Sharif Digital Repository

Past earthquakes revealed that while fulfilling the requirements of the conventional design codes guarantees the life safety of the occupants, considerable economic losses may still be incurred. This highlights the importance of considering life cycle losses in the design procedure of structures. In this research, the significance of the life cycle seismic risk costs in the optimal design of steel framed tube tall buildings is investigated. Typical 20- and 40-story buildings are optimally designed based on three approaches: the code-based, the cost-based, and the fixed weight approach. The first approach only minimizes the initial cost of the building while in the second and third approaches... 

Distance metric plays an important role in many machine learning algorithms. Recently, there has been growing interest in distance metric learning for semi-supervised setting. In the last few years, many methods have been proposed for metric learning when pairwise similarity (must-link) and/or dissimilarity (cannot-link) constraints are available along with unlabeled data. Most of these methods learn a global Mahalanobis metric (or equivalently, a linear transformation). Although some recently introduced methods have devised nonlinear extensions of linear metric learning methods, they usually allow only limited forms of distance metrics and also can use only similarity constraints. In this... 

A univariate iterative method for the optimization of nonlinear trusses with fuzzy constraints is proposed. The method is based on the control of elemental strains rather than stresses and hence it is called the desirable strain design criteria method. The objective of the fuzzy optimization is to find a design so that the weight or volume of the truss as well as all of the constraints on the elemental strains and joint deflections are desirable and satisfactory according to the fuzzy designer expressions. Such expressions are made in the form of fuzzy membership functions. Two illustrative examples, a 3- and a 10-bar truss, are optimized by the proposed method, where it is shown that in... 

An efficient algorithm for the design optimization of the compressible fluid flow problem through a flexible structure is presented. The methodology has three essential parts: first the behavior of compressible flow in a supersonic diffuser was studied numerically in quasi-one-dimensional form using a flux splitting method. Second, a fully coupled sequential iterative procedure was used to solve the steady state aeroelastic problem of a flexible wall diffuser. Finally, a robust Genetic Algorithm was implemented and used to calculate the optimum shape of the flexible wall diffuser for a prescribed pressure distribution. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

This paper presents a centralized structure for optimum navigation of emergency vehicles with emphasis on ambulances in disaster situations. In this system, an enhanced fuzzy controlled ant colony system (FCACS) based search engine is proposed for optimum route selection. Performance of the system is evaluated by simulating it on a part on London, UK  

Drop motion on different types of new proposed micro-structure surfaces has been numerically investigated to find the optimum structure in view point of ice formation delaying. The droplet automatically moves on the inclined surfaces due to gravity forces. To validate the numerical algorithm, three different bench mark problems have been considered. The results indicate that the present algorithm is trustable for the presented numerical simulations. Then the validated numerical approach has been used to simulate droplet motion on nine proposed superhydrophobic surfaces in the same conditions. Comparison the drop motion on different micro-structure surfaces at different time indicate that... 

Multi-turn resolvers are proposed to be used in high accuracy, high-reliability applications that need to have the benefits of absolute measurement and high accuracy, simultaneously. In this paper, the influence of different arrangements of rotary transformer (RT) and resolvers' core on the accuracy of a multi-turn wound rotor (WR) resolver is discussed. Then, an optimal configuration with the aim of reducing the total cost, and the total volume of the sensor is proposed. All the analysis is done using 3-D time-variant finite element method (3-D TVFEM) and the optimal structure is built for experimental tests. Finally, experimental measurements are employed to verify the simulation results.... 

New penalty functions, which have better convergence properties, as compared to the commonly used exterior and interior penalty functions, have been proposed in this paper. The convergence behavior and accuracy of ordinary penalty functions depend on the selection of appropriate penalty parameters. The optimization of ordinary penalty functions is accomplished after several rounds of optimization where, at each round a different but fixed value of penalty parameter is used. While some useful hints and rules for the selection of suitable penalty parameter values have been provided by different authors, the objective of this paper has been to improve this procedure by including the penalty... 

It has been well documented that multivariate systems will benefit from application of advanced control strategies. The application of these methods has thus far been hindered for a variety of reasons which range from complexity of the design methodologies to the cost associated with implementation of these solutions. This paper shows that there exist alternative means by which existing control strategies of a multivariate system could be extended, thereby leading to increased efficiency, without the need to remove and implement a new control system installation. A realistic model of an entire pulping mill is used in this paper to show that by careful selection of only a few additional... 

In this paper, we study the problem of learning the structure of Bayesian networks from data, which takes a dataset and outputs a directed acyclic graph. This problem is known to be NP-hard. Almost most of the existing algorithms for structure learning can be classified into three categories: constraint-based, score-based, and hybrid methods. The K2 algorithm, as a score-based algorithm, takes a random order of variables as input and its efficiency is strongly dependent on this ordering. Incorrect order of variables can lead to learning an incorrect structure. Therefore, the main challenge of this algorithm is strongly dependency of output quality on the initial order of variables. The main... 

