The fundamental parameters of the central stars of eight WR ring nebulae

We describe work that has recently been completed on deriving the fundamental parameters of eight WR stars through the photoionization modelling of their surrounding nebulae using non-LTE WR flux distributions. The resulting effective temperatures range from 57 000–71 000 K for the WN4-5 stars and <30 000–42 000 K for the WN6-8 stars. The derived stellar parameters are compared with those obtained from stellar emission line modelling. We find good agreement for the hot early WN stars, indicating that the non-LTE WR flux distributions have essentially the correct shape in the crucial far-UV region. We find lower temperatures for the four cooler late WN stars, particularly for the two WN6 stars. For the nebulae surrounding these stars, we find that the model flux distributions produce too much nebular ionization. We suggest that these discrepancies arise because of the lack of line-blanketing in the WR atmospheres. For the WO1 central star of G2.4+1.4, with strong nebular He II 4686 A emission, we derive a temperature of 105 000 K, somewhat less than previous estimates. The positions of our eight WR stars on the H-R diagram are compared with the evolutionary tracks of Maeder (1990) for solar metallicity. In common with previous workers, we find that our derived luminosities are too low, giving an initial mass range of 25–40 M, below that expected for the majority of WR stars.     

Mars Global Surveyor Observations of Solar Wind Magnetic Field Draping Around Mars

We examine the magnetic field in the martian magnetosheath due to solar wind draping. Mars Global Surveyor provided 3-D vector magnetic field measurements at a large range of altitudes, local times, and solar zenith angles as the spacecraft orbit evolved. We choose orbits with very clean signatures of draping to establish the nominal morphology of the magnetic field lines at local times of near-subsolar and near-terminator. Next, using a compilation of data from Mars Global Surveyor, we determine the average magnetic field morphology in the martian magnetosheath due to the solar wind interaction. The topology of the field is as expected from previous observations and predictions. The magnetic field magnitude peaks at low altitude and noon magnetic local time and decreases away from that point. The magnetic field has an inclination from the local horizontal of 5.6° on average in the dayside magnetosheath and 12.5° on the nightside. The inclination angle is closest to zero at noon magnetic local time and low altitude. It increases both upward and to later local times. The magnetic field in the induced magnetotail flares out from the Mars—Sun direction by 21°. Finally, we compare the observations to gasdynamic model predictions and find that the shocked solar wind flow in the martian magnetosheath can be treated as a gasdynamic flow with the magnetic pileup boundary as the inner boundary to the flow.     

Incoherent Scatter Plasma Lines: Observations and Applications

Space plasmas are host to the electrostatic Langmuir waves and a rich range of processes associated with them. Many of such processes that are of interest in micro-scale plasma physics and magnetosphere-ionosphere physics are open to investigation via incoherent scatter plasma lines—i.e., a pair of resonant peaks in the incoherent scatter radar (ISR) spectrum, symmetrically displaced from the radar transmitting frequency by about the plasma frequency, as the signature of Langmuir waves in the ISR spectrum. There now exists a large body of literature devoted to the investigation of a number of topics in ionospheric physics via plasma line theory and observation. It is the goal of this work to provide a comprehensive review of this literature, from the early theoretical works on oscillations in magnetized plasma to the recent advances in plasma line measurements and applications. This review includes detailed theoretical discussions on the intensity and frequency displacement of plasma lines. It reviews the experimental observations of plasma lines enhanced by various sources of energy and discusses the implications of the observations in the context of ionospheric physics. The review also covers the practical aspects of plasma line measurements, from measurement techniques to the applications of plasma lines in estimating the bulk parameters of the ionosphere.     

Discretized Miller approach to assess effects on boundary layer ingestion induced distortion

The performance of propulsion configurations with boundary layer ingestion (BLI) is affected to a large extent by the level of distortion in the inlet flow field. Through flow methods and parallel compressor have been used in the past to calculate the effects of this aerodynamic inte-gration issue on the fan performance;however high-fidelity through flow methods are computation-ally expensive, which limits their use at preliminary design stage. On the other hand, parallel compressor has been developed to assess only circumferential distortion. This paper introduces a discretized semi-empirical performance method, which uses empirical correlations for blade and performance calculations. This tool discretizes the inlet region in radial and circumferential direc-tions enabling the assessment of deterioration in fan performance caused by the combined effect of both distortion patterns. This paper initially studies the accuracy and suitability of the semi-empirical discretized method by comparing its predictions with CFD and experimental data for a baseline case working under distorted and undistorted conditions. Then a test case is examined, which corresponds to the propulsor fan of a distributed propulsion system with BLI. The results obtained from the validation study show a good agreement with the experimental and CFD results under design point conditions.     

Evidence of change after 2001 in the seasonal behaviour of the mesopause region from airglow data at El Leoncito

Airglow intensities and rotational temperatures of the OH(6-2) and O₂b(0-1) bands acquired at El Leoncito (32°S, 69°W) provide good annual coverage in 1998–2002, 2006, and 2007, with between 192 and 311 nights of observation per year. These data can therefore be used to derive the seasonal variations during each of these seven years, in airglow brightness and temperatures at altitudes of 87 and 95 km. From 1998 to 2001, seasonal variations are similar enough so that they can be well represented by a mean climatology, for each parameter. On the other hand, these climatologies do not agree with what is usually observed at other sites, maybe due to the particular orographic conditions at El Leoncito. With respect to the last three fully documented years (2002, 2006, and 2007), the similarity from year to year deteriorates, and there are greater differences in the seasonal behaviour, more or less in all the parameters. The differences include, e.g., maxima occurring earlier or later than “normal”, by one or two months. All this may suggest the build-up of a new regime of intraseasonal variability, with a possible relationship to corresponding changes in wave activity.     

A transition prediction method for flow over airfoils based on high-order dynamic mode decomposition

This article presents a novel approach for predicting transition locations over airfoils, which are used to activate turbulence model in a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes flow solver. This approach combines Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) with e^N criterion. The core idea is to use a spatial DMD analysis to extract the modes of unstable perturbations from a steady flowfield and substitute the local Linear Stability Theory (LST) analysis to quantify the spatial growth of Tollmien–Schlichting (TS) waves. Transition is assumed to take place at the stream-wise location where the most amplified mode’s N-factor reaches a prescribed threshold and a turbulence model is activated thereafter. To improve robustness, the high-order version of DMD technique (known as HODMD) is employed. A theoretical derivation is conducted to interpret how a spatial high-order DMD analysis can extract the growth rate of the unsteady perturbations. The new method is validated by transition predictions of flows over a low-speed Natural-Laminar-Flow (NLF) airfoil NLF0416 at various angles of attack and a transonic NLF airfoil NPU-LSC-72613. The transition locations predicted by our HODMD/e^N method agree well with experimental data and compare favorably to those obtained by some existing methods (LST/e^N or $\gamma -\stackrel{￣}{R{e}_{\theta \text{t}}}$). It is shown that the proposed method is able to predict transition locations for flows over different types of airfoils and offers the potential for application to 3D wings as well as more complex configurations.