Sharif Digital Repository

In recent years, a growing interest in investigation of new energies has been observed. Pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) could be a feasible source of renewable energy. This study aims to present a model based on the present technology of PRO power plant components for design and economic evaluation of a PRO power plant, and to investigate case studies in order to demonstrate how each main component of a PRO power plant affects the economic evaluation. Therefore, all the mechanisms including intake and outfall systems, pre-treatment system, membrane system, and transportation and generation systems are explicated and meant to present the capability of the model to design the PRO power plant.... 

In recent years, a growing interest in investigation of new energies has been observed. Pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) could be a feasible source of renewable energy. This study aims to present a model based on the present technology of PRO power plant components for design and economic evaluation of a PRO power plant, and to investigate case studies in order to demonstrate how each main component of a PRO power plant affects the economic evaluation. Therefore, all the mechanisms including intake and outfall systems, pre-treatment system, membrane system, and transportation and generation systems are explicated and meant to present the capability of the model to design the PRO power plant.... 

This paper is concerned with the existence of positive solution to a class of singular fourth order elliptic equation of Kirchhoff type (Formula Presented.)▵2u-λM(‖∇u‖2)▵u-μ|x|4u=h(x)uγ+k(x)uα,under Navier boundary conditions, u= ▵u= 0. Here Ω⊂ RN, N≥ 1 is a bounded C4-domain, 0 ∈ Ω, h(x) and k(x) are positive continuous functions, γ∈ (0 , 1) , α∈ (0 , 1) and M: R+→ R+ is a continuous function. By using Galerkin method and sharp angle lemma, we will show that this problem has a positive solution for m0 and 0 < μ< μ∗. Here μ∗=(N(N-4)4)2 is the best constant in the Hardy inequality. Besides, if μ= 0 , λ> 0 and h, k are Lipschitz functions, we show that this problem has a positive smooth... 

We present a combined trust region-line search structured algorithm for solving constrained nonlinear least-squares problems. The approach is based on adaptive structured scheme due to Mahdavi-Amiri and Bartels of the exact penalty method of Coleman and Conn for nonlinearly constrained optimization problems. The structured adaptation also makes use of the ideas of Nocedal and Overton for handling quasi-Newton updates of projected Hessians. For robustness, we propose a new penalty parameter updating strategy and a specific line search strategy within the trust region, taking account of the least-squares objective and special structured considerations for the approximate projected... 

Due to increasing demand for natural gas, storage plan development in order to cope with seasonal gas fluctuations and ensure constant gas supply during a year, has recently become highly indispensable. However, developing underground gas storage (UGS) facility is so costly which may sometimes discourage the investment.One of the main cost items while fulfilling a UGS project can be attributed to cushion gas; this is part of gas inventory which remainspermanently in the storage field in order to maintain pressure and provide adequate deliverability rate during production cycles.For this reason, UGS in low quality gas reservoirs has been recentlyproposed. In such a case, native reservoir gas... 

Sloshing, or liquid free surface oscillation, in containers has many important applications in a variety of engineering fields. The modal method can be used to solve linear sloshing problems and is the most efficient reduced order method that has been used during the previous decade. In the present article, the modal method is used to solve a nonlinear sloshing problem. The method is based on a potential flow solution that implements a two-phase analysis on sloshing in a rectangular container. According to this method, the solution to the mass conservation equation, with a nonpenetration condition at the tank walls, results in velocity potential expansion; this is similar to the mode shapes... 

A new method to evaluate the steady state performance of a three-phase self excited induction generator based on conductance minimization is proposed. It can be simply used to take series compensation into account. Among the priorities of this method are the absence of convergence problem and flexibility. Simple methods to find the frequency and magnetizing reactance have been proposed. Simulation results show the efficiency of this method  

By development of ocean exploration, autonomous vehicles are employed to perform on-water and underwater tasks. Using an extended Kalman filter, Inertial Navigation System/Doppler Velocity Log (INS/DVL) integrated systems are trying to navigate in oceans and underwater environments when Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are not accessible. The dependency of DVL signals on acoustic environments may cause any DVL malfunction due to sea creatures or strong wave-absorbing material. In this paper, an improved version of evolutionary TS-fuzzy (eTS) is proposed in order to predict DVL sensor outputs at DVL malfunction moment, by utilizing an artificial intelligent (AI) aided integrated... 

The physics and modes of radiation in structures exhibiting extraordinary transmission (ET) can be best studied using Green's function formalism. In this article, we find the electromagnetic response to local excitation of a canonical structure exhibiting ET, and investigate the role of complex waves. The structure is a perfectly conducting slab having a finite or infinite number of through-slits. The solution breaks up the field into even and odd modes, and solves for the fields of the structure with a finite number of slits, by setting up an integral equation. The solution is then extended to find Greens' function of the infinitely periodic structure. The dispersion relations of the... 

We revisit the classical edge coloring problem for general graphs in the streaming model. In this model, the input graph is presented as a stream of edges, and the algorithm must report colors assigned to the edges in a streaming fashion, using a memory of size O(n polylog n) on graphs of up to O(n2) edges. In ESA 2019 and SOSA 2021, two elegant randomized algorithms were presented for this problem in the adversarial edge arrival model, where the latest one colors any input graph using O(Δ2/s) colors with high probability in O (ns) space. In this short note, we propose two extremely simple streaming algorithms that achieve the same color and space bounds deterministically. Besides being... 

