Sharif Digital Repository

The exploitation of solar energy facilitates the renewable energy paradigm. In this regard, parabolic trough collectors (PTC) are considered as a useful set-up to absorb solar energy. Simultaneous study of thermal, thermodynamic, and exergoeconomic performance of PTC systems paves the way for designers and manufacturers to not only have a better insight into understanding the underlying concepts about the operation of PTC systems but also to find the most effective and cost-effective circumstances. This study aims at analyzing a practical PTC system by considering an evacuated absorber tube with glass cover, non-uniform heat flux, and taking into account the convective and radiative heat... 

Proppants transport is an advanced technique to improve the hydraulic fracture phenomenon, in order to promote the versatility of gas/oil reservoirs. A numerical simulation of proppants transport at both hydraulic fracture (HF) and natural fracture (NF) intersection is performed to provide a better understanding of key factors which cause, or contribute to proppants transport in HF–NF intersection. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in association with discrete element method (DEM) is used to model the complex interactions between proppant particles, host fluid medium and fractured walls. The effect of non-spherical geometry of particles is considered in this model, using the multi-sphere... 

Minimization of drop contact time is so important and critical for applications such as self-cleaning and anti-corrosion. In recent years, surface acoustic waves are presented as a powerful method for the manipulation of the drops. In this manuscript, a numerical study of drop shedding under the effect of acoustic waves is presented, which may have potential use in the anti-icing systems. Therefore, the effects of different parameters, such as acoustic wave frequency, amplitude, and direction of the wave on the water removal, are investigated. For this purpose, a color gradient lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is developed and used in these simulations. The acoustic actuator effect is added as... 

The attitude fault-tolerant control of a flexible satellite actuated by reaction wheels and magnetic torquer bars is investigated in this article. A low earth orbit is considered for moment perturbations such as drag and gravity gradient. Furthermore, the flexible panels attached to a rigid central body are modeled through the assumed mode approach by a finite set of bending modal motion. The ordinary differential equations of their generalized coordinates are found using Lagrange’s equation, and the resulting dynamical model is validated by comparing its simulation results to the NX Siemens software results. Finally, a fault-tolerant controller based on sliding mode control is suggested and... 

The flying agility demonstrated by dragonflies is accomplished by means of complex aerodynamic forces produced by flapping their four wings arranged in a tandem configuration. The current study presents a novel tandem flapping wing mechanism for a biomimetic air vehicle that was designed and manufactured to experimentally investigate the aerodynamic forces. By optimizing the configuration and using spatial network analysis, it is shown that the designed structure can flap the wings in a linear up–down stroke motion and is capable of maintaining good consistency and aerodynamic performance. Such a mechanism could be used in a future biomimetic micro air vehicle (BMAV) design. The mechanism... 

In this paper, the effects of rocking and fixed base prestressed columns and conventional reinforced concrete columns on the response of frames are investigated. Also, the influence of some selected rocking base prestressed columns on the response of the concrete frame was studied. Three types of a concrete frame with conventional Reinforced Concrete columns, rocking, and fixed base prestressed columns were modeled using the finite element method in Opensees software. The details of the simulation of the rocking and fixed base columns in Opensees are described precisely. The results obtained from the models were compared with those of the literature to evaluate the validity of the results.... 

Droplet-based microfluidics is an attractive approach for producing microgels due to its high potential to control the size and shape of the particles and precisely entrap the substances within the hydrogel matrix. However, the microfluidic generation of monodisperse microgels with desired structures is still challenging. Indeed, the rheological and interfacial properties of the immiscible fluids, as well as the adopted gelling strategy, play important roles in microfluidic methods. Herein, sodium alginate droplets with different concentrations are generated via a microfluidic device with a flow-focusing unit. Besides, a combined in situ and ex situ strategy is optimized to crosslink sodium... 

Oscillatory condition in LTI dynamic systems is generally expressed as possessing purely imaginary solutions by their characteristic equations. Dealing with the class of fractional order systems, such a condition is equivalently restated as owing complex roots with specific arguments by a polynomial defined based on the system characteristic equation. The degree of this polynomial can be unboundedly high. Consequently, such statement for the oscillatory condition in fractional order systems, which is based on arguments of the roots of a polynomial with an unbounded degree, cannot be viewed as a closed-form expression. To tackle this challenge, this brief introduces an approach to obtain a... 

Darrieus type vertical axis wind turbines have several advantages over other wind turbines for local electricity generation in urban environments. However, the main aerodynamic challenge is the negative impacts of the dynamic stall phenomenon on the turbine performance. This study numerically scrutinizes the effects of plasma actuators on the dynamic stall control and performance improvement of a Darrieus turbine. For this sake, unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved using a pressure-based finite volume method. The Suzen-Hoang plasma actuator model is employed to calculate the body forces attributed to the plasma actuator. First, the dynamic stall characteristics of... 

This paper investigates the potential of using an active flow control technique to modify stall flutter oscillations of a NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) 0015 wing section. Wind tunnel experiments have been performed with a test-rig that provides the elastic degree of freedom in pitch. Measurements of the clean airfoil are taken at preset angles of θ 0 = 6 ° - 12 °, and for Reynolds numbers of R e c = 6.2 × 10 4 - 1.25 × 10 5, which reveal the dependency of the stall flutter oscillations to Rec and θ0. Then, flow control experiments are carried out at θ 0 = 10 ° and R e c = 1.04 × 10 5. Two dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators have been employed simultaneously to... 

