Confined Transducer Geometries to Enhance Sensitivity to Thermal Boundary Conductance in Frequency-Domain Thermoreflectance Measurements

Quantifying the resistance to heat flow across well-bonded, planar interfaces is critical in modern electronics packaging architectures, particularly as device length scales are reduced and power demands continue to grow unabated. However, very few experimental techniques are capable of measuring the thermal resistance across such interfaces due to limitations in the required measurement resolution provided by the characterization technique (i.e., Rth < 0.1 mm2·K/W in steady-state configurations) and restrictions on the thermal penetration depth that can be achieved as a result of the heating event that is typically imposed on a sample’s surface (for optical pump-probe thermoreflectance techniques). A recent numerical fitting routine for Frequency-domain Thermoreflectance (FDTR) developed by the authors1 offers a potential avenue to rectify these issues if the transducer’s geometry can be confined. This work utilizes numerical simulations to evaluate the sensitivity of FDTR to a range of thermal boundary resistance (TBR) values as a function of the thermal resistance of adjacent material layers. Experimental measurements are performed across a handful of different material systems to validate our computational results and to demonstrate the the extent to which confined transducer geometries can improve our sensitivyt to the TBR across so-called “buried” interfaces when characterized with FDTR.

Intensity-based and a lifetime-based PSP imaging method with enhanced sensitivity

A pressure-/temperature-sensitive paint (PSP/TSP) has been developed and used as a measurement tool for the two-dimensional distribution of pressure and temperature on aerodynamic surfaces. In recent years, although the concern with measuring a pressure difference of several Pa, such as countermeasures against the noise of small fans, has been growing, the resolution of current PSP measurements is limited to several 10 Pa, even with carefully conducted measurements. For highly accurate measurements, researches on the advanced coating films in PSP/TSP have eagerly been conducted to date. However, measurement resolution and accuracy deteriorate when quantum efficiency or lifetime decrease under high pressure or high temperature conditions.

A Simple Calibration Method for A Fringe Projection System Embedded within An Additive Manufacturing Machine

In additive manufacturing (AM), especially for advanced powder fusion machines, it is of high importance to develop an in situ inspection system to monitor the printed surface and pre-print powder bed as the build cycle proceeds. Consequently, high resolution, high precision and fast detection measurement systems need to be investigated, as such optically based measurement systems can provide feedback for manufacturing process optimisation. Fringe projection technology has a great advantage in the measurement of topography in such environments. The implementation of a fringe projection system requires that the system is pre-calibrated in order to obtain high measurement resolution and repeatability. This paper presents a simple calibration method for an AM-based in situ fringe projection system using a phase-depth calibration model. If a calibration plate with certificated marks is used, however, the texture of the plate will affect the measured phase accuracy. A simple calibration method to reduce the calibration plate texture effect in the process of calibration is outlined. Experimental results show that the proposed method can eliminated these effects and improve measurement resolution and repeatability. The proposed in situ/in process inspection technique has been implemented within a commercial electron beam powder bed fusion additive manufacturing machine (EBAM), to demonstrate the capability for effective feedback during the manufacturing process.

Inspection of Production Tubing Thickness to Extend Well Operation Time With Thicktube Robot at Pertamina EP Asset 5 Field Sangasanga

PT Pertamina EP Field Sangasanga is committed to completing the work program that is launched every year. It is expected to support the 2020 production target of 5380 BOPD as written in the 2020 Work Program. One of the efforts to increase the production rate of Field Sangasanga is to do Well Service Maintenance (WSM). Data of different failures during performing WSM work are collected. The frequency of breakdowns and size of loss were identified and analyzed employing quality improvement tools are; Pareto and Fishbone Diagram. Results indicate that tubing leaks cause 51.6% of the potential loss. Tubing often leaks because the wall thickness is less than the minimum. Root-cause-analysis highlights that most failure in the tubing is caused by the existing inspection tool cannot check the entire thickness of the tubing surface. Leaky tubing leads to many problems, such as increased work time, operational costs, and loss of production. We developed an inspection robot named Thicktube, which uses simple Arduino programming, equipped with a VL53L0X proximity sensor for measurement, SMS feature, and micro-SD feature. The Thicktube is fitted with a motor speed of 0.36 m/s driven by a battery remote control. With three sensor angles, Thicktube is designed to measure the thickness of the tubing as much as 27 points on one joint dimension along 9 meters. The test to compare the result is measured using Thicktube and Ultrasonic Thickness. Thicktube has a measurement accuracy of 82% with a measurement resolution of 1 mm. Thicktube as a preliminary tubing inspection can reduce the incidence of downtime due to leaky tubing. By applying Thicktube tools, a company can save up to Rp. 3.1 billion. In addition, the potential hazards of pulling out the tubing can be avoided.

