Sharif Digital Repository

The structure of turbidity currents released on a sloping bed below fresh water is investigated. Kaolin is used as a suspended material. Laboratory observations indicate that if a dense layer moves through the channel, the current thickness increases due to a hydraulic jump. This phenomenon occurs under special inlet conditions and has a significant effect on the current structure including velocity profile, current height and bed shear stress. Flows with different inlet Froude numbers based on various inlet concentrations behave more distinctly than those based on different inlet opening heights. Laboratory experiments indicate that an increase in the inlet Froude number causes an increase... 

In this research mass transfer coefficient under jetting regime in different directions (from dispersed to continuous and continuous to dispersed phase) has been studied using an experimental setup. n-Butanol-succinic acid-water with low interfacial tension has been selected as experimental chemical system. The effects of various parameters such as jet velocity, nozzle diameter and the height of the continuous phase above the nozzle, on mass transfer coefficient have been investigated. A correlation has also been derived in order to predict the mass transfer coefficient as a function of physical properties of both phases and aforementioned parameters. Based on the experimental results, mass... 

The effect of an intermediate standing baffle on the flow structure in a rectangular open channel has been investigated by a three-dimensional acoustic Doppler velocimeter. Investigation of time-averaged velocity profiles at different streamwise positions reveals that the approach flow is fully developed upstream of the baffle. By analysing the space-averaged power spectra of streamwise velocity, a peak structure was observed in the upstream baffle region. Downstream of the baffle this peak structure has been alleviated by the baffle. The same analysis for the vertical component indicates the existence of a peak structure both up- and downstream of the baffle. Consequently, a baffle affects... 

In this paper, fundamental concepts of ultrasonics and characteristics of distinctive microstructures have been used to simply explain the effect of microstructure on the attenuation mechanism of ultrasonic waves in carbon steels. In addition, it has been shown that application of the second medium hardness instead of the bulk hardness is more appropriate to correlate the sound velocity and the microstructure  

Air–water flow is a complex and challenging subject in many engineering fields as well as hydraulic engineering; and discovery of its characteristics can help the engineers to predict and analyze a probable phenomenon. In the present paper, development of a device capable of measuring the flow velocity, air concentration, diameter and counts of bubbles in air–water flows is described. The heart of the present device is two resistive probes with a novel configuration. Being pressure and corrosion resistant and also having negligible resistivity in the flow are some of the unique features of the employed needles. Moreover, sampling frequency and time can be adjusted for the intended... 

In this article, the behavior of gas bubbles in tapered fluidized beds is investigated with the use of a two-fluid model incorporating kinetic theory of granular flow. The effects of various parameters such as apex angle, particle size, and particle density on the size distribution and the rise velocity of gas bubbles were examined. In addition, the simulation results for the bubble fraction and axial velocity of gas bubbles were compared with experimental data reported in the literature and good agreement was observed. As the apex angle was increased, the fraction of gas bubbles with large sizes increased and the fraction of bubbles with small sizes decreased. As the particle size... 

In this article, the behavior of gas bubbles in tapered fluidized beds is investigated with the use of a two-fluid model incorporating kinetic theory of granular flow. The effects of various parameters such as apex angle, particle size, and particle density on the size distribution and the rise velocity of gas bubbles were examined. In addition, the simulation results for the bubble fraction and axial velocity of gas bubbles were compared with experimental data reported in the literature and good agreement was observed. As the apex angle was increased, the fraction of gas bubbles with large sizes increased and the fraction of bubbles with small sizes decreased. As the particle size... 

We numerically solve the Navier-Stokes equations to study the rarefied gas flow in short micro- and nanoscale channels. The inlet boundary conditions play a critical role in the structure of flow in short channels. Contrary to the classical inlet boundary conditions, which apply uniform velocity and temperature profiles right at the real channel inlet, we apply the same inlet boundary conditions, but at a fictitious position far upstream of the real channel inlet. A constant wall temperature incorporated with suitable temperature jump is applied at the channel walls. Our solutions for both the classical and extended inlet boundary conditions are compared with the results of other available... 

The powering requirement of a land yacht is one of the most important aspects of its design. In this respect the wind tunnel testing is an effective design tool. In fact, changing the parameters of the vehicle and testing the changes in the wind tunnel will give us a better understanding of the most efficient vehicle, and yet it is time consuming, expensive, and has inherent scaling errors. Another set of design tools are Computational Fluid Dynamics and parametric prediction. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes are not yet wholly proven in its accuracy. Parametric prediction is the starting point for most engineering studies. It will be used to calculate the land yacht's performance... 

We present a method for global estimation of joint velocities in rigid manipulators. A class of velocity observers with smooth dynamics are introduced whose structure depend on freely selectable functions and gains giving the flexibility of achieving multiple design objectives at the same time. Unlike most methods, no a priori knowledge of an upper bound for velocity magnitude is used. An adaptive version of the observer is also presented to handle a class of structured uncertainties in manipulator model. Simulation example illustrates low noise sensitivity of the globally convergent observer in comparison with semi-globally convergent observers. © 2009 IEEE  

Functionally graded material shafts are the main part of many modern rotary machines such as turbines and electric motors. The purpose of this study is to present an analytical solution of the elastic-plastic deformation of functionally graded material hollow rotor under a high centrifugal effect and finally determine the maximum allowed angular velocity of a hollow functionally graded material rotating shaft. Introducing non-dimensional parameters, the equilibrium equation has been analytically solved. The results for variable material properties are compared with the homogeneous rotor and the case in which Young’s modulus is the only variable while density and yield stress are considered... 

