Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, a multi-product inventory problem is investigated in which a retailer buys items from different suppliers based on their purchasing costs and defective rates. Due to the warehouse and staff constraints involved, the inventory cycle consists of two parts. The first part corresponds to a screening period in which a destructive testing acceptance-sampling plan is used to accept or reject a lot. The other part is for selling the items. In the screening period, a lot that is rejected is returned to the suppliers where another lot is claimed for substitution at no cost. Shortage occurs during the screening period and the defective items are sold at a lower price at the end of the... 

The present study aimed to join AA4014 to AA7075 by using magnetic pulse welding (MPW). In addition, acceptable joints were achieved by selecting welding parameters such as collision angle and discharge energy appropriately. Changing collision angle and discharge energy can influence the velocity, leading to the formation of three different types of welding interfaces with wavy, molten wavy and porous morphologies. The formation of these various morphologies is mainly associated with different collision angle parameters. The hardness of the welding interface with molten layer was significantly higher than that of the base metals due to the grain refinement phenomenon occurring through the... 

Peripheral nerve injuries remain among the most challenging medical issues despite numerous efforts to devise methods in fabrication of nerve conduits to functionally regenerate axonal defects. In this regard, the current study offers a holistic perspective in design by considering the mechanical, topographical and structural aspects which are crucial for a successful nerve guide conduit. Poly(e-caprolactone) and gelatin were employed to serve this purpose in the form of dual-electrospun films which were rolled and later shaped the assembly of a multichannel conduit. Polyaniline/graphene (PAG) nanocomposite was incorporated to endow the conduit with conductive properties. FTIR analysis,... 

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the stiffness and strength of damaged rectangular reinforced concrete shear walls after an earthquake using surface crack patterns. Assessing the damage severity of buildings after an earthquake is an important part of the emergency inspection operation of buildings. Expert inspectors tag buildings into two categories of safe or unsafe that are usually affected by subjective decisions, which may result in catastrophic events reported in previous earthquakes. In this research, an extensive database on the images of damaged rectangular reinforced concrete shear walls (RCSWs) is collected and used to develop predictive equations for updated stiffness and... 

Surface passivation of organic-inorganic halide perovskites (OIHPs) is a crucial step to annihilate the surface defects and to control the deteriorated ion migration phenomenon. Here, we study the role of lead sulfate (PbSO4) as an effective passivator in OIHP single crystals (SCs). Using impedance spectroscopy, we evaluate the ion migration and electrical properties of lead sulfate-passivated methylammonium lead tri-bromide (MAPbBr3) SCs. We found that the low-frequency impedance response that is assigned to the ionic motion in the MAPbBr3 SC is strongly affected by the inorganic PbSO4 surface treatment. The activation energy corresponding to the ion migration of MAPbBr3 SC is increased... 

In this research, for the first time, the effect of air quenching on the microstructural and electrical properties of (In, Nb) co-doped TiO2 was investigated. The FE-SEM images showed that the air quenching has no effect on microstructure of co-doped TiO2. However, air quenching affected the electrical properties so that the dielectric constant in the frequency of 1 kHz at room temperature sharply enhanced from 21*103 to 26*104 and the dielectric loss surprisingly decreased from 0.6 to 0.1. This incredible improvement in the dielectric properties is attributed to the electron-pined defect dipoles which has been activated through air quenching. © 2020 Elsevier B.V  

Rolling-element bearing (REB) Failure is one of the most common failure in rotary machines in industry. Therefore, this concern draws attention to the concept of diagnostic and the prediction of REB failure. The efficacy of vibration analysis in this area has led many researchers to focus on this topic in recent decades. Defective bearings such as fatigue, surface roughness, and corrosion can lead to disastrous accidents. Therefore, providing an algorithm for the detection and classification of bearing defects is valuable and useful. The prediction of the bearing's lifetime is important to ensure the planned production in an industrial unit. In this paper, different models for performance... 

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... 

It has been shown that FEM simulation of creep deformation of composites is somehow very challenging. The type of FEM model, mesh size, element type, internal defects (such as fibre/matrix debonding), and the type of mathematical creep law all affect the calculation of the creep strain rate. In the present study, the fibre offsetting which happens in the manufacturing phase of composites is added to the simulation. It is shown that this defect at some critical point can affect the calculation of creep deformation. Here, the quantification of this phenomenon is performed using 3-D FEM models. Since it has also been shown that the fibre/matrix debonding affects the creep strain rate, the... 

Surface crack patterns can easily show the behavior of concrete elements and structures. However, visual damage inspection performed by experts is a subjective approach and is prone to inaccuracies. The quantification makes this process objective and more reliable. In that regards, the maximum crack width is used as a practical measurement. It has been shown that the crack width is not a good indicator of damage due to its inherent uncertainties; In fact, it might bounce back after unloading. As such, a dimensionless parameter so-called Fractal Dimension has been introduced as a robust index that can quantify the complexity of crack distribution efficiently. The present study aims to... 

