Sharif Digital Repository

An investigation into the dynamics of vehicle-passenger-structure-induced vibration of suspension bridges traversed by accelerating vehicles is carried out. The vehicle including the driver and passengers is modeled as a half-car planer model with six degrees-of-freedom. In addition, the stiffness of compliant bushings at the connecting points of the shock absorbers to the body is considered. The bridge is assumed to obey the Timoshenko beam theory with axial load and arbitrary conventional boundary conditions. The roughness of the bridge is assumed as a differentiable function of location. Due to continuously moving the location of the variable loads on the bridge, and in the presence of... 

Purpose - This paper aims to develop an adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) formulation for orientation estimation of aircraft and UAV utilizing low-cost attitude and heading reference systems (AHRS). Design/methodology/approach - A recursive least-square algorithm with exponential age weighting in time is utilized for estimation of the unknown inputs. The proposed AUKF tunes its measurement covariance to yield optimal performance. Owing to nonlinear nature of the dynamic model as well as the measurement equations, an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is chosen against the extended Kalman filter, due to its better performance characteristics. The unscented transformation of the UKF is shown... 

Eringen's nonlocal theory and an accurate determination of the nonlocal kernel functions for hexagonal close-packed (hcp) crystals are of interest. The kernel functions are closely related to the anisotropy as well as any crystalline symmetries. To this end, five new distinct nonlocal kernel functions which have the characteristics of discrete atomistic Green's functions in the stress space are obtained through consideration of the nonlocal dispersion relations associated with certain directions combined with ab initio Density Functional Perturbation Theory (DFPT) calculations of the pertinent phonon frequencies. This is the first work which provides the nonlocal hcp kernel functions... 

The dilemma with the deficiencies of the nonlocal kernel functions as the building blocks of the Eringen’s nonlocal theory has been of concern. The aim of the current work is to provide a remedy for the calculation of the components of the nonlocal moduli tensor pertinent to face center cubic (fcc) crystals accounting for their true symmetry group. To this end, three new distinct nonlocal kernel functions which are the discrete atomistic Green’s functions in the stress space are obtained through the nonlocal dispersion relations associated with the longitudinal and shear waves in fcc crystals combined with the corresponding ones calculated via ab initio based on density functional... 

The vibration of a simply-supported beam with rotary springs at either ends is studied. The governing equations of motion are investigated considering the nonlinear effect of stretching. These equations are made non-dimensional and solved to the first-order approximation using the two known methods, namely, the multiple scales and the mode summation. The first five natural frequencies of the beam for different pairs of the boundary condition parameters are evaluated. A multilayer feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network is trained using these natural frequencies. The artificial neural network used in this study shows high degree of accuracy for the natural frequency of the... 

The vibration of a simply supported beam with rotary springs at either ends is studied. The governing equations of motion are investigated considering the nonlinear effect of stretching. These equations are made non-dimensional and then solved to first order approximation using the two methods of the multiple scales and the mode summation. The first five natural frequencies of the beam for few pairs of the boundary condition parameters are evaluated. A multilayer feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network is trained using these natural frequencies. The artificial neural network used in this study shows high degree of accuracy for the natural frequency of the beam with general... 

This article aims to compensate the velocity and position errors that exist when the star sensor starts to work in a strapdown inertial navigation system aided by celestial navigation. These systems are integrated via unscented Kalman filter to estimate the current attitude and the gyros fixed bias, precisely. Since an accurate integration is desired, the nonlinear attitude equations are utilized in filter and these equations are propagated through a precise discretization method. Then, implementing the back-propagation and smoothing techniques, the initial attitude and the accelerometers fixed bias are also estimated. Finally, carrying out a parallel navigation, the velocity and position... 

In this paper we present a new landmark initialization technique for Bearing-Only Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm. The initialization scheme is a type of the delayed constrained initialization method and is different from previous approaches. In our work, it is shown that the angle between sequential observations measured by a bearing-only sensor such as pan-tilt camera and the distance between the vehicle and landmark plays an important role in landmark localization accuracy. Considering this fact, a proper constrained function that utilizes the rotation angle of the camera is applied between multiple landmark location estimates and the best estimate is selected. The... 

A new algorithm for complete pre-flight calibration of triple magnetometers is developed. The traditional approach for calibrating these sensors are based on a cumbersome procedure called 'swing' that involves levelling and rotating the vehicle containing the magnetometers through a series of known headings. Application of such a procedure is difficult and costly. Recently, new approaches have been developed to calibrate magnetometers without the need of attitude information. Such methods are used mostly for the calibration of biases and scale factors. Additionally in situations where misalignment errors are also to be estimated, they are usually modelled as errors of a non-orthogonal frame... 

Localization of radio-frequency (RF) transmitters using time difference of arrival (TDOA)-based methods is one of the conventional passive techniques that admits noncooperative source position finding, but suffers from challenging requirements such as precise intersensor synchronization and high-throughput transmission data links. A tradeoff governing the TDOA systems is in the sensor placement configuration. The more distance the sensors are placed, the more accurate localization is carried out, while the cost for the synchronization and data link increases, at the same time. In this work, a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided localization system is proposed that enjoys... 

In this study, an attempt has been made to fabricate Cu-SiC nanocomposites by flake powder metallurgy and high-pressure torsion processing techniques at room temperature. Pure Cu and a mixture of Cu and nano-sized SiC powders were mechanically milled separately for 3 h and then green compacts were prepared by uniaxial pressing under 1 GPa pressure. The green compacts experienced 6-turn high-pressure torsion under a pressure of 6 GPa to prepare bulk Cu and Cu-SiC samples. The microstructures of the consolidated samples were characterized using an X-ray diffractometer and a high resolution scanning/transmission electron microscope, and the mechanical properties were evaluated by microhardness,... 

