sbisson: (Default)

My tweets

posted by [personal profile] sbisson at 12:00pm on 05/03/2013 under
( Read more... )
There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)
sbisson: (Little Dee: Library Card)

So today's XKCD What-If...

posted by [personal profile] sbisson at 12:30pm on 05/03/2013 under , ,
...about the logarithmic scale-powered hairdryer is pretty much the topic of my research work at the University of Bath in the early 1990s, when I was developing electrothermal models for the heating effects inside electromagnetic launchers.

But his single pager is probably a little more easy to read than my paper (the TL;DR of which is "Railguns get too hot, too quickly to be practical weapons. Sorry David Weber et al.)

The high transient currents used by electromagnetic launch techniques produce a wide range of problems for modeling. The use of electromagnetic finite element (FE) analysis has allowed the electromagnetic effects to be modeled, and as a result the instantaneous heating effects. A technique for modeling the cumulative heating has been demonstrated for the 2-D case in Bath University's MEGA electromagnetic FE program, by an FE application of the thermal diffusion equation. The 2-D thermal model has been modified and extended to modeling the 3-D case, and to the coupling between electromagnetic and thermal material properties.


Phew.
location: Putney, London
Mood:: 'amused' amused
There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

January

SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
  1
1
 2
2
 3
1
 4
 
 5
 
 6
 
7
 
 8
 
 9
 
 10
 
 11
 
 12
 
 13
 
14
 
 15
 
 16
 
 17
 
 18
 
 19
 
 20
 
21
 
 22
 
 23
 
 24
 
 25
 
 26
 
 27
 
28
 
 29
 
 30
 
 31