Adiabatic process | EPFL Graph Search

In thermodynamics, an adiabatic process (Greek: adiábatos, "impassable") is a type of thermodynamic process that occurs without transferring heat or mass between the thermodynamic system and its environment. Unlike an isothermal process, an adiabatic process transfers energy to the surroundings only as work. As a key concept in thermodynamics, the adiabatic process supports the theory that explains the first law of thermodynamics. Some chemical and physical processes occur too rapidly for energy to enter or leave the system as heat, allowing a convenient "adiabatic approximation". For example, the adiabatic flame temperature uses this approximation to calculate the upper limit of flame temperature by assuming combustion loses no heat to its surroundings. In meteorology and oceanography, adiabatic cooling produces condensation of moisture or salinity, oversaturating the parcel. Therefore, the excess must be removed. There, the process becomes a pseudo-adiabatic process whereby the

27.2 An Adiabatic Sense and Set Rectifier for Improved Maximum-Power-Point Tracking in Piezoelectric Harvesting with 541% Energy Extraction Gain

Yimai Peng

Piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) convert mechanical energy from vibrations into electrical energy. They have become popular in energy-autonomous IoT systems. However, the total energy extracted by a PEH is highly sensitive to matching between the PEH impedance and the energy extraction circuit. Prior solutions include the use of a full-bridge rectifier (FBR) and a so-called synchronous electric-charge extraction (SECE) [1], and are suitable for non-periodic vibrations. However, their extraction efficiency is low since the large internal capacitance C p (usually 10's of nF) of the PEH (Fig. 27.2.1) prevents the output voltage from reaching its maximum power point (MPP) under a typical sinusoidal and transient excitation (V MPP = 1/2·I p R p ). A recently proposed technique [2,3,4], called bias-flip, achieves a higher extraction efficiency by forcing a predetermined constant voltage at the PEH output, V p , which is then flipped every half-period of the assumed sinusoidal excitation (Fig. 27.2.1, top left). To flip V p , the energy in capacitor C p is extracted using either a large external inductor [2,3] or capacitor arrays [4]. It is then restored with the opposite polarity (Fig. 27.2.1, top). However, V MPP of the PEH varies with sinusoidal current I p ; hence, the two fixed values of V p in the flip-bias technique either over or underestimate V MPP for much of the oscillation cycle (pattern filled regions in Fig. 27.2.1, top right). In addition, none of the prior approaches compensate for V MPP -waveform amplitude changes, due to input intensity variations or decaying oscillations after an impulse, further degrading efficiency.

IEEE2019

Studying the effect of non-adiabatic passing electron dynamics on microturbulence self-interaction in fusion plasmas using gyrokinetic simulations

Ajay Chandrarajan Jayalekshmi

Microturbulence driven by plasma instabilities is in most cases the dominant cause of heat and particle loss from the core of magnetic confinement fusion devices and therefore presents a major challenge in achieving burning plasma conditions. The role of passing electron dynamics in turbulent transport driven by ion-scale microinstabilities, in particular Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG) and Trapped Electron Mode (TEM) instabilities, has been given relatively little attention. In first approximation, these particles, which are highly mobile along the confining magnetic field, are assumed to respond adiabatically to the low frequency ion-scale modes. However, near mode rational surfaces (MRSs), the non-adiabatic response of passing electrons becomes important and can no longer be neglected. This non-adiabatic electron response actually has a destabilising effect and leads to generation of fine-structures located at the MRSs of each eigenmode. This thesis focuses on the effects of non-adiabatic response of passing electrons in tokamak core turbulence. One such effect of non-adiabatic passing electrons that is of particular interest to this work is the self-interaction mechanism. It is essentially a process by which a microinstability eigenmode that is extended along the direction parallel to the magnetic field interacts non-linearly with itself, in turn generating E x B zonal flows. Unlike the usual picture of zonal flow drive in which microinstability eigenmodes coherently amplify the flow via modulational instabilities, the self-interaction drive of zonal flows from these eigenmodes are uncorrelated with each other. In the case of ITG driven turbulence, using novel statistical diagnostic methods, it is shown that the associated shearing rate of the fluctuating zonal flows therefore reduces as more toroidal modes are resolved in the simulation. In simulations accounting for the full toroidal domain, such an increase in the density of toroidal modes corresponds in fact to an increase in the system size, leading to a finite system size effect that is distinct from the other better known system size effects such as profile shearing or finite radial extend of the unstable region. The study of non-adiabatic passing electron dynamics is pursued further to include more reactor relevant conditions such as collisions and background shear flow. It is found that, with increasing collisionality, electrons behave more adiabatic-like, especially the trapped electrons away from MRSs, thereby leading to a decrease in the growth rate of ITG eigenmodes. Furthermore, the shortened electron mean free path in presence of collisions leads to a radial broadening of the fine-structures at the MRS of corresponding eigenmodes. In nonlinear simulations, the turbulent flux levels decrease with increasing collisionality, as a result of the reduced drive from the less unstable ITG eigenmodes. The radial width of the fine structures at MRSs is found to reduce with increasing collisionality as a result of reduced nonlinear modification of the eigenmodes in turbulence simulations. A study of the effect of collisions on the self-interaction mechanism reveals that for physically relevant values of collisionality, the effect of self-interaction is still significant. A preliminary study of the effect of background E x B flow shear shows that the fine-structures associated with the non-adiabatic passing electron response persist even with finite background flow.

