Hydrous metal oxide (HMO) materials are inorganic ion exchangers which have many desirable characteristics for catalyst support applications, including high cation exchange capacity, anion exchange capability, high surface area, ease of adjustment of acidity and basicity, bulk or thin film preparation, and similar chemistry for preparation of various transition metal oxides. Cation exchange capacity is engineered into these materials through the uniform incorporation of alkali cations via manipulation of alkoxide chemistry. Specific examples of the effects of Na stoichiometry and the addition of SiO{sub 2} to hydrous titanium oxide (HTO) on ion exchange behavior will be given. Acid titration and cationic metal precursor complex exchange will be used to characterize the ion exchange behavior of these novel materials.

React-before-wind surface-coated BSCCO-2212 is being established as a relatively low cost HTS conductor for practical applications. Quality tape is presently being manufactured in 450-500m lengths at a cost estimated to be 1/3-1/5 of the industry costs of BSCCO-2223 powder-in-tube tape. Robust, mechanically sound coils for applications ranging from NMR insert magnets to transformer windings are being made from this BSCCO-2212 tape. The coils have performed consistently through test and thermal cycling without degradation and as projected from short sample measurements. A hybrid approach, which uses mainly BSCCO- 2212 augmented by BSCCO-2223 conductor in the high radial field end regions, is expected to halve magnet system costs.

Hydrous Metal Oxides (HMOs) are chemically synthesized materials which contain a homogeneous distribution of ion exchangeable alkali cations that provide charge compensation to the metal-oxygen framework. In terms of the major types of inorganic ion exchangers defined by Clearfield, these amorphous HMO materials are similar to both hydrous oxides and layered oxide ion exchangers (e.g., alkali metal titanates). For catalyst applications, the HMO material serves as an ion exchangeable support which facilitates the uniform incorporation of catalyst precursor species. Following catalyst precursor incorporation, an activation step is required to convert the catalyst precursor to the desired active phase. Considerable process development activities at Sandia National Laboratories related to HMO materials have resulted in bulk hydrous titanium oxide (HTO)- and silica-doped hydrous titanium oxide (HTO:Si)-supported NiMo catalysts that are more active in model reactions which simulate direct coal liquefaction (e.g., pyrene hydrogenation) than commercial {gamma}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}-supported NiMo catalysts. However, a fundamental explanation does not exist for the enhanced activity of these novel catalyst materials; possible reasons include fundamental differences in support chemistry relative to commercial oxides, high surface area, or catalyst preparation effects (ion exchange vs. incipient wetness impregnation techniques). The goals of this paper are to identify the key …

For hydrotreating a petroleum-derived liquid feed at 400 C, LHSV = 2. 5 g/g{sub cat}/h, and 1500 psig hydrogen (H) pressure, both HDS and HDN activities were roughly equivalent for a name/TO:Si-coated Amocat catalyst and a commercial alumina-supported name catalyst (Amocat 1C). Superior HDN performance was exhibited by the name/TO: Si-coated Amocat catalyst at low H pressure (500 psig) and after H pressure cycling (1500-500-1500 psig) relative to Amocat 1C. Consistent with previous results obtained on a coal-derived liquid feed, the HDS/HDN results with the petroleum-derived liquid showed that the performance of the name/TO:Si-coated Amocat catalyst on an active metals weight basis exceeded the performance of Amocat 1C at all test conditions. The name/TO:Si-coated Amocat catalyst also showed potentially increased hydrogenation activity, increased resistance to deactivation, and increased yields of lower boiling point distillate fractions, although further work is needed.

