Sharif Digital Repository

In this work, numerical investigation of a gas turbine model combustor (GTMC) was carried out using two different turbulence-chemistry interaction models: the EDC (eddy dissipation concept) and TPDF (transported probability density function). GTMC with good optical access for laser measurements provides a useful database for swirling CH4/Air diffusion flames at atmospheric pressure. Modeling was performed by solving Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and Reynolds stress model (RSM) equations for a two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric computational domain accompanied by swirl and the combustion chamber was investigated for both reacting and nonreacting conditions. A detailed reduced... 

The aqueous phase reforming (APR) of glycerol is an attractive yet challenging pathway to convert abundant biomass into value added hydrogen. Pt catalysts have received attention due to their ability to produce hydrogen-rich gas under APR conditions. In this work, the conversion of glycerol into hydrogen is demonstrated using Pt0.05CexZr0.95-xO2 (x = 0, 0.29, 0.475, 0.66 and 0.95) solid solution catalysts. Both characteristic (XRD, BET, H2-TPR, CO-chemisorption, TEM and XPS) and reactivity measurements were used to investigate the activity of the catalysts. Results indicated that reactivity depended on the Ce/Zr ratio, which in turn affected the Pt oxidation state, active metal dispersion... 

An interaction between ferrite recrystallization and austenite transformation in low-carbon steel occurs when recrystallization is delayed until the intercritical temperature range by employing high heating rate. The kinetics of recrystallization and transformation is affected by high heating rate and such an interaction. In this study, different levels of strain are applied to low-carbon steel using a severe plastic deformation method. Then, ultra-rapid annealing is performed at different heating rates of 200–1100°C/s and peak temperatures of near critical temperature. Five regimes are proposed to investigate the effects of heating rate, strain, and temperature on the interaction between... 

CO2 injection has proved to be the most common and efficient enhanced oil recovery techniques which leads to more residual oil recovery. Unfavorable sweep efficiency which results in fingering propagation and causes early gas breakthrough is the most challenging issue of gas flooding process. The aim of this work is to study foam stability and analyze the mobility of CO2 foam stabilized by mixture of raw silica nanoparticles and ethyl hexadecyl dimethyl ammonium bromide (cationic surfactant). The result is obtained through both dynamic and static techniques using a new adsorption index.NPS-stabilized foams are generated using Ross-Miles method. A novel index for the adsorption of surfactant... 

Energy and environment crises motivated scientists to develop sustainable, renewable, and clean energy resources mainly based on solar hydrogen. For this purpose, one main challenge is the low cost flexible substrates for designing earth abundant efficient cocatalysts to reduce required water oxidation overpotential. Here, a systematic morphological and electrochemical study has been reported for cobalt oxide/hydroxide nanoflakes simply electrodeposited on four different commercially available substrates, titanium, copper sheet, steel mesh, and nickel foam. Remarkable dependence between the used substrate, morphology, and electrocatalytic properties of nanoflakes introduced flexible porous... 

Oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs can be enhanced by altering the wettability from oil-wet toward water-wet state. Recently, silica nanoparticle (SNP) suspensions are considered as an attractive wettability alteration agent in enhanced oil recovery applications. However, their performance along with the underlying mechanism for wettability alteration in carbonate rocks is not well discussed. In this work, the ability of SNP suspensions, in the presence/absence of salt, to alter the wettability of oil-wet calcite substrates to a water-wet condition was investigated. In the first step, to ensure that the properties of nanofluids have not been changed during the tests, stability analysis... 

In this work, static strain aging behavior of an alloy steel containing high amounts of silicon and manganese was examined while the influences of initial microstructure and pre-strain on the aging kinetics were evaluated as well. The rate of strain aging in a low carbon steel was also determined and compared with that occurred in the alloy steel. The rates of static strain aging in the steels were defined at room temperature and at 95 °C by means of double-hit tensile testing and hardness measurements. In addition, three-stage aging experiments at 80 °C were carried out to estimate aging behavior under multi-pass deformation processing. The results showed that in-solution manganese and... 

Copper based hybrid composites containing nano-sized silicon carbide and carbon nanotubes reinforcements with minimal porosity were fabricated via mechanical milling followed by hot pressing technique. Microstructures of the powders and consolidated materials were studied using scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscope. Microstructural characterization of the materials revealed that the addition of nanosized silicon carbide reinforcement lowered the grain growth rate and enhanced the homogenization during mechanical milling. Microhardness measurements and compression test showed considerable improvements in mechanical... 

The recently study of the corrosion in some bronze artefacts from the Sangtarashan Iron Age site, western Iran, was established to identify corrosion morphology and mechanism in these objects. The corrosion layers in 22 samples were studied by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy–energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. The results showed that a thin corrosion crust has formed on the surface of bronzes with a triple-layer structure, including two internal and one external corrosion layers. The formation of these layers is due to copper leaching from the bronze surface. The internal corrosion part has been a compact, tin-rich corrosion/oxidation product... 

A new structural connection with special unique features was developed. While under bending it showed very high rotational capacity, in shear, unlike other existing connections, it also demonstrated a large shear deformation capacity. The ductile response of this connection stems from its innovative geometry as well as the ductility of the elements embedded in it. Since the previous shear tests on the specimens of this connection were carried out under 'unrestricted' conditions, the tests reported here were all under 'restricted' conditions. These shear tests consisted of 'monotonie' as well as 'cyclic' tests on mild steel specimens. Due to the restrictions imposed on the specimens during... 

