Sharif Digital Repository

Despite the seismic vulnerability of non-structural Exterior Infill Walls (EIWs), their resilient design has received minimal attention. This study addresses the issue by proposing a novel framework for predicting possible damage states of EIWs. The framework benefits from an automated combination of Building Information Modeling as a visualized 3D database of the building's components and the Machine Learning classification as the prediction engine. The framework's applicability is studied in a Proof of Concept example of the exterior walls of the buildings damaged in the 2017 earthquake in Kermanshah, Iran. The Extremely Randomized Trees classifier produced the best results for predicting... 

Control Performance Assessment (CPA) and tuning of PID controllers are studied in this paper. We propose a framework for systematic analysis of the tradeoff between the structural complexity of the controller and its performance. As the measure of the controller performance, an LQG based index is used. The problem is augmented with an additional term which forces sparsity on the complexity of a decentralized PID controller. The desired complexity is controlled via a weighting parameter which determines the cost of each additional element (i.e., P, I, and D terms). The result is a decentralized multivariable PID controller in which the complexity of each loop controller is optimized such that... 

Control Performance Assessment (CPA) and tuning of PID controllers are studied in this paper. We propose a framework for systematic analysis of the tradeoff between the structural complexity of the controller and its performance. As the measure of the controller performance, an LQG based index is used. The problem is augmented with an additional term which forces sparsity on the complexity of a decentralized PID controller. The desired complexity is controlled via a weighting parameter which determines the cost of each additional element (i.e., P, I, and D terms). The result is a decentralized multivariable PID controller in which the complexity of each loop controller is optimized such that... 

One of the distributed solutions for scaling Web Search Engines (WSEs) may be peer-to-peer (P2P) structures. P2P structures are successfully being used in many systems with lower cost than ordinary distributed solutions. However, the fact that they can also be beneficial for large-scale WSEs is still a controversial subject. In this paper, we introduce challenges in using P2P structures to design a large-scale WSE. Considering different types of P2P systems, we introduce possible P2P models for this purpose. Using some quantitative evaluation, we compare these models from different aspects to find out which one is the best in order to construct a large-scale WSE. Our studies indicate that... 

Crack detection is a vital component of structural health monitoring. Several computer vision-based studies have been proposed to conduct crack detection on concrete surfaces, but most cases have difficulties in detecting fine cracks. This study proposes a deep learning-based model for automatic crack detection on the concrete surface. Our proposed model is an encoder–decoder model which uses EfficientNet-B7 as the encoder and U-Net’s modified expansion path as the decoder. To overcome the challenges in the detection of fine cracks, we trained our model with a new training strategy on images extracted from an open-access dataset and achieved a 96.98% F1 score for unseen test data. Moreover,... 

The purpose of this research is to explain the surface modification of fabricated polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membranes using UV-initiated graft polymerization at different irradiation times (15, 30, 60, and 90 s) and various acrylamide concentrations (10, 20, and 30 g L−1). Also, coating of membranes surface with various concentrations of TiO2 nanoparticles (10, 20, 30, and 50 ppm) followed by the same UV irradiation times was investigated. After that, the membranes modification was done by grafting of acrylamide blended with TiO2 nanoparticles via UV irradiation. The characterization of membranes surface properties and their performance were systematically carried out. The results... 

In this study, aiming at hexavalent chromium removal from aqueous solutions, different strategies were proposed for developing hydrophilic and surface functional polysulfone (PSf) membrane. In addition to PSf membrane, three different types of membranes were prepared by addition of SiO2 nano-particles to the dope solution and/or by deposition of polydopamine (PDA) layer on the surface of the membranes. The membranes (i.e. PSf, PSf/PDA, PSf/SiO2 and PSf/SiO2/PDA) were characterized by different techniques. The membranes' transport properties and the separation performance were studied using a filtration unit operated at a continuous dead-end flow mode. The kinetics and the separation... 

Electric distribution system is one of the most important parts of power systems owing to delivering electricity to consumers. The major amount of losses in a power system is in distribution level. Optimal distributed generation (DG) placement and sizing have a significant effect on power loss reduction in distribution systems. In this paper, a mixed integer conic programming (MICP) approach is presented to solve the problem of DG placement, sizing, and hourly generation with the aim of reducing power loss and costs in radial distribution systems. The costs include both investment and operational costs of DGs. Hourly load variations are considered in the model. To verify the effectiveness of... 

The major obstacles in gas separation by mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) are poor dispersion and poor affinity between polymers and fillers. The present study demonstrates that these challenges can be overcome appropriately by utilizing a series of synthesized stand-alone MMMs. The matrix used was polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and the MMMs were synthesized by in situ polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) in the presence of UiO-66, NH2-UiO-66 and vinyl group attached UiO-66. In situ polymerization of MMA in the presence of vinyl attached UiO-66 resulted in PMMA grafted UiO-66 with a high degree of grafting. Microscopic analysis by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM)... 

