Sharif Digital Repository

The electrodeposition of nickel was studied using electrochemical techniques in different electrolytes and various agents. The voltammetry analysis clearly showed that the electrodeposition of nickel was a diffusion-controlled process associated with a typical nucleation process. The current transients represented instantaneous nucleation with a typical three-dimensional (3D) growth mechanism. Scharifker's equations were derived for instantaneous and progressive nucleation of the 3D growth of the spherical centers under diffusion-controlled condition. The number of nucleation sites increased with the increment in overpotential and Ni 2+ concentration. Atomic force microscopy was used to... 

Single-phase ac-dc Power Factor Correction (PFC) rectifiers have attracted considerable attention in recent years due to the adoption of increasingly stringent power quality regulations. In this paper a nonlinear model predictive controller design for a single-phase Flyback PFC rectifier is presented. After approximation of the tracking error in the receding horizon by its Taylor-series expansion to a specified order, an analytic solution to the model predictive control (MPC) is developed and a closed-loop nonlinear predictive controller is introduced. The main advantage of this digital control method is that unity power factor can be achieved over wide input voltage, load current range and... 

A new composite adaptive control strategy is developed for both of the reduction of cancer tumor volume and the online identification of tumor parameters during the drug delivery process in chemotherapy. This control strategy is developed for three different nonlinear mathematical cell-kill models of the cancer tumor including the log-kill hypothesis, Norton-Simon hypothesis and Emax hypothesis. All of these models are considered to have fully parametric uncertainties. The stability, tracking convergence and parameters identification convergence during the chemotherapy process are proved using the Lyapunov method. For the first time, the parameters identification of the uncertain... 

Fuzzy sliding mode control (FSMC) as a robust and intelligent nonlinear control technique is proposed to control processes with severe nonlinearity and unknown models. The performance of the proposed method has been evaluated for both single input single output (SISO) and MIMO nonlinear systems through its application in three severely nonlinear processes that are frequently used as benchmarks of nonlinear process control strategies. The evaluation shows that, despite its lack of dependence on the process model, the proposed method performs almost the same as conventional sliding mode control alternatives that utilize all the information that exists in the mathematical model of the process.... 

Finding an optimal control strategy for a nonlinear uncertain system is a challenging problem in the area of nonlinear controller design. In this paper, a two-level control algorithm is developed for robust optimal control of large-scale nonlinear systems. For this purpose, using a decomposition/coordination framework, the large-scale nonlinear system is first decomposed into several smaller subsystems, at the first level, where a closed-form solution as a feedback of states and interactions is obtained to optimize each subsystem. At the second level, a substitution-type prediction method, as a coordination strategy, is used to compensate the nonlinear terms of the system and to predict the... 

The electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol was studied over Ni, Co and Cu binary or ternary alloys on graphite electrodes in a NaOH solution (0.1 mol/L). The catalysts were prepared by cycling the graphite electrode in solutions containing Ni, Cu and Co ions at cathodic potentials. The synergistic effects and catalytic activity of the modified electrodes were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). It was found that, in the presence of methanol, the modified Ni-based ternary alloy electrode (G/NiCuCo) exhibited a significantly higher response for methanol oxidation compared to the other samples. The anodic peak... 

Manipulation of a quantum system requires the knowledge of how it evolves. To impose that the dynamics of a system becomes a particular target operation (for any preparation of the system), it may be more useful to have an equation of motion for the dynamics itself, rather than the state. Here we develop a Markovian master equation for the process matrix of an open system interacting with a reservoir, which resembles the Lindblad Markovian master equation. We employ this equation to introduce a scheme for optimal local coherent process control at target times and extend the Krotov technique to obtain optimal control. We illustrate utility of this framework through several quantum... 

In the present study, the electrodeposition of Fe, Pd and Fe-Pd alloys, in alkaline solutions, has been investigated. Using ammonium hydroxide and trisodium citrate as the complexing agents, it has been shown that the co-deposition of Fe and Pd is achieved due to diminishing the difference between the reduction potentials of these two metals. Cyclic voltammetry results clearly show that the electrodeposition processes are diffusion-controlled and the diffusion coefficients of Fe2+ and Pd2+ are 1.11 × 10-6 and 2.19 × 10-5 cm2 s -1, respectively. The step potential experiments reveal that nucleation mechanism is instantaneous with a typical three-dimensional (3D) growth. At low overpotentials,... 

In this paper, a new approach is presented for optimal control of large-scale chemical processes. In this approach, the chemical process is decomposed into smaller sub-systems at the first level, and a coordinator at the second level, for which a two-level hierarchical control strategy is designed. For this purpose, each sub-system in the first level can be solved separately, by using any conventional optimization algorithm. In the second level, the solutions obtained from the first level are coordinated using a new gradient-type strategy, which is updated by the error of the coordination vector. The proposed algorithm is used to solve the optimal control problem of a complex nonlinear... 

