Sharif Digital Repository

Considerable portion of energy losses in a vehicle traced to tire. Energy losses in a tire are due to tire longitudinal slip as well as rolling resistance. Hence, both of aforementioned factors must take into the consideration to study the tire energy loss. Present paper aims to investigate the power losses in tires and to examine influence of road conditions and tire inflation pressure on them. To cover the real-world conditions, experiments were done on a gasoline-fueled passenger vehicle on an urban highway along two routes with same length and opposite gradients to comprise the change of road conditions. Then, by use of engine performance model which is prepared in dynamometer... 

We outline a comprehensive numerical procedure for modeling of species transport and surface reaction kinetics in electrokinetically actuated microfluidic devices of rectangular cross section. Our results confirm the findings of previous simplified approaches that a concentration wave is created for sufficiently long microreactors. An analytical solution, developed for the wave propagation speed, shows that, when normalizing with the fluid mean velocity, it becomes a function of three parameters comprising the channel aspect ratio, the relative adsorption capacity, and the kinetic equilibrium constant. Our studies also reveal that the reactor geometry idealized as a slit, instead of a... 

Many reservoir and production engineers face asphaltene precipitation as a major problem during miscible carbon dioxide flooding projects. Experimental studies regarding asphaltene precipitation are therefore employed to assist in selecting appropriate facilities and proper operation schemes. During this study, a series of high pressure, high temperature experiments are designed and performed to analyze asphaltene precipitation behavior of an Iranian light reservoir crude at reservoir conditions due to natural production and miscible CO2 gas injection. For both sets of experiments, two different temperature levels (including reservoir temperature) are selected to investigate the role of... 

Screening analysis is a useful guideline that helps us with proper field selection for different enhanced oil recovery processes. In this work, reservoir simulation is combined with experimental design to estimate the effect of reservoir rock and fluid properties on performance of immiscible nitrogen injection. Reservoir dip, thickness, and horizontal permeability are found to be the most influential parameters. Possible interactions of parameters are also discussed to increase reliability and robustness of screening results. Finally, significance of both main effects and interactions are evaluated by employing a statistical inference approach (hypothesis testing) and results are compared to... 

Many high performance steganographic schemes work at a limited or sparsely distributed set of embedding rates. We have shown that some steganographic changes will be wasted as these schemes are utilized individually for messages of various lengths. To measure the wasted changes and compare different schemes in this respect, we have built a framework based on two new criteria: the Relative Change Waste (RCW) and the Expected Changes per Pixel (ECP). To decrease the wasted changes a systematic combination of schemes is introduced and proved to be equivalent to nonlinear interpolation of points in a two-dimensional space. We have proved that a special case which leads to a linear interpolation... 

The earned value management (EVM) model is an essential technique for managing and forecasting project features such as scheduling and cost performances indexes. This paper presents a novel fuzzy earned-value model based on Z-number theory incorporating both the impreciseness of real life conditions and a degree of reliability through considering an expert judgment process. The latter factor has not been used by other researchers in the field. The proposed model provides a reliable assessment for the progress performance of a project and its 'at completion' cost in an uncertain environment. Finally, an illustrative case demonstrates the applicability of the proposed model in real life... 

In this study, the authors explore a generalised scheme for the synchronous code division multiple access (CDMA). In this scheme, unlike the standard CDMA systems, each user has different codewords for communicating different messages. Two main problems are investigated. The first problem concerns whether uniquely detectable overloaded matrices (an injective matrix, i.e. the inputs and outputs are in one-to-one correspondence depending on the input alphabets) exist in the absence of additive noise, and if so, whether there are any practical optimum detectors for such input codewords. The second problem is about finding tight bounds for the sum channel capacity. In response to the first... 

In this study, the authors present a new criterion which can be used to decompose the coding advantage (CA) of space-frequency block codes (SFBCs). The proposed decomposition separates the CA into two parts, called precoder-CA and channel-CA. The precoder-CA represents the effects of the precoder and the signal constellation, and can be used in the design of the precoder of SFBCs. The channel-CA, on the other hand, gives an indication of the effects of the channel characteristics, and can be utilised for optimising the permutation parameter. The authors have shown that the proposed decomposition method leads to a lower computational complexity for the optimisation procedure compared with the... 

In this study, the authors show that the coding advantage (CA) of quasi-orthogonal space-frequency block codes (QOSFBCs) could be decomposed into two parts, namely intrinsic CA (ICA) and extrinsic CA (ECA). Then, by using the ICA, the authors demonstrate that the optimum precoder of the QOSFBCs could be analytically derived without any requirement of the exhaustive search. Then, by improving the ECA, the authors enhance performances of the QOSFBCs efficiently - up to 4dB. Finally, the authors show that a very fast optimisation process for the QOSFBCs is viable over any arbitrary frequency-selective channel  

This paper presents a comprehensive operation model for micro-grids (MG) operating in the islanded mode. Various energy sources of a MG including diesel engine generator, micro-turbine, wind turbine and photovoltaic cell as well as battery storage and AC/DC rectifier/inverter are modeled in the proposed framework. Fuel costs, emission costs, and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs of these sources as well as their operating limits and characteristics are considered in the model. Furthermore, a new multi-cross learning-based chaotic differential evolution (MLCDE) algorithm is presented to solve the optimization problem of MG operation. The numerical results obtained from the proposed... 

