Sharif Digital Repository

Cancer is one of the most significant causes of death in the world. It has been shown that the role of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the early detection of cancer is crucial. Since the number of these cancerous cells in blood is very rare, the inertial microfluidic devices are one of the best candidates for the isolation of CTCs because they result in a high throughput process. Consequently, they can process a large volume of blood in a short time. Despite extensive computational and experimental studies on inertial microfluidic platforms, the impact of the curvature has not been thoroughly investigated during separation. In this paper, the feasibility of isolation of CTCs for... 

The present study is set out to systematically investigate the combined impact of operational, geometrical, and model uncertainties on the hemodynamics and performance characteristics in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) benchmark centrifugal blood pump. Non-intrusive Polynomial Chaos Expansion (NIPCE) has been utilized to propagate the uncertainty of 12 random input variables in the flow field and the performance characteristics of the blood pump at three working conditions. The global sensitivity of the Quantities of Interest (QoI) to the uncertain input parameters was measured through the Sobol’ indices. The Multiple Reference Frames (MRF) approach and the SST k−ω turbulence... 

Microfluidic experiments have found wide applications in medical sciences and engineering, such as cell separation and focusing. In the present study, focusing and separation of particles with different sizes and densities were investigated by designing inertial microfluidic devices. The microfluidic channel is designed by analyzing the induced forces on the particles. In the designing process, the objective was to focus and separate the particles in the shortest length of the channel with the lowest possible cycles and high efficiency. The simulation is then used for analyzing the two proposed geometries to evaluate their particle separation and focusing ability, named convergent and... 

It has always been a human challenge to inspire natural configurations and phenomena and benefit from their merits in improving the performances of man-made proposed aero/hydro vehicles. For example, the manta rays are known for their great swimming performances. To design and fabricate an underwater robot based on the manta ray geometry and its kinematic characteristics, it is important to initially study its hydrodynamic behavior and possibly arrive at some key design parameters, which can remarkably help to figure out an optimum geometry with high swimming performances. The main objective of this study is to focus on the merits of gliding motion inspired by the manta ray fish considering... 

The elastodynamic behavior of layered media consisting of an arbitrary combination of isotropic and transversely isotropic layers is of great importance for many engineering applications. In this work, some appropriate elastodynamic Green’s functions pertinent to both the displacement and the stress fields are devised so that the problems associated with the n-layer semi-infinite and infinite media with any combinations of transversely isotropic and isotropic layers subjected to surface and buried oblique time-harmonic annular loading can all be treated in a unified manner. The material degeneracy arising due to the scenarios where one or more regions are isotropic is also discussed and... 

More than 80% of desalination plants use the multi-stage flash (MSF) technology in the Persian Gulf and hence may have a severe irreversible impact on the marine environment. In the present study, geometrical, mixing, and turbulence characteristics of thermal-saline jets, similar to MSF effluents, are numerically investigated using the dynamic Smagorinsky sub-grid scale (SGS) model and UNESCO equation of state. For this purpose, two affecting dimensionless parameters are considered: (1) density ratio, which is thermal flux to salinity flux ratio, and (2) salinity Froude number. Examining the effects of density ratio reveals that the jet flow pattern only depends on the density ratio with a... 

Nowadays, cervical disorders are common due to human lifestyles. Accordingly, the cage design should be optimized as an essential issue. For an optimal design, an objective function is utilized to calculate the proper geometrical parameters. Additionally, the base material of the cage plays a key role in its functionality and final cost. Novel materials are currently introduced with more compatibility with the bone in terms of mechanical and chemical properties. In this study, a cervical cage was modeled based on PEEK material with three types of tooth designs on its surface. The cervical cage is assumed to be implanted between C6 and C7 vertebrae. The geometric parameters of the cage were... 

In this paper, the elastic solution to the problem of an isotropic bi-material full-space reinforced by a perfectly bonded thin film across the media interface and subjected to arbitrary asymmetric interfacial loading is addressed. To not include any simplifications, the thin film is first considered as a layer having a finite thickness, and with the aid of Fourier expansion of Muki's potential functions in Hankel transformed space, the formulation of the problem is obtained for a tri-material full-space. Then, knowing that the flexural stiffness of the thin film is negligible, its thickness and shear modulus are assumed to tend to zero and infinity, respectively, such that its in-plane... 

Purpose: Core Bone Plug Fixation (CBPF) technique is an implant-less methodology for ACL reconstruction. This study investigates the effect of bone density on CBPF stability to identify the bone quality that is likely to benefit from this technique. Methods: Artificial blocks with 160 (Group 1), 240 (Group 2), and 320 (Group 3) kg/m3 densities were used to simulate human bone with diverse qualities. These groups are representative of the elderly, middle age and young people, respectively. A tunnel was made in each test sample using a cannulated drill bit which enabled harvesting the core bone plug intact. Fresh animal tendon grafts were prepared and passed through the tunnel, so the core... 

Tunable metasurfaces can shift their resonant frequency through different approaches, one of which is applying mechanical deformations. Here, we show the effects of two key factors on the tunability of deformable metasurfaces; the resonator geometry and substrate stiffness. To show the effects, we compared the tunability of unit cells with three resonator geometries and three common substrates at microwave frequencies from 1 GHz to 10 GHz under a given mechanical deformation. We showed that the resonator geometry affects the deformation field, as a consequence, causes different resonant frequency shifts. Moreover, it affects the stress field in the metasurface which in turn limits the... 