In this paper, an algebraic tuning rule is presented for fractional PI controllers to control first order plus dead-time processes. By using the performance map (PM) method, this tuning rule is derived in order to set the gain margin of the control system close to 3 and the phase margin close to 60 degrees. The robustness and performance of this tuning rule are compared with some well-known PI tuning rules. Simulation results are brought to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of this tuning formula against process dynamic uncertainties in comparison with the other tuning methods  

It has been well documented that multivariate systems will benefit from application of advanced control strategies. The application of these methods has thus far been hindered for a variety of reasons which range from complexity of the design methodologies to the cost associated with implementation of these solutions. This paper shows that there exist alternative means by which existing control strategies of a multivariate system could be extended, thereby leading to increased efficiency, without the need to remove and implement a new control system installation. A realistic model of an entire pulping mill is used in this paper to show that by careful selection of only a few additional... 

In process planning, determining feature's machining precedence is an essential step. The task becomes more difficult if features interact with each other, in which case the feature precedence information may suggest multiple machining sequences of the features. This paper considers interacting features in a feature-based model for process planning tasks. For each feature, precedence information is generated considering both roughing and finishing operations. A rule-based system is developed and implemented based on the information about machining precedence of the interacting features. The STEP-NC data model is used as the underlying data model. This model is object-oriented and compliant... 

Determining the precedence of machining features is a critical issue in feature-based process planning. It becomes more complex when geometric interaction occurs between machining features. STEP-NC, the extension of STEP (ISO 10303) standard developed for CNC controllers, is a feature-based data model. It represents all the geometric and topological product data minus feature interactions. In this paper, machining precedence of interactive and non-interactive STEP-NC features is discussed. Local and global precedence of machining features are defined on the basis of geometric constraints, such as geometric interaction of features and feature approach face and technological constraint such as... 

In addition to perfectly steering the output concentration of a process network to an exogenous set-point, a desired synthetically implemented biological controller should be able to robustly maintain this regulated output in the face of the extrinsic disturbances and inherent uncertainties due to an evervarying environment besides the imprecise modeling. Such an ability, which is called robust perfect adaptation (RPA), can be achieved by integral feedback control (IFC). Answering how IFC is (biochemically) constructible in generally unknown synthetic networks has been a research focus in the community. One of these answers, which has been well investigated previously, is to utilize a simple... 

Co/Cu multilayers were deposited in a sulfate solution by controlling the current and potential for the deposition of cobalt and copper layer respectively. The electrochemical behavior of these multilayers was studied by cyclic voltammetry and current transients. In addition, a mathematical analysis was used to characterize the electrodeposition system. Simultaneously, the nucleation and growth mechanisms were monitored by these techniques. In this case, the results clearly showed that electrodeposition of cobalt layers was a kinetically controlled process while the reduction of copper ions was a diffusion-control process. Although nucleation mechanism of the single Co deposit was found as a... 

Loop restoration scheme (LRS) is a special feeder automation (FA) scheme, which is used by utilities to improve distribution system reliability. The LRS is controlled and managed by its automatic control system (ACS). The impacts on distribution system reliability indices of implementing LRS mainly depend on the type of its ACS. Two common types of ACS of LRS are presented and used in this study. Successful operation of ACS is dependent on the protection and automatic control functions of switching devices of LRS. Different failure modes of these switching devices can therefore affect the procedure of ACS in fault detecting, isolating and service restoration. The impacts of failure of... 

In this paper, the axiomatic design is introduced for controlling a power electronic converter. The main idea of axiomatic design is to introduce variables affecting the desired performances of the system most independently possible. The control process is presented for a Buck converter to achieve constant efficiency and output voltage ripple. ©2008 IEEE  

Nickel and nickel-copper alloy modified glassy carbon electrodes (GC/Ni and GC/NiCu) prepared by galvanostatic deposition were examined for their redox processes and electro-catalytic activities towards the oxidation of glucose in alkaline solutions. The methods of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) were employed. The cyclic voltammogram of NiCu alloy demonstrates the formation of β/β crystallographic forms of the nickel oxyhydroxide under prolonged repetitive potential cycling in alkaline solution. It is also observed that the overpotential for O 2 evolution increases for NiCu alloy modified electrode. In CV studies, NiCu alloy modified electrode yields significantly higher... 

Process planning (PP) has an important role in manufacturing systems design and operations. Volume decomposition and machinable volumes (MVs) or machining features determination is the core activity in process planning. This process requires extraction of elementary volumes (EVs), merging or clustering EVs to construct feasible MVs and finally selecting an optimal combination of MVs. Development of MVs is an important activity, so that better solution is obtained by better developed MVs. Generation of limited number of MVs or machining features, which is often performed by experts may miss the optimal solution. Also, using exact methods such as combinatorial optimization not only generate... 

This study shows the growth behavior of Co-Ni alloy nanowires in AAO template. Growth of nanowires consists of four different stages namely electronucleation, steady state growth, filling of pores, and coverage of filled nanowires and forming of a film on the template surface. TEM study of nanowires showed that the nanowires possess hemispherical head due to the preferable and more rapid growth phenomenon in central section of nanowires instead of edge sides. Studies on the relations between nanowires composition and ion concentration in solution showed that growth of nanowires is a diffusion-controlled process. The compositional, structural and magnetic properties of nanowires were...