Sharif Digital Repository

Petroleum contamination of soil is a serious problem throughout oil-producing countries. One of the cost-effective options for removing contaminants from shallow soils is phytoremediation. Vegetation, by stimulating the microorganisms via releasing root exudates near the rhizosphere, may play an important role in the biodegradation of toxic organic chemicals in soil. This experiment investigates the efficiency of this emerging technology following the implementation of five plant species. The study was carried out in a greenhouse using crude oil-contaminated soil from sites around the Tehran Refinery. To study the effect of a water-absorbent agent, we also used hydrogel in this experiment.... 

Elastomeric bearings are becoming a preferred device for isolating bridges, buildings, and sensitive equipment structures. The technical specifications used to procure these isolators are considered as important factors for the consumers. Lack of communication between structural engineers and rubber technologists, causes structural engineers have slight understanding of rubber properties. In the present study, a number of compounds were initially designed and manufactured, based on a previously studied and manufactured isolator compound. The outcome of the experiments indicated the physical and mechanical properties. Afterwards, the targeted improvement led to modification of the compounds... 

Petroleum contamination of soil is a serious problem throughout the oil producer countries. Vegetation may play an important role in the biodegradation of toxic organic chemicals in soil. For petroleum compounds, the presence of rhizosphere micro flora may accelerate biodegradation of the contaminants. In a greenhouse study, petroleum contaminated soil were treated using phytoremediation . The C/N ratios and microbial populations were assessed in the beginning and the end of trials. The results showed that Puccinellia distance could tolerate the harsh condition of the soils. As MPN increases, C/N ratios decrease among trials. N, as a nutrient, had effects on both microbial populations and... 

In this work, cold rolling behavior of stainless steel 304L is investigated and the effects of different process parameters on the occurrence of strain-induced martensite and mechanical properties are studied. The rolling experiments are conducted under different rolling speeds and reductions in which a set of samples is deformed at room temperature and the other set is first cooled to the temperature of − 10 °C and then rolled. Afterward, the developed microstructures and mechanical properties of the rolled steel are evaluated employing different testing techniques. In order to justify the results, mathematical modeling of cold rolling operation is also performed using Abaqus/Explicit to... 

Background: Although kinematic assessment has potentials for better evaluation of the movement quality, they are not widely used in clinics. Besides the equipment cost, the contradictory results of their clinimetric analysis are presumed as a major reason. This raises concerns about whether the current kinematic indices are intrinsically sound and truly reflect the quality of the subjects’ movement. Methods: A list of essential requirements for the kinematic indices (KIs) was proposed. Monotonic response to the change in the movement quality, independence from the task geometry and the subjects’ upper limb dimensions and speed, and robustness against the measurement error was investigated.... 

Many companies regularly run Big Data analysis, and need to optimize their resource usage considering cost, deadline, and environmental impact simultaneously. The cloud allows choosing from various virtual machines (VM) where the number and type of VMs affect the outcome such as the time for data placement and data shuffle phases, a task's energy consumption and execution time, and the makespan of jobs. We provide provisioning and scheduling algorithms to minimize environmental impact, considering the above factors, for frequently executed MapReduce jobs. To mathematically model the problem and obtain the optimal solution, we present an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model and then... 

This paper presents a novel Gait Pattern Generator ((IPC) developed for the "Alice" social humanoid robot, which up to now lacked an appropriate walking pattern. Due to t he limitations of this robot, the proposed gate pattern generator was formulated based on a nine-mass model to decrease the modeling errors and t he inverse kinematics of the whole lower-body was solved in such a way that the robot remained statically stable during t he movements. The main challenge of this work was to solve t he inverse kinematics of a 7-link chain with 12 degrees of freedom. For this purpose, a new graphical-numerical technique has been provided using the definition of the kinematic equations of the robot... 

This paper presents a novel Gait Pattern Generator ((IPC) developed for the "Alice" social humanoid robot, which up to now lacked an appropriate walking pattern. Due to t he limitations of this robot, the proposed gate pattern generator was formulated based on a nine-mass model to decrease the modeling errors and t he inverse kinematics of the whole lower-body was solved in such a way that the robot remained statically stable during t he movements. The main challenge of this work was to solve t he inverse kinematics of a 7-link chain with 12 degrees of freedom. For this purpose, a new graphical-numerical technique has been provided using the definition of the kinematic equations of the robot... 

This study aims at identifying the parameters that govern the environmental costs in oil and gas projects. An initial conceptual model was proposed. Next, the costs of environmental management work packages were estimated, separately and were applied in project control tools (WBS/CBS). Then, an environmental parametric cost model was designed to determine the environmental costs and relevant weighting factors. The suggested model can be considered as an innovative approach to designate the environmental indicators in oil and gas projects. The validity of variables was investigated based on Delphi method. The results indicated that the project environmental management's weighting factor is... 

In this paper a nonlinear dynamic model for drill string in inclined well drilling is developed. Effects of drilling mud flow rate, weight on bit, angular velocity along with viscous damping on stability and vibration of the drill string are studied. Findings indicate the nonlinear effects are significant on the results. The effects of drilling mud flow rate and weight on bit on the natural frequencies and time responses are evaluated. Enhancement of drilling mud flow rate results in decreasing of natural frequencies and vibrational amplitude, while increasing the weight on bit, leads to decrease of the natural frequencies and increase the vibrational amplitude. © JVE INTERNATIONAL LTD  

The analysis of gravitational wave (GW) data from advanced LIGO provides the mass of each companion of binary black holes as the source of GWs. The mass of events corresponding to the binary black holes from GW is above 20 M Δ which is much larger than the mass of astrophysical black holes detected by x-ray observations. In this work, we examine primordial black holes (PBHs) as the source of LIGO events. Assuming that 100% of the dark matter is made of PBHs, we estimate the rate at which these objects make binaries, merge, and produce GWs as a function of the redshift. The gravitational lensing of GWs by PBHs can also enhance the amplitude of the strain. We simulate GWs sourced by binary... 

