Nowadays composite materials have been extensively utilized in many military and industrial applications. For example, the newest Boeing 787 uses 50% composite (mostly carbon fiber reinforced plastic) in production. However, the weak delamination strength of fiber reinforced composites, when subjected to external impact such as ballistic impact, has been always potential serious threats to the safety of passengers. Dynamic fracture toughness is a critical indicator of the performance from delamination in such impact events. Quasi-static experimental techniques for fracture toughness have been well developed. For example, end notched flexure (ENF) technique, which is illustrated in Fig. 1, has become a typical method to determined mode-II fracture toughness for composites under quasi-static loading conditions. However, dynamic fracture characterization of composites has been challenging. This has resulted in conflictive and confusing conclusions in regard to strain rate effects on fracture toughness of composites.
Liquid foams are viscoelastic liquids, exhibiting a fast relaxation attributed to local bubble motions and a slow response due to structural evolution of the intrinsically unstable system. In this work, these processes are examined in unique organic foams that differ from the typically investigated aqueous systems in two major ways: the organic foams (1) posses a much higher continuous phase viscosity and (2) exhibit a coarsening response that involves coalescence of cells. The transient and dynamic relaxation responses of the organic foams are evaluated and discussed in relation to the response of aqueous foams. The change in the foam response with increasing gas fraction, from that of a Newtonian liquid to one that is strongly viscoelastic, is also presented. In addition, the temporal dependencies of the linear viscoelastic response are assessed in the context of the foam structural evolution. These foams and characterization techniques provide a basis for testing stabilization mechanisms in epoxy-based foams for encapsulation applications.
Alkali nitrate eutectic mixtures are finding application as industrial heat transfer fluids in concentrated solar power generation systems. An important property for such applications is the melting point, or phase coexistence temperature. We have computed melting points for lithium, sodium and potassium nitrate from molecular dynamics simulations using a recently developed method, which uses thermodynamic integration to compute the free energy difference between the solid and liquid phases. The computed melting point for NaNO3 was within 15K of its experimental value, while for LiNO3 and KNO3, the computed melting points were within 100K of the experimental values [4]. We are currently extending the approach to calculate melting temperatures for binary mixtures of lithium and sodium nitrate.
The annual program report provides detailed information about all aspects of the SNL/CA Pollution Prevention Program for a given calendar year. It functions as supporting documentation to the SNL/CA Environmental Management System Program Manual. The program report describes the activities undertaken during the past year, and activities planned in future years to implement the Pollution Prevention Program, one of six programs that supports environmental management at SNL/CA.
Development of silicon, enhancement mode nanostructures for solid-state quantum computing will be described. A primary motivation of this research is the recent unprecedented manipulation of single electron spins in GaAs quantum dots, which has been used to demonstrate a quantum bit. Long spin decoherence times are predicted possible in silicon qubits. This talk will focus on silicon enhancement mode quantum dot structures that emulate the GaAs lateral quantum dot qubit but use an enhancement mode field effect transistor (FET) structure. One critical concern for silicon quantum dots that use oxides as insulators in the FET structure is that defects in the metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) stack can produce both detrimental electrostatic and paramagnetic effects on the qubit. Understanding the implications of defects in the Si MOS system is also relevant for other qubit architectures that have nearby dielectric passivated surfaces. Stable, lithographically defined, single-period Coulomb-blockade and single-electron charge sensing in a quantum dot nanostructure using a MOS stack will be presented. A combination of characterization of defects, modeling and consideration of modified approaches that incorporate SiGe or donors provides guidance about the enhancement mode MOS approach for future qubits and quantum circuit micro-architecture.
The microscopic Polymer Reference Interaction Site Model theory has been applied to spherical and rodlike fillers dissolved in three types of chemically heterogeneous polymer melts: alternating AB copolymer, random AB copolymers, and an equimolar blend of two homopolymers. In each case, one monomer species adsorbs more strongly on the filler mimicking a specific attraction, while all inter-monomer potentials are hard core which precludes macrophase or microphase separation. Qualitative differences in the filler potential-of-mean force are predicted relative to the homopolymer case. The adsorbed bound layer for alternating copolymers exhibits a spatial moduluation or layering effect but is otherwise similar to that of the homopolymer system. Random copolymers and the polymer blend mediate a novel strong, long-range bridging interaction between fillers at moderate to high adsorption strengths. The bridging strength is a non-monotonic function of random copolymer composition, reflecting subtle competing enthalpic and entropic considerations.
The low-energy properties of the Anderson model for a single impurity coupled to two leads are studied using the GW approximation. We find that quantities such as the spectral function at zero temperature, the linear-response conductance as function of temperature or the differential conductance as function of bias voltage exhibit universal scaling behavior in the Kondo regime. We show how the form of the GW scaling functions relates to the form of the scaling functions obtained from the exact solution at equilibrium. We also compare the energy scale that goes inside the GW scaling functions with the exact Kondo temperature, for a broad range of the Coulomb interaction strength in the asymptotic regime. This analysis allows to clarify a presently suspended question in the literature, namely whether or not the GW solution captures the Kondo resonance.