Sharif Digital Repository

Particle retention and clearance is a major concern in the treatment of pulmonary diseases. Inhaled materials into the nasal and lung airways include gases/vapors, liquid droplets and soluble/insoluble particulate matter which can be toxic or therapeutic (or both). For example, nanoparticles (NPs), as part of nanomedicine, are now being used as drug carriers for passive and active targeting of solid tumors and inflamed tissue. However, natural and especially manmade NPs can also be harmful, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), asbestos fibers and ambient toxic pollutants, based on epidemiological and pathological studies of occupational and environmental exposures. In fact, ultrafine particles... 

In this thesis, a special case of the Traveling Purchaser Problem (TPP) is considered in which instead of one vehicle there are multiple vehicles as purchasers. Furthermore, the vehicles start their path from a set of starting points and after visiting a number of markets they return to the depot. Moreover, each of the products needs a special loading condition and the vehicles have multiple compartments to meet these loading constraints and the products are loaded in their appropriate compartments. This problem is at first modeled as a MIP formulation and then by decomposing the problem a Column Generation procedure is developed to solve the problem. To enhance the speed of the column...