Sharif Digital Repository

In this article, the state estimation for Automotive Slip Angle considering the measurement noise in sensor is addressed. Realtime measurement of the slip angle is applicable to many active vehicle safety applications, such as rollover prevention and yaw stability control. As the sensors that measure slip angle directly are expensive, the method to extract slip angle from other available sensors in vehicle is considered. First from the simplified nonlinear dynamic system of vehicle, a Piecewise Affine (PWA) model with calculated uncertainties is obtained. The uncertainties are the result of nonlinear system deviation from PWA model. Then using the PWA model, a Stochastic Robust Hybrid... 

In this paper optimization of energy consumption in an electric vehicle is presented. The main idea of this optimization is based on selecting the best gear level in driving the vehicle. Two algorithms for optimization are introduced which are based on fuzzy rules and fuzzy controllers. In first algorithm, fuzzy controller simulates energy consumption in different gear levels, and chooses the optimum gear level. While in second method, fuzzy controller detects the optimum gear level by measuring the vehicle's average speed and acceleration. To investigate the performance of these controllers, a model of TOSAN vehicle is developed and the controllers outputs are checked in simulation of TOSAN... 

[No abstract available]  

Endurance Time (ET) method is a new dynamic procedure that has been recently developed for seismic safety evaluation of structures. This method is based on the comparison of seismic response of new-designed or existing structures under intensifying ET records with the pre-assigned damage index. Also this method can efficiently reproduce the seismic responses of the structures excited by scaled earthquakes that are required in time history analysis by the codes. In this paper, first general idea of this new method is described and then is applied to evaluate the seismic safety of a cylindrical steel storage tank under multidirectional excitations. It is shown that the ET method can predict... 

Background and aims: Among different types of occupational accidents in the construction industry, falls and falling objects accidents (group I) account for 44% of construction accidents. Hit by vehicle, electric shock, collapse in the excavation and fire or explosion accidents (group II), while are only 7% frequent, make up about 26% of all fatalities and total disabling accidents. The aim of this study is to investigate these two groups of accidents and to discuss the obtained results in order to identify the potential hazards of construction industry. Methods: Data mining methods are employed to analyze data in this research. Hence, 21864 data records which were provided by Social... 

Crash data availability is a significant requirement for identifying hazardous roads. However, for roads with poor data sets or no crash record, a method is needed to find and rank road segments independent of the crash records. In this paper, an auditing based methodology is proposed to determine the hazardous locations. A Rural road is investigated by decomposing it first into six elements, and then into safety factors corresponding to each element. The elements are: straight segments, horizontal and vertical curves, bridges, tunnels, merges and intersections, and side road land use. The relative contribution of the elements to the safety of a road segment is determined using the... 

There are different well-established strategies for making a process plant inherently safer. The benefits of applying these strategies on reducing the overall risk inside a plant are obvious. However, some of these changes are rejected many times because they appear to be too costly. But if the effects of applying inherently safer design strategies are investigated not only on the processing costs of a plant but also on the potential accident costs, the decision would in fact be different. In this paper an optimization procedure is proposed which integrates both processing and accident costs for different design schemes. In this procedure, some of the design variables are chosen with regard... 

Performability is an important parameter in safety-critical real-time systems. This parameter is defined as the joint consideration of two other important parameters, i.e., reliability and performance. This paper proposes a schedulability condition that guarantees a desired level of performability under various working conditions for real-time systems. The basic idea underlining this condition is to select a subset of schedulable tasks and manage their slack times to satisfy a desired performability level. The proposed condition is evaluated on a hard real-time system that employs the Rate-Monotonic (RM) scheduling algorithm and uses the re-execution mechanism to improve the reliability.... 

The wellhead flow control valve bodies which are the focal point of this failure case study were installed in some of the upstream facilities of Khangiran's sour gas wells. These valve bodies have been operating satisfactorily for 3 years in wet H2S environment before some pits and cracks were detected in all of them during the periodical technical inspections. One failed valve body was investigated by chemical and microstructural analytical techniques to find out the failure cause and provide preventive measures. The valve body alloy was A216-WCC cast carbon steel. During investigation many cracks were observed on the inner surface of the valve body grown from the surface pits. The results... 

Fault tolerant operation of single-ended non-isolated DC-DC converters used in embedded and safety critical applications is mandatory to guaranty service continuity. This paper proposes a new, fast and efficient FPGA-based open and short-circuit switch fault diagnosis asssociated to fault tolerant converter topology. The results of Hardware-In-the-Loop and experimental tests are presented and discussed  

The challenge of finding an optimized and reliable path dates back to emersion of mobile robots. Several approaches have been developed that have partially answered this need. Satisfying results in previous implementations has led to an increased utilization of sampling-based motion planning algorithms in recent years, especially in high degrees of freedom (DOF), fast evolving environments. Another advantage of these algorithms is their probabilistic completeness that guarantees delivery of a path in sufficient time, if one exists. On the other hand, sampling based motion planners leave no comment on safety of the planned path. This paper suggests biasing the Rapidly-exploring Random Trees... 