The chemical preparation and crystal structure for a 4,4′- azodi(phenylcyanamide) salt) in the solid state are reported. This compound crystallizes in the triclinic space group P with the following unit cell parameters: a = 9.759(3) Å, b = 11.237(4) Å, c = 11.919(4) Å, α = 95.54(3)°, β = 98.50(3)°, γ = 109.39(2)°, Z = 1 and V = 1204.4(7) Å3. The 4,4′-azodi(phenylcyanamide) dianion, azodicyd2-, is approximately planar, with the cyanamide groups (-N=C=N) in an anti conformation relative to each other and the azo group (-N=N-) adopting the more thermodynamically stable trans conformation. The crystal X-ray analysis shows that there are one azo molecule cation, two tetrabutylammonium cations and... 

Electrochemical activity of TiO2 nanotube arrays (NTAs) is restricted by a wide band gap of TiO2. To overcome this restriction, we considered systematic research on two effective methods of doping of TiO2 NTAs such as the N-doping and electrochemical reductive doping and predicting the proper application of them. Band gap narrowing was occurred from 3.16 eV for undoped TiO2 NTAs to 2.9 and 2.7 eV at N-doped and self-doped TiO2 ones respectively. The electrochemical responses of the TiO2 NTAs before and after doping were examined by cyclic Voltammetry (CV) curve. To understand the electrochemical behavior of the undoped and doped TiO2 NTAs, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was... 

Although morphological disorder of nanotube structure is further down than the nanoparticular electrode, its density of traps are the hindering effects in the charge transport. In this study, crack-free TiO2 nanotube membranes, which obtained through a re-anodizing process, are fixed on transparent fluorine–tin-oxide glass by applying a few drops of Titanium Isopropoxide without needing the TiO2 powder paste. Front-side illuminated dye sensitized solar cells fabricated by undoped, N-doped and blue TiO2 nanotube membranes are investigated. The electrical characteristics of TiO2 nanotube based dye sensitized solar cells are followed by theoretical analysis using simple one-diode model.... 

The effect of cooling rate after hot deformation on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a commercial microalloyed forging steel (30MSV6 grade) was investigated using the hot compression test. Hot compression test was performed at 1150 and 925 °C followed by air cooling at different rates. Final microstructures and mechanical properties were evaluated by optical microscopy and shear punch test (SPT), respectively. The results indicated that by increasing the cooling rate, the as-received ferritic-pearlitic microstructure changes to the acicular ferrite, bainite or martensite. It is shown that both yield and ultimate strength increase but the ductility decreases significantly. At a... 

HVOF-sprayed coatings (WC-17%Co) and hard chromium coatings corrosion resistances have been compared through electrochemical polarization test in 3.5% NaCl solution. WC-17%Co alloy coatings were deposited on mild steel substrates by High Velocity Oxy-Fuel (HVOF) spray process. The layers of standard and crack free hard chromium coatings were prepared by using Direct Current (DC) and Pulse Current (PC) electroplating process on the mild steel substrates. Hard chromium coatings was characterized as a reference material, to verify whether HVOF-sprayed coatings are suitable as a hard chromium coatings replacement. The microstructure of the coatings was examined by OM, SEM and XRD. Standard hard... 

2-Thenoyltrifluoroacetone has been offered as a mobile carrier in organic phase for the transport and selective separation of yttrium from aqueous media using a liquid membrane system. Perceivably, the use of n-propylamine (PA) in the source phase enhances the transport of yttrium ions. The extraction and stripping conditions have entirely been evaluated and explained. The suggested method has been utilized for the separation of yttrium(III) from its binary mixtures with strontium(II) and some other cations such as Ni2+, Co2+, Ag+, Fe2+, Al3+, Cu2+, Hg2+and Cs+ in aqueous solutions of pH 5.4 in the presence of PA, while 1 M nitric acid was acting as a stripping agent in the receiving... 

Multi-application execution in Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), a promising way to utilize GPU resources, is still challenging. Some pieces of prior work (e.g., spatial multitasking) have limited opportunity to improve resource utilization, while other works, e.g., simultaneous multi-kernel, provide fine-grained resource sharing at the price of unfair execution. This paper proposes a new multi-application paradigm for GPUs, called NURA, that provides high potential to improve resource utilization and ensures fairness and Quality-of-Service (QoS). The key idea is that each streaming multiprocessor (SM) executes Cooperative Thread Arrays (CTAs) belong to only one application (similar to the... 

AIDS causes increasing mortality every year. With advancements in nanomedicine, different nanomaterials (NMs) have been applied to treat AIDS and overcome its limitations. Among different NMs, nanoparticles (NPs) can act as nanocarriers due to their enhanced solubility, sustained release, targeting abilities and facilitation of drug-dose reductions. This review discusses recent advancements in therapeutics for AIDS/HIV using various NMs, mainly focused on three classifications: polymeric, liposomal and inorganic NMs. Polymeric dendrimers, polyethylenimine-NPs, poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)-NPs, chitosan and the use of liposomal-based delivery systems and inorganic NPs, including gold and... 

Smart drug delivery systems (DDSs) have attracted the attention of many scientists, as carriers that can be stimulated by changes in environmental parameters such as temperature, pH, light, electromagnetic fields, mechanical forces, etc. These smart nanocarriers can release their cargo on demand when their target is reached and the stimulus is applied. Using the techniques of nanotechnology, these nanocarriers can be tailored to be target-specific, and exhibit delayed or controlled release of drugs. Temperature-responsive nanocarriers are one of most important groups of smart nanoparticles (NPs) that have been investigated during the past decades. Temperature can either act as an external...