Sharif Digital Repository

Tests have shown that concrete post-tensioned slab under heat condition suffer a significant reduction in stiffness and strength. Design and implementation of post-tensioned concrete slabs with large spans of industrial structures exposed to extreme variation in temperature can be possible with detailed research on its behavior under heating condition. In this study numerical modelling of PT concrete slabs with unbonded tendons under heating condition was created based on available test results in the literature. A parametric study has been carried out and the results are presented for concrete coefficient thermal expansion, thermal contact conductance between the concrete and the cables,... 

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are a route to highly efficient and clean power, which have been attracting interest due to the issues associated with the ever-increasing energy demand and pollution. However, their commercialization is hindered by the high operating temperatures (700-1000℃). One of the challenges faced by intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs) with operating temperature in the range of 500-700℃ is the increased overpotentials of the components, especially cathode. Lanthanide nickelates (Ln2NiO4+δ, Ln = La,Pr,Nd) with mixed ionic and electronic conduction (MIEC) have already been introduced as promising IT-SOFC cathode materials. Among them, Pr2NiO4+δ... 

Three distinct areas in linguistic studies are typically considered, namely, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Each category has a specific realm and deals with special linguistic phenomena. Presenting exact definition and clarification of the corresponding boundaries of each area is considered in both linguistics and philosophy of language. In order to explain the “meaning” for sentences of a language, this issue turns out to be vital. Representing the definition and evaluating the domain of each area, is the objective of the first chapter. In chapter two, some important semantic theories have been investigated. Since at first one semantic theory ought to clear its position about reference,... 

Reverse electrodialysis-based membranes are one of the most promising approaches to osmotic energy production. However, conventional reverse electrodialysis membranes have high strength and insufficient mass transfer, which leads to low power density and efficiency. In recent decades, the transport of ions at the nanoscale for the manufacture of reverse electrodialysis machines has attracted much attention. Compared to conventional devices, power density and energy conversion efficiency increase dramatically due to space constraints and electrostatic interactions at the nanoscale. Lamellar nanostructures, which can be easily fabricated by stacking two-dimensional nanosheets, may be a... 

Scale deposition is one of the reasons of formation damage during water injection process. This phenomenon often ocuures when two incompatible waters that interact chemically and precipitate minerals, mix within the reservoir. A typical example is sea water, with high concentration of sulfate ion and formation water, with high concentrations of calcium and/or barium ions. Mixing of these waters, therefore, can cause precipitation of calcium sulfate and/or barium sulfate. This study was conducted to investigate the permeability reduction caused by deposition of calcium and barium sulfates in carbonate cores from mixing of injected sea water and formation water in two flow rates and two... 

Tissue engineering is a science that tries to create new tissues by using cells, growth factors and appropriate biological materials in order to repair damaged organs and replace parts lost due to various reasons. In this research, the effect of adding mxene sheets on the oxidized alginate-gelatin hydrogel scaffold was investigated. For this purpose, mxene nanosheets were first synthesized by Max phase chemical etching and its synthesis was confirmed by X-ray diffraction spectroscoy, field emission scanning electron microscope, X-ray energy diffraction spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, UV-visible spectroscopy. Then, in order to prepare the scaffolds, different amounts of... 

In this research, various molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out and sensitivity of the crack propagation process to the simulation parameters including the load pattern, maximum applied strain, temperature, loading frequency, and percentage of defects is investigated. Moreover, the crack propagation in poly-crystalline structure is studied using a larger model consisting of several atomic crystals and the effect of the presence of crystals on crack growth is investigated. In the next step, a novel coupling technique is developed in the continuum–atomistic multi-scale analysis of temperature field problems. In this manner, a new thermostat is introduced based on the single-atom... 

In the real engineering problems, the existing materials in the nature or human-made materials, contain different heterogeneities from the view of small scale. Reinforced composite materials and porous media containing grains or micro-cracks are some examples of these materials. Due to the large amount of these heterogeneities as well as the small size, direct modelling of these micro-structures requires extremely high computational and memorial cost. Also, the equivalent models introduced in the literature, have strong limitations and therefore, cannot capture accurate behavior of the material. Hence, multiscale methods have been proposed in order to model these heterogeneous media with... 

The subject of control and stabilization of dc-dc series resonant converter (SRC) is still a challenge in power electronics. The conventional controller design and stability analysis for this converter are based on the model which is derived using the sinusoidal approximation and averaging followed by linearization about an operating point. This model is not applicable to a SRC that operates below resonance especially in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) because the sinusoidal approximation is no longer acceptable. However, a SRC may be purposely designed to operate in DCM. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the stability analysis and controller design using a more sophisticated... 

Attaining accurate information about satellite attitude is one of the most important requirements in space missions in order to improve the accuracy of the satellite control and mission objectives. Many different sensors such as sun sensor, star sensor, horizon sensor, etc. are used to estimate spacecraft’s attitude. Attitude estimation using temperature sensors is a topic that has recently been addressed by some related researchers because, they need less power and budget to operate in comparison with the other sensors.Accuracy and heat model performance improvement is the main purpose of this project. To achieve a more accurate perspective of space thermal model, and the way heat transfers... 

