Sharif Digital Repository

Branched hierarchical zinc oxide nanowires (BH-ZnO NWs) were fabricated successfully by a facile and rapid synthesis using two-step growth process. Initially, ZnO NWs have been prepared by anodizing zinc foil at room temperature and followed by annealing treatment. Then, the BH- ZnO NWs were grown on the ZnO NWs by a solution based method at very low temperature (31 oC). The BH- ZnO NWs with different aspect ratio were obtained by varying reaction time (0.5, 2, 5, 10 h). Photocatalytic activity of the samples was studied under both UV and visible light. The results indicated that the optimized BH-ZnO NWs (5 h) as a photocatalyst exhibited the highest photoactivity with about 3 times higher... 

In this study the effect of HPGR operational parameters on the dimensional properties of pellet feed was examined and optimized using factorial methodology. The operational parameters considered include feed moisture, specific pressure and roll speed. For this study, size and shape of particles with Blaine number in the range 1800–2200 cm2g−1 was thoroughly investigated. It was deduced that increasing the specific pressure and decreasing the roll speed would result in reduction of D80 but would increase the Blaine number. The circularity, aspect ratio and roughness descriptors of the particles were measured by SEM micrographs and image analysis software. It was observed that particles tended... 

In this paper, nonlinear instability of an elliptical jet is investigated by considering the impacts of orifice geometry variations using regular perturbation method. In the breakup mechanisms, created disturbances on the jet interfaces will grow owing to the nonlinear dynamics of fluid. In this study, a scrutiny of nonlinear cylindrical jet breakup is done initially. Next, Cosserat equations as a low order form of Navies-Stokes equations are solved on the nonlinear form to exert the impacts of orifice deformation on various aspect ratios. These nonlinear equations, Cosserat equations, are linearly solved in the past papers. As a result, the dispersion equation is derived to find the most... 

Inertial particle focusing as a powerful passive method is widely used in diagnostic test devices. It is common to use a curved channel in this approach to achieve particle focusing through balancing of the secondary flow drag force and the inertial lift force. Here, we present a focusing device on a disk based on the interaction of secondary flow drag force, inertial lift force, and centrifugal forces to focus particles. By choosing a channel whose cross section has a low aspect ratio, the mixing effect of the secondary flow becomes negligible. To calculate inertial lift force, which is exerted on the particle from the fluid, the interaction between the fluid and particle is investigated... 

The purpose of this experimental work is to study the effect of slot depth to width ratio, rotational motion and inlet velocity on friction factor and Nusselt number in an annular flow between two concentric cylinders with smooth and slotted surface. The heated outer surface is stationary and the unheated inner one is rotating. This configuration is popular in industrial applications such as internal air system of gas turbine engines, cooling of rotating machinery, techniques of chemical vapor deposition and solidification of pure metals. The results show that the ratio of average slotted surface friction factor to that of the smooth one enhances by increasing the slot depth to width ratio... 

A CMOS fully differential UHF variable gain amplifier for use in a direct-conversion DVB-H receiver is presented employing input devices with variable aspect ratios. High linearity is achieved by reducing the transconductance of the input transistors for lower gain settings. It is shown that this technique has better linearity and noise performance compared to the conventional methods in which the gain reduction is performed at preceding stages. Implemented in TSMC 0.18-μm CMOS process, the inductorless RF VGA covers a voltage gain ranging from 15.5 dB to -6.5 dB with a maximum IIP3 of +24 dBm. The amplifier achieves a 3-dB bandwidth of 1.4 GHz and a minimum noise figure of 5.8 dB while... 

Separation of particles or cells has various applications in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Inertial cell separation, in particular, has been gaining a great attention in the recent years since it has exhibited a label-free, high-throughput and efficient performance. In this work, first, an inertial contraction–expansion array microchannel device, capable of passively separating two particles with diameters of 4 and 10 μm, was numerically studied. Then, the validated model was combined with curved geometries in order to investigate the effect of curve features on the separation process. The overall purpose was to investigate the interaction between the two different... 

Micro-mixers are considered as vital components of Micro Total Analysis systems (μTAS). Major objective in the design of micro-mixers is achieving high mixing quality in short mixing times. In this paper, numerical simulation of some micro-mixer designs has been carried out to understand the detailed flow pattern and thereby to propose modifications for improving mixing efficiency. It is well known that inducing convection will provide turbulent like behavior with corresponding mixing enhancement. In micro systems to drive the flow, electro-osmotic force is usually used by introducing electrodes. In this work, mixing electrodes have been implemented to induce convection and eddies. This... 

In this article, the size-dependent behavior of micro-beams with the thermoelastic damping (TED) phenomenon is studied. The coupled thermoelasticity equations are derived on the basis of the modified couple stress theory (MCST) and dual-phase-lag (DPL) heat conduction model. By solving these coupled equations simultaneously, a closed-form expression for the TED parameter in micro-beams is presented which considers the small-scale effects incorporation. Then, the effect of various parameters on TED in micro-beams, such as micro-beam height, the type of material, boundary conditions, and aspect ratio is investigated. The results show that the influence of utilizing non-classical continuum and... 

As steel plate shear walls are typically used in the building central cores around the elevators and stairs, introduction of an opening as door seems to be inevitable in steel plate shear wall spans. Due to the weakening of the steel plate shear walls’ performance caused by this particular type of opening, the use of stiffeners around the opening is necessary. Nevertheless, introduction of stiffeners around all sides of the opening, which does continue to boundary elements, is very expensive and inefficient. Therefore, the study on the effect of different arrangements of stiffeners on the behavior of steel plate shear walls is significant. In this research, a number of steel plate shear... 

