Sharif Digital Repository

Over the last few years, substantial efforts have been made to develop earth-abundant bi-functional catalysts for urea oxidation and energy-saving electrolytic hydrogen production due to their low cost and the potential to replace traditional noble-metal-based catalysts. Nevertheless, finding a straightforward and effective route to prepare efficient catalysts with unique structural features and optimal supports still is a big challenge. Among the various candidates, metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived materials show great advantages as new kinds of active non-precious catalysts. On the other hand, the controllable integration of MOFs and carbon-based nanomaterials leads to further... 

In this study, adsorption of important pollutant cations on the surface of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) was investigated by density functional theory. The calculations indicated that N6 cavity surrounded by triazine units is the most probable adsorption site on this surface. The structural optimizations also predicted a planar surface for Cr3+, and Ni2+/g-C3N4 systems while the structure of the surface for other systems indicated a considerable distortion with strong dependency on the cation size. Also, g-C3N4 surface exhibited the high adsorption energies for Cr3+, As3+, and Sb3+ ions in the gas phase. However, formation energies of the metal-aquo complexes of these cations indicated... 

The study develops a methodology for the aero-structural design including consideration of the starting of a small wind turbine blade. To design a fast-starting blade, starting time was combined with output power in an objective function and the blade allowable stress was considered as a constraint. The output power and the starting time were calculated by the blade-element momentum theory and the simple beam theory was employed to compute the stress and deflection along the blade. A genetic algorithm was employed to solve the constrained objective function, finding an optimal blade for which the starting time was small and output power was high while the stress limitation was also met.... 

Real-world, large-scale problems often have coefficient matrices with special structures that can be obtained by reordering their rows and columns. One fundamental problem in the field of combinatorial optimization is the Set Packing Problem (SPP), which takes on added significance in view of its far-reaching applications in routing and scheduling problems, scheduling surgical procedures, the winner determination problem, forestry, production management, etc. The coefficient matrix of this problem has low density (the number of 1’s is much less than the number of 0’s in the matrix); therefore, by reordering the matrix, one can aggregate its 1’s in order to exploit special structures like... 

In this article, an optimal maneuver structure is proposed to improve the cruise fuel consumption performance of a transport category aircraft. The maneuver is taken by analogy to the natural phenomena of fish movement in the water. By using fish-like locomotion and implementing it on a transport category aircraft, better performance economy has been realized in cruise flight. The maneuver structure and the required control actions are extracted using optimal control theory. The power required during a specified cruise time span is taken as the merit function in the optimal control formulation. The cost savings associated with this type of optimized periodic maneuver during cruise is... 

There is no method to determine the optimal topology for multi-layer neural networks for a given problem. Usually the designer selects a topology for the network and then trains it. Since determination of the optimal topology of neural networks belongs to class of NP-hard problems, most of the existing algorithms for determination of the topology are approximate. These algorithms could be classified into four main groups: pruning algorithms, constructive algorithms, hybrid algorithms and evolutionary algorithms. These algorithms can produce near optimal solutions. Most of these algorithms use hill-climbing method and may be stuck at local minima. In this article, we first introduce a... 

A new design methodology based on the total value of structures is introduced. This methodology, namely Value Based Design of structures (VBD), uses the advantages of Endurance Time (ET) method. While prescriptive and earlier generations of performance based design approaches commonly try to find structures with the least initial cost, a design approach to directly incorporate the concept of value in design procedure has been formulated here. Reduced computational effort in ET analysis provides the prerequisites to practical use of optimization algorithms in seismic design. A genetic algorithm is used with the objective of minimizing total cost of the building during its lifespan. ET method... 

The purpose of this paper is to present efficient and accurate analytical expressions for deflection of a shape memory polymer (SMP) beam employing Euler-Bernoulli beam theory in a thermomechanical SMP cycle. Material behavior is considered using a recently 3D thermodynamically consistent constitutive model available in literature. In different steps of an SMP thermomechanical cycle, closed form expressions for internal variables variations, stresses and beam curvature distribution are presented. We show that during the cooling process, stored strains evolve to fix the temporary shape and then during the heating process they relax to recover the permanent shape. Effects of applying external... 

Electric power deregulation has drastically affected the engineering aspects of planning. In addition need flexible electric systems, changing regulatory and economic scenarios, energy savings and environmental impact are providing impetus to the development of Distributed Generation (DG), which is predicted to play an increasing role in the electric power system of the future. This opens the venue for distribution company's (Disco) aiming to minimize their investment risks by developing optimum new planning strategies to meet the load growth and satisfy the system performance at minimum cost different electricity structures. This paper proposes a framework for solving the distribution... 

An efficient method for computation of surface wave (SW) reflectivity and coupling in an abruptly ended planar layered waveguide is presented. Using characteristic Green's function (CGF) technique, the original structure is approximated by a separable structure. Then by applying rational function fitting method (RFFM) a uniform and closed-form expression of spatial Green's function for separable structure is derived. Having a full wave solution of the original structure, an optimization problem is defined to find the reflection coefficients of SW modes. Unlike the previous presented CGF based method called CGF-complex images (CI), CGF-RFFM leads to easy incorporation of radiation modes... 

