Sharif Digital Repository

In this research, the nonlinear elastic behavior of human extensor apparatus was investigated. To this goal, firstly the best material parameters of hyperelastic strain energy density functions consisting of the Mooney–Rivlin, Ogden, invariants, and general exponential models were derived for the simple tension experimental data. Due to the significance of stress response in other deformation modes of nonlinear models, the calculated parameters were used to study the pure shear and balance biaxial tension behavior of the extensor apparatus. The results indicated that the Mooney–Rivlin model predicts an unstable behavior in the balance biaxial deformation of the extensor apparatus, while the... 

In this paper, an optimal down sampler is used for Associate Discrete Circuit (ADC) based modeling and simulation of basic switching converters. Characteristic equation of backward Euler based discrete model of the circuit is used to find the value for down sampling. Using ADC modeling, fixed admittance matrix can be achieved for modeling switching converters and using down sampler, additional switch and diode current oscillations are minimized. Real-time digital simulation of buck converter using ADC with down sampler method is implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and the results are those expected without additional numerical oscillations. Based on the place-and-route... 

In the present work, a micro combustor for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) devices is proposed which is included a U-shaped microtube in a box with a secondary fluid in space between U-shaped microtube and box walls. By utilizing the three-dimensional CFD model, combustion characteristics of the premixed lean hydrogen-air mixture in the present micro combustor are studied numerically with detailed chemistry and transport taking into account heat transfer through the wall. The results show that the establishment of secondary flows and better preheating in the curved tubes is caused the flammability limits to be at least four times in comparison with straight tubes. Combustion characteristics are... 

Purpose - A numerical method is developed to capture the interaction of solid object with two-phase flow with high density ratios. The current computational tool would be the first step of accurate modeling of wave energy converters in which the immense energy of the ocean can be extracted at low cost. Design/methodology/approach - The full two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are discretized on a regular structured grid, and the two-step projection method along with multi-processing (OpenMP) is used to efficiently solve the flow equations. The level set and the immersed boundary methods are used to capture the free surface of a fluid and a solid object, respectively. The full... 

During the last decades, the adoption of more strict safety and environmental regulations, as well as a rise in energy costs, sparked an increasing interest in the design of renewable energies systems, particularly solar systems, to supply both electrical power and heat. Because of their capability to simultaneously supply both electricity and heat, concentrating photovoltaic-thermal and thermoelectric hybrid systems have recently attracted scholarly attention. In this study, a detailed three-dimensional computational model of a novel concentrating photovoltaic-thermal solar system combined with thermoelectric modules in an integrated design with a triangular absorber and corresponding... 

Experimental acoustic cell separation methods have been widely used to perform separation for different types of blood cells. However, numerical simulation of acoustic cell separation has not gained enough attention and needs further investigation since by using numerical methods, it is possible to optimize different parameters involved in the design of an acoustic device and calculate particle trajectories in a simple and low cost manner before spending time and effort for fabricating these devices. In this study, we present a comprehensive finite element-based simulation of acoustic separation of platelets, red blood cells and white blood cells, using standing surface acoustic waves... 

The current study aims to simultaneously and comprehensively investigate the performance of four types of recuperative heat exchangers applied in 200 kW microturbines by using numerical method. Different fin configurations including rectangular, triangular, louver and offset strip fins are employed in the recuperators to enhance the heat transfer rate. Additionally, the calculations are separately undertaken for both counter and cross-flow arrangements. To achieve the best performance, a three-objective optimization problem is solved using Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II). Recuperator effectiveness and exergy efficiency and total cost are considered as the objective... 

Recently, colloidal gas aphron (CGA) fluids technology has been employed to drill depleted oil and gas reservoirs. Almost all reported experience on CGA fluids were conducted at ambient conditions, and little attention has been paid on the behavior of CGAs at high pressures which is more close to real conditions. In this study, high pressure experiments were conducted by using High Pressure Microscope cell to visualize/monitor the behavior of CGAs at elevated pressures. Single bubble behavior and bubble size distribution (BSD) of CGAs were investigated under different scenarios of pressure change. Results of experiments revealed that BSD of CGAs is controlled by the path of pressure changes,... 

The problem of controlling an all-thruster spacecraft in the coupled translational-rotational motion in presence of actuators fault and/or failure is investigated in this paper. the nonlinear model predictive control approach is used because of its ability to predict the future behavior of the system. The fault/failure of the thrusters changes the mapping between the commanded forces to the thrusters and actual force/torque generated by the thruster system. Thus, the basic six degree-of-freedom kinetic equations are separated from this mapping and a set of neural networks are trained off-line to learn the kinetic equations. Then, two neural networks are attached to these trained networks in... 

A novel second-order-statistics-based sequential blind extraction algorithm for blind extraction of quasi-periodic signals, with time-varying period, is introduced in this paper. Source extraction is performed by sequentially converging to a solution that effectively diagonalizes autocorrelation matrices at lags corresponding to the time-varying period, which thereby explicitly exploits a key statistical nonstationary characteristic of the desired source. The algorithm is shown to have fast convergence and yields significant improvement in signal-to-interference ratio as compared to when the algorithm assumes a fixed period. The algorithm is further evaluated on the problem of separation of... 