The objective of the present research, for the first time, was to configure a novel dynamic model to be applied in a general manner to simulate bioelectrochemical systems including microbial fuel cell and microbial electrolysis cell. Biochemical reactions engaged in organic substances degradation in both anolyte and biofilm were described by two anaerobic digestion models; Bernard’s anaerobic digestion model and ADM1. In addition, the bioelectrogenesis and electron transfer were modeled based on the direct electron transfer mechanism across the conductive biofilm. The biofilm simulation was established upon the one-dimensional distributions of substrates and microorganisms. In this study,... 

The bronchial tree consists of two main parts: conducting airways and respiratory airways. Parametric Lindenmayer System (L-System) has been used for modeling of the structure. The conducting airways are divided into two parts: central region consisting of trachea up to segmental bronchi and bronchioles located in the bronchopulmonary segments. The boundary of these segments has been found by image processing techniques. Stochastic Parametric L-system has been used for modeling of acinar region. To find the characteristic properties of conducting airways and respiratory bronchioles, an intelligent method has been developed. The parameters of the model are either age dependent or... 

With the advent of new computer technologies, computational analysis on the human organs has become tremendously popular in the field of medical science. Every year thousands of people suffer irreversible eye damages pertaining to lack of adequate medications. In this regards, enormous amount of money is spent annually but mostly in vain due to the irreversibility and silent nature of eye diseases like glaucoma. Yet more precise studies on the topic are requisite. In this thesis, a validated half 3D finite volume model of human eye considering the fluid flow in collaboration with heat transfer in the steady state utilizing the well known discretized bio-heat transfer equation coupled with... 

Integrated silicon photonic networks have attracted a lot of attention in the recent decade due to their potential for low-power and high-bandwidth communications. However, despite high bandwidth and low-loss data communication capability, optical NoCs are susceptible to on-chip temperature variations. In these promising networks, packets’ erroneous routing due to thermally-induced resonant wavelength shift of microring resonators are common temporary faults unless heat control mechanism is adopted. In other words, thermal drifts may paralyze wavelength-based operation of these networks. On the other hand, employing a heat control mechanism in an ONoC necessitates developing thermal fault... 

The instability and contamination leakage through tailings dams is one of the major problems of them. These dams are usually constructed through self-consolidation with minimum compaction effort, so special attention must be given to the stability of these structures. In addition, tailings dams contain considerable amounts of metals and chemically soluble contaminants resulting from mining processes in their reservoirs, making them more likely to leak contamination from the dam's foundation and body, causing pollution downstream. The infiltration of various chemical contaminants into the soil may alter its hydraulic and resistance properties. Laboratory studies have shown that pore solution... 

Shallow geothermal energy is a renewable and sustainable form of energy that has the potential to help alleviate the growing climate and energy crisis. The most common system used to extract shallow geothermal energy is the ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. The concept of using underground structures in exploiting shallow geothermal energy for space heating and cooling has received increasing attention. This study focuses on the use of geothermal tunnels as a means of extracting shallow geothermal energy.This research examines the effects of different heat transfer mechanisms, and highlights the effects of this phenomenon by focusing on the effects of natural convection around the... 

The acid fracturing process is a thermal, hydraulic, mechanical, geochemical and geomechanical coupled phenomena in which the behavior of these variables are interrelated. To model the flow behavior of an acid into a fracture, mass and momentum balance equations are used to draw 3D velocity and pressure profiles. Part of the fluid diffuses or leaks off into the fracture walls and dissolves part of the fracture face.An acid balance equation is used to draw the concentration profile of the acid and to account for the quantity of rock dissolved. An algorithm is developed for this process to generate the final conductivity distribution after fracture closure. The objective of modeling acid... 

Due to the growing need for plasmonic wavs in microwave and terahertz spectra, a periodic arrangement of one-dimensional cut-through slits is investigated and an equivalent model based on the effective medium theory is derived. In contrast to the all previous attempts that were successful in mimicking only the zeroth-order diffracted waves, the proposed effective medium is capable of mimicking all diffraction orders. The parameters of the equivalent model are established by comparing the scattered waves of the semi-homogeneous medium and those of the main structure obtained by invoking the rigorous mode matching approach based on the single mode approximation inside the slits. This medium is... 

In this thesis, new boundary conduction mode boost PFCs are proposed and implemented for different power levels according to the characteristics and requirements of each power level. For medium power applications, we have proposed a new zero voltage switching PFC based on a synchronous boost converter which is controllable with conventional boundary conduction mode PFC control ICs without requiring any additional timing adjustment control circuits other than a special high side driver that consists of only low voltage components. Based on mathematical calculations, we have proposed two sipmle circuit solutions to reduce the high level of line current zero crossing distortion in the proposed... 

The global wind energy capacity has been increased rapidly in the past few years and became the fastest developing renewable energy technology. Small Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generators (PMSG’s) are widely used in low power wind turbines because they don’t need a gearbox and complicated control systems. In order to inject the electrical power generated by PMSG to the grid, an AC-DC-AC power electronic converter is required. A novel low cost efficient AC-DC converter is proposed to obtain the maximum power per ampere of PMSG. The new structure for the rectifier stage of the AC/AC converter is based on a DCM operated SEPIC converter and can convert the variable voltage and frequency of...