Sharif Digital Repository

In some quality control applications, processes consist of multiple components, stations or stages to finish the final products or the services. Some quality characteristics in each stage of these processes (called multistage processes) can be represented by a relationship between a response and one or more explanatory variables which is named as profile. In this paper, a general model is proposed for monitoring multivariate profiles in multistage processes. To this aim, the multivariate form of the U transformation approach is first used to remove the effect of the cascade property between the stages. Then, three control schemes are employed to monitor the parameters of multivariate simple... 

There are several methods for assessing ecosystem tolerance level, each method is defined according to the target of the ecosystem development. This paper seeks a way to plan for the development of the existing ecosystems modified for human activities. For this purpose, two methods have been applied to assess the effects of local development on the local ecosystem tailored to the different demands. Thus, after gathering data in a coastal region all technologies being capable to be applied in this region regarding ecotourism development (population growth) were determined. Via different indicators, the quality of the ecosystem was evaluated. The Ecosystem Quality Index (EQI) and Technique for... 

Nowadays, data and information are recognized as a precious resource in an organization. Data quality indicators help organizations manage the quality of data quantitatively and improve organizational processes. Organizations manage data and information with the help of information systems and make decisions within the framework of data collected and analyzed. On the other hand, continuous evaluation of the quality of data flow in systems can lead to a preventive program to formulate strategies for improving performance. This can be done effectively and efficiently in the form of control charts. In this paper, control charts are employed to monitor the quality of data flow in information... 

Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is one of the most common types of nondestructive methods that is being used in various industries, especially in the automotive industry. In this paper, qualitative and quantitative control of resistance spot welds on three-sheet joints was studied. Initially, mathematical model of ultrasonic waves was extracted for triple sheet joints. Then, acoustic simulation of ultrasonic testing on spot welds was performed using Finite Element Method (FEM). Afterwards, A Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural network was used to classify spot welds based on their diameter. There was a mean error of 20.9 % between peak amplitudes of numerical and theoretical models which the most... 

Introduction: In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been applied in various ways in medicine and dentistry. Advancements in AI technology show promising results in the practice of orthodontics. This scoping review aimed to investigate the effectiveness of AI-based models employed in orthodontic landmark detection, diagnosis, and treatment planning. Methods: A precise search of electronic databases was conducted, including PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Embase (English publications from January 2010 to July 2020). Quality Assessment and Diagnostic Accuracy Tool 2 (QUADAS-2) was used to assess the quality of the articles included in this review. Results: After applying... 

In recent years, utilizing the electrical propulsion system in the marine industry has become widely popular. Control of the propeller has been a high-priority design challenge in this industry. One of the essential issues in propeller control is the speed control of the ships. A suitable control strategy for the propeller should be economically-efficient while ensuring stability, reliability, and power quality of the ship's power system. This article proposes an improved propeller control strategy for increasing/decreasing the ship's speed. This scheme consists of two strategies: a maximum acceleration strategy and an efficient operation strategy. The maximum acceleration strategy aims to... 

Acidizing is widely used to remove near-wellbore damage and enhance the inflow performance of the reservoir to boost the well oil production rate. However, when the injected acid exposes to reservoir oil, either asphaltic sludge or emulsion forms as acid-induced damages. Therefore, laboratory compatibility tests are required before every acidizing job to determine both the acid sensitivity of oil samples and the optimal dosage of chemical inhibitors that should be used to prevent sludge and emulsion formation. The lack of knowledge to predict the risk of asphaltic sludge and emulsion damages for different oil and acid systems necessitates expensive and time-consuming compatibility tests... 

In this study, for the first time, the influence of the nanoporous Zr-based NH2-UiO-66 metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) on the tensile strength and fracture toughness of the epoxy coating was investigated. In addition, the impacts of the UiO particles' functionality (i.e., NH2 or GMA) on the MOFs/epoxy interfacial bonding and nanoparticles dispersion quality in the epoxy resin were examined by the tensile test, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and field emission-scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM). The NH2-UiO-66 and GMA-UiO-66 MOFs chemical structures were investigated by FT-IR, BET, and FE-SEM approaches. The FE-SEM investigation of the fracture morphology (at the cross-section... 

An increasing trend for reducing cost, space, and weight leads to modern embedded systems that execute multiple tasks with different criticality levels on a common hardware platform while guaranteeing a safe operation. In such Mixed-Criticality (MC) systems, multiple Worst-Case Execution Times (WCETs) are defined for each task, corresponding to system operation mode to improve the MC system’s timing behavior at run-time. Determining the appropriate WCETs for lower criticality modes is non-trivial. On the one hand, considering a very low WCET for tasks can improve the processor utilization by scheduling more tasks in that mode, on the other hand, using a larger WCET ensures that the mode... 

Laser drilling is a well-established manufacturing process utilised to produce holes in various aeroengine components. This research presents an experimental investigation on the effects of laser drilling process parameters on productivity (material removal rate), hole quality (hole taper) and drilling cost. Single-pulse drilling was employed to drill a thin-walled Inconel 718 superalloy plate of 1 mm thickness using pulsed Nd:YAG laser. The experiments were designed using Box-Behnken statistical approach to investigate the impacts of pulse energy, pulse duration, gas pressure and gas flow rate on the selected responses. Multi-objective optimisation was performed using response surface... 

