Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, design, simulation and optimization of a novel electrothermally-activated polymeric microactuator capable of generating combination of bidirectional lateral and rotational motions are presented. The composite structure of this actuator is consisted of a symmetric meandered shape silicon skeleton, a SU8 thermal expandable polymer and a thin film chrome layer heater. This actuator is controlled by applying appropriate voltages on its four terminals. With the purpose of dimension optimization, a numerical parametric study is executed. The modeled actuator which is 1560 ?m long, 156 ?m wide and 30 ?m thick, demonstrates a remarkable lateral displacement of 23 ?m at power... 

In this study, the influence of volumetric flow rate and inclination angle of air jet is evaluated on the performance of a Saccardo ventilation system in a straight rectangular tunnel in case of fire. Simultaneous effects of volumetric flow rate and inclination angle of jet exiting the Saccardo nozzle on the behavior of smoke plume is considered by studying the structure of velocity profile before the fire source. It is found that this factor has a remarkable influence on the behavior of smoke plume and therefore, on the temperatures experienced near the fire. Besides, the influence of tunnel slope on the performance of the Saccardo system to sweep the plume is investigated. It is shown that... 

Prediction of shear plane angle is a way for prediction of the mechanism of chip formation, machining forces and so on. In this study, Merchant and Lee-Shaffer theories are used to predict the shear plane angles and cutting forces in machining of Al/SiC p MMC. The experimental cutting forces are compared with the calculated cutting force based on shear plane angles extracted from Merchant and Lee-Shaffer theories. The variation of these cutting forces with cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut has been discussed. The results show that Merchant theory may be used as a good method for prediction of chip formation in machining of Al/SiC p MMC  

In the present study, the neutron noise, i.e. the stationary fluctuation of the neutron flux around its mean value is calculated based on the 2G, 3D neutron diffusion theory. To this end, the static neutron calculation is performed at the first stage. The spatial discretization of the neutron diffusion equation is performed based on linear approximation of Galerkin Finite Element Method (GFEM) using unstructured tetrahedron elements. Using power iteration method, neutron flux and corresponding eigen-value are obtained. The results are then benchmarked against the valid results for VVER-1000 (3D) benchmark problem. In the second stage, the neutron noise equation is solved using GFEM and... 

The issue of the new elastic terms discovered in the nonlinear dynamic model of an enhanced nonlinear 3D Euler-Bernoulli beam is discussed. While the elastic orientation is negligible, the nonlinear dynamic model governing tension-compression, torsion and two spatial bendings is presented. Considering this model, some new elastic terms can be identified in the variation of elastic potential energy in each bending motion equation, and in each transverse shear force. Due to the new terms, each term of a bending equation and a transverse shear force, finds a counterpart in the other bending equation and transverse shear force, but the equations remain asymmetric. The new terms have arisen,... 

This paper presents the application of a relatively new technique of fluidic thrust-vectoring (FTV), named Co-flow, for a small gas-turbines. The performance is obtained via experiment and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The effects of a few selected parameters including the engine throttle setting, the secondary air mass-flow rate and the secondary slot height upon thrust-vectoring performance are provided. Thrust vectoring performance is characterised by the ability of the system to deflect the engine thrust with respect to the delivered secondary air mass-flow rate. The experimental study was conducted under static conditions in an outdoor environment at Cranfield University workshop... 

Cell formation and cellular layout design are the two main steps in designing a cellular manufacturing system (CMS). In this paper, we will present an integrated methodology based on a new concept of similarity coefficients and the use of simulated annealing (SA) as an optimization tool. In comparison with the previous works, the proposed methodology takes into account relevant production data, such as alternative process routings and the production volumes of parts. The SA-based optimization tool is parallel in nature and, hence, can reduce the computation time significantly, so it is capable of handling large-scale problems. Finally, the SA-based procedure is compared with a genetic... 

Numerical modeling of the fully coupled phenomena of solid deformation-fluid flow in partially saturated porous media is of great interest in many branches of science and engineering. In this study, a new formulation based on one of the famous mesh-less methods, called Element-Free Galerkin (EFG), is developed to simulate the water and air movement through variably saturated soils. For this purpose, the governing partial differential equations including the equilibrium equation and mass conservation laws for each fluid phase are discretized in space using the same EFG shape functions. To enforce the essential boundary conditions, penalty method is employed. Temporal discretization is... 

In high Knudsen number flow regimes microgas flow analysis may not be performed accurately using the classical CFD methods. Alternatively, the gas flow through micro-geometries can be investigated reliably using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. Our concern in this paper is to use DSMC to study the mixing of two gases in entering simultaneously into a microchannel. The mixing process is assumed to be complete when the mass composition of each species deviates by no more than ±1% from its equilibrium composition. To enhance the mixing process, we focus on the effects of inlet-outlet pressure difference and the pressure ratios of the two incoming CO and N2 streams on the mixing... 