Anisotropy and heterogeneity in reservoir properties introduce challenges during the development of hydrocarbon reservoirs in naturally fractured reservoirs. In reservoir simulations, grid-block properties are frequently assigned to obtain reasonable history matches. Even then, accuracy with regard to some aspects of the performance such as water or gas cuts, breakthrough times, and sweep efficiencies may be inadequate. In some cases, this could be caused by the presence of substantial flow through natural fractures. In this work the fracture characterization and modeling was performed in a highly fractured carbonate reservoir in SW Iran. It was observed that reservoir simulation based on... 

Reliable relative permeability curves of oil-gas systems are important for successful simulation and modeling of gas injection, especially when the miscibility condition approaches. In this work, the relative permeability of a CO2-light oil system has been measured under different conditions, using the Civan and Donaldson (1989) [13] method. Dolomite and sandstone core samples were used in the experiments. The minimum miscibility pressure was calculated using an empirical correlation, as well as slim-tube simulation. Due to some controversial assumptions of the Civan and Donaldson method, such as immiscible and incompressible displacement, history matching was used for predicting the... 

During the last decade, fabrication of high-quality graphene films by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) for nanoelectronics and optoelectronic applications has attracted increasing attention. However, processing of large-area monolayer and defect-free graphene films is still challenging. In this work, we have studied the effect of processing conditions on the self-limited growth of graphene monolayers on copper foils during low pressure CVD both experimentally and theoretically based on thermokinetics and kinetics of Langmuir adsorption. The effect of copper pre-treatment, growth time, and carbon potential of the atmosphere (indicated by the methane-to-hydrogen gas ratio, r) on the quality of... 

Development of reliable and accurate models to estimate carbon dioxide–brine interfacial tension (IFT) is necessary, since its experimental measurement is time-consuming and requires expensive experimental apparatus as well as complicated interpretation procedure. In the current study, feed forward artificial neural network is used for estimation of CO2–brine IFT based on data from published literature which consists of a number of carbon dioxide–brine interfacial tension data covering broad ranges of temperature, total salinity, mole fractions of impure components and pressure. Trial-and-error method is utilized to optimize the artificial neural network topology in order to enhance its... 

We used density functional theory (DFT) and Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) simulation to investigate the adsorption and bond formation of hydronium ion (H3O+) onto a (10 1 ¯ 4) calcite surface. For surface coverage of 25% to 100%, the nature of H3O+ interaction was explored through electron density and energetics in the context of bond critical points. The adsorbate–adsorbent structure was studied by simulation of pair correlation function. The results revealed that dissociation into water molecule(s) and proton(s) complements H3O+ ion(s) adsorbtion. The H2O molecule adsorbs onto the surface via its O atom, and interacts with surface calcium in a closed-shell mode; the H+ ion makes... 

This research investigates the flexural behavior of a polymer concrete beam/pile encased with carbon fiber sleeve. The mechanical properties of carbon fiber sleeves in tension and cement and polymer concrete in compression were determined. Polymer concrete beams were tested in flexure to determine the bending moment capacity. Then, the test results were compared to the theoretical model results. Finally, a parametric study was conducted to determine the influence of beam/pile parameters on the capacity of the element. Based on the investigation, carbon fiber sleeve filled with polymer concrete exhibits outstanding structural performance including ductility and bending capacity. © 2017 Taylor... 

The major purpose of this research is increasing the photocatalytic activity of TiO2 nanotube arrays by doping with sodium and carbon for using in water splitting as photoanode. The synthesized TiO2 nanotubes (TNA) were characterized using FESEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope), XRD (X-ray Diffraction), DRS (Diffraction Reflection Spectroscopy) and XPS test (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) analyses. The results of FTIR and XPS confirmed the presence of sodium and carbon in the lattice of TNA as dopants. Moreover, the DRS test showed the decrease in the band gap energy of TNA from 3.20 to ∼2.88 eV; uv-visible test exhibited extension in the absorption edge of pure TiO2... 

The objective of this paper is to investigate dynamical pull-in behavior of an electrostatic actuated nano-device based on Eringen's nonlocal elasticity theory. The Euler–Bernoulli beam model is used to establish the dynamic equation of motion of the nano-device subjected to both electrostatic and intermolecular forces. The nanobeam is considered with axially immovable ends and the geometrically nonlinearity due to mid-plane stretching is incorporated to the model as well. A new intermolecular attractive force model based on the macroscopic interactions of a circular cross section nanobeam and a flat surface is presented for the carbon nanotube based nano-device. The nonlinear static... 

Nowadays, the growth of energy consumption in buildings is an important topic. Rammed earth (RE) structures have attracted the attention of engineers and contractors in recent years due to their advantages such as sustainability, availability and low embodied energy content. These advantages result in less energy consumption in the life cycle of the RE structures. However, there is a lack of research on the mixture composition of RE materials containing admixtures. This research introduced integrated analytic network process (ANP) and genetic algorithm (GA) methodology to select the optimum mixture of RE material containing cement, expanded polystyrene(EPS), and phase change materials(PCM)... 

Recently, a wide variety of research works have focused on carbon nanotube (CNT)-ceramic matrix nanocomposites. In many cases, these novel materials are produced through conventional powder metallurgy methods including hot pressing, conventional sintering, and hot isostatic pressing. However, spark plasma sintering (SPS) as a novel and efficient consolidation technique is exploited for the full densification of high-temperature ceramic systems. In these binary nanocomposites, CNTs are added to ceramic matrices to noticeably modify their inferior properties and SPS is employed to produce fully dense compacts. In this review, a broad overview of these systems is provided and the potential...