Patterns of microearthquakes detected downhole defined fracture orientation and extent in the Austin chalk, Giddings field, TX and the 76 field, Clinton Co., KY. We collected over 480 and 770 microearthquakes during hydraulic stimulation at two sites in the Austin chalk, and over 3200 during primary production in Clinton Co. Data were of high enough quality that 20%, 31% and 53% of the events could be located, respectively. Reflected waves constrained microearthquakes to the stimulated depths at the base of the Austin chalk. In plan view, microearthquakes defined elongate fracture zones extending from the stimulation wells parallel to the regional fracture trend. However, widths of the stimulated zones differed by a factor of five between the two Austin chalk sites, indicating a large difference in the population of ancillary fractures. Post-stimulation production was much higher from the wider zone. At Clinton Co., microearthquakes defined low-angle, reverse-fault fracture zones above and below a producing zone. Associations with depleted production intervals indicated the mapped fractures had been previously drained. Drilling showed that the fractures currently contain brine. The seismic behavior was consistent with poroelastic models that predicted slight increases in compressive stress above and below the drained volume.

Solid dynamics simulations with Lagrangian finite elements are used to model a wide variety of problems, such as the calculation of impact damage to shipping containers for nuclear waste and the analysis of vehicular crashes. Using parallel computers for these simulations has been hindered by the difficulty of searching efficiently for material surface contacts in parallel. A new parallel algorithm for calculation of arbitrary material contacts in finite element simulations has been developed and implemented in the PRONTO3D transient solid dynamics code. This paper will explore some of the issues involved in developing efficient, portable, parallel finite element models for nonlinear transient solid dynamics simulations. The contact-detection problem poses interesting challenges for efficient implementation of a solid dynamics simulation on a parallel computer. The finite element mesh is typically partitioned so that each processor owns a localized region of the finite element mesh. This mesh partitioning is optimal for the finite element portion of the calculation since each processor must communicate only with the few connected neighboring processors that share boundaries with the decomposed mesh. However, contacts can occur between surfaces that may be owned by any two arbitrary processors. Hence, a global search across all processors is required at …

In finite-element, transient dynamics simulations, physical objects are typically modeled as Lagrangian meshes because the meshes can move and deform with the objects as they undergo stress. In many simulations, such as computations of impacts or explosions, portions of the deforming mesh come in contact with each other as the simulation progresses. These contacts must be detected and the forces they impart to the mesh must be computed at each timestep to accurately capture the physics of interest. While the finite-element portion of these computations is readily parallelized, the contact detection problem is difficult to implement efficiently on parallel computers and has been a bottleneck to achieving high performance on large parallel machines. In this paper we describe a new parallel algorithm for detecting contacts. Our approach differs from previous work in that we use two different parallel decompositions, a static one for the finite element analysis and dynamic one for contact detection. We present results for this algorithm in a parallel version of the transient dynamics code PRONTO-3D running on a large Intel Paragon.

An efficient, scalable, parallel algorithm for treating material surface contacts in solid mechanics finite element programs has been implemented in a modular way for MIMD parallel computers. The serial contact detection algorithm that was developed previously for the transient dynamics finite element code PRONTO3D has been extended for use in parallel computation by devising a dynamic (adaptive) processor load balancing scheme.

The dramatic acceleration of erosion associated with the expansion of pinyon-juniper woodlands over the past 100 years has been a widely recognized but poorly understood phenomenon. A more complete understanding will come only through long-term observations of erosion and related factors. To this end, we are conducting a study of a small (1-ha) catchment in a rapidly eroding pinyon-juniper woodland. Since July 1993, we have been collecting data on runoff, erosion, and weather conditions in the catchment, as well as on the topography, soils, and vegetation. Our preliminary results suggest that (1) the catchment is currently in a cycle of accelerated erosion that began concomitant with a shift from ponderosa pine forest to pinyon-juniper woodland that was initiated by a prolonged drought; (2) the intercanopy soils cannot be sustained at the current erosion rates and will be mostly stripped away in about a century; (3) large summer thunderstorms are the most important agents of erosion (4) erosion increases dramatically as the scale increases; (5) runoff makes up <10% of the water budget.

