Sharif Digital Repository

The use of sandwich panels has become very common in recent engineering designs when the weight of the part or structure is important and we are looking to lose weight while maintaining strength. The mechanical properties of this type of structures, including yield stress, fatigue behavior and estimation of their life, failure modes, natural frequencies and resonance phenomena, etc. are affected by various factors, including geometric and environmental factors. Fatigue is one of the most common failures in these structures. Composite materials have complex structures. In these materials, due to the viscoelastic properties, the fatigue behavior changes with changing stress, stress frequency,... 

In the late 1980s, the International Maritime Organization started working on reducing air pollution by ships, and the result was the approval of Annex 6 of MARPOL and its mandatory implementation since 2005. Since then, due to the increasing importance of pollutant emissions in the maritime transport industry and the stricter regulations of the International Maritime Organization and the high cost of fuel for ships, ship owners are looking for ways to reduce fuel consumption. For this purpose, various activities related to reducing the fuel consumption of ships were carried out. Among these, the use of energy saving devices can be a solution. Recently, the hull vane, as a fixed underwater... 

The error of the inertial navigation system increases over time due to the cumulative errors of sensors. Inertial navigation system couples with sensors or other systems to prevent navigation system errors growth. One of the systems that can be used to couple with inertial navigation system is visual odometry. Visual odometry can calculate relative position of the camera at any time and estimate the device path through input images from one camera (Monocular) or multiple cameras (Stereo). Visual odometry algorithms improvements in recent decade cause this system used as real time. In this thesis, DSO algorithm, which is a direct method and monocular approach, couples with an inertial system... 

Tubular sections and consequently tubular joints in construction of steel structures in the form of space frames is widely used in ground and marine structures, including offshore jacket platforms. The passage of part of the life of the existing offshore platforms has caused cracks in various parts of the joints of these structures due to various reasons, the most important of which is fatigue. In this thesis, by adopting numerous numerical studies and validations with some cited experimental papers, the principles governing the proper buckling behavior of tubular members focusing on the conventional geometries of Persian Gulf platforms as well as the behavior and local flexibility of... 

Independent robots are equipped with various sound, inertia and visual sensors for decision making. Vision is an attractive sensor due to its non-invasive nature, passivity, and high information content. In natural environments, visual noises such as snow, rain, and dust distort images. in underwater environments, factors such as refraction and absorption of light suspended particles in the water, and color distortion affects the quality of visual data, resulting in noisy and distorted images. As a result, the autonomous underwater vehicles that rely on vision (AUVs) are challenged, resulting in poor performance. To improve the input to the visual algorithm for tracking the pipeline, in... 

Warming the injectable blood is a set of methods used to transfuse blood to the supplier (Accident patients, surgery, dialysis). These methods raise the temperature of the injected blood to body temperature. Blood transfusions are performed directly before World War II, so there is no need to heat the blood, Increased need for blood units caused blood banks. In these banks, to prevent the proliferation of pathogens, the temperature of blood units is reduced to 2-6 degrees Celsius. For indirect injection of these blood units, the injection temperature should be brought to the patient's body temperature before injection to prevent the recipient's body temperature from decreasing.In this... 

The minimum cost of energy is the goal of the wind farm layout optimization. This can be achieved by either maximizing the total energy or minimizing the total costs of the farm. This thesis considered the effect of wind speed on the performance and thrust coefficients. We also used two sizes of commercial turbines. First, we started by a single variable objective function (turbine cost to generated power), then, considering cable, foundation and O&M modules, objective function changed to a LCOE function which is non-dimensionalized by dividing all the costs to the cost of one turbine. We modified the simple cost model proposed by Mosetti et al., using cost scaling law, and also included... 

One of the key issues in the design of vessels is their proper stability and performance in waves. Therefore, the use of twin-hull vessel designs such as conventional catamaran and SWATH is suitable for improving stability and seakeeping quality. Although SWATH has a better seakeeping quality than a conventional catamaran, it has been observed that at high forward speeds, especially in head waves, the vertical motions of the vessel is greatly enhanced. Various methods such as correction of the hull form and the use of fin stabilizers can be used to modify SWATH vessel motion behavior. These control surfaces can respond appropriately to the dynamic forces from the waves, reducing the motions... 

Magnetic shape memory alloys (MSMAs) are a new kind of smart materials which are great alternatives for energy harvesting systems due to some unmatched characteristics such as reversible large strain, high cycle fatigue and fast time response. In this work, an energy harvesting system using MSMA is studied. For this goal, a 3-D thermodynamic-based MSMA model is applied for predicting magnetomechanical behavior of the MSMA sample which is used in the energy harvester system. Since demagnetization effect, which has a great influence on the model’s outputs, has been neglected in the selected MSMA model, a new approach is presented for inserting demagnetization coefficients, regarding to the... 

Helical swimming robots with a capable propulsion system at low Reynolds numbers have been proposed for many applications. Although linear propulsion characteristics of swimming robots with a single helical flagellum have been extensively studied, the characteristics of maneuverability have not been completely investigated yet. In this thesis two novel mechanisms was proposed. The first mechanism presents a new method for the maneuverability of the helical swimming robot with a single helical flagellum. This mechanism is based on the change in the angle between the helical and body axes. This study shows that a change in the aforementioned angle can enable the swimming robot to have turning... 

large ships should only make very small horizontal movements at the berth for efficient loading. This is especially a concern in ports facing the open ocean directly, where high swells at sea can cause harbor oscillations and low-frequency surge motions of the ship. A developed mooring unit, the MoorMaster, which replaces conventional mooring lines is addressed here. The hydraulics of the system have a strong reducing effect on the motions of the moored ship. Measurements have shown that the surge motion of container ships was reduced from an amplitude in the order of 1 metre to an amplitude in the order of 5 centimetres, by using MoorMaster units. In here MoorMaster action is divided to two... 