DC-DC quasi-resonant converters (QRC) have the advantage of reducing switching losses and electromagnetic interference (EMI) which are the main disadvantages of high frequency power converters. The control and stabilization of these converters have always been a challenge. Traditionally, the dynamical model of the QRC is obtained using state space averaging followed by linearization about an operating point. The major flaw of this method is that state variables have large variations; thus, the linearized averaged model is not valid. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain a more precise model for the aim of stability analysis and controller design. Due to semiconductors switching, QRCs are... 

This paper offers a new EF-class converter for dynamic wireless power transfer application. The proposed high-frequency converter employs a floating-frequency switching algorithm to control the converter in a continuous frequency range, eliminate the requirement to any additional operational data from the secondary (receiver) side, accelerate the load impedance match while moving, maximize the transferred power rate, reduce charging interval and compensate power transfer tolerances. Moreover, an optimized super elliptical shape coil is designed to cope with lateral misalignment, enhance coil coupling, and increase efficiency. In the proposed converter, (i) soft switching is implemented to... 

As the first review in this field, this paper presents an in-depth mathematical view of Intelligent Flight Control Systems (IFCSs), particularly those based on artificial neural networks. The rapid evolution of IFCSs in the last two decades in both the methodological and technical aspects necessitates a comprehensive view of them to better demonstrate the current stage and the crucial remaining steps towards developing a truly intelligent flight management unit. To this end, in this paper, we will provide a detailed mathematical view of Neural Network (NN)-based flight control systems and the challenging problems that still remain. The paper will cover both the model-based and model-free... 

The heat transfer simulations of turbine blades with internal cooling are faced with so many uncertainties, of which some originate from the secondary air system, including the inlet hot gas temperature and pressure and the cooling side boundary conditions, and the blade material. The main objective of this work is to carry out a suitable sensitivity analysis on a specific novel turbine vane to improve the thermal performance of its internal cooling system and to quantify how the uncertainties on the designed/calculated values can desirably/undesirably affect the maximum blade surface temperature, which can consequently affect the gas turbine engine efficiency. Furthermore, the sensitivity... 

Plasma actuator is a flow control device which may be used to improve the performance of wind turbine blades at low airspeeds. One of the most robust numerical models to simulate the interaction of the plasma actuator with the fluid flow is the electrostatic model. This model is improved by the authors. Due to the high cost of performing experimental optimization, the optimization of plasma actuators may be investigated by this numerical model. To optimize the aerodynamic performance of a Delft University (DU) wind turbine airfoil in a full stall condition, we used the operational parameters (voltage, frequency and the waveform) applied to the plasma actuator as the main design variables. We... 

The Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)–discrete element method (DEM) numerical simulation may be applied to predict the hydrodynamic behavior of dense particle–fluid flows. The main drawback of this simulation is the long computational time required owing to the large number of particles and the minute time-step required to maintain a stable solution. In this work, a new method to improve the efficiency and accuracy of CFD–DEM simulations is presented. The particle stiffness coefficient is used as a flexible parameter to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the model. The particle concentration distribution results are compared with experimental one’s to derive the optimum effective... 

In this paper, the effectiveness of using nonlinear fluid/structure interaction for controlling the seismic response of the structures under near-field earthquake is investigated. For this purpose an SDOF Structure is considered which is equipped with the circular cylindrical liquid tank. Considering its fundamental mode of vibration, the structure is an idealised model of multi-degree of freedom system. Under 72 horizontal near-field earthquake excitations, the dynamic response of this system is examined studying three liquid sloshing modes. The dynamic response is investigated in the neighbourhood of 1:1 resonance between first unsymmetrical sloshing mode and SDOF structural mode. For this... 

The seismic risk framework of building structures has been presented to reduce earthquake-induced adverse consequences. In this context, probabilistic analysis of engineering demand parameters (EDPs) is always associated with many uncertainties and high computational demand for use in practical applications. This study has been presented to efficiently estimate the distribution of EDPs in probabilistic seismic risk assessment of irregular steel moment-resisting frames (SMRFs). For this purpose, the incorporation of the consistent fish-bone (CFB) model and the endurance time (ET) analysis method has been used. The proposed method (i.e., CFB-ET) has a substantial impact on reducing the... 

Rod-shaped samples of maraging steel were additively fabricated in vertical and horizontal directions using laser powder bed fusion technique. The samples were first aged at 490 °C for 6 h and then subjected to dynamic compressive tests using Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar apparatus. The dynamic compression tests were conducted on vertical samples at strain rates of 190, 460, 810, 1100, 1300 s−1. However, the high strain rate tests were performed at strain rates of 120, 615, 745, 890, 2200 s−1 on horizontal samples. After applying the compressive impact loads on the samples, it was found that although horizontally built samples exhibit higher dynamic strength, vertically built samples show... 

A detailed 3D anatomical model of the patellofemoral joint was developed to study the tracking, force, contact and stability characteristics of the joint. The quadriceps was considered to include six components represented by 15 force vectors. The patellar tendon was modeled using four bundles of viscoelastic tensile elements. Each of the lateral and medial retinaculum was modeled by a three-bundle nonlinear spring. The femur and patella were considered as rigid bodies with their articular cartilage layers represented by an isotropic viscoelastic material. The geometrical and tracking data needed for model simulation, as well as validation of its results, were obtained from an in vivo...