Software-defined network (SDN) is an emerging network architecture in which the network control task is separated from packet forwarding. This architecture can be considered as a suitable infrastructure for fifth-generation mobile network (5G) and Internet of things due to its flexibility and dynamism. In real-time networks, time-sensitive packets that miss their deadlines are considered useless or less worthy. As with traditional networks, SDN is expected to support real-time communications and handle a variety of failures (including local controller, switch, and link failures) simultaneously. This study focuses on real-time communication of time-sensitive applications that operate on... 

An efficient isogeometric-based framework is presented to integrate optimum design and formability analysis of sheet metal forming processes. To assess the quality of the formed parts, several objective functions such as fracture, wrinkling, thickness variation, and stretching are studied. In this framework, geometric parameters of addendum surfaces and middle tools are considered as design variables, the objective functions are calculated using the recently developed one-step and multi-step inverse isogeometric methods, and the optimum design variables are obtained using the genetic global optimization algorithm. The major advantage of employing the inverse methods is to analyze the... 

A novel photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) structure, based on Haar wavelet patterns, is proposed in this paper. Its main goal is to mitigate the PAM imaging resolution and thus the time of its sampling process without compromising the image quality. Owing to the intrinsic nature of wavelet transform, this structure collects spatial and spectral components simultaneously, and this feature speeds up the sampling process by 33%. The selection of these patterns helps in better control of required conditions, such as multi-resolution imaging, to guarantee adequate image quality in comparison to previous microscopic structures. Simulation results prove the superior quality of the proposed approach... 

A novel photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) structure, based on Haar wavelet patterns, is proposed in this paper. Its main goal is to mitigate the PAM imaging resolution and thus the time of its sampling process without compromising the image quality. Owing to the intrinsic nature of wavelet transform, this structure collects spatial and spectral components simultaneously, and this feature speeds up the sampling process by 33%. The selection of these patterns helps in better control of required conditions, such as multi-resolution imaging, to guarantee adequate image quality in comparison to previous microscopic structures. Simulation results prove the superior quality of the proposed approach... 

This paper reports on the NTIRE 2021 challenge on perceptual image quality assessment (IQA), held in conjunction with the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement workshop (NTIRE) workshop at CVPR 2021. As a new type of image processing technology, perceptual image processing algorithms based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) have produced images with more realistic textures. These output images have completely different characteristics from traditional distortions, thus pose a new challenge for IQA methods to evaluate their visual quality. In comparison with previous IQA challenges, the training and testing datasets in this challenge include the outputs of perceptual image... 

Quality of Experience (QoE) measures the overall quality of a service from users’ point of view by considering several system, human, and contextual factors. There exist various objective and subjective methods for QoE prediction. Although the subjective approach is more expensive and challenging than the objective approach, QoE’s level can be more accurately determined by a subjective test. This paper investigates various features affecting QoE by proposing a comprehensive subjective evaluation. First, we show that many unconsidered factors can significantly affect QoE. We have generated voice samples featuring different values for novel factors related to the speaker, signal, and network.... 

This paper introduces the concept of mapping of Artificially Intelligent (AI) computational systems. The concept of homunculus from human neurophysiology is extended to AI systems. It is assumed that an AI system behaves similarly to a mini-column or ganglion in the natural animal brain that comprises a layer of afferent (input) neurons, a number of interconnecting processing cells, and a layer of efferent (output) neurons or organs. The objective of the present study was to identify the correlation between the stimulus to each afferent neuron and the corresponding response from each efferent organ when the intelligent system is subjected to certain stimuli. To clarify the general concept, a... 

In the present research, the effects of spot-welding process parameters on the nugget diameter and electrode penetration depth of spot-welded joints were investigated. To achieve this, a spot-welded joint of three-thin sheet low carbon steels (same thicknesses of 0.8 mm) was simulated as an electerical-thermal-mechanical coupling of 3D finite element model. After validating the finite element simulation presented in this study by comparison with the experimental results for the spot diameter, various cases of spot welds were analyzed based on the design on experiment (i.e., Taguchi method). Six variables including electrode force, electric current, and quadrilateral times (squeeze, up-slope,... 

Computed Tomography (CT) is one of the most widely used screening and diagnostic tools in medical imaging centers. Considering IAEA HUMAN HEALTH SERIES No. 19 and the American College of Radiology (ACR) Accreditation Program, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are mandatory programs to periodically monitor the system condition to promote the effective utilization of ionization radiation for a diagnostic outcome through obtaining and retaining appropriate image quality and reduction of patient dose. Computational phantoms (CPs) are the key tool to monitor system condition. The commercial QC phantoms are expensive products and are not flexible enough for user demands. In this... 

One of the well-known online monitoring techniques used for quality control of bulk samples is Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA). PGNAA suffers from the so-called matrix effect problems such as density, thickness and moisture content of the sample under study. In this work, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model is introduced to deal with these effects. The required spectra for training and testing the proposed ANN model are obtained by Monte Carlo simulation of the gamma-ray spectra recorded in a PGNAA online analyzer system used in cement factories. The gamma-ray spectra related to given set of density, thickness and moisture content are corrected channel-to-channel using...