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... 

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... 

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  

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,... 

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  

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... 

The field enhancement in micro resonators causes the Raman amplification enhancement in them. Micro resonators can be connected to form sequence in variety of ways. The various structures such as single channel and double channel side coupled integrated space sequence of resonators (SClSSORs) can be used as Raman amplifier with different performances. In this paper, a silicon micro-ring coupled-resonator optical waveguide (CROW) is considered as a bandpass Raman amplifier. We introduce an iterative matrix method for analysis the CROW Raman amplifier. This method is applied to the single pump and single input for silicon CROW Raman amplifiers, and the effects of physical parameters of the... 

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... 

In the light of the novel physical-chemical properties of supercritical water as a green reaction medium, we studied the synthesis of deuterated benzene in supercritical heavy water, in the presence of sodium deutroxide, as a catalyst. The effects of operational parameters including temperature, time, pressure (density), catalyst amount and benzene/D2O volumetric ratio on the degree of deuteriation (D%) and deuterated benzene yield were investigated extensively and the conditions for the highest degree of deuteration and product yield, were optimized. Furthermore, because of the importance of the pressure of solution inside the reaction medium on the H/D exchange process as well as the... 

Optical tweezers (OT) are widely used for pico (and femto)-Newton range force measurements. The appropriate choice of the bead size is not well understood for biopolymer stretching applications of OT. We have shown, both by theory and experiment, that wrong choice of the bead size could cause errors as large as 295% in the measured force. We provide a simple map for correct choice of the bead size and the direction of pulling for such applications. There is a good agreement between our theoretical and experimental results  

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... 

Microfluidics is a promising approach for the facile and large-scale fabrication of monodispersed droplets for various applications in biomedicine. This technology has demonstrated great potential to address the limitations of regenerative medicine. Microfluidics provides safe, accurate, reliable, and cost-effective methods for encapsulating different stem cells, gametes, biomaterials, biomolecules, reagents, genes, and nanoparticles inside picoliter-sized droplets or droplet-derived microgels for different applications. Moreover, microenvironments made using such droplets can mimic niches of stem cells for cell therapy purposes, simulate native extracellular matrix (ECM) for tissue... 

Formation of unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layers lacking of thermal stability in non-aqueous electrolytes of rechargeable batteries is the main bottleneck for their long-life cycling, especially at elevated temperatures. Inclusion of a small dose of functional electrolyte additives into the batteries' electrolyte can be highly beneficial to surmount this issue. Of these additives, vinylene carbonate (VC) has drawn particular attention thanks to its high ability to build protective layers at anodes showing good integrity and outstanding thermal stability. In addition to its primary roles in present-day lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), VC additive has also been examined in other... 

Motivated by the decompositions of sphere and QR-based methods, in this paper we present an extremely fast maximum-likelihood (ML) detection approach for quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QOSTBC). The proposed algorithm with a relatively simple design exploits structure of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations to achieve its goal and can be extended to any arbitrary constellation. Our decoder utilizes a new decomposition technique for ML metric which divides the metric into independent positive parts and a positive interference part. Search spaces of symbols are substantially reduced by employing the independent parts and statistics of noise. Symbols within the search... 

OFDM is an effective multicarrier transmission technique with one primary disadvantage; it suffers from high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR). Although clipping and filtering is a simple and effective method for PAPR reduction, it makes in-band and out-of-band noise, which degrades the bit error rate performance and spectral efficiency. Publications on this subject show that clipped samples could be reconstructed at the receiver by using oversampled signal and bandwidth expansion. By building on published literature, this paper aims to achieve a low-complexity method. The proposed method has complexity order of O(L2) to solve linear system, where L indicates the number of clipped samples.... 

In this study, antibacterial activity, biocompatibility, and corrosion resistance of 316 LVM implants were improved using the development of HAp/GO/Ag nanocomposite coatings by the dip-coating method. The XRD and FTIR results confirmed the synthesis of HAp/GO/Ag nanocomposites. HAp/Ag nanoparticles (68 nm) bound to epoxy, hydroxyl, and carboxyl functional groups on GO sheets (size of GO sheets varies from 255 to 1480 nm) by electrostatic interaction. FESEM images showed that HAp/GO/Ag coatings had higher density and fewer micro-cracks than pure HAp coatings. In addition, HAp/GO/Ag coatings showed optimized nano-hardness (4.5 GPa) and elasticity modulus (123 GPa). The results of...