Sharif Digital Repository

Hierarchical stochastic activity networks (HSANs) are a newly introduced extension of stochastic activity networks (SANs). HSAN models encapsulate hierarchies and a key benefit of these models is the possibility of automatic employment of composition techniques by their modelling tools. For modelling and evaluation with HSANs, we have developed a software tool called SANBuilder. This tool has an integrated development environment (IDE) for construction, animation, simulation and analytic solution of SAN-based models. We have implemented in this tool some state-of-the-art methods for the simulation and analytic solution of SAN and HSAN models. In addition to an introduction to HSANs, this... 

Recent studies have revealed that deadlocks are generally infrequent in the network. Thus the hardware resources, e.g. virtual channels, dedicated for deadlock avoidance are not utilised most of the time. This consideration has motivated the development of novel adaptive routing algorithms with deadlock recovery. This paper describes a new analytical model to predict message latency in hypercubes with a true fully adaptive routing algorithm with progressive deadlock recovery. One of the main features of the proposed model is the use of results from queueing systems with impatient customers to capture the effects of the timeout mechanism used in this routing algorithm for deadlock detection.... 

In this study the developing turbulent swirling pipe flow is investigated both numerically and analytically. Governing equations are derived accompanying the boundary layer assumptions. Uniform and solid body rotation (SBR) distributions are taken into account for the axial and tangential velocities at the inlet of the pipe, respectively. Beyond the boundary layers, the flow pattern is considered to be the potential flow. Making use of the fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme, the numerical solution of the differential equations is obtained. Further more, by simplifying the governing equations for large Rossby number, the analytical solution is performed. The results of numerical and analytical... 

Power transformer inner insulation system is a very critical component. Its degradation may pose apparatus to fail while in service. On the other hand, experimental experiences prove that partial discharges are a major source of insulation failure in power transformers. If the deterioration of the insulation system caused by PD activity can be detected at an early stage, preventive maintenance measures may be taken. Because of the complex structure of the transformer, accurate PD location is difficult and is one of the challenges power utilities are faced with. This problem comes to be vital in open access systems. In this paper a theory for locating partial discharge and its propagation... 

A large number of people are exposed to whole body vibration in their occupational life. Measuring vibration is an important tool in rehabilitation and biomechanical fields of research. We have proposed image processing as a new method to record and determine the frequency response of human body. The arranged set up for forced vibration consisted of an AC motor, a variable speed drive unit and a shaking table for producing one directional sinusoidal vibration. Volunteers were asked to stand on the shaking table at a relaxed posture. Two digital camcorders were used to capture the motion of colored pencil-dot markers on the skin of human body (forehead) and on the edge of the shaking table.... 

Abstract Software product line engineering is a method of producing a set of related products that share more commonalities than variability in a cost-effective approach. Software product lines provide systematic reuse within a product family. Extended feature models with cardinalities are widely used for managing variability and commonality in the software product line domains. In this paper, we use promotion technique in Alloy to formalize constraint based extended feature models with cardinalities and their specialization and generalization. This technique has a significant influence on applying analysis operations on feature models. To show the benefits of the promotion technique, we... 

Nowadays, software product line is an approach to reduce costs of software development, decrease time to market, and increase capabilities of reuse in designing and exploiting software development processes. Moreover, other quality attributes of the project domain should be considered to enhance quality of the product. Meanwhile, taking advantage of software product line makes developers capable of estimating development costs and time to market in a more realistic way. However, old approaches to estimate cost of development and foresee time to market are not suitable enough for software product line. In this paper, some important business parameters and a way to calculate cost and time to... 

Service-Oriented Software Engineering is based on concepts and principles for constructing complex enterprise systems in which services as building block of the system, are distributed in large networks. The main goal of the service-oriented methodologies is to define a process for development and maintenance of service-based systems. Most of the Service-Oriented methodologies are not mature enough compared with traditional software development methodologies such as Object-Oriented or Component-Based. Hence, defining an evaluation framework will be useful for comparing methodologies for identifying their strengths and weaknesses, defining new methodologies or extending existing... 

Dealing with crosscutting requirements in software development usually makes the process more complex. Modeling and analyzing of these requirements in the software architecture facilitate detecting architectural risks early. Distributed systems have more complexity and so these facilities are much useful in development of such systems. Aspect oriented Architectural Description Languages(ADL) have emerged to represent solutions for discussed problems; nevertheless, imposing radical changes to existing architectural modeling methods is not easily acceptable by architects. Software architecture analysis methods, furthermore, intend to verify that the quality requirements have been addressed... 

