Sharif Digital Repository

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Varactor and bipolar junction transistor (BJT) frequency multipliers are a class of non-linear circuits that show parametric instability when the input drive is varied. If parametric oscillations are present in the circuit, output phase noise of the multiplier degrades remarkably in some specific driving levels. Phase noise analysis is performed by the conversion matrix method using generalised nodal analysis. The conversion method predicts the phase noise degradation precisely because it encompasses the effect of the noise sources that are modulated by the large signal drive. The added phase noise of a varactor and a BJT frequency doubler with subharmonic oscillation is calculated and the... 

The particle size distribution (PSD) is known as an important parameter affecting the hydrodynamic behavior of fluidized beds. In this study, extensive experimental data for fluidization of particles with different PSDs in tapered fluidized beds was presented. In the experimentations, three Geldart B powders with four average diameters and various PSDs were used. The experimental results showed that the minimum fluidization velocity (Umf) for particles with flat and binary size distributions were roughly the same; moreover, they were up to 25% larger than the Umf values for narrow cut particle size distribution. The Umf values for Gaussian size distribution were lower than those of narrow... 

In this paper, an analytical and low cost computational antenna array beamforming method in the presence of mutual coupling has been proposed. Mutual coupling effects is taken under consideration through the induced EMF method and the concept of active element pattern. After establishing the corresponding optimization problem, the desired beamformer is obtained through solving a convex optimization. At the end, the 3D arrays of half-wave dipole elements, of different geometries are compared based on the SIR criterion  

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a... 

Herniation in the lumbar area is one of the most common diseases which results in lower back pain (LBP) causing discomfort and inconvenience in the patients' daily lives. A computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system can be of immense benefit as it generates diagnostic results within a short time while increasing precision of diagnosis and eliminating human errors. We have proposed a new method for automatic diagnosis of lumbar disc herniation based on clinical MRI data. We use T2-W sagittal and myelograph images. The presented method has been applied on 30 clinical cases, each containing 7 discs (210 lumbar discs) for the herniation diagnosis. We employ Otsu thresholding method to extract the... 

The current paper presents an analytical model for the problem of squeezed film damping in micromirrors considering the bending of the supporting torsion microbeams. At the first the nonlinear Reynolds equation governing the behavior of the squeezed gas underneath the mirror is linearized. The resulting linearized equation is then nondimensionalized and analytically solved for two cases of the infinitesimal and finite tiling angle of the mirror. The obtained pressure distribution from the solution of the Reynolds equation is then utilized for finding the squeezed film damping force and torque applied to the mirror. The results show that in the case of the infinitesimal tilting angle, the... 

The relative velocity between ground surface and receiver platform leads to clutter expansion in the range-doppler surface. The expanded clutters can mask slow moving targets. The passive radar is a low cost and light weight radar with high detection ability, due to its multistatic geometry. In this paper, we employ the MISO passive radar with at least four transmitters of opportunity to constitute an over-determined system of equations. We propose an algorithm to localize moving targets in the presence of clutters. In the first step, the clutters are separated from moving targets and in the second one, the position and velocity of the target are computed by solving the system of equations.... 

Two new displacement potential functions are introduced for the general solution of a three-dimensional piezoelasticity problem for functionally graded transversely isotropic piezoelectric solids. The material properties vary continuously along the axis of symmetry of the medium. The four coupled equilibrium equations in terms of displacements and electric potential are reduced to two decoupled sixth- and second-order linear partial differential equations for the potential functions. The obtained results are verified with two limiting cases: (i) a functionally graded transversely isotropic medium, and (ii) a homogeneous transversely isotropic piezoelectric solid. The simplified relations... 

This study deals with the elastodynamic response of a surface-stiffened transversely isotropic half-space subjected to a buried time-harmonic normal load. The half-space is reinforced by a Kirchhoff thin plate on its surface. By virtue of a displacement potential function and appropriate time-harmonic Green’s functions of transversely isotropic half-spaces, a robust solution corresponding to two plate-medium bonding assumptions, namely (a) frictionless interface, and (b) perfectly bonded interface is obtained for the first time. All elastic fields of the problem are expressed explicitly in the form of semi-infinite line integrals. Results of some limiting cases including isotropic materials,... 

