Sharif Digital Repository

Knee osteoarthritis is one of the most common musculoskeletal disorders, characterized by the gradual deterioration of the joint, reduced range of motion, chronic pain, and a decline in patients’ quality of life. This condition disrupts the neuromuscular system, leading to decreased motor coordination of the lower-limb muscles. The present study was designed to investigate the effects of a physiotherapy intervention on lower-limb muscle function as well as to analyze changes in muscle synergies in patients with knee osteoarthritis. Fourteen patients with moderate knee osteoarthritis were compared with eleven age-matched healthy individuals before and after undergoing physiotherapy treatment.... 

Obesity is a worldwide growing health challenge affecting ~30% of the world's population. Increased rate of disc degeneration and herniation, low back pain and surgery has been reported in obese individuals. Although obesity-related low back diseases have multifactorial etiology, presumably greater mechanical loads on the spine of heavier individuals during their daily activities may be considered as a risk factor. Likely larger trunk muscle sizes, disc sizes and thus passive stiffness in heavier individuals may however partly or fully offset the effect of their additional body weight on the spinal loads. In absence of in vivo approaches, the present study aims to construct subject-specific... 

Obesity is a worldwide growing health challenge affecting ~30% of the world's population. Increased rate of disc degeneration and herniation, low back pain and surgery has been reported in obese individuals. Although obesity-related low back diseases have multifactorial etiology, presumably greater mechanical loads on the spine of heavier individuals during their daily activities may be considered as a risk factor. Likely larger trunk muscle sizes, disc sizes and thus passive stiffness in heavier individuals may however partly or fully offset the effect of their additional body weight on the spinal loads. In absence of in vivo approaches, the present study aims to construct subject-specific... 

Due to adverse health problems with lumbar spine among professional drivers associated with exposure to whole body vibration (WBV), studying the effect of vibrations and parameters influencing WBV is of great importance. This study aims to simulate whole body vibration for a ground vehicle occupant and calculate loads that lumbar spine tolerate during harmonic sinusoidal vibrations. Moreover, this study determines the effect of lumbar spine angle, seat specifications (angles and materials), and vibration frequency on the results. To this end, a detailed viscoelastic lumbar spine (L1-S1) has been modeled using FE method which has been replaced with the simplified spine model in HYBRID III... 

Several geometrically-detailed passive finite element (FE) models of the lumbar spine have been developed and validated under in vitro loading conditions. As these models are devoid of muscles, they are either not used to simulate in vivo activities or muscle forces are modeled by a hypothetical compressive follower load (FL). A number of symmetric and asymmetric static tasks were first simulated using a validated musculoskeletal model of the thoracolumbar spine to predict trunk muscle forces. The predicted muscle forces along with the gravity loading were then applied to a passive FE model of the L4-L5 motion segment (developed and validated here) to estimate load sharing among the disc,... 

In this project we plan to propose a mechanism for controlling the profile of vertebra displacment and intera-discal pressure in in-vitro tests. Spineis the one of the most important members of the human musculoskeletal system. Health and stability of the spine help the people to moves on two legs. So any problems with this organ, causing movement problems and pain. For the treatment of spinal diseases, several methods such as surgery, insertion of implants and stabilizing were used. To ensure the accuracy of these methods, laboratory examination is essential. One of the ways to test these interventions, the implementation of in vitro tests on samples obtained from the bodies of the spine.... 

In this thesis, a Segmented Gama Scanning System for measuring total activity of the low/intermediate level radioactive waste drums is designed and a prototype 3-segmented commercial system is manufactured by using NaI detectors. The optimum distance of detector from drum surface and the optimum number of detectors on reconstruction of the radioactivity of the waste drum were studied by MCNP simulations. In addition, the effects of inhomogeneous distribution of radioactivity, the addition of lead filters to detectors, the change in collimator length and the asymmetrical placement of a drum on the rotary plate were also examined by the MCNP calculations. In the absence of a real radioactive... 

80% of people in all over the world, experience Low Back Pain (LBP) once in their lives. LBP leads to dysfunction of spine. About 25% of LBP relates to the intervertebral disks which in the critical cases, a Posterior Lumbar Surgery (PLS) on the one or more lumbar disks should be done. Due to the some procedure such as retracting, cutting or denervation of muscles, PLS can hurt trunk muscles and spine. Thus, investigation of LBP and postoperative complications of PLS can help us in recognition of causes of LBP and PLS complications and modification of PLS approaches. The objective of this research was investigation of effects of LBP and PLS on the biomechanical function of spine. Pattern of... 

Manual material handling (MMH) activities are identified as risk factors for occupational low back pain (LBP). Task-related variables including load and posture characteristics are required as input into these models and tools for estimation of trunk external moment. Biomechanical modeling studies that aim to mathematically estimate low back loads currently need an inevitable parallel time-consuming in vivo study in an equipped laboratory to measure trunk posture under physical activities. Inertial sensors as a portable, accurate, almost inexpensive, and small device could be very helpful in order to capture the kinematic data of movement in human activities. My master thesis aims to... 

Biomechanical models are indispensable tools in predictions of muscle forces and joint loads towards design of prevention and treatment programs. In most of these models intervertebral joints are modeled as hinge joints thus neglecting the existing translational degrees of freedom (DOFs). This simplification can alter the results of the model as changes in model kinematics affect the prediction of the joint and muscle forces. The current study aims to evaluate the likely effect of this simplification on the predictions of the musculoskeletal model of AnyBody Modeling System (AMS) for muscle forces and spinal loads. Clinical application of this study is in assessing the limitation of... 