In this paper we will briefly describe our coupled ECHAM/GRANTOUR model, provide a detailed description of our atmospheric chemistry parameterizations, and discuss a couple of numerical experiments in which we explore the influence of assumed pH and rate of mixing between cloudy and clear air on aqueous sulfate formation and concentration. We have used our tropospheric chemistry and transport model, GRANTOUR, to estimate the life cycle and global distributions of many trace species. Recently, we have coupled GRANTOUR with the ECHAM global climate model, which provides several enhanced capabilities in the representation of aerosol interactions.

Fragmentation and loss of tropical forest cover alters terrestrial plant and animal population dynamics, reduces biodiversity and carbon storage capacity, and, as a global phenomenon could affect regional and global climate patterns. Lacunarity as a texture measure can offer a simple solution to characterize the texture of tropical forest landscape and determine spatial patterns associated with ecological processes. Lacunarity quantifies the deviation from translational invariance by describing the distribution of gaps within a binary image at multiple scales. As lacunarity increases, the spatial arrangement of tropical forest gaps will also increase. In this study, we used the Spatial Modeler in Imagine as a graphic programming tool to calculate lacunarity indices for a tropical forest landscape in Southern Mexico and Northern Guatemala. Lacunarity indices were derived from classified Landsat MSS images acquired in 1974 and 1984. Random-generated binary images were also used to derive lacunarity indices and compared with the lacunarity of forest patterns derived from the classified MSS images. Tropical forest area declined about 17%, with most of the forest areas converted into pasture/grassland for grazing. During this period, lacunarity increased about 25%. Results of this study suggest that tropical forest fragmentation could be quantified with lacunarity measures. The study …

Remote-sensing observations of the Sun and inner heliosphere are reviewed to appraise our understanding of the mix of the mechanisms that heat the corona and accelerate the solar wind. An assessment of experimental uncertainties and the basic assumptions needed to translate measurables into physical models, reveals very large fundamental uncertainties in our knowledge of coronal structure near the Sun. We develop a time-dependent, filamentary model of the extended corona that is consistent with a large number of remote sensing observations of the solar atmosphere and the solar wind.

Extensive modeling of proposed National Ignition Facility (NIF) ignition targets has resulted in a variety of targets using different materials in the fuel shell, using driving temperatures which range from 250-300 eV, and requiring energies from < 1 MJ up to the full 1. 8 MJ design capability of NIF. Recent Nova experiments have shown that hohlraum walls composed of a mixture of high-z materials could result in targets which require about 20% less energy. Nova experiments are being used to quantify benefits of beam smoothing in reducing stimulated scattering processes and laser beam filamentation for proposed gas-filled hohlraum targets on NIF. Use of Smoothing by Spectral Dispersion with 2-3 {Angstrom}of bandwidth results in <4-5% of Stimulated Raman Scattering and less than about 1% Stimulated Brillouin Scattering for intensities less than about 2x10{sup 15}W/cm{sup 2} for this type of hohlraum. The symmetry in Nova gas- filled hohlraums is affected by the gas fill. A large body of evidence now exists which indicates that this effect is due to laser beam filamentation which can be largely controlled by beam smoothing. We present here the firs 3-D simulations of hydrodynamic instability for the NIF point design capsule. These simulations, with the HYDRA …

Corrosion damage to a nuclear power plant containment structure can degrade the pressure capacity of the vessel. For the low-carbon, low- strength steels used in containments, the effect of corrosion on material properties is discussed. Strain-to-failure tests, in uniaxial tension, have been performed on corroded material samples. Results were used to select strain-based failure criteria for corroded steel. Using the ABAQUS finite element analysis code, the capacity of a typical PWR Ice Condenser containment with corrosion damage has been studied. Multiple analyses were performed with the locations of the corrosion the containment, and the amount of corrosion varied in each analysis.

Article explores the history of baseball in Oklahoma City and Tulsa through the victories and training regime of two major teams: the Oklahoma City Indians and the Tulsa Oilers. Max J. Nichols traces their plays and connection with the Texas League in a golden era of baseball.

