Sharif Digital Repository

This study investigates the flexural and impact behaviour of GFRP laminates after exposure to elevated temperatures. The effect of fibre's length and orientation, laminate's thickness, and exposure time is studied. A total number of 540 tests in terms of three-point bending and Charpy impact tests were conducted to obtain the mechanical properties. In addition, SEM analyses were carried out to investigate the degradation mechanisms. Finally, statistical study was conducted to investigate the contribution of each variable and develop probabilistic models using ANOVA and linear Bayesian regression method. The results showed that generally the flexural and impact properties of GFRP laminates... 

In this study, the effects of fiber type (i.e., carbon and glass fibers) and intumescent paint on the tensile performance of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets at elevated temperatures are investigated. For this purpose, a series of tensile tests were conducted on the glass and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP and CFRP) sheets, with and without intumescent fire retardant paint, at different elevated temperatures. The studied temperatures ranged from 25 °C to 600 °C. Scanning electron microscopy was also used to examine the effects of elevated temperatures on FRP sheets and the fire protecting mechanism of the intumescent paint. Based on the test results, the tensile strength of the... 

Alkali-activated binders have been proposed and have emerged as an alternative to ordinary Portland cement (OPC) binders with acceptable mechanical and durability performances in addition to positive environmental impacts. These alternative binders use a wide range of aluminosilicate precursors, with differing availabilities, reactivities, costs and CO2 emissions. Despite all the studies published on improving the characteristics of these materials in the last decades, some aspects of alkali-activated binders require further investigations. For instance, shrinkage in alkali-activated binders due to the different chemical processes being involved is more complicated than OPC composites and it... 

Due to high vulnerability of steel structures to elevated temperatures and the need for taking adequate and effective measures to reduce human and financial losses in fires, a thorough understanding of such behaviour is of utmost importance. In this research, a half-scale 3D model, comprising moment-resisting frames, equipped with flush end-plate connections, in one direction, and braced frames in the other, was subjected to a scaled ISO 834 standard fire. The maximum attained temperature was 1055 °C. The results showed that the structure tolerates high temperatures for an appreciable amount of time before collapsing. Moreover, for thick flush end-plates, which were used in this study, the... 

This paper addresses numerically-derived tsunami wave loads on bridge superstructures using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), which is a type of mesh-free methods. Although there exist some relationships for the case of impinged loads on bridges exerted by regular (sinusoidal) waves, for the case of solitary waves such as tsunamis, no relation has yet been proposed in the literature. This shortcoming is partly due to the lack of understanding the mechanism of wave action on the bridge superstructures. In this study, three water depths, three wave amplitudes and four submergence depths of the deck are considered for the process of numerical investigation of tsunami-induced loads on... 

Flow stress and ductility behaviors of the annealed and severely deformed Al were investigated at warm deformation temperatures. Constrained groove pressing (CGP) method as a severe plastic deformation process was used. The tensile test was carried out at the temperature range of the 298-573 K and strain rate range of 0.001-0.1 s−1 to present the elevated temperature deformation behavior utilizing hyperbolic sine constitutive equation. The flow stress of the CGPed sample is increased with the number of CGP passes and decreased with temperature. Dynamic recovery and strain softening are found as main restoration mechanisms. Flow stress amounts are not remarkably affected by the strain rate.... 

This study examines different soot sub-models to simulate the soot nano-aerosol formation in turbulent kerosene-surrogate flames. The examinations are carried out at three different elevated pressures. We use a two-equation soot model considering the aerosol dynamics and chemistry of soot nano-particles, i.e. nucleation, coagulation, surface growth, and oxidation. Four different soot sub-models are used to predict the structures of pressurized flames. These structures are then compared with each other as well as the data collected by experiment. Our findings indicate that the acetylene soot-inception sub-model performs poorly in prediction of the flames’ structures at different elevated... 

The oxidation behavior of three types of stainless steels, namely AISI 321, AISI 316, and AISI 409, was compared. In all stainless steels, oxide layers were formed and their masses and thicknesses increased with oxidation time. Among them, AISI 409 ferritic stainless steel demonstrated higher oxidation rate. According to the kinetical oxidation behavior of them at elevated temperatures, the oxidation mechanism was determined. Among them, the AISI 409 ferritic stainless steel showed the lowest and AISI 321 austenitic stainless steel demonstrated the highest oxidation resistance. Based on the experimental results, it was suggested that the kinetic of oxide growth in stainless steels was... 

In micron-scale, powder consolidation process is driven by diffusion phenomenon, while in nano-scale the higher surface energy of particles leads to some anomalous behaviors within the process. In order to investigate the nano-sintering occurrence, an atomistic approach is employed via molecular dynamics simulations. Within this approach, the effect of particle size and temperature is examined. The study of particle structure emphasizes on a transition on the governing mechanism of process depending on the material energy levels. The results show that in a specific particle size at low temperatures, the main sintering mechanism is the plastic deformation, while at elevated temperatures it... 

Cardiovascular diseases are very common and are one of the main reasons of death. Being among the major types of these diseases, correct and in-time diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) is very important. Angiography is the most accurate CAD diagnosis method; however, it has many side effects and is costly. Existing studies have used several features in collecting data from patients, while applying different data mining algorithms to achieve methods with high accuracy and less side effects and costs. In this paper, a dataset called Z-Alizadeh Sani with 303 patients and 54 features, is introduced which utilizes several effective features. Also, a feature creation method is proposed to... 

