Sharif Digital Repository

The effectiveness of the application of CFD to vapour cloud explosion (VCE) modelling depends on the accuracy with which geometrical details of the obstacles likely to be encountered by the vapour cloud are represented and the correctness with which turbulence is predicted. This is because the severity of a VCE strongly depends on the types of obstacles encountered by the cloud undergoing combustion; the turbulence generated by the obstacles influences flame speed and feeds the process of explosion through enhanced mixing of fuel and oxidant. In this paper a CFD-based method is proposed on the basis of the author's finding that among the various models available for assessing turbulence, the... 

Quantification of spatial and temporal concentration profiles of vapor clouds resulting from accidental loss of containment of toxic and/or flammable substances is of great importance as correct prediction of spatial and temporal profiles can not only help in designing mitigation/prevention equipment such as gas detection alarms and shutdown procedures but also help decide on modifications that may help prevent any escalation of the event. The most commonly used models - SLAB (Ermak, 1990), HEGADAS (Colenbrander, 1980), DEGADIS (Spicer & Havens, 1989), HGSYSTEM (Witlox & McFarlane, 1994), PHAST (DNV, 2007), ALOHA (EPA & NOAA, 2007), SCIPUFF (Sykes, Parker, Henn, & Chowdhury, 2007), TRACE... 

In this paper, Ti-6Al-4V/TiC composite was fabricated by VIM furnace and graphite crucible. X-ray diffraction analysis and EDS techniques were used to identify the phases in the material. Microstructure characteristics of the Ti-6Al-4V/TiC composite were evaluated by means of optical microscopy. The tensile test was performed at room temperature after hot-rolling of the samples in the beta phase field. The results revealed that at different melting times, three kinds of precipitates are formed in the microstructure including grain boundary, eutectic and transgranular precipitates. The size of transgranular precipitates was significantly larger than that of the other two types of carbides and... 

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... 

In high-yields process monitoring, the Geometric distribution is particularly useful to control the cumulative counts of conforming (CCC) items. However, in some instances the number of defects on a nonconforming observation is also of important application and must be monitored. For the latter case, the use of the generalized Poisson distribution and hence simultaneously implementation of two control charts (CCC & C charts) is recommended in the literature. In this paper, we propose an artificial neural network approach to monitor high-yields processes in which not only the cumulative counts of conforming items but also the number of defects on nonconforming items is monitored. In order to... 

To attain superior energy density concurrently with high power density, high-performance supercapacitors have been developed. Herein an innovative strategy has been adopted to fabricate unique binder-free electrodes composed of a unique porous structure of binary metal carbonate hydroxide nanomace-decorated hydrothermal porous carbon spheres (PCSs). Hierarchical nickel-cobalt carbonate hydroxide (NiCOCH) nanomaces, directly grown on PCSs, are used as positive electrodes for supercapacitors fabrication. Furthermore, Fe2O3@PCS composites, having benefits of highly reversible redox reaction in the negative potential window and highly porous structure, are employed as the negative electrode in... 

Resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is one of the most important problems in the context of project scheduling. Considering a single objective, such as makespan minimization, net present value minimization or cost minimization has been the cornerstone of most studies done so far. At the other hand, taking this problem into account as a multi objective one has not been well studied. In this paper, a bi-objective model of RCPSP is presented. The first objective is makespan to be minimized, and the second one, a recently developed measure, is robustness maximization aimed at floating time maximization to make scheduling more reliable. The problem formed in this way is an... 

To attain superior energy density concurrently with high power density, high-performance supercapacitors have been developed. Herein an innovative strategy has been adopted to fabricate unique binder-free electrodes composed of a unique porous structure of binary metal carbonate hydroxide nanomace-decorated hydrothermal porous carbon spheres (PCSs). Hierarchical nickel-cobalt carbonate hydroxide (NiCOCH) nanomaces, directly grown on PCSs, are used as positive electrodes for supercapacitors fabrication. Furthermore, Fe2O3@PCS composites, having benefits of highly reversible redox reaction in the negative potential window and highly porous structure, are employed as the negative electrode in... 

Statistical analysis of non-normal data is usually more complicated than that for normal distribution. In this paper, a simple root/power transformation technique developed by Niaki, et al [1] is extended to transform right and left skewed distributions to nearly normal. The value of the root/power is explored such that the skewness of the transformed data becomes almost zero with an acceptable error. The proposed method is then compared to the well-known and complicated Box, et al [2] transformation method for different left and right skewed distributions using Monte Carlo simulation. While the proposed procedure is easy to understand and to implement, the results of the simulation study... 

A novel photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) structure, based on Haar wavelet patterns, is proposed in this paper. Its main goal is to mitigate the PAM imaging resolution and thus the time of its sampling process without compromising the image quality. Owing to the intrinsic nature of wavelet transform, this structure collects spatial and spectral components simultaneously, and this feature speeds up the sampling process by 33%. The selection of these patterns helps in better control of required conditions, such as multi-resolution imaging, to guarantee adequate image quality in comparison to previous microscopic structures. Simulation results prove the superior quality of the proposed approach... 

