Sharif Digital Repository

This study presents an innovative approach for the integration of flood hazard into the site selection of detention basins. The site selection process is conducted by taking into account multiple criteria and disciplines. Hydraulic modeling results derived from stormwater management model are employed by Technique for the Order of Prioritization by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to determine flood hazard score. The score generated by TOPSIS is used in a spatial multi-criteria decision-making site selection framework. Applying the framework, a suitability map is generated in which primary locations for detention basin placement are determined. The method is demonstrated through the... 

Facility location problem is one of the strategic logistical drivers within the supply chain which is a hard to solve optimization problem. In this study, we focus on the uncapacitated single-source multi-product production/ distribution facility location problem with the presence of set-up cost. To efficiently tackle this decision problem, two Lagrangian-based heuristics are proposed one of which incorporates integer cuts to strengthen the formulation. Local search operators are also embedded within these methods to improve the upper bounds as the search progresses. Three sets of instances with various characteristics are generated and used to evaluate the performance of the proposed... 

Network pricing is an effective transportation demand management scheme to reduce traffic and control air pollution, particularly in CBDs. In this study, congested area cordon entry and Park-and-Ride (P/R) facility use are priced for automobiles. Increase in these prices may reduce private auto demand by impelling some of the auto passengers to use public transport from the origin of their trips, or encouraging them to park their cars at the P/R facilities and use buses, or pay the entrance fee and drive inside the cordon. A Markov decision process has been devised to find an optimal policy for pricing the P/R facilities and cordon entry in a city within a variable demand context. This... 

We propose modified hybridizations of genetic algorithms with some neighborhood search based metaheuristics. In our hybrid algorithms, we consider gradually increasing probability for the application of the neighborhood search procedure on the best individuals as the number of iterations of the genetic algorithm increases. We implement the proposed hybrid algorithms and compare their performance with two other recently proposed hybrid algorithms which, in contrast, use the neighborhood search procedure on all the individuals of the population, two hybrid algorithms applying simulated annealing on the best individual in the papulation in every iteration and three non-hybrid metaheuristic... 

Developing ocean energy extraction, including ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), has been of interest to researchers for many decades. OTEC is a free fuel technology and could be used as a baseline power generation. These advantages plus the engineering challenge have resulted in researchers striving to design and construct prototype devices. Making use of worldwide experience, all sections of a conceptual design including site selection, technical specifications and cost estimation were carried out for an Iranian OTEC power plant. A 5 MW closed cycle floating plant with an annual average temperature difference of 22°C was chosen at a 33 km distance from Chabahar harbour. Deep seawater... 

In this research, a site selection method for wind-compressed air energy storage (wind-CAES) power plants was developed and Iran was selected as a case study for modeling. The parameters delineated criteria for potential wind development localities for wind-CAES power plant sites. One important consequence of this research was the identification of the wind energy potential for wind-CAES sites. The theoretical wind energy potential of Iran of greater than 50 W/m2 was identified from a wind atlas of Iran. The model produced factor maps by considering the boundary conditions of the input data and created geo-databases from the outputs maps. The main factor maps were electrical grids and... 

Finding the most suitable location among some alternatives is one of the most important factors which could affect the whole success of the construction of a facility. The facility site selection is a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem including both quantitative and qualitative criteria. Due to some difficulties in many real life cases, defining the exact values for MCDM problems is almost impractical and, it's preferable to use fuzzy values (fuzzy numbers) in this type of problems. In this study, we try to determine a suitable location for a Sewage Treatment Plant by using a new fuzzy weighted average (FWA) method. For this aim, ten different criteria is defined and then, by... 

We consider a multi-facility location problem in the presence of a line barrier with the starting point of the barrier uniformly distributed. The objective is to locate n new facilities among m existing facilities minimising the summation of the weighted expected rectilinear barrier distances of the locations of new facilities and new and existing facilities. The proposed problem is designed as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model, conveniently transformed into a mixed-integer quadratic programming model. The computational results show that the LINGO 9.0 software package is effective in solving problems with small sizes. For large problems, we propose two meta-heuristic algorithms,... 

Bus network design is an important problem in public transportation. In practice, some parameters of this problem are uncertain. We propose two models for the bus terminal location problem with fuzzy parameters. In the first formulation, the number of passengers corresponding to each node is a fuzzy number. In the second formulation, an additional assumption of fuzzy neighborhood is considered. These problems being NP-hard, we use a genetic algorithm (GA) and a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm for solving them. We also propose an idea to hybridize these algorithms. In our hybrid algorithm, SA is applied as a neighborhood search procedure of GA on the best individual of the population,... 

Trip distribution is considered as the second step in urban transportation planning. The important factors which affect trip distribution are the characteristics of origins and destinations and travel impedance between O/D. Trip distribution traditionally models with the deterministic variables although it seems affective variables in trip distribution molding are based on human perceptions. Since perceptions of people vary from one person to another, thus variables are imprecise and vague. Fuzzy approaches are proper tools of modeling non-deterministic variables. In this paper we present fuzzy estimation models of trip distribution for discretionary trip purposes including: shopping,... 

Bus terminal assignment with the objective of maximizing public transportation service is known as bus terminal location problem (BTLP). We formulate the BTLP, a problem of concern in transportation industry, as a p-uncapacitated facility location problem (p-UFLP) with distance constraint. The p-UFLP being NP-hard (Krarup and Pruzan, 1990), we propose evolutionary algorithms for its solution. According to the No Free Lunch theorem and the good efficiency of the distinctive preserve recombination (DPX) operator, we design a new recombination operator for solving a BTLP by new evolutionary and memetic algorithms namely, genetic local search algorithms (GLS). We also define the potential... 

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) decorated with Cu2O particles were grown on a Ni catalyst layer deposited on a Cu substrate by thermal chemical vapor deposition from liquid petroleum gas. Ni catalyst nanoparticles with different sizes were produced in an electroplating system at 45 °C using the corrosive effect of H2SO4 which was added to solution. These nanoparticles provide the nucleation sites for CNT growth avoiding the need for a buffer layer. The surface morphology of the Ni catalyst films and CNT growth over this catalyst was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). High temperature surface segregation of the Cu substrate into the Ni catalyst layer and its exposition to O2 at...