Sharif Digital Repository

The capability analysis of production processes where there are more than one correlated quality variables is a complicated task. The problem becomes even more difficult when these variables exhibit nonnormal characteristics. In this paper, a new methodology is proposed to estimate process capability indices (PCIs) of multivariate nonnormal processes. In the proposed methodology, the skewness of the marginal probability distributions of the variables is first diminished by a root transformation technique. Then, a Monte Carlo simulation method is employed to estimate the process proportion of nonconformities (PNC). Next, the relationship between PNC and PCI is found, and finally, PCI is... 

Large-scale integration of wind power in the electricity system presents some planning and operational difficulties, which are mainly due to the intermittent and difficult nature of wind prediction process. Therefore it is considered as an unreliable energy source. This paper presents a new approach for solving the generation scheduling (GS) problem. It will consider the reserve requirement, load balance and wind power availability constraints. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is suggested to deal with the equality and inequality constraints in the GS problem. The proposed PSO is applied to a 12-unit test system (including 10 conventional thermal generating units and 2 wind... 

Determining the precedence of machining features is a critical issue in feature-based process planning. It becomes more complex when geometric interaction occurs between machining features. STEP-NC, the extension of STEP (ISO 10303) standard developed for CNC controllers, is a feature-based data model. It represents all the geometric and topological product data minus feature interactions. In this paper, machining precedence of interactive and non-interactive STEP-NC features is discussed. Local and global precedence of machining features are defined on the basis of geometric constraints, such as geometric interaction of features and feature approach face and technological constraint such as... 

In this paper, a comparative techno-economic evaluation of hydrogen production by glycerol reforming in aqueous and gaseous phases are presented. To accomplish the techno-economic evaluation, firstly the process modeling and design are presented. Based on the equipment purchased costs, with 80 kg/h hydrogen production, the total cost of hydrogen production is estimated 3.65 and 3.55 $/kgH2 for steam reforming and aqueous phase reforming plants, respectively. Regarding the installation factor in the equipment costs, the total cost of hydrogen production is estimated 7.49 and 7.45 $/kgH2 for steam reforming and aqueous phase reforming plants, respectively. To investigate the impact of... 

OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has deeply influenced modern-day software development, not only by providing promising means for automating the software process, but also through revitalizing the role of modeling in software development, the importance of which had been neglected during the recent euphoria over lightweight development methods. However, MDA's need to remain reasonably abstract means that it is more a software development approach rather than a standalone methodology, and therefore needs methodology support to be practically useful. Several MDA-based methodologies exist today, yet the need remains for the definition of an instantiable MDA-based development process. We... 

A method to setup virtual point-to-point links between the cores of a packet-switched network-on-chip is presented in this paper which aims at reducing the NoC power consumption and delay. The router architecture proposed in this paper provides packet-switching, as well as a number of virtual point-to-point, or VIP (VIrtual Point-to-point) for short, connections. This is achieved by designating one virtual channel at each physical channel of a router to bypass the router pipeline. The mapping and routing algorithm exploits these virtual channels and tries to virtually connect the source and destination nodes of high-volume communication flows during task-graph mapping and route selection... 

Analogous to Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE), which aims to facilitate Software Engineering through specialized tools, Computer-Aided Method Engineering (CAME) strives to support a wide range of activities carried out by method engineers. Although there is consensus on the importance of tool support in method engineering, existing CAME environments are incomplete prototypes, each covering just a few steps of the method engineering process. This paper summarizes the history and the state of the practice in CAME technology, and provides criteria-based critique on existing CAME environments, thus highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg  

Traffic assignment is one of the primary steps in the urban transportation planning process. There are several parameters that affect on drivers route choice. These factors arenot shown completely in the classic traffic assignment techniques so, these methodes donot have acceptable accuracy in the link volume estimating. Therefore many researchers have been tried to use fuzzy set theory in order to gain more precise approximation in traffic assignment. In this paper, we intend to propose a new fuzzy assignment model which has more flexibility relarive to driver behavior characteristics. At first, our assumptions are cited and then we illustrate how the membership function of the travel time... 

The process of monitoring the events occurring in a computer system or network and analyzing them for sign of intrusions is known as intrusion detection system (IDS). The objective of this paper is to extract fuzzy classification rules for intrusion detection in computer networks. The proposed method is based on the iterative rule learning approach (IRL) to fuzzy rule base system design. The fuzzy rule base is generated in an incremental fashion, in that the evolutionary algorithm optimizes one fuzzy classifier rule at a time. The performance of final fuzzy classification system has been investigated using intrusion detection problem as a high-dimensional classification problem. Results show... 