The current investigation was to present composite membranes with strong interfacial adhesion between top polymeric selective layer and the bottom micro-porous support layer with appropriate gas permeation behavior and practically suitable processing characteristics. To this end, a series of acrylate-terminated polyurethanes (APUs) based on poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) with different molecular weights (Mn) of 600, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 4000 g/mol, toluene diisocyanate (TDI), and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) were synthesized. Composite membranes were prepared with UV-curable acrylate-terminated polyurethane/acrylate diluent (APUAs) as selective layer and polyester/polysulfone (PS/PSF) as... 

A metal organic framework (MOF) modified with amino group (NH2-UiO-66) was functionalized with glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) via ring opening reaction between the amine species in the framework and epoxy groups in GMA. The products were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), and N2 adsorption–desorption measurements to monitor their textural properties before and after functionalization. The BET surface area, pore volume, and pore... 

In this study an experimental design was developed to optimize the performance and structure of a membrane-based parallel-plate liquid desiccant dehumidifier used in air conditioning regeneration system which operates under high humidity weather conditions. We conducted a series of polymeric porous membranes with different compositions fabricated that were prepared with various weight percentages of polysulfone (PSU), mixed with N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and dimethyl form amide (DMF) solvents. Furthermore, the designed experiments were performed under various operating conditions, indicating that the dehumidification efficiency declines with increasing flow rate, temperature, and... 

An optical amplifier followed by a bistable element has been statistically analyzed before [1]. In this manuscript, output noise analysis represents, then signal to noise ratios (SNR) are calculated either for input or output. It will be shown that noise reduction, can be achieved by a proper selection of parameters  

In this study, the effects of the type and content of reactive diluents on the permeation/separation of carbon dioxide/nitrogen (CO2/N2) through acrylate-terminated polyurethane (APU)-acrylate/acrylic diluent (APUA) composite membranes was investigated. A series of APUs based on poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-1000 g mol−1, toluene diisocyanate, and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate was synthesized and then diluted with several reactive diluents. The results obtained from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier transform infrared analyses showed that the microphase interference of hard and soft segments increased with increasing reactive diluent content. Furthermore, with increasing alkene... 

In this paper, an extended finite element method is employed to simulate the presence of discontinuities caused by the contact surface. In X-FEM, the need for mesh adaption to interface is neglected and the process is accomplished by partitioning the domain with some triangular sub-elements whose Gauss points are used for integration of the elements. The modified level set technique and the Heaviside enrichment function are employed to approximate the discontinuous displacement field of elements located on the contact surface. The penalty method is used to impose the contact constraints and establish the non-penetration condition. An efficient numerical algorithm is employed to model the... 

In this paper, a restricted structure of PID controller is proposed for automobile gas turbine by considering a LQG cost function. So PID Controller coefficients are calculated by minimizing this cost function. One of the most important characteristics of this approach, its ability to design various structure PID controllers by solving optimization problem only for one time, moreover it can approximate main optimization problem by a repetitive Quadratic optimization Problem (QP). This approach is convex optimization and has an analytic solution; therefore its calculations are not complicated. In defined cost function, there are two weighting functions, control error and control action; they... 

In this research, low density polyethylene (LDPE) and poly ethylene-co-vinyl acetate (EVA) were used as polymeric materials. The methods used to produce LDPE and EVA was Film Blowing and ThermalDry Phase Inversion. The amount of permeability, diffusivity and solubility of O2 and CO2 through above polymers were obtained and also the effect of temperature, pressure and film thickness for LDPE was measured. The Barometric method was considered and measurements were based on ASTM standard. To study film cross-section morphology in EVA, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was applied. From results we considered that the amount of permeability and solubility were decreased by increasing film... 

The purpose of this investigation is to develop a model for prediction of topologically closed-packed (TCP) phases formation in superalloys. In this study, artificial neural networks (ANN), using several different network architectures, were used to investigate the complex relationships between TCP phases and chemical composition of superalloys. In order to develop an optimum ANN structure, more than 200 experimental data were used to train and test the neural network. The results of this investigation shows that a multilayer perceptron (MLP) form of the neural networks with one hidden layer and 10 nodes in the hidden layer has the lowest mean absolute error (MAE) and can be accurately used... 

The purpose of this study is to investigate separation performance of poly(ether-b-amide6) (Pebax1657)/glycerol triacetate (GTA) gel membranes for CO2 removal from H2, N2 and CH4. GTA as a low molecular weight and highly CO2-phill compound was added to membrane structure at various weight fractions, 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of Pebax, to fabricate a new high solubility selective membrane with improved performance. Permeation of pure gases was studied at different temperatures from 25 to 65°C and pressures from 4 to 24bar and ideal selectivities were calculated. Results indicated enhancement in permeation for all tested gases. For example, at a pressure of 4bar and a temperature of 25°C, membrane... 

Voltammetric behavior of two mercaptopyrimidine derivatives (2-thiouracil and 2-thiobarbituric acid) has been studied by cyclic voltammetry at a cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc)-modified carbon-paste electrode. The results of voltammetric determinations showed that the CoPc in the matrix of modified electrode acts as catalyst for electrooxidation of these thiols (RSH), lowering the overpotential of the reaction and significantly increasing the sensitivity for detection of thiols in neutral conditions. The results of voltammetric and polarization measurements in solutions with various pHs were used for prediction of the mechanism of electrocatalytic oxidation at the surface of modified electrode....