Sharif Digital Repository

Accurate prediction of electricity demand is essential for planning, policy making and resource allocation in national level. In this manuscript, we applied a number of artificial intelligence methods to predict macro-scale electricity consumption rates in Iran. To this end, three socio-economic and three environmental factors were considered as inputs to the prediction models. We used data for the period 1967-2013 in order to predict the power demand in the years 2014-2018. Experimental results showed that the path coefficient analysis model with linear coefficients had the best performance among the models considered in this study. The outcome of this research can help the policy makers to... 

In this paper, we propose an analytical approach to compute the probability of connectivity for one-dimensional ad hoc networks. The proposed analysis gives the exact probability of connectivity for an arbitrary distribution of nodes, provided that nodes are independently and identically distributed. We conduct separate analyses for two cases; in the first case, the number of nodes varies by time under a stationary distribution and in the second case, there is a fixed (known) number of nodes in the network. Using the approaches presented in this work, we are able to derive closed-form formulas for the probability of connectivity for some spatial distributions, while for more complicated... 

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has a large peak to mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR), which can result in significant signal distortion in presence of nonlinear amplifiers. In this paper, we will show that peak of the continuous envelope of OFDM signal can be bounded by maximum of corresponding oversampled sequence. This fact is then used as the corner stone of our study in two parts. In the first part, statistical analysis is used to find probability upper bound for complementary cumulative distribution function of PMEPR. It is also proven that for large number of subcarriers, only one redundant bit is necessary to limit PMEPR within %10 of its maximum value. In the... 

Wall walking robots are designed for different purposes, rescue operations, wall inspections and jobs such as painting and cleaning and fire fighting for tall buildings. These are some cases that these types of robots are extensively used. This paper describes a design of a new serial mechanism for wall climbing job. In deed we are seeking to define a minimum degree of freedom mechanism to be applied in a robot moving vertically on a surface. This mechanism has 5 links, but at any point it works with its 4 links, actually in each cycle of motion the linkage will be interchanged. Copyright © 2006 by ASME  

Regulations of offshore structures suggest the application of Morison type equation for the estimation of forces induced by wave and current on the slender bodies of Jacket and Jack-up structures. However, common values of hydrodynamic coefficients are rarely defined in two different regulations. Estimation of global responses of Jack-up structure, the simplified geometrical model is used, therefore we will try to modify the DNV formulations in order to estimate the hydrodynamic forces on equivalent pile. Finally, the forces on the real structure and the equivalent pile model are compared and it has been shown that the approximation of the inertia forces has more accuracy comparing to the... 

The aim of the present research is to simulate dynamic behavior of the human auditoria peripherals during sound transmission using the equivalent six-degrees-of-freedom lumped parameter mathematical model. Transmissibility analysis was employed to get a better insight into the sound transmission from tympanic membrane to malleus, incus, stapes, and cochlea. Furthermore, transmissibility from each member to corresponding adjacent member was carried out to functional analysis of the human ear. Simulation study illustrated that the results are in agreement with the experimental results published in the literature, and the proposed model provides more information in the dynamic analysis of... 

Landslide-generated waves (LGWs) are among natural hazards that have stimulated attentions and concerns of engineers and researchers during the past decades. At the same period, the application of numerical modeling has been progressively increased to assess, control, and manage the risks of such hazards. This paper represents an overview of numerical studies on LGWs to explore associated recent advances and future challenges. In this review, the main landslide events followed by an LGW hazard are scrutinized. The uncertainty regarding landslide characteristics and the lack of data concerning generated tsunami properties highlights the necessity of probabilistic analysis and numerical... 

The assessment of forest sustainability in the Asian and Pacific Region was carried out. It was stated that 61 countries are members of the largest United Nations regional commission, the Economic Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP). The study showed that for about one third of these countries, the national forest and woodland coverage has steadily diminished and for more than 50 percent of the remaining countries the coverage has not improved significantly. The results confirmed the significance of the region 's forest sustainability problem and its forthcoming challenges for the 21st century  

Exploiting of the nanostructure arrays as a promising candidate for excitation of neural cells has been analyzed. Based on the importance of the coupling effect between electrode and neuron, a multiphyscis modeling approach has been proposed. The model incorporates theoretically both structural effects (size, geometry) and electrophysiological effects. The system of equations for proposed model has been solved numerically using Finite Element Method for Poisson equation and Finite Difference Method for Cable equation. In this regards we have combined the system of equations in COMSOL platform with Matlab interface accordingly. We have analyzed the effect of excitation of neuron with an extra... 

We study the problem of stability of chiral states, also known as problem of chirality, within the framework of a two-dimensional approximation of a symmetric double-well potential. We show how the symmetry breaking of the potential due to the molecular parity violation can stop the tunneling in a coherent way, accordingly stabilize the chiral states. Then, we use the quantum Brownian motion within a linear Lindblad-type equation to model how the intermolecular interactions make the tunneling incoherent, thus inducing a racemization by dephasing. Finally, we investigate the normal physical conditions where the dephasing racemization does not suppress the effects of the molecular parity... 

