Sharif Digital Repository

Increasing popularity and use of smartphones has led to rapid growth in number of mobile applications. With the increasing number of available apps in app stores, some of them may have many similarities to each other in functional aspects. Detecting similar apps among a large number of different applications is an important and difficult problem which is useful in a variety of applications, such as app recommendation, comparing competitor apps, app search engines, etc. In order to investigate the functional similarities between applications, high-level and low-level characteristics can be used. With using the high-level characteristics, app functionality features can be extracted from... 

Lightweight aluminum and magnesium alloy sheets do not generally possess as much strength as steel sheets and their strength need to be increased by a suitable process such as Accumulative Roll Bonding (ARB). One of the most important limitations of ARB is the low ductility and formability of the sheets produced by this process. In the present research conducted on the 5083 aluminum and AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets efforts have beem made to overcome this limitation by heating up the sheets whether during metal forming process as hot deformation or as distinct controlled annealing process subsequent to the deformation, in order to develop the application domain of the sheets. Results... 

To produce polyurea, a secondary or higher amine must be combined with a diisocyanate. For this purpose, we first combined diethylenetriamine, and hexamethylene diisocyanate, which did not have good mechanical properties due to the aliphatic nature of the molecules. Then, instead of hexamethylene diisocyanate, we used MDI, which was mixed using a mechanical mixer but became a paste that was not suitable for coating applications. To reduce the viscosity of MDI, propylene carbonate was added to improve mixing, but the gel time also increased. Because the solvent was non-polar and the amine was polar, it was decided to add the solvent, amine, and polyvinyl alcohol as surfactants to allow faster... 

Ultrasonic metal welding is a solid state welding process and is widely used in welding the connections of lithium-ion battery batteries in hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. This welding process has advantages over fusion welding processes such as; Shorter time, no heat affected area, optimal energy consumption, cheaper equipment and no harm to the environment. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect and optimization of time, normal pressure and oscillation amplitude parameters in order to achieve the maximum tensile-shear test force and T-peel test in the dissimilar welding of 1050 aluminum and copper (purity above 99.9%). In order to achieve the optimal state of welding... 

Phospholipid membranes and vesicles play important roles in the cellular functioning, otein signaling and material transport inside cells. Protein-embedded vesiclesare also used for targeted drug delivery. In this thesis, we use molecular dynamicsmethods and study (i) the formation of vesicles from flat lipid bilayers (ii) the mechanicalproperties of vesicles under compressive forces (iii) the shape variations ofvesicles with and without transmembrane proteins (iv) protein clustering.We grow our vesicles from lipid bilayers, which may contain proteins with differentconcentrations. We start with a random initial distribution of proteins that allowsus to monitor the clustering and... 

Energy and environment crisis in past decades raised concerns about fossil fuels use and has accelerated renewable energy application in terms of solar electric, solar thermal and wind turbines. Due to the fluctuating nature in renewable resources, renewable electric power generation has a stochastic nature that makes it difficult to use by the electricity consumers. Energy storage plays a key role to put more control on renewable power generation.Lead-acid battery is a storage technology that is widely used in photovoltaic systems. Battery investment and maintenance costs account for a big part of photovoltaic system costs. Charging and discharging profiles of the battery has a great impact... 

The design and development process of menu systems has always been a focus of researchers and engineers in the fields of software engineering and human-computer interaction. Considering the large and complex nature of the design space, it is nec- essary to provide automatic methods that aid designers during the design process. In this study, natural language processing is used to investigate the semantic relationship between menu system commands. Users expect related commands to be conveniently located next to each other, and a properly designed interface satisfies this need. As a result of this research, a fast-text-based model is developed that uses the data of past menu systems. In a... 

The potential future use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel must be evaluated from a supply chain perspective. However, the main challenge in motivating the hydrogen supply chain network is the lack of existing hydrogen infrastructure. Strategic decisions for planning sustainable infrastructure can be analyzed hierarchically in time-related stages (2025-2030-2035). Meanwhile, a time- and location-based design has been specifically applied to a few selected ports in southern Iran, with limited focus on a national or countrywide scale. This study proposes a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model to logically design the hydrogen supply chain, considering primary energy... 

Quince seed gum is a natural material that was used in Iranian traditional medicine for wound treatment. Alginate is a beneficial biomaterial that has been used in making commercial wound dressings for a long time. In this work, the preparation method and properties of films based on Alginate and Quince seed gum for drug delivery and wound healing have been investigated. According to the obtained results about crosslinking and plasticizing, the suitable condition of synthesis is 0.5% CaCl2 concentration, 2min soaking time, and 13% glycerol in crosslinking solution. In this crosslinking solution, a film with good mechanical properties (tensile strength: 13MPa, elongation: 27.3%, and Young’s... 

