bed coefficient. In all versions, the results completely coincide with the known results of bending of slabs that do not have an elastic base and in the case when this base exists and its resistance is constant. The discrepancy here is very insignificant ‒ in the third significant digit after the decimal point for deflection when hinged and in the second for moments. In case of rigid clamping, the deflections and moments also differ from the corresponding values of the known solutions in the second significant digit after the decimal point.

Benford’s law in the Gaia universe

Context. Benford’s law states that for scale- and base-invariant data sets covering a wide dynamic range, the distribution of the first significant digit is biased towards low values. This has been shown to be true for wildly different datasets, including financial, geographical, and atomic data. In astronomy, earlier work showed that Benford’s law also holds for distances estimated as the inverse of parallaxes from the ESA HIPPARCOS mission. Aims. We investigate whether Benford’s law still holds for the 1.3 billion parallaxes contained in the second data release of Gaia (Gaia DR2). In contrast to previous work, we also include negative parallaxes. We examine whether distance estimates computed using a Bayesian approach instead of parallax inversion still follow Benford’s law. Lastly, we investigate the use of Benford’s law as a validation tool for the zero-point of the Gaia parallaxes. Methods. We computed histograms of the observed most significant digit of the parallaxes and distances, and compared them with the predicted values from Benford’s law, as well as with theoretically expected histograms. The latter were derived from a simulated Gaia catalogue based on the Besançon galaxy model. Results. The observed parallaxes in Gaia DR2 indeed follow Benford’s law. Distances computed with the Bayesian approach of Bailer-Jones et al. (2018, AJ, 156, 58) no longer follow Benford’s law, although low-value ciphers are still favoured for the most significant digit. The prior that is used has a significant effect on the digit distribution. Using the simulated Gaia universe model snapshot, we demonstrate that the true distances underlying the Gaia catalogue are not expected to follow Benford’s law, essentially because the interplay between the luminosity function of the Milky Way and the mission selection function results in a bi-modal distance distribution, corresponding to nearby dwarfs in the Galactic disc and distant giants in the Galactic bulge. In conclusion, Gaia DR2 parallaxes only follow Benford’s Law as a result of observational errors. Finally, we show that a zero-point offset of the parallaxes derived by optimising the fit between the observed most-significant digit frequencies and Benford’s law leads to a value that is inconsistent with the value that is derived from quasars. The underlying reason is that such a fit primarily corrects for the difference in the number of positive and negative parallaxes, and can thus not be used to obtain a reliable zero-point.

Work function seen with sub-meV precision through laser photoemission

Electron emission can be utilised to measure the work function of the surface. However, the number of significant digits in the values obtained through thermionic-, field- and photo-emission techniques is typically just two or three. Here, we show that the number can go up to five when angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is applied. This owes to the capability of ARPES to detect the slowest photoelectrons that are directed only along the surface normal. By using a laser-based source, we optimised our setup for the slow photoelectrons and resolved the slowest-end cutoff of Au(111) with the sharpness not deteriorated by the bandwidth of light nor by Fermi-Dirac distribution. The work function was leveled within ±0.4 meV at least from 30 to 90 K and the surface aging was discerned as a meV shift of the work function. Our study opens the investigations into the fifth significant digit of the work function.