Sharif Digital Repository

The present study Is carried out to investigate fatigue crack initiation and kinking behaviours of spot welded coach peel (CP) specimens of low carbon steel sheets subjected to cyclic loading by experimental and finite element analysis methods. Evaluations of fatigue crack growth stages were performed by crack tip plastic strains and J integral analyses and also by microhardness measurements on process zone. According to the experimental and analytical results, fatigue crack initiation and growing stages in the spot welded CP specimens can be divided to three stages. Stage I corresponds to 'gap sharpening stage' observed at the beginning steps of cyclic loading with crack growing on the... 

The fatigue life for T and cruciform welded joints containing different extents of lack of root penetration was calculated for different combinations of geometrical parameters, including thicknesses up to 45 mm, by integration of the Paris law and use of stress intensity factor solutions calculated previously. The effect of attachment and main plate thickness, weld leg length and initial lack of penetration size on fatigue life was studied. For T welded joints, the effect of different support span has also been investigated. The results are reported as fatigue life curves for both types of joints. All the curves show higher fatigue life for T joints than for cruciform joints. These curves... 

Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys (7xxx series Al alloys) are extensively used for their superior mechanical and corrosion performance. These properties are microstructure-sensitive and highly dependent on the formation, growth and coarsening of precipitates. To date, a wide variety of ageing procedures have been developed to tailor the evolved microstructures so as to yield a good combination of mechanical capacity and corrosion resistance of 7xxx series Al alloys. Among these methods, isothermal ageing, multi-stage ageing, non-isothermal ageing, retrogression and re-ageing (RRA), and stress ageing (i.e. creep ageing) are the most significant. In the present review, all of these approaches are... 

Discrete-time Markov Chains (MCs) and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are two standard formalisms in system analysis. Their main associated quantitative objectives are hitting probabilities, discounted sum, and mean payoff. Although there are many techniques for computing these objectives in general MCs/MDPs, they have not been thoroughly studied in terms of parameterized algorithms, particularly when treewidth is used as the parameter. This is in sharp contrast to qualitative objectives for MCs, MDPs and graph games, for which treewidth-based algorithms yield significant complexity improvements. In this work, we show that treewidth can also be used to obtain faster algorithms for the... 

This article presents a novel identification approach which can deal with nonlinear and time-varying characteristics of complex dynamic systems, especially an aerial vehicle in the entire flight envelope. A set of local sub-models are first developed at different operating points of the system, and subsequently a self-organizing multi-model ensemble is introduced to aggregate the outputs of the local models as a single model. The number of employed local models in the proposed multi-model ensemble is optimized using a novel self-organizing approach. Also, wavelet neural networks, which combine both the universal approximation property of neural networks and the wavelet decomposition... 

In order to optimize the aging treatment of Mg-1.8Zn-0.7Si-0.4Ca alloy, different times and temperatures of solid solution and age hardening were applied to the alloy specimens. Microstructures and mechanical properties of the specimens were investigated using the optical microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy equipped with an energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer, x-ray diffraction, hardness, and shear punch tests. The lowest hardness and strength were achieved by solution treating of the alloy at 500 °C for 8 h, presenting the optimal condition for solution treatment of the alloy. The microstructural examinations revealed three different precipitates consisting of CaMgSi,... 

Redistribution of alloying elements in the transient liquid phase (TLP) bonding zone of IN738LC/ BNi-3/IN738LC was studied to investigate microstructural evolution in this area. Wavelength dispersive spectrometry and electron probe microanalysis revealed that, during non-isothermal solidification in the TLP bonding zone, enrichment of residual liquid phase with the positive segregating elements caused formation of intermetallic in the bonding zone. Scanning electron microscopy observation Indicated that the redistribution of alloying elements, between TLP bonding zone and base alloy, resulted In formation of a γ′ boundary layer, containing high density of fine γ′, around the bonding zone.... 

Transient-liquid-phase (TLP) bonding of the IN-738LC base alloy with BNi-3 interlayer was investigated in this article. Effects of the TLP bonding thermal cycle on the base alloy were studied microstructurally and macrostructurally. Microscopic investigation revealed that the microstructural evolution in the TLP bonding area was affected substantially by the bonding temperature. Therefore, a critical bonding temperature (Tcr) was defined for TLP bonding of IN-738LC/ BNi-3/IN-738LC samples. Unlike bonding below Tcr, TLP bonding at temperatures higher than Tcr resulted in formation of individual γ-γ' colonies in the adjacent base alloy to TLP bonding zone and caused significant reduction in... 

The effects of the mold preheating and the silicon content of ductile iron on the percentage of carbides, graphite nodule counts and shrinkage volume were investigated. The results showed that the percentage of carbides and the shrinkage volume decreased when the mold preheating increased. The ductile iron with the carbon equivalent of 4.45% and the silicon content of 2.5% without any porosity defects was achieved when the mold preheating was 450 °C. Increasing the silicon content in the range of 2.1%-3.3% led to the increase in graphite nodule count and graphite size and the decrease in percentage of carbides. It is due to the increase in induced expansion pressure during the graphite... 

We propose an analytical circuit model for accurate analysis of one-dimensional periodic array of metallic strips. The proposed model is valid not only in subwavelength regime, but also for wavelengths shorter than the period of structure. The working frequency can reach the visible range and thus electromagnetic properties of periodic arrays of nano-slits can be analyzed by the proposed model. The proposed model remains valid for arbitrary incident angles even when nonspecular diffracted orders become propagating. Analytical expressions are derived explicitly in order to describe the parameters of the proposed circuit model. The circuit model is derived by assuming that only one guided mode... 

