Sharif Digital Repository

Asphalt concrete is a complex mixture, the behavior of which is dependent on its components while showing different nonlinear behaviors under various conditions. Application of rest time between compressive loading cycles causes hardening-relaxation (H-R) behavior in the sample and increases the deformation potential of the sample. This process might induce changes in the microstructure and the pattern of the placement and rotation of the aggregates. These changes cause a relaxation in the hardening of the material, pose a higher potential of reception of viscoplastic strain in the following cycles, and increase the rate of accumulation of the permanent deformation in contrast with creep... 

Thermal cracking is the prevalent type of distress experienced by asphalt pavements in cold regions. It is widely assumed that when thermal stresses induced in the pavement exceed the tensile strength of the asphalt surface layer, cracking occurs; however, the role of thermal fatigue should not be ignored. To better describe the low-temperature (LT) performance properties of modified asphalt binders, a new parameter, normalised tensile stress (NTS), was defined in this research. NTS values were compared with bending beam rheometer (BBR), direct tension (DT) and semi-circular bending (SCB) fracture test results. The m-value parameter of the BBR test specifies the type of asphalt binder. This... 

The present experimental study investigated the behavior of hot-mix asphalt (HMA) under repetitive creep and recovery loading. Cylindrical samples of HMA were subjected to trapezoidal and haversine loading followed by unloading. Different amounts of unloading (stress reduction) and relaxation periods (rest periods in complete unloading) were tested. The measured vertical deformation was decomposed into viscoelastic and viscoplastic components. It was observed for cyclic loading that an increase in unloading and/or relaxation period increased the recovery of viscoelastic strain, which in turn increased the accumulated viscoplastic strain in subsequent loading cycles. It appears that... 

The present study addresses a new effort to improve the prediction of the thermal field in separating-reattaching flows by making modifications in a low-Reynolds-number (LRN) version of HOGGDH heat-flux model proposed by Suga and Abe (2000). The modifications are based on introducing non-equilibrium effects of hydrodynamic flow field in the heat-flux model. Using an analytical approach, we have implemented P/ε, ignored in the base version, to the modified version. To do so, the model structure was changed and a damping function which is more sensitive to non-equilibrium flow features is also applied to the model. The modified heat-flux formulation along with a second moment closure... 

The present paper outlines the application of the recently proposed heat-flux model (Mazaheri et al., 2017) to high blowing-ratio film-cooling and corrugated heat-exchanger simulations. Here, the focus is mainly on the accuracy of the predicted thermal fields, while to find out the sources of inaccuracy detailed analysis of the adopted second-moment-closure hydrodynamic model is provided. To do so, fundamental benchmarks which contain the dominant phenomena in the main cases are thoroughly analyzed to identify the anomalies. Then, the main cases including leading-edge film-cooling, antivortex film-cooling and corrugated heat-exchanger are investigated. The numerical predictions indicate that... 

Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes are 3D nanoscaled materials with large potential in solid phase microextraction (SPME). Here, as a case study, an octaglycidyldimethylsilyl modified polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane network is described. It was deposited on a stainless steel wire via a sol–gel method and used as a fiber coating for SPME of aromatic compounds. The uniform pore structure, high surface area, and hydrophobicity of the network make it susceptible toward isolation of non-polar and semi-polar chemical compounds. The performance of the fiber coating was tested with three classes of environmental pollutants, viz. chlorobenzenes (CBs), benzenes (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene,... 

In real applications of hub networks, the travel times may vary due to traffic, climate conditions, and land or road type. To facilitate this difficulty, in this paper, the travel times are assumed to be characterized by trapezoidal fuzzy variables to present a fuzzy capacitated single allocation p-hub centre transportation (FCSApHCP) with uncertain information. The proposed FCSApHCP is redefined into its equivalent parametric integer non-linear programming problem using credibility constraints. The aim is to determine the location of p capacitated hubs and the allocation of centre nodes to them in order to minimize the maximum travel time in a hub-and-centre network under uncertain... 

Online power system stability assessment during restoration has not been strongly addressed yet. The introduction of wide area measurement systems (WAMS), however, made it possible to monitor the stability online. This study technically presents a detailed analysis of stability during restoration using WAMS. The power system build-up strategy is used as the restoration approach, based on which the early and the last stages of restoration are to divide the power system into islands and interconnect them, respectively. In fact, the practical use of WAMS at the early stages of restoration provides precise determination of generators loading steps. Moreover, unification of phase angle references... 

This paper presents a method for the optimal restoration planning based on Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS). This method uses observability analysis and Power Transfer Distribution Factor (PTDF) concept. The PTDF concept is applied to decrease the overvoltages caused by energizing transmission lines with lightly load. The New England 39 bus power system is used to demonstrate the proposed algorithm and verify the results. The outcomes of the study are evaluated to show the validity and reliability of the presented approach  

Fungal delignification can be considered as a feasible process to pre-treat lignocellulosic biomass in biofuel production, if its performance is improved in terms of efficiency thorough a few modifications. In this study, Trichoderma viride was utilized to investigate the effect of wet-milling, addition of surfactant (Tween 80) and optimization of operating factors such as temperature, biomass to liquid medium ratio and glucose concentration on biodelignification of rice straw. Next, the enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated biomass was studied at various pretreatment times. Results revealed that the wet milling and addition of surfactant increases the lignin removal about 15% and 11%,... 