The total cost of earthquakes is in this paper modeled as a continuous random variable that includes the cost of damage and the cost of construction to prevent damage. Realizations of this variable are obtained by evaluating an array of probabilistic models that take many basic random variables as input. Consequently, analyses can be conducted to determine the mean cost, as well as cost exceedance probabilities and other measures of seismic risk. Such results are employed to address the underlying decision problem, namely to minimize the total cost of earthquakes when that cost is a continuous random variable. Applicable decision theories are outlined and several risk measures are... 

Today, managing an organization is concerned with many problems. Adopting proper strategies can promote an organization's survival. This study aimed at developing an appropriate HSSE Strategy for regional operation associated companies of Iran National Gas Company (INGS) using SWOT analysis. The analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of HSSE was carried out and according to the results suitable strategies were recommended. In this regard, senior and junior managers, supervisors, and experts active in regional operation associated companies of Iran National Gas Company participated in SWOT analysis from HSSE angle. Then, they selected the most applicable SWOT... 

The objective of this paper is to present some novel insights for solving a second stage creep problem in metal matrix composites. First, a new analytical approach is developed for obtaining some unknowns in second stage creep of short fiber composites under an applied axial load. The unknowns are the radial, circumferential, axial, shear and equivalent stresses, which are determined by approximation of creep constitutive equations and using proper assumed displacement rates. A nonlinear differential equation is solved employing suitable and correct approximate assumptions. Then, the difference of the stress components utilizing creep constitutive equations and assumed displacement rates is... 

Scratch Pad Memory (SPM) is an important part of most modern embedded processors. The use of embedded processors in safety-critical applications implies including fault tolerance in the design of SPM. This paper proposes a method, called FTSPM, which integrates a multi-priority mapping algorithm with a hybrid SPM structure. The proposed structure divides SPM into three parts: 1) a part is equipped with Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) which is immune against soft errors, 2) a part is equipped with Error-Correcting Code, and 3) a part is equipped with parity. The proposed mapping algorithm is responsible to distribute the program blocks among the above three parts with regards to their vulnerability... 

Fast fault detection (FD) and reconfiguration is necessary for fault tolerant power electronic converters in safety critical applications to prevent further damage and to make the continuity of service possible. The aim of this study is to minimize the number of the used additional voltage sensors in a fault tolerant three-phase converter. In this paper, first a practical implementation of a very fast FD scheme with reduced sensor number is discussed. Then, an optimization in this scheme is also presented to decrease the detection time. For FD, special time and voltage criterion are applied to observe the error in the estimated phase-to-phase voltages for a specific period of time. The... 

Bluetooth headsets are one of the popular accessories of mobile phones because of their convenience. It is necessary to assess the impact of electromagnetic waves on the human head when a person is using a headset. In this paper different scenarios closely modeling the situations that a subject may use the headset in real life are simulated. Simulations are performed for two types of materials commonly used to manufacture the headsets, namely silicone and acetal, and for two different orientation angle of the headset on the ear. Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and path loss values are then obtained for two different environments, the open space and inside a car. SEMCAD-X software is used as a... 

In this paper, we study the one-receiver two-eavesdropper Broadcast Channel (BC) with three degraded message sets. A common message is sent to three receivers. Another message is sent to the first and second receivers and needs to be kept secret from the third receiver (second eavesdropper). The third message is sent to the first receiver and needs to be kept secret from the second and third receivers (first and second eavesdroppers). First, we consider perfect secrecy conditions at the eavesdroppers, where we find an achievable perfect secrecy region. In the achievability scheme, we use superposition coding which divides the available randomness into different levels. These levels are used... 

Fault detection (FD) in power electronic converters is necessary in embedded and safety critical applications to prevent further damage. Fast FD is a mandatory step in order to make a suitable response to a fault in one of the semiconductor devices. The aim of this study is to present a fast yet robust method for fault diagnosis in nonisolated dc-dc converters. FD is based on time and current criteria which observe the slope of the inductor current over the time. It is realized by using a hybrid structure via coordinated operation of two FD subsystems that work in parallel. No additional sensors, which increase system cost and reduce reliability, are required for this detection method. For... 

Network forensic analysts employ payload attribution systems (PAS) as an investigative tool, which enables them to store and summarize large amounts of network traffic, including full packet payload. Hence an investigator could query the system for a specific string and check whether any of the packets transmitted previously in the network contained that specific string. As a shortcoming, the previously proposed techniques are unable to support wildcard queries. Wildcards are an important type of query that allow the investigator to locate strings in the payload when only part of the string is known. In this paper, a new data structure for payload attribution, named Character Dependent...