One of the central problems of ecological risk assessment is modeling the relationship between test endpoints (numerical summaries of the results of toxicity tests) and assessment endpoints (formal expressions of the properties of the environment that are to be protected). For example, one may wish to estimate the reduction in species richness of fishes in a stream reach exposed to an effluent and have only a fathead minnow 96 hr LC50 as an effects metric. The problem is to extrapolate from what is known (the fathead minnow LC50) to what matters to the decision maker, the loss of fish species. Models used for this purpose may be termed Effects Extrapolation Models (EEMs) or Activity-Activity Relationships (AARs), by analogy to Structure-Activity Relationships (SARs). These models have been previously reviewed in Ch. 7 and 9 of and by an OECD workshop. This paper updates those reviews and attempts to further clarify the issues involved in the development and use of EEMs. Although there is some overlap, this paper does not repeat those reviews and the reader is referred to the previous reviews for a more complete historical perspective, and for treatment of additional extrapolation issues.

We have developed a technique for measuring thin film stress during growth by monitoring the wafer curvature. By measuring the deflection of multiple parallel laser beams with a CCD detector, the sensivity to vibration is reduced and a radius of curvature limit of 4 km has been obtained in situ. This technique also enables us to obtain a 2-dimensional profile of the surface curvature from the simultaneous reflection of a rectangular array of beams. Results from the growth of SiG alloy films are presented to demonstrate the unique information that can be obtained during growth.

A laboratory prototype system has been developed for the experimental evaluation of an explosives detection technique based on nuclear resonance absorption of gamma rays in nitrogen. Major subsystems include a radiofrequency quadrupole proton accelerator and associated beam transport system, a high-power gamma-ray production target, an airline-luggage tomographic inspection system, and an image- processing/detection-alarm subsystem. The detection system performance, based on a limited experimental test, is reported.

We present status of high-power linac design studies for a proposed National Spallation Neutron Source (NSNS), based on a linac/accumulator-ring accelerator system. Overall project is a collaboration involving 5 national laboratories. ORNL will be responsible for the target, facilities, and conceptual design; BNL will be responsible for the ring; LBNL will be responsible for the injector, including the RFQ and a low-energy chopper in front of the RFQ; LANL will be responsible for the main linac; and ANL will be responsible for the instrumentation. The facility will be built at Oak Ridge. In the first phase, the dual-frequency linac with 402.5 and 805 MHz frequencies must deliver to the accumulator ring an H{sup -} beam near 1 GeV, with about 1 ms pulse length, a repetition rate 60 Hz, and average beam power {ge} 1 MW. The linac can be upgraded by a factor of 4 in beam power by increasing the dc injector current, and by funneling the beams from two 402.5 MHz low-energy linacs into the 805-MHz high-energy linac. Requirements for low beam loss in both linac and ring have important implications for linac design, including the requirement to provide efficient beam chopping to provide low-loss extraction for …

In direct drive ICF, nonuniformities in laser illumination seed ripples at the ablation front in a process called imprint. These non nonuniformities grow during the capsule implosion and, if initially large enough, can penetrate the capsule shell, impede ignition, or degrade burn. Imprint has been simulated for recent experiments performed on the Nova laser at LLNL examining a variety of beam smoothing conditions. Most used laser intensities similar to the early part of an ignition capsule pulse shape, I=10X13 W/cm3. The simulations matched most of the measurements of imprint modulation. The effect of imprint upon National Ignition Facility (NIF) direct drive ignition capsules has also been simulated. Imprint is predicted to give modulation comparable to an intrinsic surface finish of 10 nm RMS. Modulation growth was examined using the Haan model, with linear growth as a function of spherical harmonic mode number obtained from an analytic dispersion relation. Ablation front amplitudes are predicted to become substantially nonlinear, so that saturation corrections are large. Direct numerical simulations of two- dimensional multimode growth were also performed. The capsule shell is predicted to remain intact, which gives a basis for believing that ignition can be achieved.

