Sharif Digital Repository

Spinal loads are recognized to play a causative role in back disorders and pain. Knowledge of lumbar spinal loads is required in proper management of various spinal disorders, effective risk prevention and assessment in the workplace, sports and rehabilitation, realistic testing of spinal implants as well as adequate loading in in vitro studies. During the last few decades, researchers have used a number of techniques to estimate spinal loads by measuring in vivo changes in the intradiscal pressure, body height, or forces and moments transmitted via instrumented vertebral implants. In parallel, computational models have been employed to estimate muscle forces and spinal loads under various... 

Strength parameters of asphalt concrete used in earth fill dams' core were studied by conducting cyclic and monotonic triaxial tests on asphalt concrete samples. Results obtained from more than 120 cyclic tests showed that asphalt concrete behaves properly under cyclic loading and specimens stay intact after applying 5000 cycles. Results of monotonic and post-cyclic loading proved that strength parameters of asphalt concrete samples does not change significantly after being subjected to seismic loads. © 2009 IOS Press  

A large portion of the railway bridge stock in many countries is comprised of masonry arch bridges. During recent years, more attention has been paid to the maintenance of such structures. Rehabilitation and retrofitting methods have been proposed to enhance the performance of masonry arch bridges and extend their service life. Because a large portion of forces exerted on such structures comes from the railway track and passing trains, structural elements are added to the track to reduce the forces transmitted to bridges. One such element is the ballast mat, which, according to suppliers, has a positive impact on the structural performance of the track. This paper tries to assess the effects... 

A modified dynamic-based pushover (MDP) analysis is proposed to properly consider the effects of higher modes and the nonlinear behavior of the structural systems. For this purpose, first, a dynamic-based story force distribution (DSFD) load pattern is constructed using a linear dynamic analysis, either time history (THA) or response spectrum (RSA). Performing an initial pushover analysis with the DSFD load pattern, a nonlinearity modification factor (NMF) is calculated to modify the DSFD load pattern. The envelope of the peak responses of the structure obtained from 2 pushover analyses with the modified DSFD load pattern as well as the code suggested first mode load pattern are considered... 

Non-linear loads such as rectifiers are growing in industry. Three phase inverter with non-linear load can lead to highly distorted output voltage. This paper proposes a method for reducing voltage THD in three phase inverters with non-linear load. The proposed method considers the load current as a disturbance and provide a control strategy to reject it using the disturbance observer method. This method doesn't need any additional sensors or hardware and is implemented digitally in controller. Simulation results show that the presented method will reduce the total harmonic distortion of the output voltage. © 2017 IEEE  

A smooth rigid circular anchor disk encapsulated by a penny-shaped crack is embedded in and unbounded transversely isotropic medium. The lamellar rigid disk exerts a nonuniform axisymmetric loading to the upper face of the crack. With the aid of an appropriate stress function and Hankel transform, the governing equations are converted to a set of triple integral equations which in turn are reduced to a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. For some transversely isotropic materials the normalized stiffness of the system falls well outside of the envelope pertinent to isotropic media. It is shown that mode I stress intensity factor is independent of the material properties and solely... 

A number of geometrically-detailed passive finite element (FE) models of the lumbar spine have been developed and validated under in vitro loading conditions. These models are devoid of muscles and thus cannot be directly used to simulate in vivo loading conditions acting on the lumbar joint structures or spinal implants. Gravity loads and muscle forces estimated by a trunk musculoskeletal (MS) model under twelve static activities were applied to a passive FE model of the L4-L5 segment to estimate load sharing among the joint structures (disc, ligaments, and facets) under simulated in vivo loading conditions. An equivalent follower (FL), that generates IDP equal to that generated by muscle... 

We consider load balancing in a network of caching servers delivering contents to end users. Randomized load balancing via the so-called power of two choices is a well-known approach in parallel and distributed systems. In this framework, we investigate the tension between storage resources, communication cost, and load balancing performance. To this end, we propose a randomized load balancing scheme which simultaneously considers cache size limitation and proximity in the server redirection process. In contrast to the classical power of two choices setup, since the memory limitation and the proximity constraint cause correlation in the server selection process, we may not benefit from the... 

Concentric braced frames are commonly used in steel structures to withstand lateral forces. One of the drawbacks of these systems is the possibility that the braces are buckled under compressive loads, which leads to sudden reduction of the bearing capacity of the structure. To overcome this deficiency, the idea of the Buckling Restrained Brace (BRB) has been proposed in recent years. The length of a BRB steel core can have a significant effect on its overall behavior, since it directly influences the energy dissipation capability of the member. In this study, numerical methods have been utilized for investigation of the optimum length of BRB steel cores. For this purpose, BRBs with... 

A number of geometrically-detailed passive finite element (FE) models of the lumbar spine have been developed and validated under in vitro loading conditions. These models are devoid of muscles and thus cannot be directly used to simulate in vivo loading conditions acting on the lumbar joint structures or spinal implants. Gravity loads and muscle forces estimated by a trunk musculoskeletal (MS) model under twelve static activities were applied to a passive FE model of the L4-L5 segment to estimate load sharing among the joint structures (disc, ligaments, and facets) under simulated in vivo loading conditions. An equivalent follower (FL), that generates IDP equal to that generated by muscle... 