The employment of tissue engineering scaffolds in the reconstruction of the damaged bone tissues has shown remarkable promise since they significantly facilitate the healing process. Fabrication of highly porous biocompatible scaffolds with sufficient mechanical strength is still challenging. In this regard, polymers have been widely utilized to construct three-dimensional (3D) porous scaffolds due to their excellent processability and biocompatibility. However, insufficient mechanical strength and inappropriate degradation rate of the monophasic polymer scaffolds in the bone regeneration process, as the main challenges, limit their extensive clinical application. The incorporation of... 

Due to their potential to recover strength and stiffness with a minimum impact on aerodynamic performance of a damaged structure, scarf repairs are boosted as a viable repair option for primary aero-structures. So far, most of the experimental and numerical studies have been limited to joint specimens and their equivalent 2 Dimensional models and a few number of studies attempted to examine the results using real scarf repair geometry. Suggestions previously made to justify the difference between scarf joint and scarf repair strength and possible solution to diminish the difference are challenged in current work. Here, it is tried to investigate the strengths and shortcomings of 2D scarf... 

The present work is expressed to interpret the hydrodynamic parameters of rotation extraction columns in the reactive and non-reactive systems. The solvent extraction technique has been utilized for optimizing the transportation of molybdenum ions to the organic phase in two agitated columns (ORC and Kühni columns). Dispersed phase volume fraction, average droplet diameter, slip velocity, size distribution, and ions permeability of the aqueous phase have been investigated in terms of changing the operational variables including the agitation rate, flow rate of the inlet dispersed and continuous phases, column geometry, and reaction conditions. By considering the reactive and non-reactive... 

The goal of this study is to investigate the effects of tendon and cannulated drill bit diameter on the strength of the bone and site hold tendon inside (BASHTI) fixation technique for an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Bovine digital tendons and Sawbones blocks were used to mimic the ACL reconstruction. Mechanical strength of the specimens was measured using a cyclic loading continued by a single cycle pullout load until failure to simulate the real postsurgical loading conditions. Finally, failure modes of specimens and ultimate failure load were recorded. The maximum possible tendon surface strain (i.e., tendon compression [TC]) for tendon diameters of 6, 7, 8, and 9 mm... 

Due to its rotation, Earth traps a few equatorial ocean and atmospheric waves, including Kelvin, Yanai, Rossby, and Poincaré modes. It has been recently demonstrated that the mathematical origin of equatorial waves is intricately related to the nontrivial topology of hydrodynamic equations describing oceans or the atmosphere. In the present work, we consider plasma oscillations supported by a two-dimensional electron gas confined at the surface of a sphere or a cylinder. We argue that in the presence of a uniform magnetic field, these systems host a set of equatorial magnetoplasma waves that are counterparts to the equatorial waves trapped by Earth. For a spherical geometry, the equatorial... 

This study investigated the effects of different patterns of coronary artery tortuosity (CAT) on the stress concentration of the plaques and the blood flow pattern inside an atherosclerotic artery to predict the risk of plaque rupture and progression. Four different loadings of the coronary artery, including pulsatile blood pressure as well as one-end twist around the artery axis at blood pressures of 74, 100, and 120 mmHg were considered. No study has addressed bent and twist buckling of an atherosclerotic artery considering pulsatile flow (for bent buckling), fluid-solid interaction, and different geometrical parameters of the plaque. The results showed that C-shape tortuosity under... 

We study the problem of preclustering a set B of imprecise points in Rd: we wish to cluster the regions specifying the potential locations of the points such that, no matter where the points are located within their regions, the resulting clustering approximates the optimal clustering for those locations. We consider k-center, k-median, and k-means clustering, and obtain the following results. Let B: = { b1, … , bn} be a collection of disjoint balls in Rd, where each ball bi specifies the possible locations of an input point pi. A partition C of B into subsets is called an (f(k) , α) -preclustering (with respect to the specific k-clustering variant under consideration) if (i) C consists of... 

The problem of cooling two hot blocks in a novel geometry using magnetohydrodynamic flow of Al2O3–water nanofluid has been studied utilizing a D2Q9 Lattice Boltzmann Model. While the Hartmann number (Ha) takes 0, 50, or 100 values, the Richardson number (Ri) varies between 0.02 and 20. Four variations of the geometry are selected. The gravity angle is set to be either (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), or (Formula presented.). Results reveal that the Nusselt number (Nu) increases as Ri increases for all cases. Furthermore, the Hartmann number has a deteriorating effect on the Nusselt number except for low Ri numbers. In addition, the results indicate that while the geometrical... 

Dynamic similar models are designed to study the flight behavior of the full-scale aircraft in early design stages. Due to physical and operational constraints, full dynamic similarity between the scaled-down model and full-scale aircraft is not feasible. Thus, the scale model would be flying at different Reynolds number and Mach number. A given aircraft configuration with specific aerodynamic characteristics will have different performance if Mach number and Reynolds number are changed considerably, which results in different dynamic behavior of the scale model. To compensate for these dissimilarities, it is proposed to modify the airfoil geometry of the scale model to preserve aerodynamic... 

The visibility graph of a polygon corresponds to its internal diagonals and boundary edges. For each vertex on the boundary of the polygon, we have a vertex in this graph and if two vertices of the polygon see each other there is an edge between their corresponding vertices in the graph. Two vertices of a polygon see each other if and only if their connecting line segment completely lies inside the polygon. Recognizing visibility graphs is the problem of deciding whether there is a simple polygon whose visibility graph is isomorphic to a given graph. Another important problem is to reconstruct such a polygon if there is any. These problems are well known and well-studied, but yet open...