In direct drive ICF, nonuniformities in laser illumination seed ripples at the ablation front in a process called ``imprint``. These nonuniformities grow during the capsule implosion and, if initially large enough, can penetrate the capsule shell, impede ignition, or degrade burn. Imprint has been simulated for recent experiments performed on the Nova laser at LLNL examining a variety of beam smoothing conditions. Most used laser intensities similar to the early part of an ignition capsule pulse shape, 1 {approx_equal} 10{sup 13} W/cm{sup 2} . The simulations matched most of the measurements of imprint modulation. The effect of imprint upon National Ignition Facility (NIF) direct drive ignition capsules has also been simulated. Imprint is predicted to give modulation comparable to an intrinsic surface finish of {approximately}10 nm RMS. Modulation growth was examined using the Haan [Phys. Rev. A {bold 39}, 5812 (1989)] model, with linear growth factors as a function of spherical harmonic mode number obtained from an analytic dispersion relation. Ablation front amplitudes are predicted to become substantially nonlinear, so that saturation corrections are large. Direct numerical simulations of two-dimensional multimode growth were also performed. The capsule shell is predicted to remain intact, which gives a basis for believing that …

Chiefly for improved efficiency, the trend to increasing use of gas turbine engines in stationary powerplants has been firmly established. The requirement for minimum NOx production has motivated operation as close as practically possible near the lean flammability limit, to reduce formation of nitrogen oxides by the Zeldovich thermal mechanism. However, experience has shown that under these conditions, stability of the chamber is reduced, often leading to the presence of sustained oscillations in the combustor. That possibility raises the problem of the influence of oscillatory motions on the production of nitrogen oxides. The work represented in this paper covers the initial steps in constructing an analysis suitable for application to that problem in design and development of operational gas turbine combustors.

Transient dynamics simulations are commonly used to model phenomena such as car crashes, underwater explosions, and the response of shipping containers to high-speed impacts. Physical objects in such a simulation are typically represented by Lagrangian meshes because the meshes can move and deform with the objects as they undergo stress. Fluids (gasoline, water) or fluid-like materials (earth) in the simulation can be modeled using the techniques of smoothed particle hydrodynamics. Implementing a hybrid mesh/particle model on a massively parallel computer poses several difficult challenges. One challenge is to simultaneously parallelize and load-balance both the mesh and particle portions of the computation. A second challenge is to efficiently detect the contacts that occur within the deforming mesh and between mesh elements and particles as the simulation proceeds. These contacts impart forces to the mesh elements and particles which must be computed at each timestep to accurately capture the physics of interest. In this paper we describe new parallel algorithms for smoothed particle hydrodynamics and contact detection which turn out to have several key features in common. Additionally, we describe how to join the new algorithms with traditional parallel finite element techniques to create an integrated particle/mesh transient dynamics simulation. Our approach …

Nanoindentation is used for measuring mechanical properties of thin films. This paper addresses potential measurement errors caused by pile-up when soft films deposited on hard substrates are tested this way. Pile-up is exacerbated in soft film/hard substrate systems because of the constraint the substrate exerts on plastic deformation of the film. To examine pile-up effects, Al films 240 and 1700 nm thick were deposited on hard glass and tested by standard nanoindentation. In Al/glass, the film and substrate have similar elastic moduli; thus, any unusual behavior in nanoindentation results may be attributed to differences in plastic flow alone. SEM examination of nanoindentation hardness impressions in the film revealed that common methods for analyzing nanoindentation data underestimate the true contact areas by as much as 80%, which results in overestimations of the hardness and modulus by as much as 80 and 35%, respectively. Sources of these errors and their effect on measurement of hardness and elastic modulus are discussed, and a simple model for the composite hardness of the film/substrate system is developed. This model could prove useful when it is not possible to make indentations shallow enough to avoid substrate effects.