Harvesting energy from renewable sources in nature, such as wind energy, solar energy, water energy and vibrations has always attracted researchers. There exist different ways to harvest energy from environmental vibrations. In this thesis, energy harvesting via Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys (MSMAs) has been taken into account due to important advantages of these alloys, such as their long fatigue life and good performance at high amplitudes and low frequencies.In this system, applying strain on alloy changes the magnetization and this change generates voltage in the pick-up coil around the MSMA. On the other hand, since the strain-magnetization relation is nonlinear and hysteresis,... 

Harvesting energy by magnetic shape memory alloy has many advantages against other various methods which harvested from environmental vibrations and has been considered due to high long longevity, large strain amplitude and good performance in low frequencies. These materials can display up to % recoverable strain in response to the application of a magnetic field or compressive mechanical stress. Microstructure of these materials changes under applying mechanical loading and/or magnetic field which cause magnetic vector rotating in magnetic domain. Change in magnetization of these materials, lead to harvesting energy by considering Faraday's law of induction. The model of this... 

Vibration based energy harvesting is the process of trapping and collecting vibrational energy from ambient sources which seem unusable at first sight. The smart materials with the capability of coupling two different fields can be used in converting vibrational energy to electrical one. One of this smart material which has been taken into account recently is the Magnetic Shape Memory Alloy (MSMA) and it can couple the magnetic and mechanical fields. In MSMAs the total magnetization vector changes with the application of stress and make it possible to harvest energy from Faraday law’s of induction. An important phenomena that exist in MSMA is the dependency of magnetization-strain behavior... 

Nowadays, multi-agent robotic systems are implemented to perform various operations such as military mission, search and rescue operations, etc. One of the most interested robotic platforms for multi-agent systems is quadrotor aerial robot. In this paper, a team of quadrotors is prepared to perform a formation flight toward a specified target in order to catch and transport it on a desired path. Therefore, at first, trajectory tracking control of the quadrotor has been studied and two types of controllers have been introduced: Hierarchical controller and Non-hierarchical controller. Coordinate free structure of the hierarchical controller provides distinctive properties and guarantees... 

In recent years, energy harvesting from ambient sources in order to use for low-powered electronics has been considered by many researchers. Wind energy, solar energy, water energy, mechanical energy from vibrations, etc are common sources of ambient energy. In this thesis, optimization of energy harvesting from ambient vibration using magnetic shape memory alloy is presented. To this end, a clamped-clamped beam coupled with MSMA units is considered. A shock load is applied to a proof mass which is attached to the middle of the beam. As a result of beam vibration a longitudinal strain is produced in the MSMA. This strain changes magnetic flux inside the coil connected to MSMA and as a... 

Among different mechanisems for ambient energy harvesters, energy harvesting systems by means of magnetic shape memory alloys are noted due to their long life time, large strain amplitudes and the ability to operate at low frequencies. Strain change in these systems, changes the MSMA magnetization resulting change in the magnetic flux leading to inducing voltage by means of pickup coil. in the commercial systems, magnetic flux path is created by inserting an MSMA specimen in the air gap of ferromagnetic core and generation of bias magnetic field by means of the permanent magnet or electromagnet. In this proposed research, a thermodynamic based constitutive model is selected for the mdeling... 

Torque variations caused by intermittent combustion and inertia effects of reciprocating components, exert significant torsional excitation on crankshaft of internal combustion engines. These excitation induces considerable torsional vibration on crankshafts. Therefore, modeling and analysis of crankshaft torsional vibration and absorber systems, especially in automobiles engine that crankshaft tolerate high amplitude excitations coupled with heavy inertia effects has high importance. In this study, ability of centrifugal pendulum vibration absorber and dual mass flywheel which used in rotating machinery for vibration reduction, will be examined. At first, cranktrain will be torsionaly... 

Regaining biomechanical function, comfort and quality of every-day life is a prime consideration when designing prosthetic devices for amputees. The magnetorheological (MR) prosthetic knee, which is the subject of this study, is an example of such a device. The study presents a comprehensive and a combined MR device design and MR fluid design approach, aiming to advance the MR prosthetic knee. First, this study focuses on developing a new configuration on magnetorheological (MR) brake damper as prosthetic knee. The new configuration is a rotary damper using MR fluid with a single rotary disc will act as a brake while MR fluid is activated by magnetic field in different walking gait. The main... 

Since Formation control have potentail applications in civil and military industries, decenterlized control of formation control is studied in this work using consensus algorithm. A specific robot quadrotor with 3D motion is used in this work. Quadrotor is an underactuated vehicle. First, we derivate twice from dynamical equations of linear positions. Hence, we can obtain appropriate form using linearization of output equations for design a consensus control algorithm. It is needed to design fourth order control algorithm for control of multiagent systems, beacause of twice derivation. Two methods that have been used for formation control in many works are potential function method and...