In this paper, a practical method is developed for performance-based design of RC structures subjected to seismic excitations. More efficient design is obtained by redistributing material from strong to weak parts of a structure until a state of uniform deformation or damage prevails. By applying the design algorithm on 5, 10 and 15-storey RC frames, the efficiency of the proposed method is initially demonstrated for specific synthetic and real seismic excitations. The results indicate that, for similar structural weight, designed structures experience up to 30% less global damage compared with code-based design frames. The method is then developed to consider multiple performance objectives... 

Estimation of distribution algorithms have evolved as a technique for estimating population distribution in evolutionary algorithms. They estimate the distribution of the candidate solutions and then sample the next generation from the estimated distribution. Bayesian optimization algorithm is an estimation of distribution algorithm, which uses a Bayesian network to estimate the distribution of candidate solutions and then generates the next generation by sampling from the constructed network. The experimental results show that the Bayesian optimization algorithms are capable of identifying correct linkage between the variables of optimization problems. Since the problem of finding the... 

In this research, application of the Endurance Time (ET) method in performance-based design of structures with and without consideration of uncertainties is investigated and a practical optimum design procedure is proposed. The ET method is used as an analytical assessment tool because of its capabilities in response estimation with an affordable computational demand. In the first step of the proposed method, ET analysis is implemented in a multi-objective optimum design procedure in order to achieve a set of Pareto optimal designs. Optimization is conducted with respect to initial cost and expected life cycle cost using a deterministic approach. For each design alternative the median... 

Microchannels are at the fore front of today's cooling technologies. They are widely being considered for cooling of electronic devices and in micro heat exchanger systems due to their ease of manufacture. One issue which arises in the use of microchannels is related to the small length scale of the channel or channel cross-section. In this work, the maximum heat transfer and the optimum geometry for a given pressure loss have been calculated for forced convective heat transfer in microchannels of various cross-section having finite volume for laminar flow conditions. Solutions are presented for 10 different channel cross sections, namely parallel plate channel, circular duct, rectangular... 

In this paper, Virtual Cathode Oscillator as a microwave generator is studied concentrating on the nonlinear behavior of the microwave-plasma interaction that introduces chaos to the output voltage and power of the generator. It is shown that periodic oscillations of the electron beam strictly depend on the two most critical characteristics of the VCO, the input maximum voltage and the cathode radius. The chaos caused by the critical values of these two parameters, could restrict the maximum possible values of the input parameters, reducing the overall maximum output values. The effects of these two parameters are studied trough PIC-code simulations. The simulation results were used to... 

The objective of this work is making comparison between thermodynamic models and data-driven techniques accuracy in prediction of hydrate formation pressure as a function of temperature and composition of gas mixtures. The Peng-Robinson (PR) and Patel-Teja (PT) equations of state are used for thermodynamic modeling and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) are used as data-driven models. The capability of each method is evaluated by comparison with the experimental data collected from literature. It is shown that there is a good agreement between thermodynamic modeling and the experimental data in most of the cases; however, the prediction... 

Seismic retrofitting of existing buildings and design of earth-quake resistant buildings are important issues associated with earthquake-prone zones. Use of metallic-yielding dampers as an energy dissipation system is an acceptable method for controlling damages in structures and improving their seismic performance. In this study, the optimal distribution of dampers for reducing the seismic response of steel frames with multi-degrees freedom is presented utilizing the uniform distribution of deformations. This has been done in a way that, the final configuration of dampers in the frames lead to minimum weight while satisfying the performance criteria. It is shown that such a structure has an... 

Conventional lateral resisting systems can provide sufficient strength and ductility for design based earthquakes, although the considerable residual deformation remaining in the plasticized regions undermines the resiliency of the structures. In order to resolve this problem, various self-centering systems have been proposed and tested in recent years, most of which are specified for new buildings and are not simply suitable for retrofitting applications. Moreover, the available self-centering systems are costly and complex to assemble, which can be considered as a serious barrier for practical application. To address these drawbacks, an innovative Core-Less Self-Centering (CLSC) brace is... 

The aeroelastic design of composite wings modeled as thin-walled beams is investigated through the use of curvilinear fiber. The structural model considers non-classical effects such as transverse shear, warping restraint, rotary inertia, nonuniform torsional model and also aerodynamic loads based on Wagner's function. In this paper, a linear spanwise variation of the fiber orientation resulting in a variable-stiffness structure is used to optimize the wing for maximum aeroelastic instability speed purpose, while manufacturing constraints are incorporated. Numerical results indicate improvements of aeroelastic stability of variable-stiffness wings over conventional, constant-stiffness ones  

one of the important issues of construction industry today, is providing a meaningful interconnectivity between Architecture and its technical and technological aspects. In construction projects aesthetic and form is habitually crucial for the architect while structural designers aim for efficiency and stability of the structure. This research is concerned with the design of an urban footbridge located in Tehran-Iran with social and cultural spaces in which the form of the bridge is obtained by the use of topology optimization process. The objective of this study is to investigate the utilization of topology optimization process in architecture in order to achieve a beneficial design...