Elastodynamic Behaviour of Laminate Structures with Soft Thin Interlayers: Theory and Experiment

Laminate structures composed of stiff plates and thin soft interlayers are widely used in aerospace, automotive and civil engineering encouraging the development of reliable non-destructive strategies for their condition assessment. In the paper, elastodynamic behaviour of such laminate structures is investigated with emphasis on its application in ultrasonic based NDT and SHM for the identification of interlayer mechanical and interfacial contact properties. A particular attention is given to the practically important frequency range, in which the wavelength considerably exceeds the thickness of the film. Three layer model with spring-type boundary conditions employed for imperfect contact simulation is used for numerical investigation. Novel effective boundary conditions are derived via asymptotic expansion technique and used for analysis of the peculiar properties of elastic guided waves in considered laminates. It is revealed that the thin and soft film influences the behaviour of the laminate mainly via the effective stiffnesses being a combination of the elastic moduli of the film, its thickness and interface stiffnesses. To evaluate each of these parameters separately (or to figure out that the available experimental data are insufficient), a step-wise procedure employing the effective boundary conditions is proposed and tested versus the laser Doppler vibrometry data for Lamb waves in Aluminium/Polymer film/Alumunium structure. The possibility of using film-related thickness resonance frequencies to estimate the film properties and contact quality is also demonstrated. Additionally, the rich family of edge waves is also investigated, and the splitting of fundamental edge waves into pairs is revealed.

A Hybrid Differential Transforms and Finite Difference Method to Numerical Solution of Convection–Diffusion Equation

In this work, we discuss a hybrid-based method on differential transforms and a finite difference method to numerical solution of convection–diffusion equation with Dirichlet’s type boundary conditions. The developed method is tested on various problems and the numerical results are reported in tabular and figure form. This method can be easily extended to handle non-linear convection–diffusion partial differential equations.

Hybrid high-order method for singularly perturbed fourth-order problems on curved domains

We propose a novel hybrid high-order method (HHO) to approximate singularly perturbed fourth-order PDEs on domains with a possibly curved boundary. The two key ideas in devising the method are the use of a Nitsche-type boundary penalty technique to weakly enforce the boundary conditions and a scaling of the weighting parameter in the stabilisation operator that compares the singular perturbation parameter to the square of the local mesh size. With these ideas in hand, we derive stability and optimal error estimates over the whole range of values for the singular perturbation parameter, including the zero value for which a second-order elliptic problem is recovered. Numerical experiments illustrate the theoretical analysis.

Boundary Value Problems of Thermoelasticity for Porous Sphere and for A Space with Spherical Cavity

This article is concerned with the coupled linear quasi-static theory of thermoelasticity for porous materials under local thermal equilibrium. The system of equations is based on the constitutive equations, Darcy's law of the flow of a fluid through a porous medium, Fourier's law of heat conduction, the equations of equilibrium, fluid mass conservation and heat transfer. The system of governing equations is expressed in terms of displacement vector field, the change of volume fraction of pores, the change of fluid pressure in pore network and the variation of temperature of porous material. The present paper is devoted to construct explicit solutions of the quasi-static boundary value problems (BVPs) of coupled theory of thermoelasticity for a porous elastic sphere and for a space with a spherical cavity. In this research the regular solution of the system of equations for an isotropic porous material is constructed by means of the elementary (harmonic, bi-harmonic and meta-harmonic) functions. The basic boundary value problems (the Dirichlet type boundary value problem for a sphere and the Neumann type boundary value problem for a space with a spherical cavity) are solved explicitly. The obtained solutions are given by means of the harmonic, bi-harmonic and meta-harmonic functions. For the harmonic functions the Poisson type formulas are obtained. The bi-harmonic and meta-harmonic functions are presented as absolutely and uniformly convergent series.

Twenty Vertex Model and Domino Tilings of the Aztec Triangle

We show that the number of configurations of the 20 Vertex model on certain domains with domain wall type boundary conditions is equal to the number of domino tilings of Aztec-like triangles, proving a conjecture of the author and Guitter. The result is based on the integrability of the 20 Vertex model and uses a connection to the U-turn boundary 6 Vertex model to re-express the number of 20 Vertex configurations as a simple determinant, which is then related to a Lindström-Gessel-Viennot determinant for the domino tiling problem. The common number of configurations is conjectured to be $2^{n(n-1)/2}\prod_{j=0}^{n-1}\frac{(4j+2)!}{(n+2j+1)!}=1, 4, 60, 3328, 678912...$ The enumeration result is extended to include refinements of both numbers.

Mathematical model for calculating the temperature field of a direct-flow drying drum

In this paper, one parabolic-type boundary value problem is solved for determining the temperature field of the raw cotton and air components in drum dryers. In the proposed model, convective heat transfer is used according to Newton’s law, the terms describing the evaporation of moisture from the components of raw cotton (seeds, fiber) and the influence of air velocity are taken into account. The resulting system of Galerkin’s differential equations is solved by the finite-difference method in time. It is shown that the approximate solution is estimated according to Galerkin in Sobolev space.The numerical results of the considered problem are obtained by the Bubnov–Galerkin method. A comparative analysis is carried out with experimental data. It is shown that the proposed mathematical model and its numerical algorithm adequately describe the drying process of raw cotton.

Determination of Temperature of Components of Cotton-Raw Material in a Drum Dryer with a Constant

This article solves one parabolic-type boundary value problem for determining the heat-moisture state of raw cotton in drum dryers at a constant air temperature. Numerical results are obtained by the Bubnov – Galerkin method of the problem under consideration, a comparative analysis is carried out with experimental data. It is shown that the proposed mathematical model and its numerical algorithm adequately describe the drying process of raw cotton.

First Principles Calculation of the Topological Phases of the Photonic Haldane Model

Photonic topological materials with a broken time-reversal symmetry are characterized by nontrivial topological phases, such that they do not support propagation in the bulk region but forcibly support a nontrivial net number of unidirectional edge-states when enclosed by an opaque-type boundary, e.g., an electric wall. The Haldane model played a central role in the development of topological methods in condensed-matter systems, as it unveiled that a broken time-reversal symmetry is the essential ingredient to have a quantized electronic Hall phase. Recently, it was proved that the magnetic field of the Haldane model can be imitated in photonics with a spatially varying pseudo-Tellegen coupling. Here, we use Green’s function method to determine from “first principles” the band diagram and the topological invariants of the photonic Haldane model, implemented as a Tellegen photonic crystal. Furthermore, the topological phase diagram of the system is found, and it is shown with first principles calculations that the granular structure of the photonic crystal can create nontrivial phase transitions controlled by the amplitude of the pseudo-Tellegen parameter.