Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, a coupled hydro-mechanical formulation is developed for the simulation of interaction between hydraulic fractures and natural discontinuities within saturated porous media. The momentum balance equation of the bulk together with the momentum balance and continuity equations of the fluid phase are employed to obtain the fully coupled set of governing equations. The hydro-fracture is modeled for fluid flow using the Darcy law. The natural discontinuity on the other hand is modeled for both opening and closing modes which induce fluid flow and/or contact behavior along the crack edges. The discontinuity in the displacement field is incorporated by using the Heaviside enrichment... 

In this paper, a computational model is developed for the simulation of hydro-fracture growth in naturally layered impervious media using the extended finite element method (X-FEM). The equilibrium equation of the bulk is solved in conjunction with the hydro-fracture inflow and continuity equations using the staggered Newton method. The hydro-fracture inflow is governed by the lubrication theory, where the permeability of the fracture is incorporated by taking advantage of the cubic law. The Eigen-function expansion method is utilised in order to develop enrichment functions suited for the asymptotic stress field in the vicinity of the singular points. An energy release rate-based criterion... 

In this paper, an enriched finite element method is presented to model the interaction between the hydraulically-driven fracture and the pre-existing naturally-cemented fault within an impermeable domain. The inflow and continuity equations of the fluid phase are solved throughout the discontinuities in conjunction with the momentum balance equation of the bulk using a sequential manner based on the staggered Newton algorithm. The frictional contact behavior along the overlapped zone of the naturally-cemented fault is modeled through the extended–FEM penalty scheme. The effect of cementation bond along the natural fault is incorporated employing a modified Coulomb law to derive the... 

Hydrostatic pressure is one of the most fundamental and common mechanical stimuli in the body, playing a critical role in the homeostasis of all organ systems. Kidney function is affected by high blood pressure, namely hypertension, by the increased pressure acting on the glomerular capillary walls. This general effect of hypertension is diagnosed as a chronic disease, but underlying mechanistic causes are still not well understood. This paper reports a portable and adaptive device for studying the effects of hydrostatic pressure on a monolayer of cells. The fabricated device fits within a conventional incubation system and microscope. The effects of various pressures and durations were... 

Hydrostatic pressure is one of the most fundamental and common mechanical stimuli in the body, playing a critical role in the homeostasis of all organ systems. Kidney function is affected by high blood pressure, namely hypertension, by the increased pressure acting on the glomerular capillary walls. This general effect of hypertension is diagnosed as a chronic disease, but underlying mechanistic causes are still not well understood. This paper reports a portable and adaptive device for studying the effects of hydrostatic pressure on a monolayer of cells. The fabricated device fits within a conventional incubation system and microscope. The effects of various pressures and durations were... 

In this study amount of soil erosion in watershed of JAJROOD is estimated by use of the RULSE model with the help of GIS12. JAJROOD River is located in upstream of LATIAN Dam and is one of the most important water sources of Tehran. Also, this River has a big role in preventing the flood. modeling Results show that the amount of soil erosion is high due to high slope of the land, lack of plant coverage and the quality of soil and changing the land application, lead to increase in erosion potential. modeling Results have estimated the amount of erosion in this basin about 1,524,511 tons in a year. In order to evaluate Results and efficiency of the model, all of obtained results are compared... 

This paper deals with the application of Fast Fourier Transform Base Method (FFTBM) with signal mirroring (FFTBM-SM) to assess accuracy of MELCOR code. This provides deeper insights into how the accuracy of MELCOR code in predictions of thermal-hydraulic parameters varies during transients. The case studied was modeling of Station Black-Out (SBO) accident in PSB-VVER integral test facility by MELCOR code. The accuracy of this thermal-hydraulic modeling was previously quantified using original FFTBM in a few number of time-intervals, based on phenomenological windows of SBO accident. Accuracy indices calculated by original FFTBM in a series of time-intervals unreasonably fluctuate when the... 

It is a current practice to employ composite claya mixture of clay and aggregates that float within the clayey matrixas the core of embankment dams that have classically been constructed from pure clays. Experience has shown that significant pore pressures could build up during cyclic undrained loading in composite clays. This may threaten dam stability during earthquake loading. However, it is difficult to attribute a single value to excess pore pressure in conventional seismic stability analysis because of the random nature of earthquake loading, leading to uncertainty in the evaluation of factor of safety against sliding. This article evaluates the importance of pore pressure build-up in... 

Pharmaceutical waste has attracted significant attention in the past two decades due to the current high consumption of pharmaceuticals together with the development of reliable detection technologies. In order to acquire better understanding on pharmaceuticals removal in biological processes, the treatment of synthetic wastewater containing diclofenac (DFN) and ibuprofen (IBU), two of the most commonly prescribed medicines worldwide, was studied using a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR). An 8.5-L aerobic MBBR with Kaldnes packing filling ratio of 40% was designed. The controlled parameters were pH within neutral range, temperature of 37 °C, mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) of 2100 mg/L,... 

In this paper, the sensitivity analysis is applied to the development of high performance adaptive hydraulic mounts. The analysis allows us to select the most effective design parameters for tuning an adaptive mount to different road and engine conditions. It is shown that in the low frequency road excitation, the upper chamber compliance and inertia of the fluid column in the inertia track are the most influential properties in changing the dynamic stiffness of the hydraulic mount. These properties for the high frequency engine excitations are the upper compliance and the inertia of the fluid column of the decoupler. For tuning the adaptive mount to different road and engine excitation, a... 