Split-field finite-difference time-domain (SF-FDTD) method can overcome the limitation of ordinary FDTD in analyzing periodic structures under oblique incidence. On the other hand, huge run times of 3D SF-FDTD, is practically a major burden in its usage for analysis and design of nanostructures, particularly when having dispersive media. Here, details of parallel implementation of 3D SF-FDTD method for dispersive media, combined with totalfield/ scattered-field (TF/SF) method for injecting oblique plane wave, are discussed. Graphics processing unit (GPU) has been used for this purpose, and very large speed up factors have been achieved. Also a previously reported formulation of SF-FDTD based... 

We report the effect of the geometric parameters on transparency and conductivity in a metallic nanowire mesh as a transparent electrode. Today, indium tin oxide and fluorine-doped tin oxide are used as the transparent electrode for displays and solar cells. Still, there is a definite need for their replacement due to drawbacks such as brittleness, scarcity, and adverse environmental effects. Metallic nanowire mesh is likely the best replacement option, but the main issue is how to find the optimal structure and how to get the best performance. Since the interaction of light with nanowire mesh is complicated, there is no straightforward rule with a simple analytical solution. We developed a... 

Proposing a proper method for face recognition is still a challenging subject in biometric and computer vision applications. Although some reliable systems were introduced under relatively controlled conditions, their recognition rate is not satisfactory in the general settings. This is especially true when there are variations in pose, illumination, and facial expression. To alleviate these problems, a hybrid face recognition system is proposed which benefits from the superiority of both convolutional neural network (CNN) and support vector machine (SVM). To this end, first a genetic algorithm is employed to find the optimum structure of CNN. Then, the performance of the system is improved... 

The optimal feeder design in gravity casting processes is considered. The design problem is formulated as an additive, growth-like, evolutionary topology optimization problem. The initial design of the presented method is a casting part which is placed in a suitable environmental mould box. The method is composed of three stages: determining the feeder-neck connection point on the casting surface, constructing the feeder-neck and the feeder growth. During the growth stage, the feeder topology is changed gradually until satisfying some predefined criteria. The design of multiple feeders is also considered in this work. In the presented method, feeders are designed in a descending order of... 

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) provide the demand for high data rates. In this study, we analyze the coexistence of femtocells and device-to-device (D2D) communication with macrocells. Interference management and decreasing energy consumption are two important issues in HetNets. To this end, we propose an efficient fractional frequency reuse (FFR)-based spectrum partitioning scheme to reduce the cross-tier interference. We also propose to use different optimization problems for resource allocation in different tiers. For this purpose, an energy efficient optimization problem is applied to D2D user equipment. Further, an optimization problem based on the spectral efficiency, i.e.,... 

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) provide the demand for high data rates. In this study, we analyze the coexistence of femtocells and device-to-device (D2D) communication with macrocells. Interference management and decreasing energy consumption are two important issues in HetNets. To this end, we propose an efficient fractional frequency reuse (FFR)-based spectrum partitioning scheme to reduce the cross-tier interference. We also propose to use different optimization problems for resource allocation in different tiers. For this purpose, an energy efficient optimization problem is applied to D2D user equipment. Further, an optimization problem based on the spectral efficiency, i.e.,... 

This paper considers dynamic pricing in a production system with a single product which is demanded by several customer classes. We seek the structure of the optimal policy assuming m available prices and n demand classes that differ based on the lost sales cost they impose on the system. The assumption of different available prices leads to dynamic pricing structure and the assumption of several demand classes leads to rationing which is proposed in the literature of revenue management. We found that an optimal policy structure exists for this combined problem. The optimal policy has a threshold form which lower thresholds are related to the rationing decision and upper thresholds are... 

Air pollutants are among the hazardous materials for human health. Therefore, many scientists are interested in removing particles from the carrier gas. In this study, flow of air and airborne particles through the virtual multi-fibrous filters that consist of different fiber cross-sectional shapes and arrangements is simulated where particle deposition and filtration performance are studied. Regular and irregular arrangements of fibers with the circular, elliptical, and equilateral triangular cross sections have been considered. Effects of important parameters such as solid volume fraction, internal structure, and filter thickness on particle collection efficiency and pressure drop are... 

This paper presents an improved firefly algorithm (FA) for fast optimization of truss structures with discrete variables. The enhanced accelerated firefly algorithm (AFA) is a simple, but very effective modification of FA. In order to investigate the performance and robustness of the proposed algorithm, some benchmark (structural optimization) problems are solved and the results are compared with FA and other algorithms. The results show that in some test cases, AFA not only finds lighter structures compared to other algorithms, but also converges faster. In the rest test cases, the optimal solutions are found with very less computational effort. The study also shows that the proposed AFA... 

Residential energy management (REM) program is a demand response (DR) tool that automatically manages energy consumption of controllable household appliances to improve the energy consumption profile of a house according to electricity price. REM intends not only to improve technical aspects of distribution systems but also motivate customers for active participation in DR programs. In this regard, this paper proposes a two-level REM framework. In the first level, each customer runs an optimization problem to minimize his payment cost and sends the desired operation scheduling of appliances and the payment cost to the system operator. In the second level, a multiobjective (MO) optimization...