Sharif Digital Repository

Filtered mode shapes are used to detect the presence, location, size and shape of the delaminations in composite laminated plates with various boundary conditions. This method is the extension of a previous study by the authors on the delamination detection in the beams using irregularities of the mode shapes. The mode shapes are filtered to separate the smooth and irregular parts. Presence and situation of delamination affects these separated parts, and these effects are used to detect the delamination. Here, two new indicators, named 'slope of smooth part' and 'irregularities in the slope of smooth part', are introduced to increase the clarity of detected damage and reduce the noisy... 

Porous NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) was fabricated by sintering of compressed constituent elements pre-mixed with NaCl or urea spacer holders. Effect of spacer to metal volume-ratio (r S) on shape, size, distribution and openness of the voids was probed by optical metallography, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to determine the SMA transformation temperatures. Controllable void geometry helping osteoblast proliferation and bone cell growth was gained by addition of the spacers. At r S = 0.7, percentage of the open pores reached 52% while at r S = 1.43, interconnected pores with 200 to 500 μm diameter were... 

Presence of bubbles affects quality of the lead silicate glass (LSG) samples. This paper presents the most recent results obtained on formation and collapse of bubbles in LSG melts. Main sources of the bubbles are dissolved gases and redox reactions. A foamy layer full of bubbles rapidly forms at top of the molten phase. Effect of viscosity and density of the melt on content and ascension rate of the bubbles are investigated. Number and mean diameter of the bubbles and thickness of the top bubbly layer are calculated from gas volume measurements and image analysis via J software  

The energy supply system of Uzbekistan is not well positioned to meet the rapidly rising domestic energy demand of this country. Uzbekistan's current energy supply system is outdated and has very low diversity, as most of its energy comes from natural gas. In addition to producing immense amounts of greenhouse gas and environmental pollution, this situation is untenable considering the eventual depletion of fossil fuel reserves of this country. Uzbekistan's renewable energy sector is highly undeveloped, a situation that can be attributed to the lack of coherent policies for the advancement of renewable power and the low price of natural gas. However, this country has significant untapped... 

Relativistic electrons, generated in the interaction of an ultra-intense laser pulse with plasma in front of a high-Z solid target, when passing near the nuclei of the solid target produce several MeV highly collimated Bremsstrahlung gamma beam, which can be used to induce photo-nuclear reactions. In this work the possibility of photo-induced transmutation (γn) of a nuclear waste of 126Sn with a half-life of 100,000 years into 125Sn with a half-life of 9.64 days was investigated for the first time. Calculations based on the available experimental data show that the Bremsstrahlung γ beam generated by irradiating a 2 mm thick tantalum target as a converter with 1020Wcm-2μm2 and 10 Hz table-top... 

High-temperature (1200-1350°C) corrosion of fused-cast ZrO2-Al2O3-SiO2 (ZAS) refractory contacting lead silicate glass melt (LSG) containing 68.5wt% PbO was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), x-ray diffraction (XRD), thickness measurement and Archimedes density measurement. ZAS durability was improved by baddeliyete content and deteriorated with open porosity proportion, corundum percentage and eutectic mixture presence. Diffusion of lead resulted in fusion-temperature lowering of the glassy layers embedded within the ZAS particles. Heating caused viscosity drop across the interface, loosening the... 

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) represent a new method for simultaneous wastewater treatment and biological electricity generation. In this study, petrochemical wastewater with 8000 mg/l of chemical oxygen demand was examined in a membrane-less single chamber MFC. Effects of wastewater concentration as substrate for microbial oxidation, and anode material (stainless steel or carbon brush) were investigated as designing parameters  

This article reports the experimental and theoretical results for a spark ignition engine working with compressed natural gas as a fuel. The theoretical part of this work uses a zero-dimensional, multi-zone combustion model in order to predict nitric oxide (NO) emission in a spark ignition (SI) engine. The basic concept of the model is the division of the burned gas into several distinct zones for taking into account the temperature stratification of the burned mixture during combustion. This is especially important for accurate NO emissions predictions, since NO formation is strongly temperature dependent. During combustion, 12 products are obtained by chemical equilibrium via Gibbs energy... 

Background: Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) wastewater from a petrochemical complex was utilized as a fuel in the anode of a microbial fuel cell (MFC). Effects of two important parameters including different dilutions of the PTA wastewater and pH on the performance of the MFC were investigated. Methods: The MFC used was a membrane-less single chamber consisted of a stainless steel mesh as anode electrode and a carbon cloth as cathode electrode. Both power density and current density were calculated based on the projected surface area of the cathode electrode. Power density curve method was used to specify maximum power density and internal resistance of the MFC. Results: Using 10-times,... 