The effect of pulsed direct current (PDC) on solid-state diffusion in the Ni–Al binary system was investigated. Two experimental schemes were employed: in the presence and absence of an electric field. The diffusion couples were heat-treated for 1.5, 3, and 5 h at 803, 833, and 863 K. Under the investigated conditions, only two intermetallic phases (NiAl3 and Ni2Al3) formed at the boundary of the metals. It was shown that the PDC passing through the diffusion couple significantly enhanced the growth rates of both phases. The apparent reaction–diffusion coefficients were DNiAl3=4.0×10−9exp(−[Formula presented]) and DNi2Al3=9.7×10−9exp(−[Formula presented]) in the field-assisted scheme,... 

The geometry structures of hexa-coordinated [NiLX]X complexes (X = Cl -, Br-, I-) {L = 8,9,18,19-tetrahydro-7H,17H- dibenzo[f,o] [1,5,9,13]dioxadiaza cyclohexadecine-8,18-diol} are optimized by density functional theory (DFT) using B3LYP/LANL2DZ. The calculated geometric parameters are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values. Calculation results about these complexes show that dipole moment decreases, and the energy levels of HOMOs descend from iodo-complex to chloro-complex. The energy levels of HOMOs descend gently from iodo-complex to chloro-complex, while the energy levels of LUMOs in the present complexes are almost similar; therefore the energy gapes between HOMOs... 

The present work was conducted to study the effects of microstructural evolutions on the mechanical and wear behavior of an accumulative back extruded aluminum-based in-situ composite. The mechanical fragmentation and thermal disintegration of the primary and secondary Mg2Si particles were found as the main microstructural changes. For that reason, the particle interspacing was decreased, the sharp ends were modified, and the reinforcements were more uniformly distributed. Surprisingly, the wear loss was dramatically decreased in processed materials in comparison to the as-received one. Oxidation and delamination were identified as the dominant wear mechanisms. These were addressed... 

A hot gas generator is a compact heat exchanger that produces high temperature or enthalpy gases. This paper presents two methods for controlling the system. The first one is an adaptive sliding mode controller that is a Lyapunov based method and proposed to confront the dynamic modeling deficiencies and system uncertainties. The second one is a linear adaptive controller that gives a new attractive ability to the system which can track a complicated requested path. Each of the presented controllers has some capabilities that may be preferred to other. In this paper, these methods are extensively compared by several transient inputs. On the other hand, since heat exchangers are typically... 

Resistance spot welding was used to join austenitic stainless steel and galvanized low carbon steel. The relationship between failure mode and weld fusion zone characteristics (size and microstructure) was studied. It was found that spot weld strength in the pullout failure mode is controlled by the strength and fusion zone size of the galvanized steel side. The hardness of the fusion zone which is governed by the dilution between two base metals, and fusion zone size of galvanized carbon steel side are dominant factors in determining the failure mode. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

Central nervous system (CNS) uses vision, vestibular, and somatosensory information to maintain body stability. Research has shown that there is more lumbar proprioception error among low back pain (LBP) individuals as compared to healthy people. In this study, two groups of 20 healthy people and 20 non-specific low back pain (NSLBP) participants took part in this investigation. This investigation focused on somatosensory sensors and in order to alter proprioception, a vibrator (frequency of 70 Hz, amplitude of 0.5 mm) was placed on the soleus muscle area of each leg and two vibrators were placed bilaterally across the lower back muscles. Individuals, whose vision was occluded, were placed... 

The central nervous system (CNS) dynamically employs a sophisticated weighting strategy of sensory input, including vision, vestibular and proprioception signals, towards attaining optimal postural control during different conditions. Non-specific low back pain (NSLBP) patients frequently demonstrate postural control deficiencies which are generally attributed to challenges in proprioceptive reweighting, where they often rely on an ankle strategy regardless of postural conditions. Such impairment could lead to potential loss of balance, increased risk of falling, and Low back pain recurrence. In this study, linear and non-linear indicators were extracted from center-of-pressure (COP) and... 

Accurate prediction of the solubility of gases in hydrocarbons is a crucial factor in designing enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations by gas injection as well as separation, and chemical reaction processes in a petroleum refinery. In this work, nitrogen (N2) solubility in normal alkanes as the major constituents of crude oil was modeled using five representative machine learning (ML) models namely gradient boosting with categorical features support (CatBoost), random forest, light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). A large solubility databank containing 1982 data points was utilized to establish the models for... 

In this paper the question of the emission of fermions in the process of dilaton black hole evolution and its characteristics for different dilaton coupling constants α are studied. The main quantity of interest, the greybody factors, are calculated both numerically and in analytical approximation. The dependence of the rates of evaporation and behaviour on the dilaton coupling constant is analysed. Having calculated the greybody factors, we are able to address the question of the final fate of the dilaton black hole. For that we also need to perform dynamical treatment of the solution by considering the backreaction, which will show a crucial effect on the final result. We find a transition...