Sharif Digital Repository

This thesis discusses the work on the production of a rhamnolipid-type biosurfactant by Pseudomonas aeruginosa MR01, its structural characterization and environmental applications. First, results from analytical approaches for screening of biosurfactant producers suggested the oil spreading method as the fastest, simplest and most consistent analytical method. The second part of the thesis describes the properties of the most efficient biosurfactant-producing bacteria isolated from oil fields in south of Iran and according to it’s biochemical characteristics and partial sequenced 16S rRNA gene affiliated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Time course study indicated that the maximum biosurfactant... 

Cold roll forming is a process for manufacturing of long sheet metal products with constant cross sections. The base of this process is bending and formation of plastic deformation in sheet. In this process, bending operation occurs in several forming stations. The purpose of this project is estimation of the distance between stations in roll forming. This work is based on determination of deformation length. In this study, first, the researches done in the roll forming is expressed. Then, a relation for estimation of deformation length has been derived that could be used in different stages of roll forming. Compared with other works, the work hardening effect has been considered in the... 

Process Planning is the link between CAD and CAM and is one of the most complex issues in product development chain. In addition, this process is time-consuming, costly and requires expert man power. In recent decades, many Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) systems are developed to reduce the duration of Process Planning and many feature based process planning systems have been reported. Feature recognition and determining the precedence of machining features are the most critical issues in feature-based process planning. It gets more complicated where geometric interaction occurs between machining features. This work, focuses on feature recognition and their geometric interactions and... 

Increasing and diversified use of micro electromechanical components necessitates further development of methods for their secure gripping and transfer. In this research, a piezoelectrically driven microgripper including two gripping sets with four arms has been designed. The system can hold and handle microparts from 100 to 150 microns by applying corresponding voltages between 80 to 20 volts. The design is such that after positioning the work piece between the two microgripper arms the piezoelectric comb-drive actuators are activated. Then the two gripping arms are moved toward each other and ultimately grasp the work piece. In order to determine the behavior of the... 

Nowadays, worm robots are widely designed and manufactured for different applications. The most common applications for these types of robots can be mentioned as maintenance of small pipes and medical purposes in biological vessels such as the lungs, intestines, urethra and blood vessels. The robot must be small, controllable, safe, reliable, energy efficient, and must be able to crawl both, forward and backward. Different worm robots have been developed and manufactured, for different purposes such as, medical and industrial applications. Most of these projects are typically designed with three or more actuators for control of the distance between cells and the clamps.The results of using... 

Oil field industry is one of the most challenging engineering subjects. In oil well drilling, undesired motion could raise a lot of problems such as stuck pipes; wash out pipe, and etc. In this industry, motion prediction is very important because a good prediction can avoid instruments failure and as a result considerable amount of time could be saved. Predicting dynamic characteristics of drill-string such as whirl orbit, whirl speed, and axial, lateral, and torsional displacements, accelerations, and velocities, might be useful in avoiding or decreasing failures. A program based on FEM (Finite Element Method) is developed in MATLAB considering deviation of drill-string, contacting with... 

The object of this study is to determine the buckling load of reinforced composite conical shells under axial compression. . Shells are reinforced by stringers and rings and the boundary conditions are assumed to be simply supported. At first the equilibrium equations are obtained using the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT), smeared stiffener technique and principle of minimum potential energy. In the following, the resulting equations which are the system of five variable coefficient partial differential equations in terms of displacement components are investigated by generalized differential quadrature method (GDQM). Finally the standard eigenvalue equation is formed and the... 

This thesis is aimed at the modeling and control of atomic force microscope (AFM) in order to improve the scanning speed and achieving video-rate imaging to realize the real-time observation of dynamic phenomena at the nanoscale. The lumped parameter model of the AFM in the non-contact operation mode is studied in this project. The tip-sample interaction is the Van der Waals force, which makes the model nonlinear. Two mathematical models of the AFM cantilever are derived and investigated in order to gain detailed insights into the system dynamics. These models are tip excited and base excited cantilever. The former is solved by the method of multiple scales and the latter is analyzed by the... 

Recent studies show that spherical shape robots have been widely developed by many robotic researchers. A spherical shape can be also benefited in keeping mechanical components and electronic circuits inside a compact volume. The shell can also perform rolling motions for going fast and smooth on flat area. The reconfigurable spherical robot can be configured into a form of two interconnected hemispheres with three legs equipped with three Omni-directional wheels. The conceptual design of the robot will be initially packed and deployed in a spherical configuration. The spherical construction offers ease in transportation and deployment; for example, a number of these robots can be packed and... 

Delivering high quality and clean air into occupied spaces is the main goal of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. HVAC systems draw supply air which usually contains fungi and moisture. Fungi and moisture plus organic materials create a good bed for mold growth. Studies prove that duct cleaning process can definitely reduce the amount of pollutants present in the ducts. Hence, it has positive impact on human lives both regarding psychological and physical points of view. Duct cleaning method’s application difficulties and ducts’ unreachable environments motivated duct cleaning firms to employ robots for duct cleaning tasks. Although there are considerable numbers of... 

Cooperative systems have been widely studied in literature. The Dual-Arm Cam-Locked (DACL) robot manipulators are reconfigurable arms formed by two parallel cooperative manipulators which operate redundantly but they may lock into each other in specific joints to increase structural stiffness in the cost of losing some degrees of freedom. Obtaining the optimal configuration demands lots of computational time and is not practical in real-time applications. In the present work, considering the kinematics of the manipulator, the optimal control problem of redundancy is formulated in the framework of tasks with the order of priority. The optimal control formulation is derived by using the... 

Herein, an introduction to optimization, aiming to help knowledge development in design optimization techniques is given. Besides, a new method of using the theory of topology optimization to optimize a microgripper system, with a piezoelectric ceramic driver (PZT) microactuator is presented as well. An optimization method is also presented to generate better control conditions. In this study a micro object gripper of 9200 µm length, 8100 µm width, and 500 µm thickness is optimized, and performances improvement is analyzed. This thesis is to investigate best practice and give advice on how to understand the process of topology optimization and how to setup an optimization run. At first, an... 

In the present work, trajectory optimization of the Dual-Arm Cam-Lock robot considering kinematic and dynamic redundancy is performed. First, the optimal control problem is solved only considering kinematic redundancy and then is solved considering dynamic redundancy. General form of the dynamic model for the system is developed using Lagrangian relations. Global optimization method is used for redundancy resolution problem. A performance index is defined based on the consumed kinetic energy and is minimized through a desired trajectory using the global optimization method. Formulations of optimal control problem are derived and initial boundary problem is changed to two point boundary value...