[en] Highlights: • The transient gas–liquid two-phase flow fields in the self-priming centrifugal pump are simulated. • The self-priming time and performance are estimated. • The air void fraction and two phase distribution are obtained.· The hole on the volute plays a significant role for gas exhausting. • The frequency of the impulsive pressure basically conforms to that of the air exhausted out of the pump. - Abstract: Self-priming pumps start up without pre-irrigation, and then work as common pumps when air in the pump is exhausted. The transient gas–liquid flow at the start-up stage inside a self-priming pump is an interesting process which greatly influences performance of the pump. In this paper, a conventional vertical self-priming centrifugal pump was selected as the object. Using unsteady numerical simulation, the authors investigated the transient gas–liquid two-phase flow in the self-priming centrifugal pump during the self-priming process. The main innovation in the simulation was that a section of the suction pipe filled with air was set as the initial condition, which conformed to the actual self-priming conditions. The gas–liquid two-phase distribution, the pressure and velocity in relation to time were computed and analyzed. Flow rates of both phases with time at the pump inlet and outlet were obtained based on the simulation, which could be used to estimate the self-priming time and other performance parameters. Finally, the numerical method and results for gas–liquid two-phase flow in the self-priming pump was partly validated by the pump performance test

[en] The sea level pressure field can be computed from sea surface winds retrieved from satellite microwave scatterometer measurements, based on variational assimilation in combination with a regularization method given in part I of this paper. First, the validity of the new method is proved with a simulation experiment. Then, a new processing procedure for the sea level pressure retrieval is built by combining the geostrophic wind, which is computed from the scatterometer 10-meter wind using the University of Washington planetary boundary layer model using this method. Finally, the feasibility of the method is proved using an actual case study. (geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics)

[en] This paper addresses the probability of atmospheric refractivity estimation by using field measurements at an array of radio receivers in terms of angle-of-arrival spectrum. Angle-of-arrival spectrum information is simulated by the ray optics model and refractivity is expressed in the presence of an ideal tri-linear profile. The estimation of the refractivity is organized as an optimization problem and a genetic algorithm is used to search for the optimal solution from various trial refractivity profiles. Theoretical analysis demonstrates the feasibility of this method to retrieve the refractivity parameters. Simulation results indicate that this approach has a fair anti-noise ability and its accuracy performance is mainly dependent on the antenna aperture size and its positions. (geophysics, astronomy and astrophysics)

[en] Intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides information on both perfusion and diffusion and has been used to evaluate Crohn’s disease (CD) activity and fibrosis in children; however, there are no reports on its use in adults. We aimed to determine its value for detecting and grading intestinal fibrosis in adults with CD compared with contrast-enhanced imaging and traditional diffusion-weighted imaging using surgical histopathology as a reference standard. Twenty-four adults with CD underwent preoperative IVIM, traditional diffusion-weighted, and contrast-enhanced imaging. Region-by-region correlations between MRI findings and histologic findings of the surgical specimens were performed. Imaging parameters including fractional perfusion, perfusion coefficient, and diffusion coefficient for IVIM and apparent diffusion coefficient value for traditional diffusion-weighted imaging and contrast-enhanced parameter of 95 bowel lesions were measured. Intestinal fibrosis was histologically scored from 0 to 3. The fractional perfusion (r = − 0.629, p < 0.001) and apparent diffusion coefficient values (r = − 0.495, p < 0.001) were significantly correlated with fibrosis scores. Fractional perfusion decreased following increases in fibrosis severity from mild, to moderate, to severe (p < 0.001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for distinguishing moderate-severe from mild fibrosis was 0.876 (p < 0.001) for fractional perfusion, followed by 0.802 for apparent diffusion coefficient value (p < 0.001). Perfusion coefficient, diffusion coefficient, and contrast-enhanced parameter were uncorrelated with histological fibrosis. IVIM diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging outperforms traditional diffusion-weighted and contrast-enhanced imaging in grading bowel fibrosis, and fractional perfusion may be a promising biomarker for fibrosis severity in adults with CD.

[en] The simplified linear model of Grad—Shafranov (GS) reconstruction can be reformulated into an inverse boundary value problem of Laplace's equation. Therefore, in this paper we focus on the method of solving the inverse boundary value problem of Laplace's equation. In the first place, the variational regularization method is used to deal with the ill-posedness of the Cauchy problem for Laplace's equation. Then, the ‘L-Curve’ principle is suggested to be adopted in choosing the optimal regularization parameter. Finally, a numerical experiment is implemented with a section of Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions with observation errors. The results well converge to the exact solution of the problem, which proves the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method. When the order of observation error δ is 10⁻¹, the order of the approximate result error can reach 10⁻³. (geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics)