High-resolution probe design for measuring the dielectric properties of human tissues

Background In order to use the microwave to measure the dielectric constant of the human body and improve the measurement resolution, a small near-field probe working at 915 MHz is designed in this paper. Method Based on the electric small loop antenna model loaded by the spiral resonator (SR), a small near-field probe was designed. The probe model is designed and optimized by the HFSS (high frequency structure simulator) software. The human tissues were tested by the manufactured probe and the relationship between the S11 parameters of the probe and the human tissues was analyzed. Results and conclusions A probe with small size was designed and fabricated, with the overall size of 10.0 mm × 12.0 mm × 0.8 mm. The probe has a good performance with a 30.7 dB return loss, a 20 MHz bandwidth at the resonance point, and a distance resolution of 10 mm. Due to the small size and good resolution of the probe, it can be used in the measurement of human tissues.

CERES Replacement “Libera” SI Traceable Measurement Spectral Calibration Concept using Direct Solar Views by High Resolution Earth Telescopes

Better predictions of global warming can be enabled by tuning legacy and current computer simulations to Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) measurements. Since the 1970’s, such orbital results exist, and the next generation instruments called “Libera” are in design. Climate communities have requested that ERB observing system calibration accuracy obtain significantly better SI traceability and stability improvements. This is to prevent untracked instrument calibration drifts, that could lead to false conclusions on climate change. Based on experience from previous ERB missions, the concept presented here utilizes solar calibration for cloud size Earth measurement resolution, at ≪1% accuracy. However it neglects shown to be unsuccessful calibration technology like solar diffusers and on-board lights, as used by ERBE, ScaRaB, CERES, GERB & other Libera designs etc. New spectral characterizing concepts are therefore introduced. This allows in-flight wavelength dependent calibration of Earth observing Libera telescopes using direct solar views, through narrow-band filters continuously characterized on-orbit.

Time Resolved PIV of the Flow Field Underneath an Accelerating Meniscus

We present an experimental analysis of the flow field near an accelerating contact line using time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (TR-PIV). Both advancing and receding contact lines are investigated. The analyzed configuration consists of a liquid column that moves along a vertical 2D channel, open to the atmosphere and driven by a controlled pressure head. Large counter-rotating vortices were observed and analyzed in terms of the maximum intensity of the Q-field. To compute smooth spatial derivatives and improve the measurement resolution in the post-processing stage, we propose a combination of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) and Radial Basis Functions (RBF). The RBFs are used to regress the spatial and temporal structures of the leading POD modes, so that “high-resolution” modes are obtained. These can then be combined to reconstruct high-resolution fields that are smooth and robust against measurement noise and amenable to analytic differentiation. The results show significant differences in the flow topology between the advancing and the receding cases despite velocity and acceleration of contact lines are comparable in absolute values. This suggests that the flow dynamics are tightly linked to the shape of the interface, which significantly differs in the two cases.

Quantum advantage from energy measurements of many-body quantum systems

The problem of sampling outputs of quantum circuits has been proposed as a candidate for demonstrating a quantum computational advantage (sometimes referred to as quantum "supremacy"). In this work, we investigate whether quantum advantage demonstrations can be achieved for more physically-motivated sampling problems, related to measurements of physical observables. We focus on the problem of sampling the outcomes of an energy measurement, performed on a simple-to-prepare product quantum state – a problem we refer to as energy sampling. For different regimes of measurement resolution and measurement errors, we provide complexity theoretic arguments showing that the existence of efficient classical algorithms for energy sampling is unlikely. In particular, we describe a family of Hamiltonians with nearest-neighbour interactions on a 2D lattice that can be efficiently measured with high resolution using a quantum circuit of commuting gates (IQP circuit), whereas an efficient classical simulation of this process should be impossible. In this high resolution regime, which can only be achieved for Hamiltonians that can be exponentially fast-forwarded, it is possible to use current theoretical tools tying quantum advantage statements to a polynomial-hierarchy collapse whereas for lower resolution measurements such arguments fail. Nevertheless, we show that efficient classical algorithms for low-resolution energy sampling can still be ruled out if we assume that quantum computers are strictly more powerful than classical ones. We believe our work brings a new perspective to the problem of demonstrating quantum advantage and leads to interesting new questions in Hamiltonian complexity.