Sharif Digital Repository

The effects of liquefaction induced lateral spreading on the piles of a dolphin-type berth were investigated using 1 g large scale shake table testing accompanied by numerical simulations. For this purpose, various aspects of the response of the soil and the pile group to lateral spreading were considered. The results indicated that large bending moments were induced in the piles during lateral spreading and the downslope piles of the group received greater bending moments than the upslope one. The monotonic components of bending moments in the piles were reasonably predicted by the displacement based numerical approach using p-y springs when they were properly tuned for strength reduction... 

The solar collectors absorb solar irradiation and then produce thermal energy; however, they cannot generate electrical power. Electricity and thermal energy can be produced by the photovoltaic thermal module, simultaneously, while the outlet temperature of the photovoltaic thermal module is not usually high enough to provide thermal requirements of a building such as hot water or space heating. This work proposes a novel compound system created by the connection of a solar collector in series with a photovoltaic thermal module to resolve the issue of low outlet temperature in the photovoltaic thermal module and lack of electrical power in solar collectors. To examine the feasibility of this... 

Manta ray swimming or bio-inspiration propulsion system, as a special type of marine propulsion system, is used for submersible vehicles that require high-speed maneuverability and stability, such as glider and AUV. In a manta ray swimming, the thrust force is generated by a couple of undulation and oscillation of wing, so that the direction of undulation wave and oscillation is upright and perpendicular to the direction of thrust force, respectively. It is possible to combine these two movement modes (flapping motion) on the three-dimensional model without considering the effects of wing twisting and flexibility to simplify and better understand the physical behaviors or special study of... 

Among the parameters affecting the critical velocity in tunnel fires, the tunnel cross-sectional shape could significantly affect the tunnel fire characteristics, mainly due to the wall-bounded physics of the tunnel fire. Previously, the effects of the cross-sectional geometry of the tunnel were calculated using the non-dimensional analysis and hydraulic height of the tunnel. The dimensionless analysis using hydraulic height calculates only the effects of the tunnel sizes and does not capture the effects of the shape of the tunnel cross-section. Developing a 3D computational fluid dynamics tool using the body-fitted grids, the critical velocities are calculated for the 7 different... 

A coupled statistical and conditional generative adversarial neural network is used for 3D reconstruction of both homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media from a single two-dimensional image. A statistical approach feeds the deep network with conditional data, and then the reconstruction is trained on a deep generative network. The conditional nature of the generative model helps in network stability and convergence which has been optimized through a gradient-descent-based optimization method. Moreover, this coupled approach allows the reconstruction of heterogeneous samples, a critical and serious challenge in conventional reconstruction methods. The main contribution of this work is to... 

Background and Objective: Blood flow variation during cardiac cycle is the main mechanism of atherosclerotic development which is dependent on. Methods: The present work mainly tends to investigate stenosis effect in dynamic curvature of coronary artery. This paper presents numerical investigations on wall shear stress profiles in three-dimensional pulsatile flow through curved stenotic coronary arteries for both static and dynamic model. In order to do so, three-dimensional models related to the curved arteries with two degrees of stenosis (30% and 50%). Results: Lower amount of wall shear stress is found near the inner wall of artery distal to the plaque region (stenosis) and in both... 

Horizontal ground heat exchangers (GHEs) have a lower cost in comparison to vertical ones; however, they require more land area. For the sake of reducing the required land area for horizontal GHEs, flat-panel GHEs have been recently introduced. In this piece of research, a 3-D numerical model has been developed to predict the thermal performance of flat-panel GHEs. In this study, at first, the thermal performance of a flat-panel GHE has been compared with that of linear horizontal ones. The results demonstrate that the flat-panel GHE has a better thermal performance of about 27% in comparison to an arrangement of linear GHEs with a value of 0.5 m for pipe spacing. In the second part of this... 

A three-dimensional model has been developed to describe the multiphase release of macromolecular drugs encapsulated in a hydrogel. The heterogeneity of network mesh size was considered by assigning varying diffusion coefficients to the network lattices randomly. Using a stochastic approach, the random nature of diffusion of drug molecules was captured within the network. The simplest form of distribution containing two diffusion coefficients was tested. To generate the drug release profiles for experimental validation under the limitation of computational cost, a simple scaling relationship was employed. Unlike the single-diffusivity model, the dual-diffusivity model showed good agreement... 

In the study, the daily and monthly performance of a photovoltaic thermal system integrated with phase change material is investigated in Shanghai, China. A three-dimensional model of photovoltaic thermal system integrated with phase change material system is developed and numerically simulated. Water is considered as working fluid, and the fluid flow regime is laminar and incompressible. Both quasi-steady and transient models are compared together, and the transient model is selected because of its higher accuracy. Validation analysis is performed on the numerical model to show the reasonable agreement of current research compared to some other research. After obtaining the suitable... 

This paper describes a three-dimensional (3D) finite-element (FE) model developed to assess the seismic behaviour of a novel prefabricated beam-to-beam connection termed a double-bolted flush end-plate beam (DBFEB) splice connection under cyclic loading. The seismic response was analysed and evaluated in terms of the hysteretic behaviour, rigidity, resistance degradation, ductility, energy dissipation capacity and equivalent damping coefficient. It is shown that the required performance can be achieved by controlling the end-plate thickness as well as the bolt grade and diameter; these parameters were therefore chosen as the key geometric variables investigated here for parametric study.... 