The continuing process of software systems enlargement in size and complexity becomes system design extremely important for software production. In this way, the role of software architecture is significantly important in software development. It serves as an evaluation and implementation plan for software development and software evaluation. Consequently, choosing the correct architecture is a critical issue in software engineering domain. Moreover, software architecture selection is a multicriteria decision-making problem in which different goals and objectives must be taken into consideration. In this paper, more precise and suitable decisions in selection of architecture styles have been... 

In this paper a strategic planning framework is proposed for generation expansion planning of grid-connected micro-power systems. The proposed framework is composed of two different decision making techniques that results a robust planning approach compared to previous techniques to identify the feasible and efficient plans according to attributes and uncertain parameters considered in planning environment. The framework considers the robustness and risk exposure of different configurations according to uncertain parameters in the planning environment to select the plans which meet the objectives more efficiently with least risk exposure. The proposed methodology is implemented for... 

Different processes in chemical industries deal with particles and multiphase flow. In such processes, particle or bubble size distribution (PSD) influences the final product quality and also process design. On the other hand, solutions to the dominant hydrodynamic and thermo-kinetic equations ignoring these distributions will make it impossible to accurately simulate these processes. Solutions to population balance equations (PBE's) are needed to attain the PSD. One of the most common methods for the solution of a PBE is the classes method (CM). However, as this method requires a large number of classes to give a reasonable result, it needs a huge amount of calculations and time. To... 

In most real-world manufacturing systems, the production of goods comprises several autocorrelated stages and the quality characteristics of the goods at each stage are correlated random variables. This paper addresses the problem of monitoring a multivariate-multistage manufacturing process and diagnoses the possible causes of out-of-control signals. To achieve this purpose using multivariate time series models, first a model for the autocorrelated data coming from multivariate-multistage processes is developed. Then, a single neural network is designed, trained and employed to control and classify mean shifts in quality characteristics of all stages. In-control and out-of-control average... 

Dynamic vibration absorbers are used to reduce the undesirable vibrations in many applications such as electrical transmission lines, helicopters, gas turbines, engines, bridges, etc. Tuneable vibration absorbers (TVA) are also used as semi-active controllers. In this paper, the application of a TVA for suppression of chatter vibrations in the boring manufacturing process is presented. The boring bar is modeled as a cantilever Euler-Bernoulli beam and the TVA is composed of mass, spring and dashpot elements. In addition, the effect of spring mass is considered in this analysis. After formulation of the problem, the optimum specifications of the absorber such as spring stiffness, absorber... 

In this paper, Analytic Hierarchy Process and Data Envelopment Analysis are introduced as multi attribute decision making techniques in planning of standalone micro-power systems. The objective of the planning framework is to select the best configuration and capacity of different generating technologies in micro-power systems to minimize certain economical and environmental attributes. The economical attributes are capital cost and net present cost and the environmental attribute is emission. The proposed framework is illustrated by a case study on a real network in northern region of Iran  

Human Brain is one of the most wonderful and complex systems which is designed for ever; A huge complex network composed of neurons as tiny biological and chemical processors which are distributed and work together as a super parallel system to do control and vital activities of human body. Brain learning simulation and hardware implementation is one of the most interesting research areas in order to make artificial brain. One of the researches in this area is Active Learning Method in brief ALM. ALM is an adaptive recursive fuzzy learning algorithm based on brain functionality and specification which models a complex Multi Input Multi Output System as a fuzzy combination of Single Input... 

The optimal design of a casting feeding system is considered. The problem is formulated as the volume constrained topology optimization and is solved with the finite element analysis, explicit design sensitivity, and numerical optimization. In contrast to the traditional topology optimization where the objective function is defined on the design space, in the presented method, the design space is a subset of the complement of the objective function space. To accelerate optimization procedure, the nonlinear unsteady heat transfer equation is approximated with a Poisson-like equation. The feasibility of the presented method is supported with illustrative examples. © 2007 Springer-Verlag  

Design technology is expected to rise to electronic system-level (ESL). This necessitates new techniques and tools for synthesizing ESL designs and for verifying them before and after ESL synthesis. A promising verification strategy for future very complex designs is to initially verify the design at the highest level of abstraction, and then check the equivalence of the lower level automatically generated models against that initial golden model. We present one such approach to simulation-based functional verification implemented in our ESL design methodology called ODYSSEY. Our ESL synthesis tool generates a transaction-level model (TLM) at TLM level 2 (i.e., design with partial timing)...