Two different hydroxyapatite based composites reinforced by oxide ceramic (20 wt%) nano crystals were synthesized by high-energy ball milling and sintered by pressure less technique. Alumina and titania nanoparticles as secondary phases improved densification and mechanical behavior of apatite and postponed its decomposition to the tricalcium phosphate (TCP) phases at elevated temperatures. Increasing the relative density of apatite using nano reinforcements leads to enhance the bending strength by more than 40% and 27% (as compared to the pure HA) and increase the hardness from 2.52 to 5.12 (Al2O3 composite) and 4.21 (TiO2 addition) GPa, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM),... 

Urmia Lake in the northwest of Iran is the second largest hyper-saline lake worldwide. During the past two decades, a significant water level decline has occurred in the lake. The existing estimations for the lake water balance are widely variable because the lake bathymetry is unknown. The main focus of this study is to extract the volume-area-elevation (V-A-L) characteristics of Urmia Lake utilizing remote sensing data and analytical models. V-A-L equations of the lake were determined using radar altimetry data and their concurrent satellite-derived surface data. Next, two approximate models, a power model (PM) and a truncated pyramid model (TPM), were parameterized for Urmia Lake and... 

Tungsten composites are interesting materials for high temperature applications. These composites are conventionally produced by solid state reaction, where elevated temperatures and long sintering processes are inevitable, and generally produce volatile components that increase defects and impair the properties of the composites for high temperature applications. In the present paper, synthesis of dense near net-shaped transition metal-metal carbide by reaction casting is studied, which creates a potential application for the composite at 2000 C. Since the pores of the ceramic preform are filled with reaction products, this technique is referred to as displacive compensation porosity (DCP).... 

Aluminum reinforced with a large amount (up to about 55 vol.%) of Al 3Ti particles can be fabricated from Al-20Ti elemental nanometer-sized powder mixture via in-situ two step hot press sintering (TSS). For production of intermetallic reinforced in-situ composite, TSS can provide elevated temperature to facilitate the formation of intermetallic phase in situ and hot consolidation to form a fully dense solid. The first step sintering was employed at a higher temperature to obtain an initial high density, and the second step was held at a lower temperature by isothermal sintering for more time than the first one to increase bulk density without significant grain growth. The optimum TSS regime... 

An experimental study of wear characteristics of electroless Ni-10% P coating sliding against hard AISI 52100 steel pin is investigated. Experiments are carried out at room and 550°C temperatures. Heat treatment effects on tribological behavior of this coating are studied. The wear surface and the microstructure of the coatings are analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersion analysis X-ray, and microhardness testing equipment. It is observed that the forming of continuous oxide film on contacting surfaces of pin and disk improves wear resistance and decreases friction coefficient of the Ni-10% P coating. The results indicate that the wear resistance of... 

Elevation angle is one of the most significant parameters of land mobile satellite channels, subject to rapid variations in the case of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems. In this paper a novel trace-based framework is proposed and analyzed which is capable of predicting elevation angle as a function of time during satellite visibility window. Trace-time based modeling makes the framework practical for real-time evaluation of elevation angle and its alteration incurred by communication links in LEO satellite systems. The proposed method is particularly suitable for development of communication channel models and services in mobile LEO satellite networks where path variability is of... 

Variational principle is used to derive the nonlinear response of the floating roof of cylindrical liquid storage tanks due to harmonic base excitations. The formulation accounts for nonlinearity due to large deflections of the floating roof. The derived nonlinear governing equation for the sloshing response of the floating roof has a cubic nonlinear stiffness term similar to the well known Duffing equation. It is shown that accounting for large deflections could substantially reduce the wave elevation for near resonance harmonic excitations. Evaluating the response of the nonlinear model for increasing amplitudes of near resonance harmonic excitations gives rise to the appearance of sub and... 

The main attempt of this paper is to present a new methodology to model a generic low-level flight close to terrain, which guarantees terrain collision avoidance. Benefiting the advantages of high-speed computer technology, this method uses satellite elevation maps to generate so-called "quad-tree forms". The latter is then used to find the optimal trajectories for low-level flights. The novelty of this approach, entitled the "cost map," lies in the integration of aircraft dynamics into the segmented map. This procedure results in some near-optimal trajectories with respect to aircraft dynamics that could easily be used for minimization of flight path together with pilot effort. Different... 

The aim of the present study is to provide an Atlas of IRAN Offshore Renewable Energy Resources (hereafter called 'the Atlas') to map out wave and tidal resources at a national scale, extending over the area of the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman. Such an Atlas can provide necessary tools to identify the areas with greatest resource potential and within reach of present technology development. To estimate available tidal energy resources at the site, a two-dimensional tidally driven hydrodynamic numerical model of Persian Gulf was developed using the hydrodynamic model in the MIKE 21 Flow Model (MIKE 21HD), with validation using tidal elevation measurements and tidal stream diamonds from... 

In this paper the main goal is to evaluate the vertical and slant bolted endplate connections performance in steel moment frame structures under thermal effect in elastic field, and by a finite element software. the connections are simulated to complete and verify simple modeling of analytical and numerical analysis of the behavior of vertical and slant bolted endplate connections due to increase in temperature. The results that are obtained from performance of a vertical bolted endplate connection and a slant bolted endplate connection due to increase in temperature will be compared