Through the strategic highway research program (SHRP) project, time-temperature superposition (TTS) was used to reduce the loading time of bending beam rheometer (BBR) test. Based on TTS, stiffness of the asphalt binder after a two-hour loading time is similar to that after 60 s at 10 °C above. This study attempted to evaluate the TTS validity using finite element (FE) method by developing master curves in a broad range of low temperatures. The results indicated that TTS was neither valid for modified asphalt binders nor for neat binder. Also, in addition to the loading time dependency of m-value, limiting values of stiffness and m-value find no rheological acceptance. As a remedy, thermally... 

Background While several studies have investigated the traditional linear measures in patients with knee osteoarthritis, no study has yet reported the non-linear structure of postural sway in these patients. Methods We used two non-linear methods, recurrence quantification analysis (percent of determinism-%DET) and central tendency measure, to respectively investigate differences in the complexity and variability of sway dynamics between two groups of knee osteoarthritis patients (n = 27) and healthy controls (n = 27) under different conditions of postural and cognitive tasks. The experimental conditions included standing on (1) rigid surface with open eyes; (2) rigid surface with closed... 

Diffusivity equation which can provide us with the pressure distribution, is a Partial Differential Equation (PDE) describing fluid flow in porous media. The quadratic pressure gradient term in the diffusivity equation is nearly neglected in hydrology and petroleum engineering problems such as well test analysis. When a compressible liquid is injected into a well at high pressure gradient or when the reservoir possess a small permeability value, the effect of ignoring this term increases. In such cases, neglecting this parameter can result in high errors. Previous models basically focused on numerical and semi-analytical methods for semi-infinite domain. To the best of our knowledge, no... 

The aim of this review is to cover advances in noble metal nanoparticle (MNP)-based biosensors and to outline the principles and main functions of MNPs in different classes of biosensors according to the transduction methods employed. The important biorecognition elements are enzymes, antibodies, aptamers, DNA sequences, and whole cells. The main readouts are electrochemical (amperometric and voltametric), optical (surface plasmon resonance, colorimetric, chemiluminescence, photoelectrochemical, etc.) and piezoelectric. MNPs have received attention for applications in biosensing due to their fascinating properties. These properties include a large surface area that enhances biorecognizers... 

Nowadays, the energy storage systems (ESSs) are widely used in different level of power systems for dealing with the challenges caused by the integration of renewable energy sources (RESs). Among the ESSs, batteries are more suitable for being used in microgrids (MGs) at distribution level due to their special features. Therefore, this paper presents a novel approach for planning of distributed battery energy storage systems (BESSs) to enhance MGs operation, economically. The model is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP) and considers various types of BESSs. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it is applied to the IEEE 33-bus network... 

Solid-State Drives (SSDs) are recently employed in enterprise servers and high-end storage systems in order to enhance performance of storage subsystem. Although employing high speed SSDs in the storage subsystems can significantly improve system performance, it comes with significant reliability threat for write operations upon power failures. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis investigating the impact of workload dependent parameters on the reliability of SSDs under power failure for variety of SSDs (from top manufacturers). To this end, we first develop a platform to perform two important features required for study: A) a realistic fault injection into the SSD in the... 

High speed planing hulls have complex hydrodynamic behaviors. The trim angle and drafts are very sensitive to speed and location of the center of gravity. Therefore, motion simulation for such vessels needs a strong coupling between rigid body motions and hydrodynamic analysis. In addition, free surface should be predicted with good accuracy for each time step. In this paper, velocity and pressure fields are coupled by use of the fractional step method. On the basis of integration of the two-phase viscous flow induced stresses over the hull, acting loads (forces and moments) are calculated. With the strategy of boundary-fitted body-attached mesh and calculation of 6-DoF motions in each time... 

The transportation sector is one of the sustainable development wheels that requires a lot of energy to operate, therefore it is concerned as one of the main factors in greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. In Iran, like rest of the world, the light-duty vehicles are the effective factors in the pollution of the metropolitan cities. Although the management of their fuel consumption is a vital action in decreasing the cost and air pollution, that's inextricable link with the public welfare and the economy of the car manufacturers creates barriers. An accurate analysis concerning the barriers to reducing the fuel consumption can be obtained by using the game theory method in the... 

The use of solar-powered reverse osmosis desalination systems is a sustainable and environmentally friendly solution in the desalination industry. However, there are some substantial technical and economic challenges due to the intermittency and fluctuation of solar energy. Recent technological improvement and feed-in tariff policies enable these systems to be competitive with conventional grid-connected reverse osmosis systems. In this paper, a feasibility study of the integration of solar panels with the grid to power small-scale reverse osmosis systems (namely up to 2000 m3/day) is conducted in Iran, as a country with a low price of electricity. For this purpose, a city located on the... 

Nowadays, the high penetration of renewable energy resources, with variable and unpredictable nature, poses major challenges to operation and planning studies of power systems. Employing energy storage systems (ESSs) has been introduced as an effective solution to alleviate these challenges. Several studies have been presented in the literature to provide a framework for expansion planning studies of ESSs. However, they usually have two main drawbacks: i) ignoring the positive effect of independent-locally operated ESSs on the bulk power system preferences, ii) inability to model the charge/discharge schedule of independent-locally operated ESSs based on their investors' acceptable risk...