This paper presents the effect of martensite volume fraction (VM) on mechanical properties of AISI 4340 steel with ferrite-bainite-martensite microstructures. The steel bars were austenitized at 900°C for 1h followed by intercritical annealing at 740°C for 100min and quenching into a salt bath with temperature of 300°C and holding at different times to obtain triple phase (TP) microstructures with 34vol.% fraction ferrite and various martensite (or bainite) contents. Presence of three phases in adjacent to each other was confirmed by metallographic analysis and TEM studies. TEM observation also indicates higher density of dislocations within ferrite near martensite colonies compared to that... 

Models play an important role in fuel cell design and development. One of the critical problems to overcome in the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells is the water management. In this work a steady state, two-dimensional, isothermal model in a single PEM fuel cell using individual computational fluid dynamics code was presented. Special attention was devoted to the water transport through the membrane which is assumed to be combined effect of diffusion, electro-osmotic drag and convection. The effect of current density variation distribution on the water content (λ) in membrane/electrode assembly (MEA) was determined. In this work the membrane heat conductivity is considered as a... 

Carbon corrosion is a major degradation mechanism in cathode catalyst layers (CCL) of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Carbon corrosion (coupled with ionomer dissolution/degradation) induces severe changes in the CCL structure. In the present study, the inter-relation between the particle size of a packed sphere medium and the pore size distribution (PSD) is established. This relation is then used to predict the agglomerate size of the mix of Pt/C and ionomer in the catalyst ink, using experimentally measured PSD of the CCL. During cell degradation, the size of these agglomerates decreases; since, carbon corrosion causes carbon particles to decrease in size. Furthermore, as... 

A modified glassy carbon electrode, prepared by potentiostatic electrodeposition of platinum-ruthenium nanoparticles (Pt-RuNPs) onto a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) layer, offers dramatic improvements in the stability and sensitivity of voltammetric responses toward methyldopa (m-dopa) compared to glassy carbon electrodes individually coated with MWCNT or Pt-RuNPs. The surface morphology and nature of the hybrid film (Pt-RuNPs/MWCNT) deposited on glassy carbon electrodes was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques. A remarkable enhancement in the microscopic area of the electrode together... 

A simulation tool, based on Ray Tracing method, has been developed and validated for millimeter-wave band. This tool helps for predicting the signal level as well as the delay characteristics of a propagation channel. Since the resultant of the received replicas of the transmitted signal at receiver point can experience a deep fade and consequently the quality degradation, a proper diversity method can effectively alleviate this drawback. Using this simulation tool and extracting the received wave characteristics in a street scenario, an analytical expression for predicting the space diversity gain for the Selection Combining technique and Maximal-Ratio Combining technique has been proposed  

This paper studies the scheduling problem in transit networks in order to decrease transfer waiting time. Transfer waiting time is calculated based on headway and departure time of intersecting routes and is divided into two parts. The first part can be reduced by changing departure times and was studied by the authors previously. The focus of the present research, however, is to minimize the second part of the transfer waiting time, dependent on the headways. The proposed optimization model in this paper includes both parts and is a nonlinear mathematical programming model. The model is decomposed to the departure time setting model (DSM) and the headway setting model (HSM). A solution... 

In this paper, we consider transmission of a Gaussian source over a Gaussian channel under bandwidth compression in the presence of interference known only to the transmitter. We study hybrid digital-analog (HDA) joint source-channel coding schemes and propose two novel coding schemes that achieve the optimal mean-squared error (MSE) distortion. This can be viewed as the extension of results by Wilson et al. [1], originally proposed for sending a Gaussian source over a Gaussian channel in two cases: 1) Matched bandwidth with known interference only at the transmitter, 2) bandwidth compression where there is no interference in the channel. The proposed HDA codes can cancel the interference of... 

The integrity of decentralized controllers with integral action, with respect to loop failures, has been researched relatively well. Important results have been found, with respect to the Relative Gain Array (RGA). However, less has been done on the treatment of the integrity of uncertain systems. This paper builds on the more-recent progress on the analysis of uncertain systems and presents new conditions for the integrity of closed-loop systems. The developed Integral Controllable (IC), Integral Controllable with Integrity (ICI), and Decentralized Integral Controllability (DIC) conditions are derived using a model of uncertainties that allows both unstructured and structured independent... 

We propose a simple, general, and accurate formula for analyzing the tunneling between classical configurations of a nonplanar molecule in a gas medium, as a function of the thermodynamic parameters of the gas. We apply it to two interesting cases: (i) the shift to zero frequency of the inversion line of ammonia, upon an increase in the pressure of the gas; and (ii) the destruction of the coherent tunneling of D 2S 2 molecules in a He gas. In both cases, we compare our analysis with previous theoretical and experimental results  

Simple compression and microscopy techniques were employed to characterise the microstructural origin of the deformation behaviour of nickel base superalloy IN625 during large strain testing. The alloy exhibited a four-stage strain hardening response similar to that previously reported for low stacking fault energy face centred cubic alloys. At strains lower than about -0.06 (stage A), a falling regime of the hardening rate was observed. This stage was followed by a second stage (stage B) of slow increasing hardening rate, which was found to be coincident with the formation of Lomer-Cottrell locks. The second falling regime of strain hardening (stage C) was seen in the strain range of -0.25...