Compact heat exchangers are among the vital components used in various industries. In this study, a general framework has been developed with a multi-scale point of view for three-dimensional simulation of multi-stream plate-fin heat exchangers. The most important features in the MSPFHEs simulation, such as phase change phenomena, multi-component mixtures, multiple streams, transversal, lateral and longitudinal conduction, non-uniformity of inlet flow, variable fluid properties, and heat leakage are simultaneously considered in this model. The modular form of the model structure has facilitated layer-by-layer simulation of cross flow heat exchangers as well as parallel flow ones. Our model... 

In this study, coupled Generative Adversarial and Auto-Encoder neural networks have been used to reconstruct realizations of three-dimensional porous media. The gradient-descent-based optimization method is used for training and stabilizing the neural networks. The multi-scale reconstruction has been conducted for both sandstone and carbonate samples from an Iranian oilfield. The sandstone contains inter and intra-grain porosity. The generative adversarial network predicts the inter-grain pores and the auto-encoder provides the generative adversarial network result with intra-grain pores (micro-porosity). Different matching criteria, including porosity, permeability, auto-correlation... 

Mechanized tunneling method using Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) is being extensively employed in urban areas, especially when excavation takes place underneath the groundwater table. In this study, three-dimensional coupled Finite Element Analyses (FEA) have been performed to investigate the interaction mechanism between mechanized twin tunnels construction of Shiraz metro (line 2) and groundwater. Firstly, two soil constitutive models (Mohr-Coulomb and Modified Cam-Clay model) of Shiraz lean clay are validated against drained triaxial compression test data. Varying the permeability of the grout layer within the specified range, the base numerical model is then calibrated by the field data of... 

Microfluidic cell culture platforms are ideal candidates for modeling the native tumor microenvironment because they can precisely reconstruct in vivo cellular behavior. Moreover, mathematical modeling of tumor growth can pave the way toward description and prediction of growth pattern as well as improving cancer treatment. In this study, a modified mathematical model based on concentration distribution is applied to tumor growth in both conventional static culture and dynamic microfluidic cell culture systems. Apoptosis and necrosis mechanisms are considered as the main inhibitory factors in the model, while tumor growth rate and nutrient consumption rate are modified in both quiescent and... 

In this study, a novel pseudo-three-dimensional model is developed to find out both fluid and solid temperature distributions in multi-stream plate fin heat exchangers. In this simulation algorithm, heat exchangers can be in either parallel flow or cross flow configuration. The model considerations include: heat leakage of cap plates and side plates, conduction throughout the solid matrix of the heat exchanger, variable physical properties, and inlet mass flow rate maldistribution. Using the computational code, the effects of different factors such as: the number of layers, mass flow variation, inlet mass flow rate maldistribution, and stacking pattern on the thermal performance of the heat... 

In this paper, a comprehensive three-dimensional model of photovoltaic thermal system integrated with phase change material (PVT/PCM) is developed and simulated. The effect of some key parameters using parametric analysis on performance of PVT/PCM system with water as working fluid is investigated. Parameters considered in this study include the properties of PCM (i.e. melting temperature, enthalpy of fusion and thermal conductivity), solar radiation and mass flow rate. The parametric analysis ranges are selected according to the properties of the most of available PCMs on the market, which shows the practical application of the numerical research. Furthermore, a three-dimensional model of... 

In this work, a mathematical model was developed to simulate the urinary concentration mechanism. A 3-D geometry was derived based on the detail physiological pictures of rat kidney. The approximate region of each tubule was obtained from the volume distribution of structures based on Walter Pfaller's monograph and Layton's region-based model. Mass and momentum balances were applied to solve for the change in solutes concentration and osmolality. The osmolality of short and long descending nephrons at the end of the outer medulla was obtained to be 530 mOsmol/kgH2O and 802 mOsmol/kgH2O, respectively, which were in acceptable agreement with experimental data. The fluid osmolality of the short... 

The aim of this paper is to consider the ability of endurance time (ET) method to estimate the seismic response of fixed offshore platforms at various excitation levels. In this way, various sources of nonlinear behaviour and challenging issues in the ET approach are included in the three-dimensional model of a real jacket platform utilising the finite element method. In addition to common-designed, over-designed and under-designed cases of this platform have been investigated to examine the effects of the structural characteristics on the ET response. To consider the accuracy and reliability of this approach, results of the ET method are compared with results of nonlinear time history... 

Machining of ceramics often involves many challenges due to their high hardness, brittleness, and low-thermal conductivity. Laser Assisted Machining (LAM) is a promising technology for improving the machinability of hard-to-cut materials. In this work, the effect of laser heating in the LAM process on Slip Cast Fused Silica (SCFS) ceramics is investigated by conducting a numerical thermal analysis of laser effects on material behavior. A transient three-dimensional heat transfer analysis for Laser Assisted Turning (LAT) of SCFS is performed using finite-element method. Temperature distributions in SCFS cylindrical specimens are obtained. Moreover, the influence of laser parameters, such as... 

The aim of this paper is to consider the ability of endurance time (ET) method to estimate the seismic response of fixed offshore platforms at various excitation levels. In this way, various sources of nonlinear behaviour and challenging issues in the ET approach are included in the three-dimensional model of a real jacket platform utilising the finite element method. In addition to common-designed, over-designed and under-designed cases of this platform have been investigated to examine the effects of the structural characteristics on the ET response. To consider the accuracy and reliability of this approach, results of the ET method are compared with results of nonlinear time history...