In this article, vibration of viscoelastic axially functionally graded (AFG) moving Rayleigh and Euler-Bernoulli (EB) beams are investigated and compared, aiming at a performance improvement of translating systems. Additionally, a detailed study is performed to elucidate the influence of various factors, such as the rotary inertia factor and axial gradation of material on the stability borders of the system. The material properties of the beam are distributed linearly or exponentially in the longitudinal direction. The Galerkin procedure and eigenvalue analysis are adopted to acquire the natural frequencies, dynamic configuration, and instability thresholds of the system. Furthermore, an... 

A series of experiments were carried out to study the unsteady wakes behind an oscillating airfoil. The airfoil is a section of a wind turbine blade oscillating in pitch about the quarter chord axis at various reduced frequencies, oscillation amplitude and mean angles of attack. Real time velocity profiles were obtained using total and static pressure at 35 vertically aligned points behind the airfoil via two similar rakes. The rakes were located at a distance of 1.5 chord length behind the model. The results show great influence of oscillation amplitude and reduced frequency on the wake velocity profiles. Copyright © 2007 by ASME  

Flows generated by density differences are called gravity or density currents which are generic features of many environmental flows. These currents are classified as the conservative and non-conservative flows whether the buoyancy flux is conserved or changed respectively. In this paper, a low Reynolds k-ε turbulence model is used to simulate three dimensional density and turbidity currents. Also, a series of experiments were conducted in a straight channel to study the characteristics of the non-conservative density current. In experiments, Kaolin was used as the suspended material. Comparisons are made between conservative and non-conservative's height, concentration and velocity profiles... 

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the techniques of Computer Aided Geometric Design such as spatial rational curves and surfaces could be applied to Kinematics, Computer Animation and Robotics. For this purpose we represent a method which utilizes a special class of rational curves called Rational Frenet-Serret (RF) curves for robot trajectory planning. RF curves distinguished by the property that the motion of their Frenet-Serret frame is rational. We describe an algorithm for interpolation of positions by a rational Frenet-Serret motion. Further more we present an algorithm for tracking the constructed RF motion to achieve the desired velocity distribution profile of robot arm.... 

In this research, the fault-tolerant pitch angle control of a horizontal axis wind turbine in region 3 (where the wind velocity is greater than rated wind speed) is investigated. The effective wind velocity (EWV) is one of the necessary information for each control system. Wind speed is measured by the anemometers on the top of the nacelle however, the measurement is not precise and is only applicable for one point in the rotor. To address this issue, we have developed a novel hybrid approach. The approach is based on a sliding mode observer to estimate the aerodynamic torque and an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is introduced for obtaining the EWV. The estimated aerodynamic... 

A general regression neural network technique is applied for design optimization of liquid-liquid coaxial swirl injectors. Phase Doppler Anemometry measurements for velocity and SMD distributions for various Reynolds numbers are used to train the neural network to generate the injector's performance map. Excellent agreement between the predicted values and the measurements is obtained. It is observed that by reducing the number of randomly selected training samples to about one third of the number of prediction points, one may reconstruct the velocity field in the extrapolation regime with an accuracy of 93%. Copyright © 2005 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.... 

Today, commercial CFD codes are widely used to simulate many different entry flow problems. The flow in the developing zone undergoes a transition from a specified velocity profile at the inlet section to a fully developed profile in the region far from the inlet. Previous investigations have shown that the hydrodynamic variables, such as velocity and pressure magnitudes, along the centreline converge to a mesh independent solution even when coarse grid distributions are utilised. However, the present work shows that the local velocity profile is highly dependent on grid resolution in the vicinity of solid boundaries. It is shown that failure to account for the grid resolution can result in... 

Organic loading rate (OLR) is an important parameter significantly affecting microbial ecology and characteristics of UASB systems. In this study, UASB performance was evaluated in a 1000 1 reactor receiving feed from a traditional medium-size slaughterhouse. The initial seed for granules formed earlier was from a mesophilic municipal anaerobic digester sludge with a VSS content of 29gl-1. The temperature of influent was adjusted by an inline thermostat around 33°C. The reactor was started with an OLR of 5kg SCODm-3d-1 with gradual increase to 10kg SCOD m -3d-1 over a 2-week period. Examination of VSS data showed that on the average 89.3±11.3% of bioparticle mass was present at the lower 30%... 

The present study has been conducted to investigate the effect of inlet flow regimes on vertical velocity and concentration profiles of the turbidity current. Experiments carried out on small scale channel and Kaolin with a density of 2.65 kg/m3 and a mean particle diameter of 4.5 μm, was used to generate the currents. Velocities were obtained at a rate of 10 Hz using an acoustic Doppler velocimeter. Using the siphon sampling approach, the acoustic backscattering intensity was calibrated and concentration was determined using a backscattering analysis. Results showed that the ratio of maximum velocity height to the height of the current was around 0.4-0.5 in sub- and super-critical regimes....