It has been recently shown that guided modes in two-dimensional photonic crystal based structures can be fast and efficiently extracted by using the Galerkin's method with Hermite-Gauss basis functions. Although quite efficient and reliable for photonic crystal line defect waveguides, difficulties are likely to arise for more complicated geometries, e.g., for coupled resonator optical waveguides. First, unwanted numerical instability may well occur if a large number of basis functions are retained in the calculation. Second, the method could have a slow convergence rate with respect to the truncation order of the electromagnetic field expansion. Third, spurious solutions are not unlikely to... 

We present a Bayesian approach for Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) in the noisy case. The algorithm is essentially a method for obtaining sufficiently sparse solutions of underdetermined systems of linear equations with additive Gaussian noise. In general, an underdetermined system of linear equations has infinitely many solutions. However, it has been shown that sufficiently sparse solutions can be uniquely identified. Our main objective is to find this unique solution. Our method is based on a novel estimation of source parameters and maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of sources. To tackle the great complexity of the MAP algorithm (when the number of sources and mixtures become large),... 

This paper proposes a method to suboptimally tune the control parameters in a conventional Lyapunov-Based method which shares the same concept of control design with sliding mode approach as applied to the robot manipulators. Optimal tuning of such parameters involves handling of nonlinearities in system dynamics and cost functions, which makes the problem challenging. We propose a step-by-step numerical algorithm that select suboptimal parameters while ensuring system stability. The controller is, suboptimal due to the facts that (1) it is in the form of a Slotine-type sliding mode control, (2) the numerical recursive algorithm might fall into a local minimum, and (3) the controller... 

We develop a fuzzy multi-objective linear programming (FMOLP) model for solving multi-objective mixed-model assembly line problem. In practice, vagueness and imprecision of the goals in this problem make the fuzzy decision-making complicated. The proposed model considers minimizing total utility work, total production rate variation, and total setup cost, using a two-phase linear programming approach. In the first phase, the problem is solved using a max-min approach. The max-min solution not being efficient, in general, we propose a new model in the second phase to maximize a composite satisfaction degree at least as good as the degrees obtained by phase one. To show the effectiveness of... 

Functionally graded materials are advanced composite materials consisting two or more material ingredients that are engineered to have a continuous spatial variation of properties. There are a few analytical methods available to solve the governing equations of FGM made structures, confined to some specific and limited shapes, loadings and boundary conditions. Hence the numerical methods such as FEM are used to treat these materials. In previous studies the finite element method was used to solve thin walled FG structures like shells and plates by modification of the conventional shell and plate elements. Solving the thick walled FG structures confronts some difficulties. One of the methods... 

The liquefaction phenomenon is usually accompanied by a large amount of settlement. Based on the observations made in past earthquakes, ground improvement by densification is one of the most useful approaches to reduce the liquefaction-induced settlement. Currently, there is no analytical solution for evaluation of the amount of settlement and tilting of footings that are constructed on densified ground surrounded by liquefiable soil. A number of factors, such as underlying soil properties, dimensions of the footing and earthquake loading characteristics, cause the problem to become complicated. In this paper, the dynamic response of shallow foundations on both liquefiable and... 

In this paper, a novel solution for the problem of joint moving target and antenna localization in the distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems is proposed. The localization problem in the presence of antenna location uncertainty is formulated as a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation problem, which is then recast into convex form by defining some auxiliary variables and applying semidefinite relation (SDR) technique. Next, an algebraic closed-form estimator is proposed to jointly estimate the target and the antennas error terms and refine their uncertain values. The proposed method is shown analytically and verified by the numerical simulations to be an efficient... 

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing is a novel technology used for fabricating high-resolution part features from a wide range of materials. Due to the multiphysics dynamics and the multiphase nature of the microdroplet formation in the EHD printers, modeling of this phenomenon is complicated. In this paper, the formation of a droplet in an EHD printer—under a pulsed electrical field—is simulated using a new numerical model which couples the fluid flow, the electric field distribution and the movement of the electric charges under dynamic and transient conditions. The level-set method is applied to the entire multiphysics domain in order to study the formation of the droplet. The presented... 

The discontinuous Galerkin method is used to solve the non-linear spherical shallow water equations with Coriolis force. The numerical method is well-balanced and takes wetting/drying into account. The two fold goal of this work is a comparative study of dynamic and static tsunami generation by seabed displacement and the careful validation of these source models. The numerical results show that the impact of the choice of seabed displacement model can be significant and that using a static approach may result in inaccurate results. For the validation of the studies, we consider measurements from satellites and buoy networks for the 2011 Tohoku event and the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman tsunami. The... 

Machining of ceramics often involves many challenges due to their high hardness, brittleness, and low-thermal conductivity. Laser Assisted Machining (LAM) is a promising technology for improving the machinability of hard-to-cut materials. In this work, the effect of laser heating in the LAM process on Slip Cast Fused Silica (SCFS) ceramics is investigated by conducting a numerical thermal analysis of laser effects on material behavior. A transient three-dimensional heat transfer analysis for Laser Assisted Turning (LAT) of SCFS is performed using finite-element method. Temperature distributions in SCFS cylindrical specimens are obtained. Moreover, the influence of laser parameters, such as...