Sharif Digital Repository

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach in terrain following (TF) flight using fuzzy logic. The fuzzy controller as presented in this work decides where and how the aircraft needs to change its altitude. The fast decision-making nature of this method promises real-time applications even for tough terrains in terms of shape and peculiarities. The method could always assist to design trajectories in an off-line manner. Design/methodology/approach - To achieve the aforementioned goal, the method effectively incorporates the dynamics of the aircraft. Basically, the mathematical method employs special relationships among existing slope of the terrain and its derivative... 

In this work we show how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could effectively be used to expedite the decision making process in the early stages of the aircraft design process. We employ both Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Neural Network (NN) as two different schemes of the AI. The developed tools are intended to help to select the proper combination of engine thrust, wing area and the aircraft weight without going through elaborate details of other direct approaches. We further show how the AI could be applied to the specific class of light business jets which serves to validate these schemes. The results indicate the effectiveness of the AI approach in the preliminary aircraft design process. The actual... 

This paper presents a new architecture called FAIS for impie- menting intelligent agents cooperating in a special Multi Agent environ- ment, namely the RoboCup Rescue Simulation System. This is a layered architecture which is customized for solving fire extinguishing problem. Structural decision making algorithms are combined with heuristic ones in this model, so its a hybrid architecture  

Evaluation of a project and its contractors has considerable importance in gas well-drilling projects due to their high investments and worth. In this paper, the quality of some gas well-drilling projects is analyzed in order to evaluate and grade project tasks. A neuro-fuzzy network is utilized to learn the grading process and generate models. To select among these models, a ranking method, namely technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is employed. During seven gas well-drilling projects, 77 tasks are studied based on quality practitioners[U+05F3] points of view. After generating the primary models, three indices namely, root mean square error (RMSE),... 

Smart home is a small but an important energy segment that has a significant potential to implement authentic energy policies, where human is a major decision-maker in the home energy management dilemma. Therefore, humans’ emotions and tendencies plays a vital role as the End-User's daily decisions. In this paper, we develop a behavioral home energy management model based on time-driven prospect theory incorporating energy storage devices, distributed energy resources, and smart flexible home appliances. The conventional prospect theory is then modified by considering the psychological time discount effect in the value function. The non-flexible load and photovoltaic generation uncertainties... 

With the advent of semantic technology' access control cannot be done in a safe way unless the access decision takes into account the semantic relationships among the entities in a semantic-aware environment. The SBAC model (Semantic Based Access Control model) considers this issue in its decision making process. However' time plays a crucial role in new computing environments'which is not supported in SBAC. In this paper' we propose the Temporal Semantic Based Access Control (TSBAC) model' as an extension of SBAC' which enhances the specification of user-defined authorization rules by constraining time interval and temporal expression over users' history of accesses. TSBAC uses logical... 

With the introduction of restructuring concepts to traditional power systems, a great deal of attention is given to the utilization of distributed generation. Since the integration of DG units has been known as an alternative for main grid as a resource for energy supply, the determination of optimal sizing and sitting is an important issue in the planning procedure of DG. This work presents a comprehensive multi-objective model for integration of distributed generations into a distribution network, regarding various technical, economical and environmental issues such as reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and investment & running costs while the bus voltages shall be kept within... 

The pipe-spool fabrication process is a critical operational section in the piping projects that usually used to accelerate and discipline the installation process, especially, when we have a particular deadline for the project. For this reason, the fast and optimal scheduling of the fabrication activities with considering the real conditions and using manual or traditional methods is a significant problem for the decision-makers. In this paper, we use a novel linear programming model to schedule the spool fabrication activities based on the flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP). Because FJSP is a challengeable NP-hard problem, we solve the proposed mathematical model with a heuristic... 

Web-based E-Leaning Systems (WELSs) have emerged as new means of skill training and knowledge acquisition, encouraging both academia and industry to invest resources in the adoption of these systems. Traditionally, most pre- and post-adoption tasks related to evaluation are carried out from the viewpoints of technology. Since users have been widely recognized as being a key group of stakeholders in influencing the adoption of information systems, their attitudes about these systems are considered as pivotal. Therefore, based on the theory of multi-criteria decision making and the research results concerning user satisfaction in the fields of human-computer interaction and information... 

The researches on environmental and sustainability are an active topic, especially in the waste management. As such, the hazardous waste optimization is an active research topic in developing countries which may be integrated with carbon emissions and green subjects. This grand challenge motivates the current research to contribute a new multi-objective optimization model to address the green hazardous waste location-routing problem. The proposed multi-objective optimization model establishes four objectives simultaneously for the first time. In addition to the total cost and the greenhouse gas emissions of the transportation systems as the two main objectives, another objective function... 

