Sharif Digital Repository

Crumb rubber, produced from shredding of scrap or refused tires, is one of the most commonly used modifiers of asphalt. Asphalt rubber, in addition to mitigating some of the environmental problems of disposing scrap tire, improves the flexural strength of pavement, extends the life of pavement and reduces the maintenance costs. The properties of asphalt rubber are highly dependent on the type and composition of base asphalt, type and amount of crumb rubber, and the production method.The goal of this research is to investigate the performance properties of asphalt rubbers produced from Iranian asphalt and crumb rubber, using an industrially feasible method. The Superpave testing procedure was... 

The ever increasing usage of modified binders in road construction requires that the effect of different modifiers on the performance characteristics of the asphalt binder be determined through laboratory testing. The current Superpave protocol for performance grading asphalt binders has proven to be insufficient to properly characterize modified binders, thus researchers have searched for other testing methods to complement or possibly replace some of the Superpave tests. Most notable are the time sweep test for fatigue resistance, the multiple stress creep and recovery test (MSCR) for rutting resistance and the direct tension test (DTT) for low temperature cracking characteristics. In the... 

The propagation behavior of Love wave in functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic half-spaces with a quadratic variation is addressed. The magneto-electromechanical coupling factor, the dispersion relations, electric potential, magnetic potential and displacement are obtained analytically for both magneto-electrically open and short conditions. The effect of gradient coefficient on phase velocity, group velocity and magneto-electromechanical coupling factor are plotted and discussed. Research on the wave propagation in magneto-electro-elastic materials is still very limited. This work provides us with a theoretical foundation to design and practically apply SAW devices with high... 

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are categorized in a branch of composite materials in which the local volume fraction of contributing phases are not fixed throughout the spatial domain, but vary gradually as a function of position. This spatial variation leads to the gradual variation of physical and mechanical properties inside the materials. It provides us the opportunity of designing multiple purpose materials by the variation of local volume fractions according to our goal. The optimal distribution of local volume fractions is a function of the spatial domain geometry and loading conditions, and in general situations, due to the complexity of the problem, it is not possible to... 

Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are used for increasing the efficiency and reducing pollutants of internal combustion engines (ICEs). In this paper, an optimization framework is developed in order to obtain the optimal dimensions for conventional coat, and the optimal dimensions and material property for functionally graded (FG) coat of a partially coated piston. A thermo mechanical analysis is investigated for Nano coat by finite element method. The conventional and Nano coats are made of MgZrO_3 as the insulating ceramic overlay and NiCrAl as the metallic bond-coat. The properties of the FG coat is assumed to vary according to power law through the thickness. For all tree conventional, FG... 

Given a simple graph G on n vertices, we prove that it is possible to reconstruct several algebraic properties of the edge ideal from the deck of G, that is, from the collection of subgraphs obtained by removing a vertex from G. These properties include the Krull dimension, the Hilbert function, and all the graded Betti numbers. We also state many further questions that arise from our study  

The photovoltaic (PV) industry is in rapid growth and a large supply of PV feedstock materials must be provided to maintain this growth. Since silicon is still the dominant material for the fabrication of solar cells, low-cost solar-grade silicon (SoG-Si) feedstock is demanded. The most cost-effective and direct approach for producing SoG-Si is to purify and upgrade metallurgical-grade silicon. The major impurities in silicon are Al, Fe and Ca. other impurities present are Cu, Ti , Zn, Ni, Cr, Mn, Cd, B and P. In this study The effects of the acid leaching process parameters, including the particle size of silicon, the acid type (HCl, HNO3, H2SO4, and their combination), tmepreture and the... 

Boric acid (H3BO3) is a weak monobasic acid that exist as a white powder in the standard conditions. In industry, it is used in manufacturing of fiberglas filaments, precious metals soldering and production of flat panel LCD displays. In all of these applications, normal grade boric acid is used, but nuclear industry demands an ultrapure boric acid (UPA) for controlling of the reactivity and power levels in pressurized water reactors. Annual consumption of UPA in Bushehr Power Plant (BPP) is around 60 metric tons. Currently, this amount is imported from Russia, but atomic energy organization of Iran plans to displace it by the acid made inside the country. Domestic production of UPA in... 

In this thesis the tow-dimensional wave propagation in a functionally graded elastic medium is considered. It is assumed that the stiffness and density of the medium vary continuously in one direction. This work presents analysis in both time and frequency domain. In time domain, a graded element is presented for static and dynamic analyses in FGMs. This element clearly simulates wave propagation in inhomogeneous materials. The most important property which an element must have to be reasonable in wave propagation analyses in FGMs is simulating reflection only from boundaries. In frequency domain a dynamic stiffness matrix is generated using stiffness and mass matrix used in time domain... 

Cylinders are one of the most applicable components in industry. According to the application of these elements, reinforcement and stiffening are the common ways to enhance mechanical properties of them. Nowadays, by advent of new materials such as functionally graded materials (FGMs), a novel method of improving these structures is discovered. By application of FGMs, many physical and mechanical characteristics of these structures can be modified. In this thesis, vibration analysis and frequency optimization of a stiffened cylinder made from FGMs are performed. FGM which is employed in this investigation is made from two different materials, to have better modal properties which cause in... 

