Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper we consider the problem of joint location and pricing optimization for a firm in a heterogeneous market producing a single product. We assume that customers have a different willingness to pay for the product. We consider two classes of customers who are not uniformly distributed in the market and develop an analytical framework to determine the relationship between the optimal price and location of the firm. We demonstrate that the optimal price and location are closely related to each other, and thus there is a need for simultaneous optimization of the price and location. We provide both analytical and numerical results to illustrate the impact of transportation cost and the... 

This paper presents a biomechanical model with seven degrees of freedom as a seated human exposed to vertical vibration. Experimental data is used to find the stiffness and damping parameters of the model. The data includes values of seat to head transmissibility, driving point mechanical impedance and apparent mass. The multi-objective function is used to obtain theoretical results similar to three different experimental cases. The unknown coefficients are calculated by a genetic algorithm. Improved results, in comparison with previous models, are achieved from the presented model. Next, this modified model is assembled on a quarter car and parameters of the cushion and the suspension... 

In this work, steady state and dynamic performances of quaternary distillation column sequences designed based on steady state and dynamic cost functions have been investigated. To quantify the dynamic performance, product losses due to disturbances have been considered in the objective function. In addition, variations of operating costs such as utilities have been considered in the objective function. To separate a quaternary mixture into four products, 22 configurations have been used. It has been observed that the feed composition, disturbance frequency and magnitude affect the dynamic behavior strongly. To decrease the optimization computational load, a scheme that provides a suboptimal... 

This paper presents a simultaneous methodology for the optimal design of integrated water and energy networks. Heat transfer coefficients are not constant but are related to the velocity of the streams. Pressure drops in heat exchangers and related power costs are considered. The model is a non-convex MINLP (mixed-integer non-linear program) model, in which the objective is to minimize the total annual costs. To accomplish this task, a new superstructure is proposed that follows the energy and mass streams from sources to sinks, enabling us to consider heat exchange between streams in two separate stages of the HENS before and after mixers. Furthermore, heat recovery from wastewater is... 

In this paper, the ability of the neural network based system identification for aircraft modeling and simulation is investigated. The focus of this paper is to obtain methods for improving generalization of the neural network based aircraft models which are going to be used in aircraft simulators. The genetic algorithm is used to simultaneously train and optimize a modified Elman network architecture. It is shown that this method improves generalization in system identification of aircraft dynamics  

Summary Increasing interest in smart grids exhibits its potential benefits for providing reliable, secure, efficient, environmental friendly and sustainable electricity from renewable energy resources. Here, reliability models of four types of renewable and hybrid distributed generation were developed. A fuzzy multi-objective function was suggested for simultaneous optimization of reliability, electricity generation cost, grid loss and voltage profile. This not only considers uncertainty of renewable energy resources but also provides smart generation dispatching. An efficient reliability index consisting of energy and interruption frequency terms was also defined. A novel hybrid heuristic... 

In this paper, assuming porosity varies only along thickness direction, its optimal distributions in functionally graded porous (FGP) beams are tailored. Two multi-objective optimization problems are defined. In the first one, critical buckling load and mass are optimized simultaneously while in the second one, we concentrate on simultaneous optimization of mass and fundamental frequency. Employing Timoshenko beam theory, we present governing equations for a FGP beam. For the solution, we use Ritz method and propose appropriate trial functions according to the boundary conditions (Hinged-Hinged, Clamped-Clamped, Clamped-Hinged and Clamped-Free). Since the porosity distribution along... 

Optimization of the placement and operational conditions of oil wells plays an important role in the development of the oilfields. Several automatic optimization algorithms have been used by different authors in recent years. However, different optimizers give different results depending on the nature of the problem. In the current study, a comparison between the genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithms was made to optimize the operational conditions of the injection and production wells and also to optimize the location of the injection wells in a southern Iranian oilfield. The current study was carried out with the principal purpose of evaluating and comparing the...