The influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on strapdown inertial gravimetry using Q-Flex accelerometers: static and dynamic experiments

In recent strapdown airborne and shipborne gravimetry campaigns with servo accelerometers of the widely used Q-Flex type, results have been impaired by heading-dependent measurement errors. This paper shows that the effect is, in all likelihood, caused by the sensitivity of the Q-Flex type sensor to the Earth’s magnetic field. In order to assess the influence of magnetic fields on the utilised strapdown IMU of the type iMAR iNAV-RQH-1003, the IMU has been exposed to various magnetic fields of known directions and intensities in a 3-D Helmholtz coil. Based on the results, a calibration function for the vertical accelerometer is developed. At the example of five shipborne and airborne campaigns, it is outlined that under specific circumstances the precision of the gravimetry results can be strongly improved using the magnetic calibration approach: The non-adjusted RMSE at repeated lines decreased from 1.19 to 0.26 mGal at a shipborne campaign at Lake Müritz, Germany. To the knowledge of the authors, a significant influence of the Earth’s magnetic field on strapdown inertial gravimetry is demonstrated for the first time.

Quantum electron liquid and its possible phase transition

Pure quantum electrons render intriguing correlated electronic phases by virtue of quantum fluctuations in addition to an exclusive electron-electron interaction. To realise such quantum electron systems, a key ingredient is dense electrons decoupled from other degrees of freedom. Here, we report the discovery of a pure quantum electron liquid, which spreads up to ~ 3 Å in the vacuum on the surface of electride crystal. An extremely high electron density and its scant hybridization with underneath atomic orbitals evidence quantum and pure nature of electrons, exhibiting polarized liquid phase demonstrated by spin-dependent measurement. Further, upon reducing the density, the dynamics of quantum electrons drastically changes to that of non-Fermi liquid along with an anomalous band deformation, manifesting a possible transition to a hexatic liquid crystalline phase. Our findings cultivate the frontier of quantum electron systems, which serve as an ideal platform for exploring the correlated electronic phases in a pure manner.

Time-dependent measurement of high-power laser light reflection by low-Z foam plasma

Porous materials have many applications for laser–matter interaction experiments related to inertial confinement fusion. Obtaining new knowledge about the properties of the laser-produced plasma of porous media is a challenging task. In this work, we report, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the time-dependent measurement of the reflected light of a terawatt laser pulse from the laser-produced plasma of low-Z foam material of overcritical density. The experiments have been performed with the ABC laser, with targets constituted by foam of overcritical density and by solid media of the same chemical composition. We implemented in the MULTI-FM code a model for the light reflection to reproduce and interpret the experimental results. Using the simulations together with the experimental results, we indicate a criterion for estimating the homogenization time of the laser-produced plasma, whose measurement is challenging with direct diagnostic techniques and still not achieved.

Calibrating Range Measurements of Lidars Using Fixed Landmarks in Unknown Positions

We consider the problem of calibrating range measurements of a Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) sensor that is dealing with the sensor nonlinearity and heteroskedastic, range-dependent, measurement error. We solved the calibration problem without using additional hardware, but rather exploiting assumptions on the environment surrounding the sensor during the calibration procedure. More specifically we consider the assumption of calibrating the sensor by placing it in an environment so that its measurements lie in a 2D plane that is parallel to the ground. Then, its measurements come from fixed objects that develop orthogonally w.r.t. the ground, so that they may be considered as fixed points in an inertial reference frame. Moreover, we consider the intuition that moving the distance sensor within this environment implies that its measurements should be such that the relative distances and angles among the fixed points above remain the same. We thus exploit this intuition to cast the sensor calibration problem as making its measurements comply with this assumption that “fixed features shall have fixed relative distances and angles”. The resulting calibration procedure does thus not need to use additional (typically expensive) equipment, nor deploy special hardware. As for the proposed estimation strategies, from a mathematical perspective we consider models that lead to analytically solvable equations, so to enable deployment in embedded systems. Besides proposing the estimators we moreover analyze their statistical performance both in simulation and with field tests. We report the dependency of the MSE performance of the calibration procedure as a function of the sensor noise levels, and observe that in field tests the approach can lead to a tenfold improvement in the accuracy of the raw measurements.

Development of a Nakazima Test Suitable for Determining the Formability of Ultra-Thin Copper Sheets

The objective is to propose an accurate method for determining the forming limit curves (FLC) for ultra-thin metal sheets which are complex to obtain with conventional techniques. Nakazima tests are carried out to generate the FLCs of a pure copper and a copper beryllium alloy with a thickness of 0.1 mm. Because of the very small thickness of the sheets, the standard devices and the know-how of this test are no longer valid. Consequently, new tools have been designed in order to limit friction effect. Two different methods are used and compared to estimate the necking: the position-dependent measurement method (ISO Standard 12004-2), and the time-dependent method based on the analysis of the derivatives of the planar strain field. It is shown that the ISO standard method underestimates the forming limit curves. As the results present non linear strain paths, a compensation method is applied to correct the FLCs for the tested materials, which combines the effects of curvature, nonlinear strain paths and pressure. The curvature effect for such thickness and punch diameter on the FLCs is weak. The results show that this procedure enables to obtain FLCs that are close to those determined by the reference Marciniak method, leading to a minimum in major strain that converges to the plane strain state.