There is a major interest to manufacturers of automobile and aerospace parts towards the tailor-welded blanks (TWBs) to reduce the weight and cost of the parts and improve their performance. In this work, formability of four groups of TWBs (two groups with similar thicknesses and different steels and two groups with similar steels and different thicknesses) are investigated. To produce the TWBs, DX54, E275 and E335 steel sheets were used. The results indicate that the inclined laser beam causes the sample failure from the weld zone in the tensile test. Setting the focal point on the top surface of the sheets results in enhancement of yield strength in comparison to the other positions. ... 

The purpose of this project is to correct the surface defects of the reverse osmosis membrane. The membrane tested in this project was a thin film made of three layers of polyester, polysulfone and polyamide. These three layers provide mechanical resistance to operating pressure, suitable substrate for polyamide layer synthesis and membrane selectivity, respectively.In order to improve the surface properties and modify the reverse osmosis membrane, it was first attempted to coat it with a protective layer of polyvinyl alcohol, then by modifying this layer and improving the properties of polyvinyl alcohol and synthesizing the sulfite agent on it by the esterification reaction, to the best... 

These days the usage of welded tailor blanks with sufficient stability and flexibility is accelerating rapidly in order to production of slighter parts and reduction of fuel consumption in transportation means. Therefore, the conjuncture of blanks by welding methods is highly considerable before forming and ultimate production. Friction Stir Welding is greatly appealing to industry as one of the newest methods of solid state welding in production of TWB blanks. In this research, the feasibility study of Friction Stir Welding of thin Al 1100 – H18 alloy blanks with 1.5, 2 and 2.5mm thickness has been evaluated first. After creation of sound welds with same thicknesses, Friction Stir Welding... 

Al 5083 is a non-heat treatable alloy that widely used in the aerospace and automotive industry due to its low density and high strength. However, poor wearing behavior and low elastic modulus restrict its engineering applications. Metal matrix composites (MMCs) have advantages of high strength and modulus by reinforcement of second phase. Also, MMCs have excellent dimensional stability, damping capacity and wear, creep and fatigue resistances as compared with the corresponding monolithic alloys. Vast loss in ductility and toughness occurs by non- deformable ceramic reinforcements. For the surface engineering purposes, ceramic particles are added in the surface layers of components, whereas... 

Emission of the greenhouse gases is a great concern and use of lightweight materials in transport vehicles has found a major importance in this respect. Metal/polymer laminated composites are of great interest due to their special mechanical properties and thoughness. Application of metal/polymer sheets is limited because of low bonding strength of metals and polymers in these sheets, which is not sufficient, to endure the stresses and strains during deformation processes such as deep drawing and bending. In this research, roll bonding of AA5052/Polypropylene sheets is investigated and the effects of bonding parameters on strength are evaluated and finally the bonding mechanisms during... 

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the digital transformation process in a constrained environment, offering practical insights for practitioners and a robust basis for future academic research. Conducted within the manufacturing industry in Iran, this research explores how companies navigate and succeed in digital transformation under the constraints of global sanctions. Employing an extreme case study methodology, the research focused on a leading organization renowned for its innovation and patented technologies. This organization offered a unique perspective on digital transformation under restrictive conditions, meeting all requirements for an "extreme case" in... 

With the advancement of GPUs and the availability of massive datasets, the main reasons behind the emergence of large language models, human life has been profoundly impacted. Large language models, due to their numerous applications and their increasing development, have influenced various aspects of human life, and this influence continues to grow. As a result, large language models are being used to solve a wide range of problems. However, using these models for problem-solving requires appropriate training data and significant computational resources. Because deep models can be attacked, leading to the extraction of their training data, preserving the privacy of training data in the... 

Acidic gases separation from hydrocarbon mixtures is very important in natural gas industry. In this study, the separation of CO2 and H2S from CH4 investigates by experimental and molecular dynamics simulation approaches. For achievement to this goal, it is used two polymeric families, as be divided to polyurethanes and PEBAX copolymers. It is used 4 polyurethane membranes as are named PU-1, PU-2, PU-Ether, and PU-Ester from polyurethanes group. Also, it is applied 5 PEBAX commercial membranes have be known PEBAX-2533, PEBAX-4033, PEBAX-5533, PEBAX-4011, and PEBAX-1074. It is compared between simulation and experimental works and found that there is good agreement between... 

International trade arrangements have been considerably developed in recent decadees. Especially, one can note the role of these factors in economic development and improvement of life standards in member countries. In the meantime, Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) was established in 1985, by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey and then extended by seven other countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Improving economic development and intra-group trade of member countries is one of the main objectives for the group. The purpose of this research is to estimate the ex-post effects of ECO on the intra-group trade of member countries.... 

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has considerably increased in recent years and achieved two percent of the world GDP in 2009. The positive impact of FDI on many national economic variables such as export and employment has been a great motivation for countries to seek it. In spite of many promoting factors in Iran, the Iranian FDI inflow still remains small. Using a huge panel dataset including 2604 real observations, this study aims to recognize and evaluate the impact of main factors influencing FDI inwards across the world. Based on a theoretical approach, we develop an empirical gravity model which includes not only the traditional mass variables but also some specific factors to FDI...