We provide upper and lower bounds on the escape rate of the Bhattacharyya process corresponding to polar codes where transmission takes place over the the binary erasure channel. More precisely, we bound the exponent of the number of sub-channels whose Bhattacharyya constant falls in a fixed interval [a, b]. Mathematically this can be stated as bounding the limit limn →∞ 1/n ln ℙ(Zn ∈ [a,b]), where Z n is the Bhattacharyya process. The quantity ℙ (Zn ∈ [a,b]) represents the fraction of sub-channels that are still un-polarized at time n  

We investigate the stochasticity in temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. We show that the angular fluctuation of the temperature is a Markov process with a Markov angular scale, ΘMarkov = 1.01 -0.07+0.09. We characterize the complexity of the CMB fluctuations by means of a Fokker-Planck or Langevin equation and measure the associated Kramers-Moyal coefficients for the fluctuating temperature field T (n̂)and its increment, ∇ T = T(n̂2). Through this method we show that temperature fluctuations in the CMB have fat tails compared to a Gaussian distribution. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA  

We report the results of our numerical investigation on the temperature dependence of the characteristics of the cylindrical gate-all-around Si nanowire field effect transistor (Si-NW-FET). Assuming the effect of temperature on the energy band structure of Si just like the effect of strain, we simulate the transistor characteristics at various temperatures (50 K ≤ T ≤ 300 K). In this investigation, we demonstrate the temperature dependence of the transistor sub-threshold swing and the threshold voltage are both linear functions of the temperature, represented by 61.5 × (T/300) + 63.4 (mV/decade) and 220140 × (T/300-1) (mV). By calculating the IDS - T characteristics for VDS = 0.4 V and... 

Cupric oxide (CuO) nanostructures are grown on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass substrate using aqueous solution approach. The concentration of precursor's solution has significant impact on morphology of CuO nanostructure. By varying concentration of precursor, the growth of two different morphologies (oriented nanosheets and nanoleaves) is achieved. X-ray diffraction pattern and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals formation of pure CuO crystalline phase. Mott-Schottky characteristic confirms the p-type semiconducting nature. Ultrathin structures of nanoleaves lead to higher light trapping and light absorption in visible-NIR region. The nanoleaves film has lower bandgap in... 

Owing to the expensive and time-consuming nature of durability experiments, finite element based durability analysis is quite prevalent in the automotive industry. Numerical fatigue life analyses are typically divided into two different categories, the quasi-static methods which are faster and the dynamic methods which are more accurate. The aim of this paper is to compare the inertia relief and modal dynamic approaches in terms of formulation, accuracy and computation time. The chosen case study is the fatigue life of the vehicle body which is considered the main load-bearing component in a vehicle. By utilizing multi-body dynamics model and driving the vehicle on different standardized... 

The food industry is dealing with the challenge of preserving fruits and vegetables and extending their shelf life, so the methods of food preservation have been investigated. Pathogens causing intestinal infections have been identified as a major cause of human disease; therefore, efforts should be made to reduce these pathogens in fruits and vegetables. Essential oils extracted from herbs and edible plants have natural antimicrobial additives. Due to their low water solubility, high volatility, and strong organoleptic qualities, essential oils are not commonly used to reduce microbial growth in fruits and vegetables. To overcome these challenges, encapsulation of essential oils in... 

Through a fast, simple, low cost, surfactant-free and convenient microwave-assisted route, narcis-like ZnO nanostructures (10-15 nm size) with flower diameters in the range of 1-2.5 μm were synthesized. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and room temperature photoluminescence (PL) measurements were used to characterize the produced ZnO nanostructures. The principle raw materials - ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) and zinc acetate dihydrate [Zn(CH3COO)2·2H2O] - were both inexpensive. The method was fast, simple and surfactant-free capable of producing larger quantities of zinc oxide... 

The excursion set approach is a framework for estimating how the number density of nonlinear structures in the cosmic web depends on the expansion history of the universe and the nature of gravity. A key part of the approach is the estimation of the first-crossing distribution of a suitably chosen barrier by random walks having correlated steps: The shape of the barrier is determined by the physics of non-linear collapse, and the correlations between steps by the nature of the initial density fluctuation field. We describe analytic and numerical methods for calculating such first up-crossing distributions. While the exact solution can be written formally as an infinite series, we show how to... 

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) is a promising metal-free catalyst for environmental remediation. However, its practical applications have been limited due to insufficient solar-light responsivity. Hetero-element doping and the construction of heterostructures, comprised of g-CN and other band-matched semiconductors could be considered to overcome these drawbacks. In the present work, a series of 2D/3D heterostructures comprised of a few layers of boron-doped g-CN (B-CN) anchored on sea urchin-like Bi2S3 (BS) particles (B-CN@BS) were successfully synthesized. The catalytic performances of B-CN@BS composites were assessed for the photo-reduction of Cr(VI) and in-situ generation of H2O2 under... 

Wastewater of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) from a petrochemical plant was examined in a membrane-less single chamber microbial fuel cell for the first time. Time course of voltage during the cell operation cycle had two steady phases, which refers to the fact that metabolism of microorganisms was shifted from highly to less biodegradable carbon sources. The produced power density was 31.8 mW m-2 (normalized per cathode area) and the calculated coulombic efficiency was 2.05 % for a COD removal of 74 % during 21 days. The total removal rate of different pollutants in the PTA wastewater was observed in the following order: (acetic acid) > (benzoic acid) > (phthalic acid) > (terephthalic...