In this paper a scheduling optimization framework is developed to enhance power plants operational decision making process. The proposed framework optimizes plant schedule including operating conditions and maintenance intervals simultaneously and on an hourly basis. In a long term operation plant performance deteriorates due to components aging. This study employs equivalent operating hour (EOH) approach to describe components aging impact on the plant performance deterioration and consequently plant long term profit. Modeling of components aging increases system simulation accuracy in long term operation and the optimum decision variables would be more reliable and realistic. Validity and... 

Ways to reduce an airline's cost has been studied for years. In fact, in order to achieve this goal, ones need to know different types of airline's costs including; fuel and oil, maintenance, Ticketing, passenger services, etc. and their impact on the total cost of an airline. According to announcement of ICAO [1], "maintenance cost (about 11% of total cost) is the second major cost after fuel and oil". Therefore, this may attract airline owners' attention to find ways to control maintenance cost and eventually the total cost of an airline. Though, there are many systematic approaches to analyze cost reduction and making policies, in this article, SD modeling is applied to develop a... 

This study proposes a novel socio-hydrological modeling framework for assessing the performance of complex water resources systems. It employs and integrates agent-based modeling (ABM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) into the socio-hydrological modeling framework to account for agents’ behaviors. Due to farmers’ major role in anthropogenic droughts, this paper mainly focuses on farmers’ behavior. The TPB framework and the agents’ behavioral rules in ABM are structured based on the data obtained from field questionnaires and interviews by the farmers in the Zarrineh River Basin as the main river feeding the Urmia Lake. The proposed modeling framework, including the TPB and ABM... 

In this research, an economic order quantity (EOQ) model is first developed for a two-level supply chain system consisting of several products, one supplier and one-retailer, in which shortages are backordered, the supplier's warehouse has limited capacity and there is an upper bound on the number of orders. In this system, the supplier utilizes the retailer's information in decision making on the replenishments and supplies orders to the retailer according to the well known (R, Q) policy. Since the model of the problem is of a non-linear integer-programming type, a genetic algorithm is then proposed to find the order quantities and the maximum backorder levels such that the total inventory... 

In this paper, a genetic algorithm for solving a class of project scheduling problems, called Resource Investment Problems, is presented. Tardiness of the project is permitted with a defined penalty. The decision variables are the level of resources and the start times of the activities. The objective is to minimize the sum of resources and delay penalty costs, subject to the activities' precedence relations and some other constraints. A revised form of the Akpan heuristic method for this problem is used to find better chromosomes. Elements of the algorithm, such as chromosome structure, unfitness function, crossover, mutation, immigration and local search operations, are explained. The... 

Decision making is the process of finding the best option among the feasible alternatives. In classical multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, the ratings and the weights of the criteria are known precisely. Owning to vagueness of the decision data, the crisp data are inadequate for real-life situations. Since human judgments including preferences are often vague and cannot be expressed by exact numerical values, the application of fuzzy concepts in decision making is deemed to be relevant. In this paper, we proposed the application of a fuzzy distance formula in order to compute a crisp value for the standard deviation of fuzzy data. Then, we use this crisp value of the standard... 

All realistic Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problems face various kinds of uncertainty. Since the evaluations of alternatives with respect to the criteria are uncertain they will be assumed to have stochastic nature. To obtain the uncertain optimism degree of the decision maker fuzzy linguistic quantifiers will be used. Then a new approach for fuzzy-stochastic modeling of MCDM problems will be introduced by merging the stochastic and fuzzy approaches into the OWA operator. The results of the new approach, entitled FSOWA, give the expected value and the variance of the combined goodness measure for each alternative. Robust decision depends on the combined goodness measures of... 

This paper aims to propose a framework by which decision-makers can evaluate and compare alternatives for sustainable island-based tourism development. The uncertainties and risks involved in information and judgment within the evaluation process were taken into account by using a hybrid approach, which combined the Delphi method, fuzzy set theory, and a discrete multi-criteria method based on prospect theory called TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multiple-criteria decision making). The decision making model examined 3 different techniques for aggregating the viewpoints of different decision-makers and explored how the aggregation technique would affect the ranking of the... 

This paper aims to propose a framework by which decision-makers can evaluate and compare alternatives for sustainable island-based tourism development. The uncertainties and risks involved in information and judgment within the evaluation process were taken into account by using a hybrid approach, which combined the Delphi method, fuzzy set theory, and a discrete multi-criteria method based on prospect theory called TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multiple-criteria decision making). The decision making model examined 3 different techniques for aggregating the viewpoints of different decision-makers and explored how the aggregation technique would affect the ranking of the... 

Introduction: Today, Fuzzy expert systems have helped physicians in cases of uncertainty in medical decision making for prescribing drugs. Narrowing of coronary heart and reduction in heart blood flow are important causes of coronary heart disease (CHD). Control of blood lipid level is a routine treatment in CHD patients. But damage to liver is a common side effect of lipid lowering drug medication. Measurement of plasma Alanine aminotransferase level is considered as a marker of liver damage. The aim of this study was to determination of optimal dose of atorvastatin using Fuzzy expert system. Materials and Methods: in this study, Fuzzy expert system based on drug dose determination was...