Analysis of Test Method to Extract Material Properties From Candu Fuel Channel Spacers Made of Helical Springs

In a particular nuclear application, separation between two concentric tubes is supported by helical springs installed in the annular space. Evaluation of material degradation due to the unique operating environment requires testing of ex-service spring material. Testing is done by compressing short segments of the spring material between two surfaces as per the loading mode in operation. Nominally, the specimen behaves like multiple rings loaded uniformly in parallel, but analysis of test results based on this approximation neglects significant end effects. A detailed analysis addresses the transition from the free end boundary condition through to where the coils become confined by friction to behave like rings. The thin ring solution is compared with finite element results as well as test results. Trends from the detailed thin ring solution correspond closely to the finite element and test results. A more precise relationship between the total applied load and the maximum stress in the material is determined.

Micromagnetic Simulation of Round Ferromagnetic Nanodots with Varying Roughness and Symmetry

Magnetic nanodots are of high interest for basic research due to their broad spectrum of possible magnetic states and magnetization reversal processes. Besides, they are of technological interest since they can be applied in magnetic data storage, especially if vortex states occur in closed dots or open rings. While producing such nanorings and nanodots from diverse magnetic materials by lithographic techniques is quite common nowadays, these production technologies are naturally prone to small deviations of the borders of these nanoparticles. Here we investigate the influence of well-defined angular-dependent roughness of the edges, created by building the nanoparticles from small cubes, on the resulting hysteresis loops and magnetization reversal processes in five different round nanodots with varying open areas, from a thin ring to a closed nanodot. By varying the orientation of the external magnetic field, the impact of the angle-dependent roughness can be estimated. Especially for the thinnest ring, significant dependence of the transverse magnetization component on the field orientation can be found.

Dynamics of a Conductor with Unclosed Alternative Electric Current

The ponderomotive interaction of displacement currents and conduction currents in an open conductor through which an alternating electric current flows is considered. The calculation is performed for a flat conductor of arbitrary shape. It has been shown that the displacement current does not create a nonzero force that would act on an open conductor. The so-called force of self-action, with which the conductor acts on itself, is compensated by the force of Abraham, transmitted to the electromagnetic field. The absolutely exact fulfillment of the law of conservation of momentum, which includes the latent momentum of the field, has been demonstrated. The density of Abraham's force is determined by the vector product of the derivative of the electric field in-duction by the magnetic field induction. As an example, a numerical calculation of the self-force and the Abraham force for a thin ring conductor is carried out. The ratio of Abraham's force to the square of the conduction current depends only on the relative dimensions of the conductor. The maximum Abraham's force is observed for a conductor representing half of a flat ring.

Dynamics of MEMS-Based Angular Rate Sensors Excited via External Electrostatic Forces

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of rotating MEMS-based vibratory gyroscopes which employs a thin ring as the vibrating flexible element. The mathematical model for the MEMS ring structure as well as a model for the nonlinear electrostatic excitation forces are formulated. Galerkin’s procedure is employed to reduce the equations of motion to a set of ordinary differential equations. Understanding the effects of nonlinear actuator dynamics is considered important for characterizing the dynamic behavior of such devices. A suitable theoretical model to generate nonlinear electrostatic force that acts on the MEMS ring structure is formulated. Dynamic responses in the driving and the sensing directions are examined via time responses, phase diagram, and Poincare’ map plots when the input angular motion and the nonlinear electrostatic force are considered simultaneously. The analysis is envisaged to aid fabrication of this class of devices as well as for providing design improvements in MEMS Ring-based Gyroscopes.

Rotating Disc around a Schwarzschild Black Hole

A stationary and axisymmetric (in fact circular) metric is reviewed which describes the first-order perturbation of a Schwarzschild black-hole space-time due to a rotating finite thin disc encircling the hole symmetrically. The key Green functions of the problem (corresponding to an infinitesimally thin ring)—the one for the gravitational potential and the one for the dragging angular velocity—were already derived, in terms of infinite series, by Will in 1974, but we have now put them into closed forms using elliptic integrals. Such forms are more practical for numerical evaluation and for integration in problems involving extended sources. This last point mostly remains difficult, but we illustrate that it may be workable by using the simple case of a finite thin disc with constant Newtonian surface density.

X-ray light curves from realistic polar cap models: inclined pulsar magnetospheres and multipole fields

ABSTRACT Thermal X-ray emission from rotation-powered pulsars is believed to originate from localized ‘hotspots’ on the stellar surface occurring where large-scale currents from the magnetosphere return to heat the atmosphere. Light-curve modelling has primarily been limited to simple models, such as circular antipodal emitting regions with constant temperature. We calculate more realistic temperature distributions within the polar caps, taking advantage of recent advances in magnetospheric theory, and we consider their effect on the predicted light curves. The emitting regions are non-circular even for a pure dipole magnetic field, and the inclusion of an aligned magnetic quadrupole moment introduces a north–south asymmetry. As the quadrupole moment is increased, one hotspot grows in size before becoming a thin ring surrounding the star. For the pure dipole case, moving to the more realistic model changes the light curves by $5\!-\!10{{\, \rm per\, cent}}$ for millisecond pulsars, helping to quantify the systematic uncertainty present in current dipolar models. Including the quadrupole gives considerable freedom in generating more complex light curves. We explore whether these simple dipole+quadrupole models can account for the qualitative features of the light curve of PSR J0437−4715.