In this paper, combined effects of material degradation, p-delta, and foundation uplift are incorporated in a soil-structure-interaction (SSI) framework to assess seismic response of a single-degree-of-freedom system. The considered phenomenological systems represent a column with a lumped mass on top is placed on a rigid foundation. The foundation is mounted on Winkler springs and dashpots to take account of soil-foundation compliance and material/radiation damping. The springs are tensionless to guarantee that uplift is properly modelled. The model is verified for two specific limit cases with the code and literature to make sure that the model is capable of capturing SSI and foundation... 

Screening length at doped nanotube junctions, which is of primary importance in device applications, has been a controversial issue. Employing a fully self-consistent tight-binding approach, we show that, for both sharp and smooth external potential drops, the screening length is of the order of a few carbon-ring separations. This rather strong screening of the Coulomb interaction is accompanied by the oscillation of transferred charge at the junction, and is observed for both semiconducting and metallic tubes despite minor differences  

Hexapod robots gives us the ability to study walking robots without facing problems such as stability in many aspects. It has a great deal of flexibility in movement even if a leg becomes malfunctioned. Radially symmetric (hexagonal) hexapods have more flexibility in movement than rectangular leg alignments. Because of symmetry they can move in any direction and time efficiently. Inverse kinematic problem of this kind of hexapods is solved through a modular mobile view considering six degrees of freedom for the trunk. Then typical tripod and wave gaits are analyzed and simulated through the presented formulation. In Reinforcement Learning algorithm for walking it is important how to make... 

Adiabatic quantum algorithms are characterized by their run time and accuracy. The relation between the two is essential for quantifying adiabatic algorithmic performance yet is often poorly understood.We study the dynamics of a continuous time, adiabatic quantum search algorithm and find rigorous results relating the accuracy and the run time. Proceeding with estimates, we show that under fairly general circumstances the adiabatic algorithmic error exhibits a behavior with two discernible regimes: The error decreases exponentially for short times and then decreases polynomially for longer times.We show that the well-known quadratic speedup over classical search is associated only with the... 

Trucking plays a vital role in economic development in every country, especially countries where it serves as the backbone of the economy. The fast growth of economy in Iran as a developing country has also been accompanied by an alarming situation in terms of fatalities in truck-involved crashes, among the drivers and passengers of the trucks as well as the other vehicles involved. Despite the sizable efforts to investigate the truck-involved crashes, very little is known about the safety of truck movements in developing countries, and about the single-truck crashes worldwide. Thus, this study aims to uncover significant factors associated with injury severities sustained by truck drivers... 

In the present work, a combination of a dynamic explicit finite element model and the low cycle fatigue theory is used to simulate the steady-state abrasive wear occurring between an as-cast eutectoid steel and a carbide-tungsten disk. While the low cycle fatigue theory has been used to model wear in softer non-ferrous alloys, this work shows its applicability and accuracy for use in harder alloys, such as the eutectoid steel used in this research which is strengthened with added chromium. The novelty of this work lies in calculating the Manson-Coffin relation constants from a coupled finite element model with experimental tests instead of the previously used Slip line method. The D... 

For multiple testing problems, Benjamini and Hochberg (1995) proposed the false discovery rate (FDR) as an alternative to the family-wise error rate (FWER). Since then, researchers have provided many proofs to control the FDR under dierent assumptions. Storey et al. (2004) showed that the rejection threshold of a BH step-up procedure is a stopping time with respect to the reverse filtration generated by the pvalues and proposed a new proof based on the martingale theory. Following this work, martingale methods have been widely used to establish FDR control in various settings, but have been primarily applied to reverse filtration only. However, forward filtration can be more amenable for... 

EEG based biometrics using linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) is proposed in this paper. Human identification using electroencephalographic signal was done in this research. Reliability of most of the biometrics systems is not up to the mark because of the possibility of being faked or duplicated. Here, the brain signatures were used as a possible biometric identifier. A Database for Emotion Analysis using Physiological Signals containing 40 trials from each participant was used. International 10-20 system of EEG electrode placement was employed and data from Cz electrode was taken for this research. Some researches showed nice performance with few subjects. Here, 20 subjects were used from... 

In this work, we study the conductance of a general periodic quantum dot (QD) attached to ideal semi-infinite uniform metallic leads (nanocrystals), fully analytically. We propose a new general formula which relates conductance to transfer matrix (TM) for an isolated cell in the periodic dot. The equation describes exactly the dependence of the transmission coefficient (TC) on Fermi energy, dot-size, dot-lead coupling, and gate voltage for an arbitrary periodic dot. Then, we derive a nonlinear equation which gives the resonance, bound, and surface state energies. Finally, the TC has been calculated for gapless, single, and double gap models exactly. Moreover, we have also calculated the... 

The unique properties of NiTi alloy, such as its shape memory effect, super-elasticity and biocompatibility, make it ideal material for various applications such as aerospace, micro-electronics and medical device. In order to meet the requirement of increasing applications, great attention has been given to joining of this material to itself and to other materials during past few years. Laser welding has been known as a suitable joining technique for NiTi shape memory alloy. Hence, in this work, a comparative study on laser welding of NiTi wire to itself and to AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel wire has been made. Microstructures, mechanical properties and fracture morphologies of the...