This paper examines active selection of clustering constraints, which has become a topic of significant interest in constrained clustering. Active selection of clustering constraints, which is known as minimizing the cost of acquiring constraints, also includes quantifying utility of a given constraint set. A sequential method is proposed in this paper to select the most beneficial set of constraints actively. The proposed method uses information of boundary points and transition regions extracted by data description methods to introduce a utility measure for constraints. Since previously selected constraints affect the utility of remaining candidate constraints, a method is proposed to... 

Accurate prediction of the PVT properties of reservoir oil is of primary importance for improved oilfield development strategies. Experimental determination of these properties is expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, new empirical models for universal reservoir oils have been developed as a function of commonly available field data. In this communication, more than 750 experimental data series were gathered from different geographical locations worldwide. Successive linear programming and generalized reduced gradient algorithm as two constrained multivariable search methods were incorporated for modeling and expediting the process of achieving a good feasible solution. Moreover,... 

Carbon nanotubes with unique physical and mechanical properties have shown great potential for biological applications, including tissue engineering and mimicking the structure and properties of human bones. In the present work, sol-gel synthesized nanocomposite powder of multi-wall carbon nanotube/hydroxyapatite characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy and thermal analyses. The results show homogenous dispersion of nanotube in well-crystallized hydroxyapatite ceramic matrix. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscope observations show the sodium... 

The dynamic deformation of a geometrically nonlinear rectangular simply supported plate under a moving lumped mass is evaluated using mode expansion method. The governing differential equations of motion for a largely deformable rectangular plate are derived using Lagrange method based on appropriate in and out-of-plane spatial functions which satisfy the proposed boundary conditions. Although the proposed procedure is applicable for any arbitrary edge boundary conditions, only the simply supported plates are addressed in the present work. On the other hand, all inertial components of the moving mass are included in the derivation of the equations of motion. A numerical example is used to... 

Due to the liberalization of the electricity market and the introduction of distributed generation (DG), the importance of distribution loss allocation (LA) has increased. This paper presents a new method for distribution power LA in radial systems. The proposed method, which is based on the results of power flow and considers active and reactive power flows of lines for LA, is composed of three steps. In the first step, starting from the source nodes (i.e., the nodes whose generation is more than their load), the power loss allocated to all nodes is calculated and then the power loss allocated to the loads connected to each node is obtained. In the next step, the total power loss is... 

Although the ability to estimate the face pose and recognise its identity are common human abilities, they are still a challenge in computer vision context. In this study, the authors aim to overcome these difficulties by learning a non-linear tensorbased model based on multi-linear decomposition. Proposed model maps the high-dimensional image space into low-dimensional pose manifold. For preserving the actual distance along the manifold shape, a graph-based distance measure is proposed. Also, to compensate for the limited number of training poses, mirrored images are added to training ones to improve the recognition accuracy. For performance evaluation of the proposed method, experiments... 

Estimation of the viscosity of naturally occurring petroleum gases is essential to provide more accurate analysis of gas reservoir engineering problems. In this study, a new soft computing approach, namely, least square support vector machine (LSSVM) modeling, optimized with a coupled simulated annealing technique was applied for estimation of the natural gas viscosities at different temperature and pressure conditions. This model was developed based on 2485 viscosity data sets of 22 gas mixtures. The model predictions showed an average absolute relative error of 0.26% and a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The results of the proposed model were also compared with the well-known predictive... 

In this study friction stir welding of Al-Cu laminated composites were carried out by two different tool geometries. Welding procedure was carried out from both sides of Al and Cu. Analyzing cross section of welds showed that different contact conditions between shoulder and material, offers different material flow behavior which is dependent on the tool geometry. SEM analyses showed that mixing of materials in nugget region is more pronounced in the advancing side. Also XRD results indicated that welding from Cu side, leads to intermetallic formation in mixed regions  

We propose an algorithm based on mutual information to address the problem of online reconstruction of dynamic MRI from partial k-space measurements. Most of previous compressed sensing (CS) based methods successfully leverage sparsity constraint for offline reconstruction of MR images, yet they are not used in online applications due to their complexities. In this paper, we formulate the reconstruction as a constraint optimization problem and try to maximize the mutual information between the current and the previous time frames. Conjugate gradient method is used to solve the optimization problem. Using Cartesian mask to undersample k-space measurements, the proposed method reduces... 

The optimal design of complex systems in engineering requires pursuing rigorous mathematical modeling of the system's behavior as a function of a set of design variables to achieve goal-oriented design. Despite the success of current knee implants, the limited life span remains the main concern of this complex system. The mismatch between the properties of engineered biomaterials and those of biological materials leads to insufficient bonding with bone, stress shielding effects and wear problems (i.e. aseptic loosening). The use of a functionally graded material (FGM) for the femoral component of knee implants is attractive because the properties can be designed to vary in a certain pattern...