In this paper, application of the Endurance Time (ET) method in seismic analysis of concrete gravity dams has been investigated. The ET method is based on time history analysis of structures, subjected to specially designed intensifying acceleration functions. It is expected that by developing its application in analysis of concrete dams, useful information on the seismic behavior of such dams at various excitation intensities can be obtained. Results from linear analysis of Folsom and Koyna dams under real earthquakes and ET acceleration functions have been compared. It is shown that the ET method can predict the response of concrete gravity dams to individual earthquakes with reasonable... 

Although static characterization of reservoirs is an inevitable part of any reservoir studies, the most robust models of the reservoirs can be obtained through integrating static and dynamic data. The following study which is done in a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir utilizes the capillary pressure and relative permeability data to verify the task of static rock typing and investigate the role of hydraulic units in capillary pressure and relative permeability modeling. For this purpose, at first, various rock typing techniques are applied to the field data to seek the best method which has the most consistency with capillary pressure curves. Using Desouky method which is based on hydraulic... 

In this paper, we present a practical linear distinguisher on the Shannon stream cipher. Shannon is a synchronous stream cipher that uses at most 256-bit secret key. In the specification for Shannon, designers state that the intention of the design is to make sure that there are no distinguishing attacks on Shannon requiring less than 280 keystream words and less than 2128 computations. In this work we use the Crossword Puzzle attack technique to construct a distinguisher which requires a keystream of length about 231 words with workload about 231  

The purpose of this study is to evaluate an anaerobic system (ABR) cultured by chemoautotrophic bacteria for biodesulfurization of natural gas. In this study anaerobic baffled reactor with five compartments and active volume of 10 l was used. For increasing solid retention time, reactor was packed by pumice with 0.5-2 cm diameter which active volume decreased to 9 l. Inoculation was performed by activated sludge from municipal sewage treatment, which was kept in anaerobic condition for 1 year. The synthetic wastewater which contains S2O32- ion was used in start-up and S -2 for running of ABR. Performance of the reactor was evaluated at three equivalent hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 50,... 

In this paper, a mesh-less numerical approach is utilized to solve Euler's equation that is the governing equation of the irrotational flow of ideal fluids. A fractional step method of discritization is applied which consists to split each time step in two steps. This numerical method is based on moving-particle semi-implicit method (MPS) for simulating incompressible inviscid flows with free surfaces. The motion of each particle is calculated through interactions with neighboring particles covered with the kernel function. There are limitations for getting a stable solution by MPS method. In this paper, various kernel functions are considered and applied to improve the stability of MPS... 

The travel time of subsurface flow in complex hillslopes (hillslopes with different plan shape and profile curvature) is an important parameter in predicting the subsurface flow in catchments. This time depends on the hillslopes geometry (plan shape and profile curvature), soil properties and climate conditions. The saturation capacity of hillslopes affect the travel time of subsurface flow. The saturation capacity, and subsurface travel time of compound hillslopes depend on parameters such as soil depth, porosity, soil hydraulic conductivity, plan shape (convergent, parallel or divergent), hillslope length, profile curvature (concave, straight or convex) and recharge rate to the groundwater... 

In this research, the efficiency of the integrated fixed-film activated sludge-oxic settling anoxic (IFAS-OSA) system in biological nutrient removal was studied. The oxic-settling anoxic (OSA) process is known as a cost effective way to reduce the nutrients (nitrogen and Phosphorus). According to the results, the percentages of total nitrogen removal efficiency in the IFAS, IFAS-OSA2h and IFAS-OSA4h systems were 78.56 ± 2.46, 83.60 ± 0.92 and 85.03 ± 1.69, respectively, while the percentages of phosphorus removal efficiency in these systems were 32.69 ± 8.25, 36.35 ± 6.73 and 39.87 ± 3.61, respectively. The PCR-RFLP method showed that C. albicans had the greatest prevalence (n = 36, 90%).... 

Understanding the effect of impact loading on the mechanical response of the intervertebral disc (IVD) is valuable for investigating injury mechanisms and devising effective therapeutic modalities. This study used 24 porcine thoracic motion segments to characterize the mechanical response of intact (N = 8), degenerated (Trypsin-denatured, N = 8), and repaired (Genepin-treated, N = 8) IVDs subject to impact loading. A meta-model analysis of poroelastic finite element simulations was used in combination with ex-vivo creep and impact tests to extract the material properties. Forward analyses using updated specimen-specific FE models were performed to evaluate the effect of impact duration. The... 

The phenomenon of the hydraulic jump is so complex that despite considerable laboratory and prototype studies, estimation of its main characteristics in a generalized and accurate form is still difficult. The Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach aims at limiting the needs for costly and time-consuming experiments. In this study, two ANN models, multi-layer perceptron using back propagation algorithm (MLP/BP) and radial basis function using orthogonal least-squares algorithm (RBF/OLS), were used to predict the roller length, sequent depth, and the relative energy loss of the B-jump. Based on a pre-specified range of jump parameters, the input vectors include: upstream bed slope (tan θ),... 

Temperature gradient on the thick Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), caused by sudden overcooling events, especially in the downcomer, would intensify the propagation of structural defects. This situation known as Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) could be created in case of Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) actuation which leads to injection of cold water into the cold leg of the primary loop in some accidents, e.g. Loss Of Coolant Accident (LOCA). Prediction of Plant response to LOCA and water temperature gradient in the downcomer are performed in thermal-hydraulic section of PTS analysis. Employment of system codes is one of the proposed procedures in literature to obtain plant response and...