The purpose of this experimental work is to study the effect of slot depth to width ratio, rotational motion and inlet velocity on friction factor and Nusselt number in an annular flow between two concentric cylinders with smooth and slotted surface. The heated outer surface is stationary and the unheated inner one is rotating. This configuration is popular in industrial applications such as internal air system of gas turbine engines, cooling of rotating machinery, techniques of chemical vapor deposition and solidification of pure metals. The results show that the ratio of average slotted surface friction factor to that of the smooth one enhances by increasing the slot depth to width ratio... 

Particle size and shape of iron ore concentrate are effective parameters in the production of quality green pellets. In this research, the effect of particle morphology on green pellet quality was studied. It was concluded that pellet quality improved with increasing specific surface area. Drop number and green compression strength of pellets ground by HPGR were found to be superior over those ground in the ball mill. The chief reasons were related to particle shape and the fraction of fine particles. Smaller particle size results in a higher order of bonding between particles and therefore the formation of a stronger system. Also, the rougher and less circular shape of particles resulted in... 

Resistive pulse sensing (RPS) has proved to be a viable method for the detection and characterization of micro and nano particles. Modern fabrication methods have introduced different nanopore geometries for resistive pulse sensors. In this paper, we have numerically studied the effects of membrane thickness and the pore's cone angle, as the main geometrical parameters, on the sensing performance of the nanopores used for nanoparticle detection in the resistive pulse sensing method. To compare the sensing performance, three resistive pulse quality parameters were investigated-sensitivity, pulse duration and pulse amplitude. The thorough investigation on the relations between the geometrical... 

In this work, the optical responses of Fe3O4@Au and Fe3O4@Ag are comprehensively investigated using the discrete dipole approximation. It is found that the resonance wavelength and absorption efficiency strongly depend on the composition of the core and shell, geometry of the nanoparticles, core to particle volume ratio, core radius and shell thickness. The strongest impact is due to the shell material, the shape of the nanoparticles and their combination. When the composition of the shell is changed from gold to silver, instead of one fundamental resonance peak the absorption spectrum shows two, corresponding to the bonding plasmon mode at the nanoparticle-environment interface and... 

Background and objective: In this study, the effect of the second excitation frequency mode under different conditions on the fluid streaming and its microparticles displacement is investigated. Methods: For this purpose, some variable parameters such as the particle diameter, microchannel aspect ratio, and applied frequency modes have been selected to study. The resulted acoustic streaming was scrutinized to understand the physics of the problem under different geometrical and input conditions. Finally, the effect of the increasing the microparticle size and aspect ratio of the microchannel, simultaneously, has been evaluated. Results: The results demonstrated that increasing the... 

For the rapid detection of hyperglycemia in human blood, we adopted a facile and two-step electrochemical procedure to prepare nickel/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) hybrid electrodes in the framework of a three-dimensional (3D) nanostructure. High-density and vertically-aligned nickel submicrorods with an average diameter of 155 ± 15 nm and a length of 7 ± 1 μm (an aspect ratio of about 40-50) were prepared by template-mediated electrochemical deposition techniques. Networks of rGO nanosheets between the rod-shaped arrays were formed by the cathodic electrophoretic deposition method. The synergistic effect of nickel morphology (planar and high-density rod-shaped arrays) and graphene oxide... 

The end diaphragm of bridges are normally designed to resist lateral seismic forces imposed on the superstructure in earthquake prone regions. Using ductile diaphragms with high deformation capacity could reduce the seismic demands on the substructure and prevent costly damage under strong ground motions. The end diaphragms of steel tub girder bridges with high lateral stiffness and dominant shear behavior have a potential to be used as ductile fuse elements. In this study, a steel plate shear diaphragm (SPSD) is introduced as an external end diaphragm of tub girder steel bridges to reduce the seismic demands imposed on the substructure. Quasi static nonlinear analyses were conducted to... 

In this paper, new arrangements of triangular winglet as a turbulator are numerically studied through a cylindrical tube. Triangular winglets are commonly placed on one side of a rectangular plate and inserted inside the tube. However, in present work, the winglets are located on both sides of the rectangular plate to further enhance the thermal performance of the fluid flow through the tube. Both backward and forward configurations of the winglets are analysed. Moreover, despite the importance of “latitudinal pitch of the winglets” and “winglet-plate angle” no investigation has been evaluated these parameters which will be evaluated in this work. Moreover, as no exergetic evaluation has... 

In this paper, the mechanical properties of graphene nanosheets are evaluated based on the nonlinear modified Morse model. The interatomic interactions including stretching and bending of the covalent bonds between carbon atoms, are replaced by nonlinear extensional and torsional spring-like elements. The finite element method is implemented to analyze the model under different loading conditions and linear characteristics of the graphene structure including the Young's modulus, surface modulus, shear modulus and Poisson's ratio are evaluated for various geometries and chirality where these properties are shown to be size and aspect ratio dependent. It is also found that when the dimensions... 

Molecular structural mechanics is implemented to investigate the vibrational characteristics of defect-free single-layered graphene sheets (SLGSs), which have potential applications as strain sensors. The effect of strain on the fundamental frequencies of the defect-free zigzag and armchair models with clamped-clamped boundary condition is studied. The atomistic modeling results reveal while sensitivities of the strain sensors are not influenced significantly by chirality, they can be slightly increased by decreasing aspect ratios of the sheets. It is further shown that the SLGSs-based strain sensors are more sensitive to the applied stretch than the SWCNTs versions. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All...