Sharif Digital Repository

In the present work, nano-composites of Ni-P-SiO2-Al2O3 were coated on a 6061 aluminum substrate. The surface morphology of the nano-composite coating was studied by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The amount of SiO2 in the coating was determined by Energy Dispersive Analysis of X-Ray (EDX) and the crystalline structure of the coating was examined by X-ray diffractometer (XRD). All the experiments concerning the corrosion behavior of the coating carried out in 3.5%wt NaCl solution and evaluated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and polarization technique. The results showed that an incorporation of SiO2 and Al2O3 in Ni-P coating at the SiO2 concentration of... 

Time-dependent model is presented to simulate random lasers in the presence of an inhomogeneous gain medium. PbSe quantum dots (QDs) with an arbitrary size distribution are treated as an inhomogeneous gain medium. By introducing inhomogeneity of the PbSe QDs in polarization, rate, and Maxwell's equations, our model is constructed for a one-dimensional disordered system. By employing the finite difference time-domain method, the governing equations are numerically solved and lasing spectra and spatial distribution of the electric field are calculated. The effect of increasing the pumping rate on the laser characteristics is investigated. The results show that the number of lasing modes and... 

Purpose: This work aims to study factors, such as driver characteristics, environmental conditions, and vehicle characteristics, that affect different crash types with a special focus on distraction parameters. For this purpose, distraction factors are divided into five groups: cellphone usage, cognitive distractions, passengers distracting the driver, outside events attracting the driver’s attention, and in-vehicle activities. Methods: Taking the crashes that occurred in the USA into account, the crash types are divided into two main groups, single-vehicle crashes and two-vehicle crashes. Since there were different crash types (alternatives) in the dataset and the probable correlation in... 

This study provides a comprehensive literature review to summarize all contributing factors and the logit-based models that were used to predict the severity of crashes. Using the General Estimates Systems (GES) dataset, as a subset and a branch of the National Automotive Sampling System in the US, a Generalized Ordered Logit (GLM) model is developed to predict the crash severity. The developed severity model detects the most important parameters based on characteristics of the driver, the environment, the vehicle, the road, and the type of crash. This study aims to take a more in-depth look into the distraction-related factors as one of the most important groups of contributing factors to... 

The present study provides an accurate simulation of velocity and temperature distributions of inhalation thermal injury in a human upper airway, including vestibule, nasal cavity, paranasal sinuses, nasopharynx, oropharynx, larynx, and upper part of main bronchus. To this end, a series of CT scan images, taken from an adult woman, was used to construct a three dimensional model. The airway walls temperature was adjusted according to existing in vivo temperature measurements. Also, in order to cover all breathing activities, five different breathing flow rates (10, 15, 20, 30, and 40. l/min) and different ambient air temperatures (100, 200, 300, 400, and 500. °C) were studied. Different flow... 

In this paper, we present an assertion-based verification methodology for system-level design. Transactionlevel concepts are integrated with an assertion language to introduce a useful, effective and familiar assertion description language. Our assertion verification language is capable of specifying system-level assertions for validating performance as well as functional properties. Proper-ties can be verified using offline simulation trace analysis. C++ trace checkers are automatically generated to validate particular simulation runs or to analyze their performance characteristic(s). Using a JPEG decoder as a case study, we demonstrate that the assertion-based verification is highly useful... 

As contemporary digital systems specifically embedded systems become more and more complex, taking advantage of system-level design is being more widespread. Many embedded systems must operate under strict timing constraints. One of the best methods for examining timing constraints in an embedded system can be done via the performance verification. In this paper an assertion-based verification methodology has been proposed for verifying system-level timing constraints in an embedded system. Performance assertions are specified by an assertion language at the transaction-level of abstraction. A Turing machine and a structure named performance evaluator have been coupled to provide a... 

Nowadays, distributed network systems are broadly using in embedded, real-time and networked control systems. Since they often operate under strict timing constraints, the timing verification is an important and critical phase during the design of them. On the other hand, as contemporary digital systems become more and more complex, taking advantage of the systemlevel design is gaining more widespread acceptance. Beginning from the transaction-level of abstraction is a common and effective method for deploying the system-level design. This paper presents a methodology for evaluation of timing constraints in a distributed network system specified at transactionlevel of abstraction. Timing... 

In this paper, we discuss the synthesis and characterization of tungsten trioxide nanoparticles prepared by the arc discharge method in deionized (DI) water. The size and morphology of WO3 nanoparticles prepared using different arc currents (25, 35 and 45 A) were studied. Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results indicate that at an arc current of 25 A, the size of the particles is about 30 nm, and this increases to 64 nm by increasing the arc current. This size increase caused a decrease of optical band gap from 2.9 to 2.6 eV. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) spectra demonstrate the formation of the WO3 phase.... 

It has been proposed that emission spectrum of random lasers with magnetically active semiconductor constituents can be made tunable by external magnetic fields. By employing the FDTD method, the spectral intensity and spatial distribution of electric field are calculated in the presence of an external magnetic field. It is numerically shown that due to the magneto-optical Voigt effect, the emission spectrum of a semiconductor-based random laser can be made tunable by adjusting the external magnetic field. The effect of magnetic field on the localization length of the laser modes is investigated. It is also shown that the spatial distribution of electric field exhibited remarkable... 