EPFL2020

Grain Boundary Relaxation in 18-carat Gold Alloys

Ann-Kathrin Audren

Grain boundaries (GBs) play an important role for the mechanical properties of metals. In addition to dislocation motion inside the grains, some metal alloys deform along the GBs at high temperatures. GBs can also be the cause of a brittle behaviour of some metallic alloys, where crack propagation along the GBs is observed. This thesis aims to understand the role of GBs on the thermo-mechanical behaviour of metals and especially to define the microscopic mechanism, which leads to a deformation at the GBs. In this thesis, polycrystals, single crystals and bi-crystals of a yellow gold alloy are studied in detail, primarily by mechanical spectroscopy. The analysis and interpretation of the experimental data identifies different anelastic relaxations (internal energy dissipation processes), that produce peaks in the mechanical loss spectrum. The mechanical loss spectrum of polycrystals shows a relaxation peak P2 at about 780K, which is absent in single crystals made from the same alloy. Stepwise deformation of a single crystal causes an increase of the high temperature mechanical loss background and the appearance of a high temperature peak (P3). Above a critical deformation, P3 disappears and the peak P2, which is normally observed in polycrystals, appears. The increase of the exponential background is interpreted as due to the introduction of new dislocations whereas the peak P3 is attributed to a dislocation relaxation mechanism in the sub-grain boundaries. The peak P2 located at intermediate temperatures depends on the grain size: with grain growth, the peak position shifts to higher temperatures. It is shown that the relaxation time is proportional to the grain size d. Such a grains size dependence is in agreement with the Zener model based on geometrical considerations of an assembly of elastic grains, which can slide against each other. The investigations on bi-crystals containing a single GB with a specific misorientation between crystal lattices and a specific boundary plane orientation show that the relaxation peak P2 is closely related to a mechanism taking place at the boundary. The peak height is proportional to the GB density in a bi-crystal, whereas a single crystalline part cut from a bi-crystal does not show a relaxation peak. Molecular dynamics simulations are performed in order to illustrate the potential microscopic mechanisms responsible for the stress relaxation peak P2 in polycrystals. A Sigma5 grain boundary is submitted to a shear deformation parallel to the boundary plane. The grain boundary shows a migration perpendicular to the boundary plane coupled to shear for temperatures below 700K. Above 1000K, only grain boundary sliding is observed. Two models are developed that provide expressions for the relaxation strength and the relaxation time that are compared to experimental measurements performed on polycrystals. The observed grain size dependence favours the sliding model over the migration model. Measurements as a function of stress allow a refinement of the sliding model. The stress amplitude dependence of the peak P2 indicates a depinning mechanism, which is interpreted as due to GB dislocations between zones where sliding of different amount occurred. Obstacles to the sliding movement like steps or extended coincidence sites in the GB plane act as pinning points. The pinning points can be overcome at high temperatures close to the melting point, which results in the onset of local microscopic creep.

EPFL2014