The generalized nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model is used to describe and simulate the ground motion time histories. Both amplitude and frequency nonstationarities are incorporated in the model. The moving time-window technique is used to evaluate the time varying parameters of the model using actual earthquake records. Application of the model for several Iranian earthquakes Naghan (1977), Tabas (1978) and Manjil (1990) are presented. It is shown that the model and identification algorithms are able to accurately capture the nonstationary features of these earthquake accelerograms. The statistical characteristics of the spectral response curves of the simulated accelerograms are compared... 

Global motion estimation (GME) is an important technique in image and video processing. Whereas the direct global motion estimation techniques boast reasonable precision they tend to suffer from high computational complexity. As with indirect methods, though presenting lower computational complexity they mostly exhibit lower accuracy than their direct counterparts. In this paper, the authors introduce a robust algorithm for GME with near identical accuracy and almost 50-times faster than MPEG-4 verification model (VM). This approach entails two stages in which, first, motion vector of sampled block is employed to obtain initial GME then Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is applied to the... 

The asymmetric problem of lateral translation of an inextensible circular membrane embedded in a transversely isotropic half-space is addressed. With the aid of appropriate Green's functions, the governing equations of the problem are written as a set of coupled integral equations. With further mathematical transformations, the system of dual integral equations is reduced to two coupled Fredholm integral equations of the second kind which are amenable to numerical treatments. The exact closed-form solutions corresponding to two limiting cases of a membrane resting on the surface of a half-space and embedded in a full-space are derived. The jump behavior of results at the edge of the membrane... 

Global motion estimation (GME) algorithms have an imperative role in object-based applications. Gradient-based GME is a well known method among these algorithms. Such algorithms require an initial value for their initialization step. Well estimation of this value plays a significant role in the accuracy of GME. This work introduces a simple but efficient technique for initial value prediction of GME. This technique employs a long-term predictor as well as global motions of previous frames. Simulations results demonstrate faster convergence and less computational complexity of the proposed method versus common presented techniques in the literature with almost same efficiency  

Public key management scheme in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is an inevitable solution to achieve different security services such as integrity, confidentiality, authentication and non reputation. Probabilistic asymmetric key pre-distribution (PAKP) is a self-organized and fully distributed approach. It resolves most of MANET's challenging concerns such as storage constraint, limited physical security and dynamic topology. In such a model, secure path between two nodes is composed of one or more random successive direct secure links where intermediate nodes can read, drop or modify packets. This way, intelligent selection of intermediate nodes on a secure path is vital to ensure security... 

The current study presents a simple and scalable method for the synthesis of (aminomethyl)phosphonic acid-functionalized graphene oxide (AMPA-GO) adsorbent. The chemical structure of the new material was disclosed by different instrumental analyses (e.g. FTIR, Raman, XPS, AFM, TEM, XRD, CHN, and UV), and two pertinent mechanisms namely nucleophilic substitution and condensation were suggested for its formation. Adsorption experiments revealed that both AMPA-GO and plain GO have a high affinity toward Th(IV) ions, but the AMPA-GO is superior in terms of adsorption capacity, rate of adsorption, selectivity, pH effect, etc. Indeed, the AMPA-GO can uptake Th(IV) nearly instantaneously, and... 

In this paper, the time-varying auto regressive moving average (ARMA) process is used as a simple yet efficient method for simulating earthquake ground motions. This model is capable of reproducing the nonstationary amplitude as well as the frequency content of the earthquake ground accelerations. The moving time-window technique is used to estimate the time variation of the model parameters from the actual earthquake records. The method is applied to synthesize the near field earthquakes, Naghan 1977, Tabas 1978, and Manjil 1990 recorded on dense soils in Iran, as well as the Mexico City 1985 earthquake recorded on a site with soft soil. It is shown that the selected ARMA (2,1) model and... 

Fast, accurate and efficient sensing is of important aspects in cognitive radio technology. A new sensing circuit is proposed using a phase frequency detector for cognitive radio applications. Using this method, spectral sensing can be done in a very short time by a low cost, low power circuit, compared with available implemented methods. The PFD circuit resolves different frequencies without the need of variable filter bandwidth or the banks of filters. Also it accelerates sensing procedure because of short time needed to detect the signal. Simulations show the accurate operation of this method and comparison with other methods shows faster sweep rates  

Fast, accurate and efficient sensing is of important aspects in cognitive radio technology. We propose a simple, practical design for two-dimensional sensing in spectral and spatial domain. In fact detection and localization of signal are done in a wide band elliptical array. Two sets of phase differences help to fast calculation of frequency and angle of arrival. We study the constraints, advantages and accuracy of the method. ©2009 IEEE