Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a comprehensive performance model for fully adaptive routing in wormhole-switched Cartesian product networks. Besides the generality of the model which makes it suitable to be used for any product graph, experimental (simulation) results show that the proposed model exhibits high accuracy even in heavy traffic and saturation region, where other models have severe problems to predict the performance of the network. Most popular interconnection network can be defined as a Cartesian product of two or more networks including the mesh, hypercube, and torus networks. Torus and mesh networks are the most popular topologies used in recent supercomputing parallel machines. They... 

The utilization of the limited resources of a multiprocessor or multicomputer system is a primary performance issue which is crucial for the design of many scheduling algorithms. While many of the existing parallel machines benefit from a regular product network topology, almost none of the previous resource placement techniques have come to recognize and exploit this inherent regularity. This paper introduces several novel algorithms for deriving resource placement schemes in product networks based on the assumption of perfect resource placement in their underling basic graphs. Our techniques use known schemes for the basic networks as their building blocks for deploying the resource... 

Differential Evolution (DE) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) are population based search algorithms that come under the category of evolutionary optimization techniques. In the present study, these evolutionary methods have been utilized to conduct the optimum design of a fuzzy controller for mobile robot trajectory tracking. Comparison between their performances has also been conducted. In this paper, we will present a fuzzy controller to the problem of mobile robot path tracking for a CEDRA rescue robot. After designing the fuzzy tracking controller, the membership functions will be optimized by evolutionary algorithms in order to obtain more acceptable results  

The design of a new cable-driven robot for large-scale manipulation is presented with focus on the tension condition in the cables. In this robot, the arrangement of the cables is such that the moving platform has three translational motions. The robot has potentials for large-scale robotic manipulations, machining of large parts and material handling. The design analysis presented here is towards the synthesis of the robot as well as the sizing of the actuators and cables. The synthesis of this robot is dependent on the results of the tensionable workspace analysis previously published by the Alikhani et al. [6]. The analysis of the cable forces is presented in detail, which is then used to... 

Chatter suppression is of great importance for achieving high precision and surface quality in machining processes. A single degree of freedom model of orthogonal turning process is used to set up the nonlinear delay differential equation of motion. Tool wear effect is considered as the contact force between the workpiece and tool flank surfaces. Uncertainties in parameters of dynamic model and machining conditions are included in the model. An adaptive control strategy is applied for chatter suppression in cutting process. The force provided by a piezoactuator is the control input of the system. Results of stability analysis and adaptive control for two distinct cases of sharp and worn... 

Precipitation of strontium sulfate (or SrSO4) has already been distinguished as one of the most costly and critical problems which may occur in process industries and oilfield operations. Costs due to scaling and remedial actions that need to be taken afterward are generally high owing to low solubility of SrSO4 in aqueous solutions. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the SrSO4 thermodynamic behavior under various operating conditions is vital to predict or even avoid the overall damage caused by scaling. The primary aim of this work is to develop a model based on Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LSSVM) and Coupled Simulated Annealing (CSA) referred to as CSA-LSSVM to predict... 

Deposition of barium sulfate (or BaSO4) has already been recognized as a devastating problem facing process industries and oilfield operations, mainly owing to its low solubility in aqueous solutions. Predicting and also preventing the overall damage caused by BaSO4 precipitation requires a profound knowledge of its solubility under different thermodynamic conditions. The main aim of this study is to develop a solubility prediction model based on a hybrid of least squares support vector nachines (LSSVM) and coupled simulated annealing (CSA) aiming to predict the solubility of barium sulfate over wide ranges of temperature, pressure and ionic compositions. Results indicate that predictions of... 

Early diagnosis of any disease at a lower cost is preferable. Automatic medical diagnosis classification tools reduce financial burden on health care systems. In medical diagnosis, patterns consist of observable symptoms and the results of diagnostic tests, which have various associated costs and risks. In this paper, we have experimented and suggested an automated pattern classification method for classifying four diseases into two classes. In the literature on machine learning or data mining, regression and classification problems are typically viewed as two distinct problems differentiated by continuous or categorical dependent variables. There are endeavors to use regression methods to... 

In the present work, the synergetic effect of Ti-based catalysts (TiH2 and TiO2 particles) on hydrogen desorption kinetics of nanostructured magnesium hydride was investigated. Nanostructured 84mol% MgH2-10%mol TiH2-6%mol TiO2 nanocomposite powder was prepared by high-energy ball milling and subjected to thermal analyses. Evaluation of the absorption/desorption properties revealed that the addition of the Ti-based catalysts significantly improved the hydrogen storage performance of MgH2. A decrease in the decomposition temperature (as high as 100°C) was attained after co-milling of MgH2 with the Ti-based catalysts. Meanwhile, solid-state chemical reactions between MgH2 and TiO2 nanoparticles... 

Precipitation and scaling of calcium sulfate have been known as major problems facing process industries and oilfield operations. Most scale prediction models are based on aqueous thermodynamics and solubility behavior of salts in aqueous electrolyte solutions. There is yet a huge interest in developing reliable, simple, and accurate solubility prediction models. In this study, a comprehensive model based on least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) is presented, which is mainly devoted to calcium sulfate dihydrate (or gypsum) solubility in aqueous solutions of mixed electrolytes covering wide temperature ranges. In this respect, an aggregate of 880 experimental data were gathered from... 