In this research, a functionally graded microbeam bonded with piezoelectric layers is analyzed under electric force. Static and dynamic instability due to the electric actuation is studied because of its importance in micro electro mechanical systems, especially in micro switches. In order to prevent pull-in instability, two piezoelectric layers are used as sensor and actuator. A charge amplifier is used to supply input voltage of the actuator from the output of the sensor layer. Using Hamilton's principle and Euler-Bernoulli theory, equation of motion of the system is obtained. It is shown that the load type (distributed or concentrated) applied to the microbeam from the piezoelectric... 

In recent decades, employing fiber-reinforced composite has growing field in various industries due to distinct features like high specific stiffness and strength. Studies in case of this type of composite have not been stopped and nowadays, widespread researches are conducted over optimization of them. As a result, the effect of distributing fiber in this composite by taking the concept of functionally graded materials, on vibrations and buckling behaviors including natural frequencies and minimum axial bulking load under different boundary conditions for a multi-layered cylindrical shell in which volume fraction of fiber along its length varies according to power-law model are investigated... 

Cracks significantly change the vibration response of structures. Cracks which exist in structures as a defect in the material or created by repeated loads, reduce the natural frequencies and change the vibration mode shapes. Therefore with measuring the vibration response of structures, the existence and position of cracks are detected. This research analytically investigates the free vibration and elastic buckling of a beam made of functionally graded materials (FGM) with open edge cracks using Reddy's beam theory and the rotational spring model. It is assumed that the material properties vary along the beam thickness according to a power law distribution in terms of volume fraction of... 

The future crisis and environmental pollution led to increasing interest in alternative energy conversion systems such as solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). One of the main obstacles in using SOFCs is their relatively high fabrication cost compared with their low amount of produced energy .Therefore, in the present study, fabrication of a more cost-efficient functionally graded NiO-YSZ composite for SOFC anode by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) method was investigated. In this research, the effect of different chemical parameters such as media, additives, particle size distribution and nano NiO addition were initially investigated on the stability of NiO-YSZ suspension by Zetasizer and turbidity... 

Due to special characteristics, nowadays functionally graded materials are of great interest of researchers. Continuous change of properties in these materials,decreases undesirable phenomena such as stresscon centration. On the other hand knowing vibration parameters of structures such as natural frequencies, to avoid damage, is important. So far, many researches have been devoted to vibration analysis of structures, such as beams.In this dissertation, free vibration analysis of FGM beams, are investigated, using RKPM, a meshlesh method. The system of equations of motion is derived using Lagrange’s method under the assumption of Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. Buckling analysis of FGM beams... 

In the aerospace industry, there are a lot of high temperature environments, including engine parts and heat shields, in which the damages under these working conditions may be so destructive and even in some cases; they may result in sudden catastrophic failure of the structure. Nowadays, to prevent the occurrence of such failures and to provide the appropriate materials capable of working in such harsh environments and being able to protect the other adjacent structural components, new generation of thermal barrier coating materials so called Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs), with the controllable material properties in one or more directions were introduced. Recently, FGM applications... 

In this thesis, the influence of nonideal boundary conditions on the vibration of a functionally graded beam excited by a moving oscillator on Pasternak-type viscoelastic foundation has been investigated. The beam has simply-supported boundary conditions and is assumed that the right-hand-side boundary conditions allows for small deflection, moment and axial force. The beam property gradient is assumed to be in the thickness direction and varies according to the power law distribution. The Hamilton's principle is utilized to obtain the governing equations of motion under the assumptions of Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. The equations of motion of the beam are solved using an... 

The current study is dedicated to free vibration and buckling analysis of thick FGM conical shells conveying hot flows with the consideration of initial geometric imperfections. To this end, the higher order governing equations of motion and the corresponding boundary conditions are derived using Hamiltonian formulations. Due to the solution procedure of Frobenius series expansion, the differential form of equations is obtained by applying by part integration to the integral form of equations of motion. Radial and longitudinal temperature distributions are considered while pressure distribution and geometric imperfection variations are found to be in longitudinal direction, only. The final... 

Resonantly actuated microstructures known as microresoantors, are the basic parts of many of MEMS devices such as highly sensitive pressure sensors, mass sensors, biosensors, RF filters, AFMs , ... . Vibration analysis of microresonators specially that of the coupled in-plane and out-f-plane motions has draught many attentions, during recent years. The purpose of the present thesis was to analyze the vibration and dynamics of an FGM microresonator consisted of a clamped-clamped beam with a relative massive pedal attached to the middle of the beam. By modeling the system initially, linear natural in-plane and out-of-plane frequencies and associated mode shapes are obtained. Results are... 

This study focuses on the mathematical modeling of the rolling contact problem of an FGM coating-substrate system. The first part presents the uncoupled rolling contact problem of an FGM coated half-plane under the assumption of a central stick zone with two slip zones of the same sign. Considering all possible stick/slip scenarios, the fully coupled rolling contact problem of a graded coating is given in the second part. Finally, the rolling contact problem of two elastically similar cylinders with graded coatings will be discussed. Generally, all mentioned problems can be solved in three consecutive steps. First, the governing equations of the relevant rolling contact problem are...