Wire-based friction stir processing is introduced as a solid-state surface alloying strategy for surface alloying of AZ31 magnesium alloy with aluminum, as a key alloying element in magnesium alloys. This technique enables the formation of a defect-free, grain refined and alloyed surface with the increased volume fraction of Mg-Al second phase, and thus, enhanced surface hardness. This simple technique provides a solid-state surface alloying pathway to improve the surface properties of the metallic materials. © 2021, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International  

The detection and repair of the cracks in the road pavement is a very time consuming task which should be performed periodically in order to maintain the safety and quality of the road network. There are various types of road pavement cracks and each type requires different management and repair method and also each type indicates a different problem in that section of the road. In this paper, an autonomous machine learning based visual inspection system for detection and classification of the road pavement cracks is proposed. The proposed framework uses deep neural networks in order to detect and classify longitudinal, alligator and asphalt cracks. A dataset of images from different road... 

In the present study, alginate/cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM)-based injectable hydrogel was developed incorporated with silk fibroin nanofibers (SFN) for cartilage tissue engineering. The in situ forming hydrogels were composed of different ionic crosslinked alginate concentrations with 1% w/v enzymatically crosslinked phenolized cartilage ECM, resulting in an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN). The response surface methodology (RSM) approach was applied to optimize IPN hydrogel's mechanical properties by varying alginate and SFN concentrations. The results demonstrated that upon increasing the alginate concentration, the compression modulus improved. The SFN concentration was... 

Central burst defect, also called chevron crack, is an internal defect which can be encountered during cold drawing processes. It causes serious problems on the quality control of products, since it is impossible to detect them by a simple surface inspection of the work piece. Therefore, its prediction is of great importance in wire drawing processes. The present investigation is concerned with the effect of strain hardening exponent on the prediction of central burst defect in aluminum wires. The major conclusion of this study is that, for a range of combination of drawing conditions, geometrical parameters and strain-hardening exponent, central burst can be predicted in wire drawing.... 

In this paper, we present a study on the contribution of silicon nanocrystals to the electrical transport characteristics of large (100 µ x 100 µm) and small (100 nm x 100 nm) metaloxide- semiconductor (MOS) capacitors at room temperature. A layer of silicon nanocrystals is synthesized within the oxide of these capacitors by ultra-low energy ion implantation and annealing. Several features including negative differential resistance (NDR), sharp current peaks and random telegraph signal (RTS) are demonstrated in the current-voltage and current-time characteristics of these capacitors. These features have been associated to charge storage in silicon nanocrystals and to the resulting Coulomb... 

A generalized Hubbard model based on a molecular approach is used to calculate many electron wavefunctions of diamond vacancies. We have calculated the oscillator strength of the dipole transition rates from the ground states of the neutral and negatively charged vacancies. The ratio of the oscillator strengths is in very good quantitative agreement with the reported optical spectroscopic data. Electronic configurations in the ground and dipole allowed excited states are presented. With the proposed picture, the much larger oscillator strength of the negatively charged vacancy with respect to other experimentally investigated color centers N-V, H3, X3 and H4 is explained  

Regression testing activities greatly reduce the risk of faulty software release. However, the size of the test suites grows throughout the development process, resulting in time-consuming execution of the test suite and delayed feedback to the software development team. This has urged the need for approaches such as test case prioritization (TCP) and test-suite reduction to reach better results in case of limited resources. In this regard, proposing approaches that use auxiliary sources of data such as bug history can be interesting. We aim to propose an approach for TCP that takes into account test case coverage data, bug history, and test case diversification. To evaluate this approach we... 

In addition to enhancement of the results near the point of application of a concentrated load in the vicinity of nano-size defects, capturing surface effects in small structures, in the framework of second strain gradient elasticity is of particular interest. In this framework, sixteen additional material constants are revealed, incorporating the role of atomic structures of the elastic solid. In this work, the analytical formulations of these constants corresponding to fee metals are given in terms of the parameters of Sutton-Chen interatomic potential function. The constants for ten fcc metals are computed and tabulized. Moreover, the exact closed-form solution of the bending of a... 

We investigate the underlying physics of degradation/recovery of a metal/n-CdTe Schottcky junction under reverse or forward bias stressing conditions. We used Sah-Noyce-Shockley (SNS) theory to investigate if the swept of Fermi level pinning at different levels (under forward/reverse bias) is the origin of change in current-voltage characteristics of the device. This theory is based on Shockley-Read-Hall recombination within the depletion width and takes into account the interface defect levels. Fermi Level Pinning theory was primarily introduced by Ponpon and developed to thin film solar cells by Dharmadasa's group in Sheffield University-UK. The theory suggests that Fermi level pinning at...