Modeling languages are needed to describe the conceptual construct underlying software. Several modeling languages have been proposed during the last decades. In order to properly understand and assess software modeling languages, we believe that a set of techniques is needed. In this paper, we describe several techniques that can be applied for studying and evaluating cognitive complexity (comprehensibility) of software modeling languages. These techniques have been applied to human-computer interaction, human languages, programming languages and cognitive science before. © 2008 IEEE  

Due to the enlargement and complexity of software systems and the need for maintenance and update, success of systems depends strongly on their architecture. Software architecture has been a key element in software development process in two past decades. Therefore, choosing the correct architecture is a critical issue in software engineering domain, with respect to the extremely extension of architecturedriven designs. Moreover, software architecture selection is a multi-criteria decision-making problem in which different goals and objectives should be considered. In this paper, a Decision Support System (DSS) has been designed which provides software architects with more precise and... 

The continuing process of software systems enlargement in size and complexity becomes system design extremely important for software production. In this way, the role of software architecture is significantly important in software development. It serves as an evaluation and implementation plan for software development and software evaluation. Consequently, choosing the correct architecture is a critical issue in software engineering domain. Moreover, software architecture selection is a multicriteria decision-making problem in which different goals and objectives must be taken into consideration. In this paper, more precise and suitable decisions in selection of architecture styles have been... 

Complexity of the software development process is often increased by actuality of crosscutting concerns in software requirements; moreover, Software security as a particular non-functional requirement of software systems is often addressed late in the software development process. Modeling and analyzing of these concerns and especially security in the software architecture facilitate detecting architectural vulnerabilities, decrease costs of the software maintenance, and reduce finding tangled and complex components in the ultimate design. Aspect oriented ADLs have emerged to overcome this problem; however, imposing radical changes to existing architectural modeling methods is not easily... 

Precipitation of asphaltene leads to rigorous problems in petroleum industry such as: wettability alterations, relative permeability reduction, blockage of the flow with additional pressure drop in wellbore tubing, upstream process facilities and surface pipelines. Experimentally determination of the asphaltene precipitation is costly and time consuming. Therefore, searching for some other quick and accurate methods for determination of the asphaltene precipitation is inevitable. The objective of this communication is to present a reliable and predictive model namely, the least - squares support vector machine (LSSVM) to predict the asphaltene precipitation. This model has been developed and... 

Bluetooth headsets are one of the popular accessories of mobile phones because of their convenience. It is necessary to assess the impact of electromagnetic waves on the human head when a person is using a headset. In this paper different scenarios closely modeling the situations that a subject may use the headset in real life are simulated. Simulations are performed for two types of materials commonly used to manufacture the headsets, namely silicone and acetal, and for two different orientation angle of the headset on the ear. Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and path loss values are then obtained for two different environments, the open space and inside a car. SEMCAD-X software is used as a... 

An environmentally benign, aqueous synthesis of 1,2-azidoalcohols via regioselective ring opening of their epoxides using magnetic imidazolium based dicationic room temperature ionic liquid, [pbmim](FeCl4)2, as an efficient magnetic phase transfer catalyst in water has been described. The present approach offers the advantages of clean reaction, simple methodology, short reaction time, high yield, easy purification and reusable catalyst  

This paper presents a new set of reliability sensitivity measures. The purpose is to identify the optimal manner in which to mitigate risk to civil infrastructure, and reduce model uncertainty in order to improve risk estimates. Three measures are presented. One identifies the infrastructure components that should be prioritized for retrofit. Another measure identifies the infrastructure that should be prioritized for more refined modeling. The third measure identifies the models that should be prioritized in research to improve models, for example by gathering new data. The developments are presented in the context of a region with 622 buildings that are subjected to seismicity from several... 

Reliability methods are employed in this paper to analyze the seismic risk to the Vancouver metropolitan region in Canada. The use of reliability methods contrasts with several contemporary approaches for risk analysis. In this paper, two analysis approaches are presented and implemented in a new computer program. One utilizes the first-order and second-order reliability methods together with a hazard combination technique. The other is a sampling-based method that repeatedly generates damage scenarios in the time period of interest. Both strategies employ the same collection of probabilistic models for seismic risk analysis. While the models are presented in the companion paper, this paper... 

Both theoretical and experimental results of an optical beam shaping system are investigated in this report. The described system is a two-stage beam shaping device including a fiber-bundle and a prism-duct. A source light is used to illuminate the fiber-bundle and the image of output beam is captured by a CCD camera. The fiber-bundle output beam shape shows a linear arrangement of circular spots lights, which are placed in a rectangular cross section of about 21.37 mm×2.44 mm. In another study, the photograph picture of the prism output beam is taken by a digital camera. The prism output beam cross section is a square shape with a dimension of about 4×4 mm2. According to the experimental... 

A library of probabilistic models for prediction of seismic risk is presented. The models are specifically intended for use with reliability methods to compute event probabilities, such as seismic loss probabilities. Several models are presented here for the first time. In particular, new and generic models are proposed for earthquake location, regional loss, building response, building damage, and building loss. Each model is presented with an explanation of its development and a discussion of its predictions. In addition, models from the literature are " smoothed" to make them amenable to reliability analysis. The models are implemented in a new computer program that is tailored for...