A novel photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) structure, based on Haar wavelet patterns, is proposed in this paper. Its main goal is to mitigate the PAM imaging resolution and thus the time of its sampling process without compromising the image quality. Owing to the intrinsic nature of wavelet transform, this structure collects spatial and spectral components simultaneously, and this feature speeds up the sampling process by 33%. The selection of these patterns helps in better control of required conditions, such as multi-resolution imaging, to guarantee adequate image quality in comparison to previous microscopic structures. Simulation results prove the superior quality of the proposed approach... 

Green tea-reduced graphene oxide (GT-rGO) sheets have been exploited for high efficiency near infrared (NIR) photothermal therapy of HT29 and SW48 colon cancer cells. The biocompatibility of GT-rGO sheets was investigated by means of MTT assays. The polyphenol constituents of GT-rGO act as effective targeting ligands for the attachment of rGO to the surface of cancer cells, as confirmed by the cell granularity test in flow cytometry assays and also by scanning electron microscopy. The photo-thermal destruction of higher metastatic cancer cells (SW48) is found to be more than 20% higher than that of the lower metastatic one (HT29). The photo-destruction efficiency factor of the GT-rGO is... 

In this paper, the shear deformation behavior of A286 Iron-based superalloy was studied with an emphasis on the influence of η phase on shear strength. The η (Ni3Ti phase precipitates at high temperature heat treatment or during services at the expense of gamma prime phase. According to the microstructural features, no evidences of η phase were found at 650 and 720°C. η phase precipitated at 780 and 840°C and the amount of it increased with an increase the time and temperature. Because of using the alloy as fasteners, investigation of shear properties and the influence of η phase on it are indispensable. The shear strength of the alloy with different volume fractions of η was examined. It... 

In this article, ferrohydrodynamic forced-convection heat transfer from a heated sphere embedded in a ferrofluid in the presence of the uniform external magnetic field has been studied numerically for the first time over a wide range of Reynolds number value, nanoparticle diameter, particle volume fraction, and magnetic field intensity. Despite the uniform external magnetic field applied, the internal magnetic field near the sphere could be nonuniform due to the considerable difference between the relative magnetic permeability of the sphere and the surrounding medium. Kelvin body force arises from this nonuniformity and induces vortexes near the sphere. These vortexes disturb the boundary... 

Time reversal is a technique in which a signal is pre-filtered such that it focuses both in time and space. Spatial focusing reduces interference to other co-existing systems and temporal focusing concentrates the received power in a very short interval. Energy detector is a practical receiver for ultra-wideband (UWB) time reversed signals due to its low-complexity and low-cost implementation. However, selection of an optimum integration interval to minimize the bit error rate is a major problem. Weighted energy detection is an effective technique to overcome this problem and enhance the performance of energy detectors. However, this improvement is achieved at the expense of non-trivial... 

The Burr XII distribution can closely approximate many other well-known probability density functions such as the normal, gamma, lognormal, exponential distributions as well as Pearson type I, II, V, VII, IX, X, XII families of distributions. Considering a wide range of shape and scale parameters of the Burr XII distribution, it can have an important role in reliability modeling, risk analysis and process capability estimation. However, estimating parameters of the Burr XII distribution can be a complicated task and the use of conventional methods such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and moment method (MM) is not straightforward. Some tables to estimate Burr XII parameters have been... 

A metal organic framework-polyaniline (MOF/PANI) nanocomposite was electrodeposited on a stainless steel wire and used as a solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber coating. The electropolymerization process was carried out under a constant deposition potential and applied to the corresponding aqueous electrolyte containing aniline and MOF particles. The employment of MOFs with their large and small cages and 3-D structures in synthesizing a nanocomposite was assumed to be efficient constitutes to induce more non-smooth and porous structures, approved by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. Three different MOFs were incorporated to synthesize the desired nanocomposites and the... 

In this paper a reliability, emission, and network security constrained unit commitment (UC) with the focus on wind power integration is formulated. It is shown that clearing both energy and spinning reserve markets taking into account network constraints provides a reliable and economic solution for day-ahead operation planning of a power system with a significant amount of thermal and wind power in the generation portfolio. The developed UC is formulated and implemented in MATLAB. The IEEE 24-Bus Reliability Test System (RTS) is used to verify the UC method by simulation. © 2017 IEEE  

Injectivity decline due to mineral scale deposition in near wellbore region of water injection wells is one of the main challenging issues and have been widely reported in the literature. One of the main mechanisms of injectivity loss is incompatibility between injected and formation waters that may result in inorganic scale precipitation and subsequent deposition in porous media. Reliable reactive flow models to predict type and amount of scale along with permeability decline estimation allow planning and risk management of water flood projects. In this paper, we present a coupled geochemical and hydrodynamic model to simulate the scale precipitation and deposition of mineral scales in... 

In this research, the atomic scale local structures in (Zr0.5Cu0.5)100−xAlx (x = 0,2,4,6,8,10,12) bulk metallic glass was studied using molecular dynamics simulation method. The pair distribution function, Voronoi analysis and mean squared displacement (MSD) were adopted for investigation of the local structures. It was found that Cu- and Al-centered full icosahedra possess the most frequency accompanied by the most changes during the glass transition process in the supercooled liquid region temperature. Moreover, it was observed that the Al-centered full icosahedra (Al-FI) and Cu-centered full icosahedra (Cu-FI) clusters with 2.5% and 1.9% increase (relative to total atoms), respectively,...