Nowadays, we are witnesses of deaths caused by cancer in large statistical amounts. Vast number of investigations are conducted for anticancer drug evaluation on human and animal cells using traditional two-dimensional and three-dimensional culturing platforms. However, most of them are not successful due to the lack of in-vivo relevant microenvironment in these platforms. One of the best cancer in-vitro cultures is the tumor spheroid which is a spherical cellular aggregation. By culturing these tumor spheroids in a microfluidic chip, it is possible to mimic the in-vivo microenvironment elements such as nutrient and metabolite gradients. Here we present a microfluidic device fabricated using... 

In this thesis, we address the problem of joint Range, Angle and Doppler frequency estimation in FDA-MIMO radars. Target parameter estimation is among the most important areas of research in radar signal processing. In this field of research, there are numerous challenges to overcome, including low estimation accuracy, a scarcity of snapshots, and the high computational complexity of algorithms. For this reason, diverse methods have been developed to solve this problem. Each of these methods has its own features and capabilities, focusing on one or more of the existing challenges. The application of these methods also depends on various factors, including the signal structure, which is... 

Melt blending of polymers is a rather cheap and easy approach for obtaining new set of properties compared to synthesizing new polymeric materials. For the same reason, binary and ternary polyethylene blends are made to provide added value for different applications. Polyethylene blends are commonly composed of high density polyethylene (HDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE). Although the Mechanical and physical properties of polyethylene binary blends have been studied extensively, microstructure and mechanical properties of polyethylene ternary blends have been the subject of very few studies. In this work, samples with 40-60 Wt. % HDPE and... 

Supersonic intakes with mixed compression has an appropriate performance in the critical point, but in the subcritical performance, when inlet mass flow rate is reduced to a certain amount, a self-sustained instability occurs in the flow. In this case, instability appears in the form of shock waves system oscillation which is called Buzz phenomenon. An axisymmetric supersonic air intake with mixed compression which is designed for a Mach number of 2 has been investigated experimentally in order to study buzz frequency. The intake has been experimented in different Mach numbers, angles of attack and mass flow rates. Besides, the intake with wind tunnel wall has been modeled and analyzed in... 

Vibration control is one of the most critical aspects of designing space structures, as it can significantly impact the performance and operational lifespan of satellites. The launch phase is the most sensitive and critical stage in the satellite mission lifecycle, as intense vibrations are generated and transmitted to the satellite during this phase. To mitigate the severity of these transmitted vibrations, vibration isolators are employed. The objective of this study is to design and model a vibration isolator to control the vibrations transmitted from the launcher to the satellite during launch. To achieve this, an extensive investigation into vibration isolators used in the space... 

The present research aims to examine the influence of response format on the reliability and validity of grammaticality judgment tests, which will also reveal some facts about the superiority of each format. To this end, the grammaticality judgment (GJ) test developed by Gass (1994) was selected as the instrument of the study, which was manipulated in terms of the response format while the original items remained intact. Thus, in the first phase of the study, a multiple-choice GJ test (MCGJT) was constructed to be compared with the traditional form, i.e., the dichotomous type (DGJT). In an interval of a month, the two tests were administered to a group of 110 engineering-major BS students at... 

Today many videos in an interval of a particular scene in a different view angle to each other are filmed. Use these videos are used in numerous fields. Time synchronization between the video, is the basis for their use. In order to provide an automated process for creating time synchronization between the video, numerous studies have been conducted that each requires specific conditions are to achieve the desired result. The biggest challenge of this problem, which appears when the camera recorded video viewing angles, high and low, and when filming the shared vision between them, jump frames is taken. Players are coordinated. In experiments conducted on different data sets, the average... 

Lean premixed flames bring both benefits and challenges to combustion systems. While they have low emission levels and high efficiencies, they are also very susceptible to combustion instabilities. Low swirl burners have been shown to be very capable in stabilizing lean premixed flames.
In this thesis, behavior of low swirl flames under conditions of variable equivalence ratio (0.6 – 0.8), mean flow velocity (3.5 – 5.5 m/s), and excitation frequency is investigated. In static stability diagram of the flame, a region is observed in which stability mode of the flame is dependent on the path that takes the flame to its operating point (hysteresis region). Increasing the recess distance of... 

In the first work, a superhydrophobic polystyrene hollow fiber (PS–HF) was synthesized by electrospinning and used in microextraction of trazine herbicides from aquatic media followed by gas chromatography mass spectrometric (GC–MS) determination. Effects of different parameters influencing the extraction efficiency including the solvent extraction and its amount, the desorbing solvent and its amount, extraction time and ionic strength were optimized. The characteristic properties of the hollow fiber were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The limits of detection and quantification of the method under optimized condition were 2 and 6 ng L-1, respectively. The relative standard... 

This thesis is concerned with measurement and analysis of noise for an underwater propeller by means of numerical and experimental methods. A major cause of noise in buoyant bodies is the propeller. Detection and measurement of such noise is a part of various engineering and maritime applications. Thus detecting the sources of sound and ways of its propagation under water is the first step in many engineering and maritime applications of underwater acoustics which leads to noise reduction and control. Due to its wide subject, this thesis presents a phenomenology of propeller noise and discusses numerical and experimental methods. In the section that deals with numerical methods, the...