Sharif Digital Repository

The opinions of other people are an essential piece of information for making informed decisions. With the increase in using the Internet, today the web becomes an excellent source of user's viewpoints in different domains. However, in one hand, the growing volume of opinionated text and on the other hand, complexity caused by contrast in user opinion, makes it almost impossible to read all of these reviews and make an informed decision. These requirements have encouraged a new line of research on mining user reviews, which is called opinion mining. User's viewpoints could change during the time, and this is an important issue for companies. One of the most challenging problems of opinion... 

In this paper, an approach is proposed to estimate the location of leakages in liquid transmission lines with a high accuracy. First, the mathematical model is analyzed and a closedform solution is provided for the partial differential equations of the pipeline. Next, the leakage location is calculated using the closed-form solution. The calculations are applied to various leakages and are extended to a case in which the pressure and flowrate do not converge to constant values. Considering a singleleakage pipeline system, a linear observer is utilized to estimate the leakage location with reduced errors. The simulation results are presented and the proposed method is verified by changing the... 

In this study, a homotopy analysis method was used to obtain analytic solutions to predict dynamic pull-in instability of an electrostatically-actuated microbeam. The nonlinear describing equation of a microbeam affected by an electric field, including the fringing field effect, was obtained based on strain gradient elasticity, couple stress, and classical theory. Influences of different parameters on dynamic pull-in instability were investigated. The equation of motion of a double-clamped microbeam was discretized and solved by using Galerkin's method via mode summation. The resulting non-linear differential equation was also solved by using the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The influence... 

The spinal cord is a structure of nervous tissue that primarily transmits nerve signals from the motor cortex to the body and from the afferent fibers of the sensory neurons to the sensory cortex. It is enveloped by three layers of meninges. Covering provides a supportive framework for the cerebral and cranial vasculature and protects the central nervous system (CNS) from mechanical damage. Surgical operation in the vicinity of the spinal cord is complicated and risky because it exposes it to probably irreversible damage. To reduce the risk of these operations, attempts have been made to remove the tumor using safer methods like waterjet operation. In these methods, the waterjet and spinal... 

A novel intelligent semi-active control system for an eleven degrees of freedom passenger car's suspension system using magnetorheological (MR) damper with neuro-fuzzy (NF) control strategy to enhance desired suspension performance is proposed. In comparison with earlier studies, an improvement in problem modeling is made. The proposed method consists of two parts: a fuzzy control strategy to establish an efficient controller to improve ride comfort and road handling (RCH) and an inverse mapping model to estimate the force needed for a semi-active damper. The fuzzy logic rules are extracted based on Sugeno inference engine. The inverse mapping model is based on an artificial neural network... 

Using CNG as an additive for gasoline is a proper choice due to higher octane number of CNG enriched gasoline with respect to that of gasoline. As a result, it is possible to use gasoline with lower octane number in the engine. This would also mean the increase of compression ratio in SI engines resulting in higher performance and lower gasoline consumption. Over the years, the use of simulation codes to model the thermodynamic cycle of an internal combustion engine have developed tools for more efficient engine designs and fuel combustion. In this study, a thermodynamic cycle simulation of a conventional four-stroke spark-ignition engine has been developed. The model is used to study the... 

With the declining energy resources and increase of pollutant emissions, a great deal of efforts has been focused on the development of alternatives for fossil fuels. One of the promising alternative fuels to gasoline in the internal combustion engine is natural gas [1-5]. The application of natural gas in current internal combustion engines is realistic due to its many benefits. The higher thermal efficiency due to the higher octane value and lower exhaust emissions including CO2 as a result of the lower carbon to hydrogen ratio of the fuel are the two important feature of using CNG as an alternative fuel. It is well known that computer simulation codes are valuable economically as a cost... 

Gaining insight into possible vibratory responses of dynamical systems around their stable equilibria is an essential step, which must be taken before their design and application. The results of such a study can significantly help prevent instability in closed-loop stabilized systems by avoiding the excitation of the system in the neighborhood of its resonance. This paper investigates nonlinear oscillations of a rotary inverted pendulum (RIP) with a full-state feedback controller. Lagrange’s equations are employed to derive an accurate 2-DoF mathematical model, whose parameter values are extracted by both the measurement and 3D modeling of the real system components. Although the governing... 

A suction-controlled ring device has been developed to continuously measure the coefficient of lateral soil pressure in deformable unsaturated soil samples from the at-rest to the active condition under application of increasing vertical pressure and controlled matric suction. The device incorporates a thin aluminum specimen ring equipped with horizontal strain gages for recording the lateral soil strains. In addition, a sensor recording water volume changes is utilized to continuously monitor the degree of saturation of the soil sample during tests. The matric suction within the soil texture is controlled using the axis translation technique. In order to verify the performance of the ring...