Axial-torsional vibrations of rotating pretwisted thin-walled composite box beams exhibiting primary and secondary warping are investigated. Considering the nonlinear strain-displacement relations, the coupled nonlinear axial-torsional equations of motion are derived using Hamilton's principle. Ignoring the axial inertia term leads to differential equation of motion in terms of elastic torsion in the case of axially immovable beams. Centrifugal load in the presence of material anisotropy and pretwist angle leads to an induced static torque. The nonlinear equation should be linearized about the corresponding equilibrium state to obtain the linear differential equation of motion. Extended... 

In this paper, the tardiness flow shop models with intermediate due date were considered. The flow shop models consist of a set of jobs each having a number of operations, while each operation is performed in a single machine. All the jobs are considered having the same unidirectional precedence order. In the tardiness flow shop models with intermediate due date, which we call the generalized tardiness flow shop models, there exist a due date associated with the completion of each operation, and we want to find a schedule which minimizes the total tardiness of the jobs. This is a more general version of tardiness flow shop in the sense that, by assigning a large value to each of the... 

Brushless doubly fed machine (BDFM) shows promising results for wind power and adjustable-speed drive applications. Due to poor rotor magnetic coupling and relatively high value of slip, core loss is an important factor which can affect the steady-state and dynamic performance of BDFM. Specifically, core loss plays a major role when evaluating the efficiency of the machine. By now, there is no comprehensive study on core loss effect on performance characteristics of BDFM in the literature. In this paper, based on the derived relations and applying transformation of parameters from one winding to another one, the steady-state equivalent circuit model of BDFM without core loss is modified in... 

Purpose - This paper aims to present the design and implementation of VirSense, a novel six-DOF haptic interface system, with an emphasis on its gravity compensation and fixed-base motors. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper, the design and manufacture of the VirSense robot and its comparison with the existing haptic devices are presented. The kinematic analysis of the robot, design of the components, and manufacturing of the robot are explained as well. Findings - The proposed system is employed to generate a Virtual Sense (VirSense) with fixed-base motors and a spring compensation system for counterbalancing the torques generated by the weight of the links. The fixed bases of the... 

Although exemplar based approaches have shown good accuracy in classification problems, some limitations are observed in the accuracy of exemplar based automatic speech recognition (ASR) applications. The main limitation of these algorithms is their high computational complexity which makes them difficult to extend to ASR applications. In this paper, an N-best class selector is introduced based on sparse representation (SR) and a tree search strategy. In this approach, the classification is fulfilled in three steps. At first, the set of similar training samples for the specific test sample is selected by k-dimensional (KD) tree search algorithm. Then, an SR based N-best class selector is... 

Estimation of the viscosity of naturally occurring petroleum gases is essential to provide more accurate analysis of gas reservoir engineering problems. In this study, a new soft computing approach, namely, least square support vector machine (LSSVM) modeling, optimized with a coupled simulated annealing technique was applied for estimation of the natural gas viscosities at different temperature and pressure conditions. This model was developed based on 2485 viscosity data sets of 22 gas mixtures. The model predictions showed an average absolute relative error of 0.26% and a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The results of the proposed model were also compared with the well-known predictive... 

In this study, Cu-TiC nanocomposites were produced by high energy ball milling of elemental powders and in-situ formation of TiC in the copper matrix. Cu-40wt% Ti powder mixture were milled for 60 h, then graphite powder was added, subsequently milling was continued for further 10 h. Based on theoretical calculations, at this composite, the amount of TiC as reinforcement should be 60.25vol% (45.47wt%). The effect of milling time on solution progress of titanium in the copper lattice was studied by X-Ray diffraction analysis (XRD) with CuKα radiation. Considering XRD of Cu-40wt%TiC after 60 h milling data and Williamson-Hall relation, crystallite size and lattice strain of copper were... 

Because of corrosion resistance and antibacterial effects, shape memory Ni-Ti-Ag alloy can be considered for different biomedical applications. Mechanical alloying is used to produce nanostructured Ni-Ti-Ag alloy from elemental powders. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) are used to characterize the product. Results show that after 1h milling, homogenous distribution of the elements occurs; while no intermetallic compounds is observed. After 3h milling, titanium dissolves in nickel to form amorphous and nanostructured solid phases. Peaks of B2 phase appear in the XRD pattern after the 3h milling of the powder mixture. Sintering of the 3h-milled... 

In this paper, we study the discriminative modeling of Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) using Conditional Random Fields (CRF) and Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) alignment models. Previous discriminative approaches to SLU have been dependent on n-gram features. Other previous works have used SMT alignment models to predict the output labels. We have used SMT alignment models to align the abstract labels and trained CRF to predict the labels. We show that the state transition features improve the performance. Furthermore, we have compared the proposed method with two baseline approaches; Hidden Vector States (HVS) and baseline-CRF. The results show that for the F-measure the proposed... 

Liver-shape analysis and quantification is still an open research subject. Quantitative assessment of the liver is of clinical importance in various procedures such as diagnosis, treatment planning, and monitoring. Liver-shape classification is of clinical importance for corresponding intra-subject and inter-subject studies. In this research, we propose a novel technique for the liver-shape classification based on Spherical Harmonics (SH) coefficients. The proposed liver-shape classification algorithm consists of the following steps: (a) Preprocessing, including mesh generation and simplification, point-set matching, and surface to template alignment; (b) Liver-shape parameterization,...