Sharif Digital Repository

Controlling evaporation plays an essential role in arid and semi-arid water resources systems where it accounts for a considerable amount of reservoirs outflow. In this study, we have evaluated evaporation reduction efficiency of different kinds of self-assembled nano-thickness films. The films consist of six different combinations of stearyl and cetyl alcohols with additives such as jojoba oil, stearic acid, and calcium hydroxide. The study lasted from July to August and utilized two pairs of class A evaporation pans: one pair was semi-floating on Chitgar lake water surface while the other one was located on the shore. The experimental results showed that a monolayer containing 3:1 stearyl... 

Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading caused severe damages to pile foundations during past earthquakes. Micropiles can be used as a mitigation strategy against lateral spreading e ects on pile foundations. However, the available knowledge about the possible efficiency of this strategy is quite limited. In this regard, the present study aims to evaluate the e ectiveness of a vertical micropile system as a lateral spreading countermeasure using large-scale 1 g shake table tests on 3 x 3 pile groups. The results showed that the micropile system was not able to e ectively reduce the bending moments in piles; however, it considerably reduced the lateral soil pressures exerted on the upslope... 

Earthquakes can cause significant damage to vulnerable residential buildings and cause irreversible adverse economic, social, and socioeconomic consequences. Implementing hazard mitigation policies can enhance homeowners' willingness to adopt hazard mitigation measures such as seismic retrofits or insurance. Several past studies have proposed models that aimed to explain individuals' hazard mitigation behavior. Despite their advantages, these decision-making models are subject to limitations. This manuscript proposes a new decision-making model that addresses the shortcomings of previous models. The proposed decision-making model is then incorporated at the core of an agent-based model to... 

This paper proposes a distributed attack detection and mitigation technique based on distributed estimation over a multi-agent network, where the agents take partial system measurements susceptible to (possible) biasing attacks. In particular, we assume that the system is not locally observable via the measurements in the direct neighborhood of any agent. First, for performance analysis in the attack-free case, we show that the proposed distributed estimation is unbiased with bounded mean-square deviation in steady-state. Then, we propose a residual-based strategy to locally detect possible attacks at agents. In contrast to the deterministic thresholds in the literature assuming an upper... 

Carbon accounting is necessary for designing effective climate change mitigation policies. A proper and fair accounting method should motivate both the producers toward cleaner production methods and the consumers toward reducing the embodied emissions of their consumption. This research work proposes a new approach to map the production chain of carbon emissions in which every subsystem is responsible for the level and efficiency of its production activities and embodied emissions for providing its economic activities or final demands. The exergy cost formation concept is used to track the emissions in the production chain. The results of this accounting present the total carbon loads on... 

Tabriz city in NW Iran is a seismic-prone province with recurring devastating earthquakes that have resulted in heavy casualties and damages. This research developed a new computational framework to investigate four main dimensions of vulnerability (environmental, social, economic and physical). An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Model and a SWOT-Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) were applied. Firstly, a literature review was performed to explore indicators with significant impact on aforementioned dimensions of vulnerability to earthquakes. Next, the twenty identified indicators were analyzed in ArcGIS, a geographic information system (GIS) software, to map earthquake... 

Tabriz city in NW Iran is a seismic-prone province with recurring devastating earthquakes that have resulted in heavy casualties and damages. This research developed a new computational framework to investigate four main dimensions of vulnerability (environmental, social, economic and physical). An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) Model and a SWOT-Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) were applied. Firstly, a literature review was performed to explore indicators with significant impact on aforementioned dimensions of vulnerability to earthquakes. Next, the twenty identified indicators were analyzed in ArcGIS, a geographic information system (GIS) software, to map earthquake... 

Passenger cars (PCs) not only are a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Iran but also pose severe energy security challenges due to their dependence on gasoline. This study aimed to understand the future trends of the gasoline demand and GHG emissions from PCs in Iran and assess the effectiveness of mitigation policies. The data were collected from multiple sources and used to develop the survival rate function of PCs. The study used back-calculation to compensate for the short period of stock data availability. The use intensity of PCs was estimated based on the gasoline consumption statistics. Econometric models were developed to project the future PC stock and use... 

Ground-borne vibrations resulting from the railway and road traffic have an adverse impact on the environment and nearby infrastructures. The focus of this study is on a specific part of the Tehran-Tabriz Railway located in the vicinity of Fath Highway, Tehran. In the investigated area, there are many residential buildings very close to the railway, and consequently, the train-induced vibrations make the people disturbed. After determining the soil layering and their properties using site investigation, the effect of geofoam trenches in mitigating train-induced vibrations was numerically investigated. The results showed that both the trench depth and width were important, especially at... 

Occurrence of drought, as an inevitable natural climate feature, cannot be ceased while happening. However, costs of the consequences could be alleviated using mature scientific integrated approaches. To reduce the amount of damage, it is required to provide “Contingency” and “Mitigation” action plans. For this reason, development of efficient operating instructions for various regions based on weather conditions and field studies is needed as well as having a sophisticated understanding of socioeconomic situations. This paper describes an approach to provide the first national agricultural drought risk management plan for a river basin in Iran country as a pilot. The study lasted for... 

