Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a multi-objective availability-redundancy allocation optimization model for a hyper-system. The hyper-system consists of B systems with shared resources. The structure of the systems is series-parallel subsystems consisting of multi-failure and multi-state components. The components may be purchased from different suppliers based on their price and discounts. It is assumed that technical and organizational activities continuously affect the components' failure rates and the subsystems' working conditions before starting the system's mission horizon. The model aims to find the optimal number and the type of the subsystems' components for all systems from each supplier and... 

Although simvastatin (SIM) has been proven to be a powerful agent against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury, poor water solubility, short half-life, and low bioavailability have made it futile while using conventional drug delivery system. Hence, this study aims to investigate therapeutic efficacy of SIM-loaded nano-niosomes on MI/R injury. Surface active agent film hydration method was used to synthesize nano-niosomes. The physicochemical properties of nano-niosomes were characterized using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Moreover, niosomes were characterized in entrapment efficiency (EE) and releasing pattern. Male Wistar rats were... 

Interaction between rock-fluid and fluid-fluid can have a significant effect on oil recovery. Changing the wettability of reservoir rock toward more water-wet or less oil-wet state is one of the expected mechanisms during low salinity water injection (LSWI). pH and salinity are of the most eminent factors of injection water controlling the wettability state of a crude oil/brine/rock system during any waterflooding operation. A small change in pH can affect the surface charges at the rock/water and oil/water interfaces leading to wettability alteration in a porous medium. In this study, the synergic effect of salinity and pH on the wettability state of carbonate rocks is evaluated through... 

Although simvastatin (SIM) has been proven to be a powerful agent against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (MI/R) injury, poor water solubility, short half-life, and low bioavailability have made it futile while using conventional drug delivery system. Hence, this study aims to investigate therapeutic efficacy of SIM-loaded nano-niosomes on MI/R injury. Surface active agent film hydration method was used to synthesize nano-niosomes. The physicochemical properties of nano-niosomes were characterized using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Moreover, niosomes were characterized in entrapment efficiency (EE) and releasing pattern. Male Wistar rats were... 

Carbonaceous radioactive waste is produced by adsorption of effluent gases of UF6 production line, on a bed of charcoal. Current research was aimed at developing a process for recovery of uranium from this waste in a laboratory and at pilot scale. As a first step, leaching of uranium from carbonaceous radioactive waste was undertaken by successive steps using Al(NO3)3 and nitric acid, the former used to eliminate corrosivity of the F− ions. The stoichiometry of reaction between F− and Al3+ ions form complexes ranging from AlF2+, AlF2+ to AlF3 depending upon their molar ratio. The results showed that the increase of NO3−/U ratio increased the uranium leaching efficiency. Presence of some... 

Hepatitis is one of the most perilous viral infectious diseases and many people suffer from it all around the world. In particular, hepatitis B is a terribly dangerous disease which may cause severe liver damage or cancer if it is not treated. Recently, several dynamic models have been developed from experimental studies for describing such diseases mathematically. The certainty of these dynamics models is questionable in realistic treatment processes. Thus, the modeling uncertainties should be considered in the dynamics, which necessitates employing robust control strategies capable to overcome these uncertainties. Accordingly, in this research, a control strategy is developed in order to... 

Ground reaction force (GRF) characteristics of amputee walking are important for the analysis of clinical gait data, and also to update model reference adaptive impedance (MRAI) controllers. GRF estimation is a better alternative than direct GRF measurement because of the disadvantages of load cells, such as high cost, integration difficulties due to weight and physical dimensions, the possibility of overload, and measurement noise. This paper presents four robust MRAI observer/controller combinations for GRF estimation-based control of a prosthesis and a legged robot model in the presence of parametric uncertainties and unmodeled dynamics, in which the robot model is employed to mimic... 

Gas condensate production using technology of multi-stage hydraulically fracturing in shale gas condensate reservoirs' horizontal wells is a new topic of unconventional resources studies. Thus, shale gas condensate as a new source of energy can be considered as an important issue for development and further studies. In this work, a semi-analytical solution of gas and oil two-phase flow is presented for pressure transient analysis (PTA) and rate transient analysis (RTA) of a shale gas condensate reservoir's production data. Fluid flow assumption here is flow in a pseudo triple-porosity porous media, which are matrix, natural fractures and adsorbed gas. Adsorbed gas is a form of gas in porous... 

In order to understand the potential role of divalent ions involved in smart water, fluid-fluid and rock-fluid interactions are studied through contact angle and interfacial tension (IFT) measurements. Then, the suitable brines in changing contact angle and IFT are brought into measurement with spontaneous imbibition experiments to evaluate the co-impact of fluid-fluid and rock-fluid interactions. The results show the importance of SO42− ions during smart water injection as removing them from the injection water leads to a sharp drop in ultimate oil recovery. Accordingly, when the concentration of SO42− within the injection water increases four times, 10% ultimate oil recovery is recovered.... 

Abstract: Well testing is one of the important methods to provide information about the reservoir heterogeneity and boundary limits by analyzing reservoir dynamic responses. Despite the significance of well testing data, misinterpreted data can lead us to a wrong reservoir performance prediction. In this study, we focus on cases ignoring the adjacent well’s production history, which may lead to misinterpretation. The analysis was conducted on both homogeneous and naturally fractured reservoirs in infinite-acting and finite-acting conditions. The model includes two wells: one is “tested well” and the other is “adjacent one.” By studying different scenarios and focusing on derivative plots, it... 

