Sharif Digital Repository

The objective of this work is making comparison between thermodynamic models and data-driven techniques accuracy in prediction of hydrate formation pressure as a function of temperature and composition of gas mixtures. The Peng-Robinson (PR) and Patel-Teja (PT) equations of state are used for thermodynamic modeling and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) are used as data-driven models. The capability of each method is evaluated by comparison with the experimental data collected from literature. It is shown that there is a good agreement between thermodynamic modeling and the experimental data in most of the cases; however, the prediction... 

Many smart grid applications need broadcast communications. Because of the critical role of the broadcasted messages in these applications, their authentication is very important to prevent message forgery attacks. Smart grid consists of plenty of low-resource devices such as smart meters or phasor measurement units (PMUs) that are located in physically unprotected environments. Therefore, the storage and computational constraints of these devices as well as their security against physical attacks must be considered in designing broadcast authentication schemes. In this paper, we consider two communication models based on the resources of the broadcasters and receivers and propose a physical... 

In this paper, the performance of an internal combustion engine is evaluated at the steady-state condition by application of energy and exergy analysis using the experimental test results. The energy and exergy balances are calculated at different engine speeds. The results show that the heat rejection of energy and exergy flow increases with increasing engine speed. The exergy efficiencies are slightly higher than the corresponding energy efficiencies. The results of this study have revealed that the most important source of the system inefficiency is the destruction of exergy by irreversible processes, mostly by the combustion. One can conclude that the use of a combined energy and exergy... 

Temporary keyword search on confidential data in a cloud environment is the main focus of this research. The cloud providers are not fully trusted. So, it is necessary to outsource data in the encrypted form. In the attribute-based keyword search (ABKS) schemes, the authorized users can generate some search tokens and send them to the cloud for running the search operation. These search tokens can be used to extract all the ciphertexts which are produced at any time and contain the corresponding keyword. Since this may lead to some information leakage, it is more secure to propose a scheme in which the search tokens can only extract the ciphertexts generated in a specified time interval. To... 

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) provides 2-way communications between the utility and the smart meters. Developing authenticated key exchange (AKE) and broadcast authentication (BA) protocols is essential to provide secure communications in AMI. The security of all existing cryptographic protocols is based on the assumption that secret information is stored in the nonvolatile memories. In the AMI, the attackers can obtain some or all of the stored secret information from memories by a great variety of inexpensive and fast side-channel attacks. Thus, all existing AKE and BA protocols are no longer secure. In this paper, we investigate how to develop secure AKE and BA protocols in the... 

This paper studied the durability, microstructure, and fire behavior of lightweight mortars based on cement, metakaolin (MK), ultrafine ground granulated blast furnace slag (UGGBFS), ceramic waste powder (CWP), and clay brick waste powder (CBWP). Two sets of mixes were prepared with two types of lightweight aggregate including lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) and pumice aggregate. Regarding the durability assessment, the electrical resistivity and water absorption of the mortars were measured. The UGGBFS-based alkali-activated mortar with pumice aggregate exhibited the highest electrical resistivity and lowest water absorption, while CBWP-based geopolymer mortar with LECA showed... 

Temporary keyword search on confidential data in a cloud environment is the main focus of this research. The cloud providers are not fully trusted. So, it is necessary to outsource data in the encrypted form. In the attribute-based keyword search (ABKS) schemes, the authorized users can generate some search tokens and send them to the cloud for running the search operation. These search tokens can be used to extract all the ciphertexts which are produced at any time and contain the corresponding keyword. Since this may lead to some information leakage, it is more secure to propose a scheme in which the search tokens can only extract the ciphertexts generated in a specified time interval. To... 

The authors regret that there was an error in the XRD pattern for pumice shown in Fig. 8. The authors have re-analyzed the pumice to address the concerns over the reliability of the pattern due to the presence of noises, and the updated XRD pattern has been shown in Fig. 8 here for more accuracy of the presented information. It is noteworthy that this change does not affect any of the conclusions. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd  

The authors regret that there was an error in the caption of Fig. 15. The corrected caption for Fig. 15 as presented here. It is noteworthy that this change does not affect any of the conclusions. Fig. 15. SEM micrograph of geopolymer mortar with clay brick waste: (a) with LECA and magnification of 60×, (b) with pumice aggregates and magnification of 2000×, (c) with pumice aggregates and magnification of 500×, (d) with pumice aggregates and magnification of 1000×. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd  

A blind semi-invertible quantization based data hiding scheme, which reconstructs the original signal with high precision has been proposed. In order to produce correlated quantization yielding reversibility of the quantization based approach, a new transform domain has been introduced. In decoder, by compensating the quantization error and using the iterative technique, the original signal is recovered; then the watermarked signal is compared with the reconstructed original signal and hidden data is retrieved. Simulation results show that the proposed method in comparison with other reversible methods imposes less distortion and thus a higher Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is achieved. © 2009... 

This paper proposes a novel combinational Adaptive Noise Canceller (ANC), which is suitable for non stationary noise environments. Pre-filter bank structure improves the convergence rate leading to less error in real-time applications. During our investigations, we have found out adaptive algorithms have better performance for low frequency subbands. Thus, by using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) in each subband, a simplified version of variable step-size algorithms has been employed in low frequency subbands; while for high frequency subbands, some conventional techniques have been used. Simulation results show that combination of adaptive and conventional methods have better performance... 

This study is aimed at optimizing the rice husk ash (RHA) content and bacterial concentration in self-compacting concrete (SCC). For this purpose, cement was partially replaced with RHA at 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% by weight of cement. In addition, micro-silica (MS) was added to all mixes at a dosage of 10% by weight of cementitious materials. The mix with the optimum RHA content was supplied with bacterial cells with concentrations of 103, 105, and 107 cells/ml to reduce the formation of micro-cracks. The RHA concretes showed reduced workability with increasing RHA content. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses were performed on...