Introduction: Due to the importance of laser light penetration and propagation in biological tissues, many researchers have proposed several numerical methods such as Monte Carlo, finite element and green function methods. Among them, the Monte Carlo method is an accurate method which can be applied for different tissues. However, because of its statistical nature, Monte Carlo simulation requires a large number of photon pockets to be traced, so it is computationally expensive and time-consuming. Although other numerical methods based on the diffusion method are fast, they have two important limitations: first, they are not valid near the bounder of sample and source, and second, their... 

In order to reach a more efficient and compact heat exchanger, it is essential to optimize the design, having in mind the impact of different geometrical parameters. Many of the previously cited studies in the area of heat transfer enhancement using vortex generators were confined only to defined points in the possible design space. Thus, a multiobjective optimization study is particularly suitable in order to cover this space entirely. A CFD simulation along with Pareto method were used to simulate the air flow and heat transfer and optimize the design parameters. The angle of attack of a pair of delta-winglets mounted behind each tube is varied between β = -90° and ß = +90°. Three... 

Both governments and health-related organizations must immediately act after a natural disaster happened, i.e., providing essential equipment and medicines to injured people as soon as possible and adequately. To achieve this goal, planning the distribution and the inventory of crucial items during a scenario of disasters, a relief supply chain network with four echelons, namely suppliers, warehouses, disaster locations, and medical centers, is designed. In this work, a bi-objective nonlinear mathematical model that follows two main concerns is proposed. First, we wish to minimize the supply chain costs in terms of both the traveling time between echelons and the inventory costs. Second, we... 

This article, introduces a new haptic robot, wrist-RoboHab, for upper limb rehabilitation of post stroke, orthopedic and Parkinson patients., The robot is designed for hand movement therapy and could be used for both treatment and evaluation purposes in three operational states; forearm supination/pronation, wrist flexion/extension and ulnar/radial deviation. At first the mechanical design and control system are described. Then the results of a case study are demonstrated. Clinical results, showed an improvement in Fugle-Meyer, AROM, power and the biomechanical assessment of the spasticity in a chronic patient. Furthermore, it was approved that the robot can have a good interaction with... 

This study investigates a supply chain of perishable fruits and vegetables. A simulation model using system dynamics approach is proposed to study the behaviors and relationships within the supply chain and to determine the impact of the supply, demand and price interactions. The proposed model yields an insight into the overall agricultural system, taking into account the influence of import quota policies. The purpose of this study is to develop a multi-objective model identifying the best import quota policy for Tehran Municipality Organization of Fruits and Vegetables. The multiple objectives are considered to be price mean, price variation and markup. Key conclusions were reached on how... 

Aims. Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected on a longer time scale when the light of remote stars crosses an interstellar turbulent molecular cloud, but it has never been observed at optical wavelengths. The aim of the study described in this paper is to fully simulate the scintillation process, starting from the molecular cloud description as a fractal object, ending with the simulations of fluctuating stellar light curves. Methods. Fast Fourier transforms are first used to simulate fractal clouds. Then, the illumination pattern resulting from the crossing of background star light through these refractive clouds is calculated... 

Aims. Stars twinkle because their light propagates through the atmosphere. The same phenomenon is expected at a longer time scale when the light of remote stars crosses an interstellar molecular cloud, but it has never been observed at optical wavelength. In a favorable case, the light of a background star can be subject to stochastic fluctuations on the order of a few percent at a characteristic time scale of a few minutes. Our ultimate aim is to discover or exclude these scintillation effects to estimate the contribution of molecular hydrogen to the Galactic baryonic hidden mass. This feasibility study is a pathfinder toward an observational strategy to search for scintillation, probing... 

In this study, a real low quality gas reservoir (which consists of 85% nitrogen) is considered for natural gas storage (UGS) operation. The native reservoir gas is used as cushion and this will considerably reduce the cost of storage plan; but the main concern during this technique is the possible mixing between nitrogen and natural injected gas which may degrade the quality of withdrawal stream.This paper presents a sensitivity analysis on some relevant parameters (such as gas production and injection rate, skin factor, and perforation length) which may affect mixing of inert cushion and natural gas during natural gas storage in a nitrogen reservoir. The extent of mixing between nitrogen... 

In this article, we have investigated the possibility to distinguish between different galactic models through microlensing parallax studies. We show that a systematic search for parallax effects can be done using the currently running alert systems and complementary photometric telescopes, to distinguish between different lens distance distributions. We have considered two galactic dark compact object distributions, with total optical depths corresponding to the EROS current upper limits. These models correspond to two extreme hypotheses on a three component galactic structure made of a thin disk, a thick disk, and a spherically symmetric halo. Our study shows that for sub-solar mass... 

For real-time embedded systems, energy consumption and reliability are two major design concerns. We consider the problem of minimizing the energy consumption of a set of periodic real-time applications when running on a multi-core system while satisfying given reliability targets. Multi-core platforms provide a good capability for task replication in order to achieve given reliability targets. However, careless task replication may lead to significant energy overhead. Therefore, to provide a given reliability level with a reduced energy overhead, the level of replication and also the voltage and frequency assigned to each task should be determined cautiously. The goal of this paper is to...