TRISO particles are the specific features of HTTR and generally HTGR reactors. Their heterogeneity and random arrangement in graphite matrix of these reactors create a significant modeling challenge. In this study, an algorithm is proposed for modeling random arrangement of TRISO particles in the fuel compacts of HTTR. The effect of this arrangement on criticality calculations, i.e. effective multiplication factor and critical position of control rods, is then compared with regular arrangement. Regular arrangement was modeled by positioning each TRISO as a fixed sphere in the center of a cubic lattice and subsequently, each fuel compact was filled with around 13,000 (approximate number of... 

In dye-sensitized solar cells recombination reactions at the TiO2 photoanode with the electrolyte interface plays a critical role in cell efficiency. Recombination of injected electrons in the TiO2 with acceptors in the electrolyte usually occurs on uncovered areas of TiO2 surfaces. In this work, we report electropolymerization of polymer films on nanoporous TiO2 electrode surfaces using an ionic liquid as the growth medium. The choice of ionic liquid as the growth medium for this study is based on the insolubility of dye N719 in this electrolyte, thus avoiding dye molecule detachment from the TiO2 photoanode surface over the entire potential range investigated during the... 

Long term evolution (LTE)-advanced aims the peak data rates in excess of 3 Gbps for the next generation wireless communication systems. Turbo codes, the specified channel coding scheme in LTE, suffers from a low-decoding throughput due to its iterative decoding algorithm. One efficient approach to achieve a promising throughput is to use multiple Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) cores in parallel, resulting in a large area overhead, a big drawback. The scaled Max-log MAP algorithm is a common approach to implement the MAP algorithm due to its efficient architecture with its acceptable performance. Although many works have been reported to reduce the area of the MAP unit, an efficient VLSI... 

Long-term evolution (LTE) is aimed to achieve the peak data rates in excess of 300 Mb/s for the next-generation wireless communication systems. Turbo codes, the specified channel-coding scheme in LTE, suffer from a low-decoding throughput due to its iterative decoding algorithm. One efficient approach to achieve a promising throughput is to use multiple maximum a posteriori (MAP) cores in parallel, resulting in a large area overhead. The two computationally challenging units in an MAP core are α and β recursion units. Although several methods have been proposed to shorten the critical path of these recursion units, their area-efficient architecture with minimum silicon area is still missing.... 

5-th generation mobile networks aim the peak data rates in excess of few Gbs, which may appear to be challenging to achieve due to the existence of some blocks such as the turbo decoder. In fact, the interleaver is known to be a major challenging part of the turbo decoder due to its need to the parallel interleaved memory access. LTE uses Quadratic Permutation Polynomial (QPP) interleaver, which makes it suitable for the parallel decoding. In this paper, a new property of the QPP interleaver, called the correlated shifting property, is theoretically proved, leading to a fully scalable interleaver and a low-complexity address generator for an arbitrary order of parallelism. The proposed... 

Resistance spot welding of dissimilar materials especially in different thickness is generally more challenging than that of similar materials due to differences in the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of the base metals. And also when the part is under static and dynamic forces the health of spot-welds is crucial. Hence, the influence of welding parameters such as current, time, applied force and hold time on the shear-tensile load has been investigated in this study. Moreover, in this research the case study is one of the most important body parts of the vehicle which is front wheel house, and effect of above-mentioned parameter on the strength of spot-welds has been... 

We theoretically demonstrate the tunabiltiy of terahertz random lasers composed of high temperature superconductor YBCO and ruby layers as active medium. The considered system is a one-dimensional disordered medium made of ruby grain and YBCO. Finite-difference time domain method is used to calculate the emission spectrum and spatial distribution of electric field at different temperatures. Our numerical results reveal that the superconductor based random lasers exhibit large temperature tunability in the terahertz domain. The emission spectrum is significantly temperature dependent, the number of lasing modes and their intensities increase with decreasing temperature. Also, we make some... 

We propose that spectral intensity of superconductor based random lasers can be made tunable by changing temperature. The two fluid model and wavelength dependent dispersion formula have been employed to describe the optical response of the superconducting materials. Random laser characteristics have been calculated using the one dimensional FDTD method. Our simulation results reveal that the emission spectrum can be manipulated through the ambient temperature of the system. It is observed that transition from metal phase to pure superconducting phase leads to the enhancement of the laser emission. Furthermore, spatial distribution of the fields in one dimensional disordered media is very... 

A carbon paste electrode (CPE), modified with novel hydroquinone/TiO2 nanoparticles, was designed and used for simultaneous determination of ascorbic acid (AA), uric acid (UA) and folic acid (FA). The magnitude of the peak current for modified TiO2-nanoparticle CPE (MTNCPE) increased sharply in the presence of ascorbic acid and was proportional to its concentration. A dynamic range of 1.0-1400.0 μM, with the detection limit of 6.4x10-7M for AA, was obtained using the DPV technique (pH=7.0). The prepared electrode was successfully applied for the determination of AA, UA, and FA in real samples