[en] A multilayer flow is a stratified fluid composed of a finite number of layers with densities homogeneous within one layer but different from each other. It is an intermediate system between the single-layer barotropic model and the continuously stratified baroclinic model. Since this system can simulate the baroclinic effect simply, it is widely used to study the large-scale dynamic process in atmosphere and ocean. The present paper is concerned with the linear stability of the multilayer quasi-geostrophic flow, and the associated linear stability criteria are established. Firstly, the nonlinear model is turned into the form of a Hamiltonian system, and a basic flow is defined. But it cannot be an extreme point of the Hamiltonian function since the system is an infinite-dimensional one. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct a new Hamiltonian function so that the basic flow becomes an extreme point of it. Secondly, the linearized equations of disturbances in the multilayer quasi-geostrophic flow are derived by introducing infinitesimal disturbances superposed on the basic flows. Finally, the properties of the linearized system are discussed, and the linear stability criteria in the sense of Liapunov are derived under two different conditions with respect to certain norms. (paper)

[en] Scatterometer is an instrument which provides all-day and large-scale wind field information, and its application especially to wind retrieval always attracts meteorologists. Certain reasons cause large direction error, so it is important to find where the error mainly comes. Does it mainly result from the background field, the normalized radar cross-section (NRCS) or the method of wind retrieval? It is valuable to research. First, depending on SDP2.0, the simulated ‘true’ NRCS is calculated from the simulated ‘true’ wind through the geophysical model function NSCAT2. The simulated background field is configured by adding a noise to the simulated ‘true’ wind with the non-divergence constraint. Also, the simulated ‘measured’ NRCS is formed by adding a noise to the simulated ‘true’ NRCS. Then, the sensitivity experiments are taken, and the new method of regularization is used to improve the ambiguity removal with simulation experiments. The results show that the accuracy of wind retrieval is more sensitive to the noise in the background than in the measured NRCS; compared with the two-dimensional variational (2DVAR) ambiguity removal method, the accuracy of wind retrieval can be improved with the new method of Tikhonov regularization through choosing an appropriate regularization parameter, especially for the case of large error in the background. The work will provide important information and a new method for the wind retrieval with real data. (electromagnetism, optics, acoustics, heat transfer, classical mechanics, and fluid dynamics)

[en] A new method of constructing a sea level pressure field from satellite microwave scatterometer measurements is presented. It is based on variational assimilation in combination with a regularization method using geostrophic vorticity to construct a sea level pressure field from scatterometer data that are given in this paper, which offers a new idea for the application of scatterometer measurements. Firstly, the geostrophic vorticity from the scatterometer data is computed to construct the observation field, and the vorticity field in an area and the sea level pressure on the borders are assimilated. Secondly, the gradient of sea level pressure (semi-norm) is used as the stable functional to educe the adjoint system, the adjoint boundary condition and the gradient of the cost functional in which a weight parameter is introduced for the harmony of the system and the Tikhonov regularization techniques in inverse problem are used to overcome the ill-posedness of the assimilation. Finally, the iteration method of the sea level pressure field is developed. (geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics)

[en] We compare the performance of two very different parallel gravitational N-body codes for astrophysical simulations on large Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) clusters, both of which are pioneers in their own fields as well as on certain mutual scales - NBODY6++ and Bonsai. We carry out benchmarks of the two codes by analyzing their performance, accuracy and efficiency through the modeling of structure decomposition and timing measurements. We find that both codes are heavily optimized to leverage the computational potential of GPUs as their performance has approached half of the maximum single precision performance of the underlying GPU cards. With such performance we predict that a speed-up of 200 – 300 can be achieved when up to 1k processors and GPUs are employed simultaneously. We discuss the quantitative information about comparisons of the two codes, finding that in the same cases Bonsai adopts larger time steps as well as larger relative energy errors than NBODY6++, typically ranging from 10 – 50 times larger, depending on the chosen parameters of the codes. Although the two codes are built for different astrophysical applications, in specified conditions they may overlap in performance at certain physical scales, thus allowing the user to choose either one by fine-tuning parameters accordingly. (paper)

[en] Simulated annealing is one of the robust optimization schemes. Simulated annealing mimics the annealing process of the slow cooling of a heated metal to reach a stable minimum energy state. In this paper, we adopt simulated annealing to study the problem of the remote sensing of atmospheric duct parameters for two different geometries of propagation measurement. One is from a single emitter to an array of radio receivers (vertical measurements), and the other is from the radar clutter returns (horizontal measurements). Basic principles of simulated annealing and its applications to refractivity estimation are introduced. The performance of this method is validated using numerical experiments and field measurements collected at the East China Sea. The retrieved results demonstrate the feasibility of simulated annealing for near real-time atmospheric refractivity estimation. For comparison, the retrievals of the genetic algorithm are also presented. The comparisons indicate that the convergence speed of simulated annealing is faster than that of the genetic algorithm, while the anti-noise ability of the genetic algorithm is better than that of simulated annealing. (geophysics, astronomy, and astrophysics)