Efficiency at maximum power (MP) output for an engine with a passive piston without mechanical controls between two reservoirs is theoretically studied. We enclose a hard core gas partitioned by a massive piston in a temperature-controlled container
and analyze the efficiency at MP under a heating and cooling protocol without controlling the pressure acting on the piston from outside. We find the following three results: (i) The efficiency at MP for a dilute gas is close to the Chambadal-Novikov-Curzon-Ahlborn (CNCA) efficiency if we can ignore the side wall friction and the loss of energy between a gas particle and the piston, while (ii) the efficiency for a moderately dense gas becomes smaller than the CNCA efficiency even when the temperature difference of reservoirs is small. (iii) Introducing the Onsager matrix for an engine with a passive piston, we verify that the tight coupling condition for the matrix of the dilute gas is satisfied, while that of the moderately dense gas is not satisfied because of the inevitable heat leak. We confirm the validity of these results using the molecular dynamics simulation and introducing an effective mean-field-like model which we call stochastic mean field model.
The nonequilibrium activity taking place in a living cell can be monitored with a tracer embedded in the medium. While microrheology experiments based on optical manipulation of such probes have become increasingly standard, we put forward a number o
f experiments with alternative protocols that, we claim, will provide new insight into the energetics of active fluctuations. These are based on either performing thermodynamic--like cycles in control-parameter space, or on determining response to external perturbations of the confining trap beyond simple translation. We illustrate our proposals on an active itinerant Brownian oscillator modeling the dynamics of a probe embedded in a living medium.
The motion of an adiabatic piston under dry friction is investigated to clarify the roles of dry friction in non-equilibrium steady states. We clarify that dry friction can reverse the direction of the piston motion and causes a discontinuity or a cu
sp-like singularity for velocity distribution functions of the piston. We also show that the heat fluctuation relation is modified under dry friction.
The impacts of granular jets for both frictional and frictionless grains in two dimensions are numerically investigated. A dense flow with a dead zone emerges during the impact. From our two-dimensional simulation, we evaluate the equations of state
and the con- stitutive equations of the flow. The asymptotic divergences of pressure and shear stress similar to the situation near the jamming transition appear for the frictionless case, while their exponents are smaller than those of the sheared granular systems, and are close to the extrapolation from the kinetic theoretical regime. In a similar manner to the jam- ming for frictional grains, the critical density decreases as the friction constant of grains increases. For bi-disperse systems, the effective friction constant defined as the ratio of shear stress to normal stress, monotonically increases from near zero, as the strain rate increases. On the other hand, the effective friction constant has two metastable branches for mono-disperse systems because of the coexistence of a crystallized state and a liquid state.
The rheology of a three-dimensional granular jet during an impact is investigated numerically. The cone-like scattering pattern and the sheet-like pattern observed in an experiment [X. Cheng, et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 188001 (2007)] can be reproduc
ed through our calculation. We discuss the constitutive equation for granular jet impact in terms of our simulation. From the analysis of an effective friction constant, which is the ratio between the shear stress and the pressure the assumption of the zero yield stress would be natural in our setup and the shear visocity is not small in contrast to the suggestion by the experiment.
We perform three-dimensional simulations of a granular jet impact for both frictional and frictionless grains. Small shear stress observed in the experiment[X. Cheng et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 188001 (2007) ] is reproduced through our simulation. H
owever, the fluid state after the impact is far from a perfect fluid, and thus, similarity between granular jets and quark gluon plasma is superficial, because the observed viscosity is finite and its value is consistent with the prediction of the kinetic theory.