In recent years, controlling the salinity and composition of the injected water has become an emerging enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique, often described as low salinity (LS) waterflooding. This work is done with the intention to contribute to the ongoing discussions about LS waterflooding mechanism(s). For this purpose, a series of different experiments were conducted. At first, the effect of salinity on the interfacial tension (IFT) and the contact angle was evaluated with a crude oil sample. Then to achieve more accurate results in observing oil/water interface, similar IFT experiments were also carried out on a synthetic oil containing asphaltenes. Thereafter, microscopic... 

An exact analytical solution for one-dimensional fluid flow through rock matrix block is presented. The nonlinearity induced from flow functions makes the governing equations describing this mechanism difficult to be analytically solved. In this paper, an analytical solution to the infiltration problems considering non-linear relative permeability functions is presented for finite depth, despite its profound and fundamental importance. Elimination of the nonlinear terms in the equation, as a complex and tedious task, is done by applying several successive mathematical manipulations including: Hopf-Cole transformation to obtain a diffusive type PDE; an exponential type transformation to get a... 

The aim of this study is to develop a non-linear robust controller with adaptive gains in order to prevent malaria epidemic as a positive system with an uncertain model. The malaria outbreak is modelled by seven non-linear coupled differential equations for the population variables: susceptible, exposed, symptomatic infected and recovered humans and the susceptible, exposed and infected mosquitoes. The non-linear robust adaptive integral-sliding-mode controller is developed in order to appropriately adjust the use of treated bednets, treatment rate of infected individuals and the use of insecticide spray to control malaria epidemic. Accordingly, the numbers of exposed and infected humans and... 

In this paper, a novel robust model reference adaptive impedance control (RMRAIC) scheme is presented for an active transtibial ankle prosthesis. The controller makes the closed loop dynamics of the prosthesis similar to a reference impedance model and provides asymptotic tracking of the response trajectory of this impedance model. The interactions between human and prosthesis are taken into account by designing a second-order reference impedance model. The proposed controller is robust against parametric uncertainties in the nonlinear dynamic model of the prosthesis. Also, the controller has robustness against bounded uncertainties due to unavailable ground reaction forces and unmeasurable... 

Considering the interaction of flexural moment and shear force in the steel frames with haunch or intermediate beam length and eccentrically braced frames with intermediate link length is a major concern of the structural analysis and design. This article contains two stages. In the first stage, to investigate the moment–shear interaction for the highly ductile steel I-sections, a study is carried out using finite element analysis and a simple and practical relationship is developed. In the second stage, a simple approach based on virtual work method for assemblage of interconnected rigid bodies is employed to consider collapse mechanisms with mixed hinges. Using this approach, the... 

In recent years, robotic rehabilitation has been utilized in treatment and recovery of patients with disabilities. In this paper, a novel design and kinematic analysis of a 4-DOF robot for upper-limb rehabilitation are proposed. The main novelty of this design is its mechanism for wrist and fingers motions which is added to the shoulder and elbow mechanism without any noticeable weight increase in the moving parts of the robot. For this purpose, a cable driven mechanism is implemented at the robot end-effector to move the wrist and fingers parts, and the corresponding actuators are placed at the base of the robot. © 2018 IEEE  

A nonlinear robust adaptive sliding mode admittance controller is proposed for exoskeleton rehabilitation robots. The proposed controller has robustness against uncertainties of dynamic parameters using an adaptation law. Furthermore, an adaptive Sliding Mode Control (SMC) scheme is employed in the control law to provide robustness against disturbances (non-parametric uncertainties) with unknown bounds. For this purpose, another adaptation law is defined for the variation of the SMC gain. The proposed scheme is augmented with an admittance control method to provide the patient with compliance during interaction with the rehabilitation robot. The stability of the proposed controller and the... 

A new robust adaptive controller is developed for the control of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection inside the body. The non-linear HBV model has three state variables: uninfected cells, infected cells and free viruses. A control law is designed for the antiviral therapy such that the volume of infected cells and the volume of free viruses are decreased to their desired values which are zero. One control input represents the efficiency of drug therapy in inhibiting viral production and the other control input represents the efficiency of drug therapy in blocking new infection. The proposed controller ensures the stability and robust performance in the presence of parametric and... 

Considering the interaction of flexural moment and shear force in the steel frames with haunch or intermediate beam length and eccentrically braced frames with intermediate link length is a major concern of the structural analysis and design. This article contains two stages. In the first stage, to investigate the moment–shear interaction for the highly ductile steel I-sections, a study is carried out using finite element analysis and a simple and practical relationship is developed. In the second stage, a simple approach based on virtual work method for assemblage of interconnected rigid bodies is employed to consider collapse mechanisms with mixed hinges. Using this approach, the... 

Ground reaction force (GRF) characteristics of amputee walking are important for the analysis of clinical gait data, and also to update model reference adaptive impedance (MRAI) controllers. GRF estimation is a better alternative than direct GRF measurement because of the disadvantages of load cells, such as high cost, integration difficulties due to weight and physical dimensions, the possibility of overload, and measurement noise. This paper presents four robust MRAI observer/controller combinations for GRF estimation-based control of a prosthesis and a legged robot model in the presence of parametric uncertainties and unmodeled dynamics, in which the robot model is employed to mimic...