Past experiences have shown that a local wind can considerably affect the performances of powerplant cooling towers and factory chimneys. In thermal powerplants, the performance of Rankin cycles would reduce if the temperature of its condenser increases. This issue is very important to powerplants located in countries with strong local winds. To remedy the malperformance of a natural cooling tower in windy conditions, it is required to understand the physics of flow around cooling towers more clearly. One adverse physics is known as the wind covering problem which can drastically affect the natural draught through a cooling tower in windy conditions. In this paper, we focus on wind-covering... 

In the present study, the comparison between the results obtained from the linear and quadratic approximations of the Galerkin Finite Element Method (GFEM) for neutronic reactor core calculation was reported. The sensitivity analysis of the calculated neutron multiplication factor, neutron flux and power distributions in the reactor core vs. the number of the unstructured tetrahedron elements and order of the considered shape function was performed. The cost of the performed calculation using linear and quadratic approximation was compared through the calculation of the FOM. The neutronic core calculation was performed for both rectangular and hexagonal geometries. Both the criticality and... 

In this study, we apply a novel numerical technique for modeling the propagation of mechanical wave in the human arteries using the multiscale method. We define a particle region characterized by molecular dynamics (MD) method which is surrounded by a continuous region characterized by a finite element (FE) method. The interface between the two models are defined so as to minimize spurious reflections at the interface. This is a preliminary work for the modeling of the mechanical stability of atherosclerosis plaques using multiscale method. The model offered has extensive application in cell mechanics  

In this paper, a combination of the Lagrangian meshfree method of SPH and Polyhedral DEM is presented to simulate the interaction between the free surface of water and solid objects possessing sharp edges and flat surfaces, such as armour units of breakwaters. Both SPH and DEM schemes are validated successfully against experimental data. The numerical scheme is utilized to inspect the stability of concrete cubic armours in rubble-mound breakwaters through systematic analyses with various geometrical parameters and environmental conditions. The numerical results regarding the required dimensions of the cubic blocks for providing stability of the armour units under the wave attack are compared... 

A large amount of research in computational mechanics has biased toward atomistic simulations. This trend, on one hand, is due to the increased demand to perform computations in nanoscale and, on the other hand, is due to the rather simple applications of pairwise potentials in modeling the interactions between atoms of a given crystal. The Cauchy–Born (CB) hypothesis has been used effectively to model the behavior of crystals under different loading conditions, in which the comparison with molecular dynamics simulations presents desirable coincidence between the results. A number of research works have been devoted to the validity of CB hypothesis and its application in post-elastic limit.... 

This paper presents the results of an analytical study on the dynamic characteristics of the Shaking Table facilities at Sharif University. This 3 degree of freedom shaking table is driven by 3 servo-control hydraulic actuators, and consists of a 12 ton, 4m×4m×0.6m steel deck. The main objective of this investigation is to identify the degree of flexibility of the deck, and its adverse effects in causing errors in the simulation of seismic effects on different structural specimens. Many frame specimens of different weights and configurations are subjected to seismic motions, and their responses are calculated using FE models. Some of these models were designed to account for eccentric... 

In the past few decades, numerical simulation of multiphase flow systems has received increasing attention because of its importance in various fields of science and engineering. In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed for the analysis of simultaneous flow of two fluids through porous media. The numerical approach is fairly new based on the element-free Galerkin (EFG) method. The EFG is a type of mesh-less method which has rarely been used in the field of flow in porous media. The weak forms of the governing partial differential equations are derived by applying the weighted residual method and Galerkin technique. The penalty method is utilized for imposition of the... 

Hydraulic fracturing (HF) of underground formations has widely been used in different fields of engineering. Despite the technological advances in techniques of in situ HF, the industry uses semi-analytical tools to design HF treatment. This is due to the complex interaction among various mechanisms involved in this process, so that for thorough simulations of HF operations a fully coupled numerical model is required. In this study, using element-free Galerkin (EFG) mesh-less method, a new formulation for numerical modeling of hydraulic fracture propagation in porous media is developed. This numerical approach, which is based on the simultaneous solution of equilibrium and continuity... 

Fully coupled flow-deformation analysis of deformable multiphase porous media saturated by several immiscible fluids has attracted the attention of researchers in widely different fields of engineering. This paper presents a new numerical tool to simulate the complicated process of two-phase fluid flow through deforming porous materials using a mesh-free technique, called element-free Galerkin (EFG) method. The numerical treatment of the governing partial differential equations involving the equilibrium and continuity equations of pore fluids is based on Galerkin’s weighted residual approach and employing the penalty method to introduce the essential boundary conditions into the weak forms.... 

In this study, an extrinsically enriched element free Galerkin (EFG) method is proposed for the thermo-hydro-mechanical simulation of saturated porous media. By taking advantage of partition of unity property of moving least square shape functions, weak discontinuities such as material interfaces are modeled using the Ridge enrichment function and impermeable strong discontinuities are simulated using the Heaviside function. Some guidelines are proposed for the selection of EFG numerical parameters to ensure the stability and accuracy of the results. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the capability of the proposed approach for fully coupled THM analysis of discontinuous porous...