Sharif Digital Repository

One of the important challenges in the auto industry is to reduce the mass of the vehicle while meeting structural performance requirements for Crashworthiness, Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) etc. In this paper, a multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) of a car back-bonnet is investigated by using trie Response Surface Method (RSM). Firstly, a car body is fully surface modeled in CATIA and meshed in HYPERMESH software. Then, modal analysis of the finite element model is performed by NASTRAN software to find natural frequencies. Frequency map of that component is extracted and compared with a reference map to detect defects. Design of Experiments (DOE) methodologies is used for a... 

This paper presents a finite element method (FEM) free and forced lateral vibration analysis of beams made of functionally graded materials (FGMs). The temperature dependency of material properties along with damping had not previously been taken into account in vibration analysis. In the present study, the material properties were assumed to be temperature-dependent, and were graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution of the volume fractions of the constituents. The natural frequencies were obtained for functionally graded (FG) beams with various boundary conditions. First, an FG beam was assumed to be isotropic (metal rich) and the results were compared... 

In this paper, effects of strain rate and mean strain on the cyclic behavior and the lifetime of aluminum-silicon alloys are investigated under thermo-mechanical and isothermal fatigue loadings. To achieve these goals, low cycle fatigue tests are accomplished at evaluated temperatures under various strain rates (by changing the loading frequency) and different strain ratios (minimum to maximum strain). Thermo-mechanical fatigue experiments are performed in an out-of-phase condition where the temperature varies between 50 and 250 °C. Various heating/cooling rates are taken into account to assess the strain rate effect and different starting temperatures are considered to study the mean strain... 

An algorithm for investigation of nonlinear systems by the transfinite element method is presented. Basically, the transformation techniques have been developed for linear systems. Nonlinear transient heat transfer of a thick FGM cylinder with temperature-dependent material properties is investigated in the present paper to clarify the proposed algorithm. Two main novelties of the present research are: (1) incorporating the temperature-dependency of the material properties in the thermal analysis which lead to highly non-linear governing equations and (2) proposing an updating numerical transfinite element procedure to solve the resulted highly nonlinear governing equations. To reduce the... 

In this paper, nonlinear radial and hoop thermoelastic stress analysis of rotating disk made of functionally graded material (FGM) with variable thickness is carried out by using the finite element method. In this method, one-dimensional second order elements with three nodes have been used. The geometrical and boundary conditions are in the shape of nonexistence of the pressure (zero radial stress) in both external and internal layers and zero displacement at the internal layer of rotating disk. Furthermore, it's assumed that heat distribution is as second order curve while material properties such as elasticity modulus, Poisson's ratio and thermal expansion coefficient vary by using a... 

In the present paper, fatigue analysis of an antiroll bar is investigated and compared for several criterions by using the finite element method (FEM) and also the experimental results. The validity of some of commonly used criterions in estimating fatigue life including Mcdiarmid and Von Misses theories is examined in which the inputs are considered as periodic data. For random inputs, some other methods are proposed including new suggestions and also a new criterion are established for estimation of fatigue life based on Mcdiarmid and Von Misses criterions. Prediction capability of mentioned new criterion which is evaluated for the antiroll bar, shows better results than other methods... 

Nonlinear transient heat transfer and thermoelastic stress analyses of a thick-walled FGM cylinder with temperature-dependent materials are performed by using the Hermitian transfinite element method. Temperature-dependency of the material properties has not been taken into account in transient thermoelastic analysis, so far. Due to the mentioned dependency, the resulting governing FEM equations of transient heat transfer are highly nonlinear. Furthermore, in all finite element analysis performed so far in the field, Lagrangian elements have been used. To avoid an artificial local heat source at the mutual boundaries of the elements, Hermitian elements are used instead in the present... 

Spinal fusion surgery is usually followed by accelerated degenerative changes in the unfused segments above and below the treated segment(s), i.e., adjacent segment disease (ASD). While a number of risk factors for ASD have been suggested, its exact pathogenesis remains to be identified. Finite element (FE) models are indispensable tools to investigate mechanical effects of fusion surgeries on post-fusion changes in the adjacent segment kinematics and kinetics. Existing modeling studies validate only their intact FE model against in vitro data and subsequently simulate post-fusion in vivo conditions. The present study provides a novel approach for the comprehensive validation of a lumbar... 

In this research, important parameters of a rack and pinion steering system in dynamic steady state and transient responses have been investigated. For this purpose, virtual model of a medium passenger car in ADAMS/Car has been used. The model has up to 121 kinematic degree of freedom and includes all components of the rack and pinion steering system. Several different experimental test results have confirmed the validity of the model. Sensitivity analysis have been done based on design of experiments (DOE) method. Two level fractional factorial designs have been selected for this purpose. Steady state cornering and step steer input are the analysis that used for this research. Understeering... 

More than 80% of desalination plants use the multi-stage flash (MSF) technology in the Persian Gulf and hence may have a severe irreversible impact on the marine environment. In the present study, geometrical, mixing, and turbulence characteristics of thermal-saline jets, similar to MSF effluents, are numerically investigated using the dynamic Smagorinsky sub-grid scale (SGS) model and UNESCO equation of state. For this purpose, two affecting dimensionless parameters are considered: (1) density ratio, which is thermal flux to salinity flux ratio, and (2) salinity Froude number. Examining the effects of density ratio reveals that the jet flow pattern only depends on the density ratio with a... 

In this paper, an automated adaptive remeshing procedure is presented for simulation of arbitrary shape crack growth in multiple cracked bodies. The Zienkiewicz-Zhu error estimator is employed in conjunction with the modified superconvergent patch recovery (SPR) technique to obtain more accurate estimation of error. A stability analysis is performed to determine active cracks from a set of competitive cracks. Various crack growth criteria together with the respective crack trajectory prediction are compared. Several numerical examples are illustrated to demonstrate the efficiency, robustness and accuracy of computational algorithm in the simulation of multiple crack growth  

In the present paper, the heat treatment effect on A356.0, a cast aluminum alloy which has been widely used in diesel engine cylinder heads, is investigated under out-of-phase thermo-mechanical fatigue and low cycle fatigue (at different temperatures) loadings. A typical heat treatment is applied to the material including 8. h solution at 535 °C, water quench and 3. h ageing at 180 °C. The experimental fatigue results show that the heat treatment process has considerable influence on mechanical and low cycle fatigue behaviors, especially at room temperature, but its effect on thermo-mechanical fatigue lifetime is not significant. The improvement in the strength can be explained by the... 

The biped walking robot demonstrates a stable limit cycle on shallow slopes. In previous researches, this passive gait was shown to be sensitive to ground slope and initial conditions. In this paper, we discuss the feedback stabilization of a biped robot by the "energy shaping" technique. Two designs are proposed to reduce the sensitivity of the biped walking robot to slope and initial conditions. In the first design, a moving mass actuator is located on each link of the robot. The actuators are used to shape the potential energy of the biped robot so that it tracks the potential energy of a known passive gait of a similar biped robot on a different slope. Although the method is applied to a...