ALBERT

Description: The morphology of lava flows is often taken as an indicator of the broad chemical composition of the lava, especially when interpreting extraterrestrial volcanoes using spacecraft images. The historical lavas of the active volcano Mount Etna in Sicily provide an excellent opportunity to examine the controls on flow field morphology. In this study only flow produced by flank eruptions after the middle of the 18th century are examined. The final form of a flow-field may be more indicative of the internal plumbing of the volcano, which may control such factors as the effusion, rate, duration of eruption, volume of available magma, rate of de-gassing, and lava rheology. Different flow morphologies on Etna appear to be a good indicator of differing conditions within the volcanic pile. Thus the spatial distribution of different flow types on an extraterrestrial volcano may provide useful information about the plumbing conditions of that volcano, rather than necessarily providing information on the composition of materials erupted.

Description: A detailed study was made of face and annular seals under conditions where boiling, i.e., phase change of the leaking fluid, occurs within the seal. Many seals operate in this mode because of flashing due to pressure drop and/or heat input from frictional heating. High pressure, water pumps, industrial chemical pumps, and cryogenic pumps are mentioned as a few of many applications. The initial motivation was the LOX-GOX seals for the space shuttle main engine, but the study was expanded to include any face or annular seal where boiling occurs. Some of the distinctive behavior characteristics of two-phase seals were discussed, particularly their axial stability. While two-phase seals probably exhibit instability to disturbances of other degrees of freedom such as wobble, etc., under certain conditions, such analyses are too complex to be treated at present. Since an all liquid seal (with parallel faces) has a neutral axial stiffness curve, and is stabilized axially by convergent coning, other degrees of freedom stability analyses are necessary. However, the axial stability behavior of the two-phase seal is always a consideration no matter how well the seal is aligned and regardless of the speed. Hence, axial stability is thought of as the primary design consideration for two-phase seals and indeed the stability behavior under sub-cooling variations probably overshadows other concerns. The main thrust was the dynamic analysis of axial motion of two-phase face seals, principally the determination of axial stiffness, and the steady behavior of two-phase annular seals. The main conclusions are that seals with two-phase flow may be unstable if improperly balanced. Detailed theoretical analyses of low (laminar) and high (turbulent) leakage seals are presented along with computer codes, parametric studies, and in particular a simplified PC based code that allows for rapid performance prediction. A simplified combined computer code for the performance prediction over the laminar and turbulent ranges of a two-phase seal is described and documented. The analyses, results, and computer codes are summarized.

Description: A computerized model was developed for analyzing the temperature distribution of a two dimensional body which is located at or near the soil surface and is partially exposed to solar radiation. The body may have one or more interior cavities containing air or another fluid. The methodology which evolved is also applicable to a general class of thermal analyses involving a body surrounded by a semi-infinite medium exposed to surface radiation energy. The theoretical analysis, numerical procedure, and a sample case are discussed.

Description: A Petrov-Galerkin finite element formulation is presented for first-order hyperbolic systems of conservation laws with particular emphasis on the compressible Euler equations. Applications of the methodology are made to one- and two-dimensional steady and unsteady flows with shocks. Results obtained suggest the potential of the type of methods developed.

Description: Thirty-six aluminous mare basalt fragments from breccia 14321 and other Apollo 14 basalts are statistically divided into two broad groups, comprising five subgroups, using La, Sm, and Yb data. Major element compositions, petrographic characteristics, and mineral compositions are similar for the five groups. However, there is an eight-fold increase in REE abundances from Group 5 to Group 1, with Group 1 having a REE pattern similar to KREEP. Groups 1 to 3 may be related by partial melting of a source similar to that proposed by Unruh et al. (1984) for feldspathic basalt 12038. However, Groups 4 and 5 cannot be as closely matched by larger degrees of partial melting of this source. Groups 1 to 4 could also be produced by assimilation of a KREEP component by a magma similar in composition to Group 5. Such a magma can be produced by partial melting of an olivine-orthopyroxene source that crystallized from a magma with chondritic relative REE abundances.

Description: The present investigation is concerned with a fully discrete accuracy and stability analysis of the one-dimensional heat equation, taking into account the evaluation of two-pass explicit schemes which simultaneously employ lumped and coupled capacity matrices. Schemes of the considered characteristics are not amenable to uncoupled semidiscrete and ordinary differential equation analyses. The obtained results illustrate that superior behavior may be achieved by schemes of the employed type when compared with the performance of the standard one-pass explicit schemes. The key idea in the considered approach is related to the utilization of a reduced-quadrature capacity matrix in the evaluation of the right-hand-side residual.

Description: Element-by-element solution strategies are developed for transient heat conduction problems. Results of numerical tests indicate the effectiveness of the procedures proposed. The small database requirements and attractive architectural features of the algorithms suggest considerable potential for solving large scale problems.

Description: A solution procedure for solving nonlinear time-marching problems is presented. The nonsymmetric systems of equations arising from a Newton-type linearization of these time-marching problems are solved using an iterative strategy based on the generalized minimal residual (GMRES) algorithm. Matrix-free techniques leading to reduction in storage are presented. Incorporation of a linesearch algorithm in the Newton-GMRES scheme is discussed. An automatic time-increment control strategy is developed to increase the stability of the time-marching process. High-speed flow computations demonstrate the effectiveness of these algorithms.

Description: Electron microprobe and INAA were used to analyze forty spherules of Apollo 15 yellow-brown glass for major and trace elements. The glass is one of twenty-five high-Mg primary magmas emplaced on the lunar surface in pyroclastic eruptions. The abundances show that the magma was produced by partial melting of differentiated cumulates in the lunar mantle. Models to explain the possible source-regions of several Apollo 15 and Apollo 12 low-Ti mare magmas are presented.

Description: Mare basalt 15388, a feldspathic microgabbro from the Apennine Front, is chemically and petrographically distinct from Apollo 15 picritic, olivine-normative (ON), and quartz-normative basalts. The evolved chemistry, coarse texture, lack of olivine, and occurrence of cristobalite in 15388 argue for derivation by a late-stage magmatic process that is significantly removed from parental magma. It either crystallized from a magma evolved from the more mafic Apollo 15 basalts, or it crystallized from a currently unrepresented magma. Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd isotopic systematics yield isochron ages of 3.391 plus or minus 0.036 and 3.42 plus or minus 0.07 Ga, respectively, and epsilon(sub Nd) = 8.6 plus or minus 2.4, which is relatively high for Apollo 15 mare basalts. In contrast to chemical patterns of average Apollo 15 ON basalts and Apollo 15 picritic basalt, 15388 has a strongly positive LREE slope, high Ti, shallower HREE slope and a slightly positive Eu anomaly. These features argue against 15388 evolution by simple olivine fractionation of a parental ON or picritic basalt magma, although olivine is a dominant liquidus phase in both potential parents.