Extensive dependence of the national economy on wasteful fossil fuel use as well as limited access to the international financial markets and the best available techniques over the strict economic sanctions period have hindered Iran from developing a sustainable energy system. By considering the reversal order, the present study investigated the least-cost options for improving energy efficiency and reducing GHG emissions in the energy supply sector. The essential purpose of this research work is to increase the evidence base necessary to inform policy and strategy discussions within Iran and related communities concerning the choice of GHG emissions reduction. Applying ARDL approach to... 

The disasters caused by epidemic outbreaks is different from other disasters due to two specific features: their long-term disruption and their increasing propagation. Not controlling such disasters brings about severe disruptions in the supply chains and communities and, thereby, irreparable losses will come into play. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of these disasters that has caused severe disruptions across the world and in many supply chains, particularly in the healthcare supply chain. Therefore, this paper, for the first time, develops a practical decision support system based on physicians' knowledge and fuzzy inference system (FIS) in order to help with the demand... 

In upstream oil industry, microorganisms arise some opportunities and challenges. They can increase oil recovery through microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) mechanisms, or they can increase production costs and risks through reservoir souring process due to H2S gas production. MEOR is mostly known by bioproducts such as biosurfactant or processes such as bioclogging or biodegradation. On the other hand, when it comes to treatment of reservoir souring, the only objective is to inhibit reservoir souring. These perceptions are mainly because decision makers are not aware of the effect microorganisms’ cell can individually have on the wettability. In this work, we study the individual effect... 

Despite that the border between chaotic and stochastic systems is exactly defined, scientists, use high dimensional chaotic dynamics to model numerous stochastic models and sometimes use stochastic models to study chaotic systems. In this paper, we have investigated chaotic systems with a stochastic approach and proposed an estimator for the chaotic system which is used to present different algorithms for chaos control, extreme event prediction and extreme event mitigation. The stochastic estimator is constructed by meshing the phase space and applying the cell mapping method (with some considerations) which provides us with a model-free approximation of the systems. The algorithms are ideal... 

In the study, the daily and monthly performance of a photovoltaic thermal system integrated with phase change material is investigated in Shanghai, China. A three-dimensional model of photovoltaic thermal system integrated with phase change material system is developed and numerically simulated. Water is considered as working fluid, and the fluid flow regime is laminar and incompressible. Both quasi-steady and transient models are compared together, and the transient model is selected because of its higher accuracy. Validation analysis is performed on the numerical model to show the reasonable agreement of current research compared to some other research. After obtaining the suitable... 

In order to guarantee the security of industrial control system (ICS) processes, the proper functioning of the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) must be ensured. In particular, cyber-attacks can manipulate the PLC control logic program and cause terrible damage that jeopardize people’s life when bringing the state of the critical system into an unreliable state. Unfortunately, no remote attestation technique has yet been proposed that can validate the PLC control logic program using a physics-based model that demonstrates device behavior. In this paper, we propose PLCDefender, a mitigation method that combines hybrid remote attestation technique with a physics-based model to preserve the... 

We consider the problem of massive matrix multiplication, which underlies many data analytic applications, in a large-scale distributed system comprising a group of worker nodes. We target the stragglers' delay performance bottleneck, which is due to the unpredictable latency in waiting for slowest nodes (or stragglers) to finish their tasks. We propose a novel coding strategy, named entangled polynomial code, for designing the intermediate computations at the worker nodes in order to minimize the recovery threshold (i.e., the number of workers that we need to wait for in order to compute the final output). We demonstrate the optimality of entangled polynomial code in several cases, and show... 

Migration from Two Dimensional Integrated Circuits (2D ICs) to Three Dimensional Integrated Circuits (3D ICs) reduces the delay due to the shorter wire length between sender and receiver. However, Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs) that connect layers in the structure of 3D ICs can seriously increase the delay due to capacitance coupling between TSVs and lead to crosstalk fault. The severity of crosstalk faults depends on transitions appearing on TSVs that is called transition patterns. To propose an efficient crosstalk tackling mechanisms in 3D ICs, an accurate probability analytical model is required to predict the delay caused by TSVs (3D ICs) in the attendance of these transition patterns. In... 

Greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic sources are believed to be the main cause of global warming and climate change. Furthermore, fossil fuels are forecasted to remain the dominant source of energy in the near future. Therefore, capture and sequestration of greenhouse gases and in particular carbon dioxide is likely to be a major pathway toward environmental protection and energy sustainability. Such clarity has stimulated an intense and diverse range of research into various capture and mitigation technologies, which race with global warming in real-time. Quantification of the performance improvement rates of these technologies can inform decision-makers' long-term investment... 

The proliferation of more sensitive loads has obliged distribution companies to pay greater attention to the voltage sag mitigation potential of different design alternatives in network planning studies. In doing so, a company has to have effective tools for estimating the voltage sag performance of its network. In this regard, this paper establishes a three-step framework for evaluating voltage sag performance of a distribution network. The first step, designated as state selection, is to select a network state in which voltage sag is likely. Although voltage sags have various causes, those that originated from faults in distribution networks are considered in this paper. The stochastic...