Plasma medicine is an emerging field where plasma physics is used for therapeutical applications. Temperature is an important factor to take into account with respect to the applications of plasma to biological systems. During the treatment, the tissue temperature could increase to critical values. In this work, a model is presented, which is capable of predicting the skin temperature during a treatment with a radio frequency driven plasma needle. The main gas was helium. To achieve this, a discharge model was coupled to a heat transfer and fluid flow model. The results provide maximum application times for different power depositions in order to avoid reaching critical skin temperatures.

Financial asset prices contain a rich set of real-time information on the economy. To extract this information, it is crucial to understand the driving factors behind financial market developments. In this paper, we exploit daily cross-asset price movements in a sign-restricted BVAR model to analyse the extent to which euro area and US yields, equity prices, and the euro-US dollar exchange rate are jointly driven by monetary policy, macro and global risk factors. A novelty is that we allow for cross-Atlantic spillovers while also accounting for the unique role of the US in the global financial system. Our results underline the importance of US spillovers and shifts in global risk sentiment for understanding the dynamics of euro area financial variables. Euro area shocks transmit much less to US financial markets in comparison, with global risk shocks being more important instead. Using the daily shocks as instruments in a Proxy-SVAR, we demonstrate that the transmission of financial market movements to the macroeconomy depends on the underlying driver, thereby illustrating why it matters to look into the driving factors in the first place.

Most offshore wind turbines (OWTs) are supported by large-diameter monopiles, installed by impact driving. OWTs are dynamically sensitive structures, with a narrow design range for the eigenfrequency. Fatigue and serviceability limit states can be critical in design, so the foundation stiffness plays an important role. The pile installation process results in changes to the soil state, investigated here through large-deformation numerical analyses using the coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian approach with a hypoplastic constitutive relation to model the sand. The soil state is then mapped to a small-strain model to evaluate the effect of the installation process on the lateral response. Complementary physical modelling results from monopile installation and lateral load testing in a centrifuge provide confidence in the numerical model. Analyses for two different sands highlight commonalities and differences. Comparison with results featuring wished-in-place or jacked installation illustrates the effect of changes in the soil state on the lateral response. The results characterise the changes in soil state and allow quantification of their effects as impact driving tends to produce a stiffer lateral response, with the expected variations due to pile dimensions and sand relative density. Further research will provide insights into the role of pore fluid response during impact driving and investigate vibro-driven piles.

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