This paper demonstrates how a probabilistic criterion could be explicitly integrated in the unit commitment (UC) formulation. Both spinning reserve and interruptible load are taken into account as the operating reserve facilities. Incorporating the interruption notice time of interruptible load involves some complexities in the evaluation procedure and problem formulation which is considered in this paper. The expected energy not supplied (EENS) is considered as a probabilistic criterion and a new method is proposed to calculate this index in the presence of interruptible load. The reliability-constrained unit commitment (RCUC) problem is formulated based on the mixed-integer programming... 

Proliferation of photovoltaic (PV) panels may cause voltage increases in low voltage (LV) distribution feeders. This issue confines PV hosting capacity of the feeders. To overcome this issue and enable higher PV hosting capacity, a model to manage the operation cycles of the domestic electric water heater and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning loads in order to avoid the voltage rise, thereby increasing PV hosting capacity in LV feeders is presented in this study. The model respects users' thermal comfort by setting the associated temperatures within allowed ranges. To preserve customers' privacy, the presented model is then decomposed into a master problem and several sub-problems... 

This paper investigates the influence of collision angle on the interface characteristics and mechanical properties of magnetic pulse welded AA4014 tubes/Cu rods. It is shown that the collision angle, which affects the collision velocity, plays a crucial role in controlling the thickness of intermetallic compounds (IMC) layer and defect formation at the weld interface. The creation of a thin and continuous IMC layer at the weld interface is responsible for the higher load-bearing capacity of the sample welded under a collision angle of 4°. The welds made at higher collision angles are featured by a thick IMC layer containing defects such as micro-cracks, pores and cavities, which reduced the... 

In this paper, the fatigue crack propagation is modeled using the Molecular Dynamics (MD) analysis based on the Embedded Atom Method (EAM). The crack growth simulation is performed for the single-crystal and poly-crystalline specimens subjected to cyclic loading/unloading conditions, and the crack growth rate is investigated at the atomistic level. The MD simulations are carried out under different model parameters, including the load pattern, maximum applied strain, temperature, loading frequency, and percentage of defects by employing more than 4000 molecular dynamics analyses to study the sensitivity of crack propagation process to the simulation parameters. The threshold values of... 

Load shedding (LS) is one of the most important protection schemes to prevent system blackout. In the case of largedisturbances, optimal LS in appropriate buses can effectively maintain the system stability. The higher complexity and lowerpredictability of modern power systems with high wind power penetration make it difficult to rely on conventional LS schemes,which shed a fixed, predetermined amount of load regardless of disturbance location. This study presents an intelligent LSscheme based on synchrophasor measurements that are adapted to both disturbance size and power system inertia. Theproposed scheme utilises improved power flow tracing method to determine the amount and location of... 

This paper presents a comprehensive educational model considering share resources among several departments bounded to educational limitations for optimizing energy consumption. The thermal model calculates the load based on the ambient temperature to minimize the user's knowledge of the building's thermal model. It determines the percentage reduction of the building's heating load in case of a change in room temperature, a term's start date, and sharing classes compared to standard curricula. It employs linear Boolean optimization. Class planning is carried out concerning minimizing energy use, students' preferences, charts, educational constraints, professors' schedules, classes' numbers,... 

In this paper, a common energy harvester is investigated which uses a specimen of magnetic shape memory alloy (MSMA). The aim of this study is to improve system performance and to evaluate the magneto-mechanical loading on the MSMA material. Since demagnetization effect is not included in the employed original MSMA model, a method to incorporate this effect is proposed which has a good performance for the specific magneto-mechanical loading of this problem. In order to decrease the need for bias magnetic field and increase system efficiency, a new return mechanism for the MSMA specimen is proposed. The results indicate that the maximum harvested power from the improved system is obtained at... 

The paper illustrates an extended effective load model including the capacities and uncertainties of generators and transmission lines. The conventional effective load model only considers the uncertainties of generators. An extended ELDC (effective load duration curve) based on the effective load model is proposed in the paper. The proposed nodal ELDC is able to supply information on nodal indices for probabilistic production cost simulation and reliability evaluation at the load points in a power system. It is expected that the effective load model presented in the paper will prove useful in many problems dealing with nodal and decentralised operation and control of electric power systems... 

The consolidation behavior of composite powders during pressure cycling at room temperature in uniaxial compaction experiments was studied and compared with monotonic compaction. Aluminum and various amounts of SiC powders (up to 50 vol%) were used to investigate the effect of hard reinforcement particle on the densification of soft aluminum matrix. The cyclic compaction was carried out at various pressure amplitudes, ranges from 90 to 360 MPa, at the frequency of 1 Hz. The pressure cycling was continued up to 5000 cycle, in which, the rate of consolidation was found to be fairly low. The consolidation of the composite powders under different loading modes was analyzed through... 

Shape memory alloys are referred to as a group of alloys that can retrieve the permanent deformation and strain applied to them and eventually return to their original form. So far, various studies have been done to determine the behavior of these alloys under cyclic loading. Most of the studies have mainly been conducted by using the foundations of Continuum Mechanics in order to examine the properties of memory alloys. In this study, instead of using the Continuum Mechanics, a Molecular Dynamics simulation method using Lennard-Jones potential is utilized. The changes in the behavior and properties of memory alloy under cyclic loading are being examined. First, the functional form...