Sharif Digital Repository

The potential of end-users to modify their consumption pattern makes them an interesting resource for providing energy flexibility in energy communities. Thus, active end-users require sufficient incentives and automated trading and management schemes. In order to enable increased small-scale end-users participation for flexibility service provision, a new design for flexibility trading is required to model the behavior of different agents and their interactions in energy communities. The novelty of our work lies in proposing an iterative game-based approach in which all agents - consisting of the distribution system operator (DSO), aggregators, and customers- can determine their decision... 

For many years, entrepreneurs were considered the change agents of their societies. They use their initiative and innovative minds to solve problems and create value. In the aftermath of the digital transformation era, a new group of entrepreneurs have emerged who are called transformational entrepreneurs. They use various digital platforms to create value. Surprisingly, despite their importance, they have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, this research scrutinizes the elements affecting transformational entrepreneurship in digital platforms. To do so, the authors have considered a two-phase method. First, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Matrices d’Impacts Croises... 

The wave functions for calculating 13C nuclear magnetic chemical shifts of 22 groups of organic compounds (64 molecules) in chloroform solution have been optimally selected using factorial design as a multivariate technique. Our own N-layered integrated molecular orbital and molecular mechanics approach was applied for molecules with different types of carbons. The results have obtained in very good agreement with the experimental values. An additional series (58 molecules) have been used as test sets and their results confirm the validity and reliability of the approaches. The total root mean square deviation and correlation coefficient of predictions (433 carbons) are 1.88 and .9994,... 

Switched Reluctance Motors (SRMs) are widely used in high-speed and low voltage applications because of their attractive features such as robustness and simplicity. No winding on the rotor of this type of motors allows reaching high speed which is desired for many applications. Drive circuits of SRMs also play an important role in their performance and operation. In this paper, a new bifilar drive circuit for this type of motors has been proposed. This novel configuration has been tested and investigated by PSIM software. Results show that the new bifilar drive circuit highly reduces the voltage stresses on semiconductor switches, and also considerably reduces the switching losses which are... 

In the present study, the performance of three moving bed biofilm reactors (MBBRs) has been evaluated in series with anaerobic/anoxic/oxic (A2O) units for simultaneous removal of organic matter and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) from a synthetic wastewater with characteristics similar to those of a typical municipal wastewater. Response surface methodology based on central composite design was used to investigate the effects of nitrate recycle ratio, hydraulic retention time (HRT), and influent chemical oxygen demand (COD) on the organic and nutrient removal and optimization process. The optimized values of influent COD, HRT, and R were 462 mg/L, 10 h, and 3.52, respectively. The... 

Since the air density reduces as altitude increases, operation of small wind turbines (SWTs), which usually have no pitch adjustment, remains challenging at high altitudes due largely to the reduction of starting aerodynamic torque. By reducing the moment of inertia through the use of hollow blades, this study aims to speed up the starting while maintaining the structural integrity of the blades and high output power. A horizontal axis turbine with hollow blades was designed for two sites in Iran with altitude of 500 m and 3000 m. The design variables are the distributions of the chord, twist, and shell thickness and the improvement of output power and starting are the design goals.... 

A micromechanical phase-field model is utilized to study the evolution of nanostructure Al3Sc phase in Al-Sc alloy. We study the formation of Al3Sc precipitates in an Al-Sc alloy by using an elastic phase-field model. Since the precipitates of Al3Sc phase are fully coherent with the Al matrix, the elastic energy will have an inuence on the resulting morphology. We have studied the effects of elastic strain energies on shape evolution of Al3Sc phase, numerically. The simulated nano-structures evolve from spherical to cubic shapes. The equilibrium shape of the coherent Al3Sc phase is found to be determined by minimizing the sum of the elastic and interfacial energies through the phase-field... 

Single-crystal hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanorods and nanogranules have been synthesized successfully by a mechanochemical process using two distinct experimental procedures. The experimental outcomes are characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. In this work, the feasibility of using polymeric milling media to prepare hydroxyapatite nanoparticles is described. The resulting hydroxyapatite powder exhibits an average size of about 20 to 23 nm. Final results indicate that the proposed synthesis strategy provides a facile pathway to obtain single-crystal HAp with high quality and suitable morphology. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights... 

Hartree-Fock and density functional theory methods at gauge invariant atomic orbital approach with different simplest basis sets were employed for the computation of chemical shifts. The wave functions for calculating gas-phase 1H and 13C chemical shifts have been optimally selected using empirical models. The effects of electron correlation treatment, triple-ξ valance shell, diffuse function, and polarization function on calculated chemical shifts have been discussed. Through empirical scaling of shielding, accurate predictions of 1H chemical shifts are achieved for the molecules studied, when considering small Pople basis sets. Gas phase experimental 1H chemical shifts in alcohols, amines... 

Cell-based diagnosis and the introduction of personalized drugs are key factors, motivating researchers to discover an efficacious tool for effective cell isolation. Optimal systems were presented through the finite element method by adjusting the arrangement of hydrodynamic forces within a serpentine micro-channel, which managed to separate different cell lines in addition to their focusing. Considering the parameters of flow, particle, and geometry, two optimal serpentine systems (fixed and variable slope) were presented and the accuracy of the simulation results was verified by their comparison with the experimental findings of the optimized microchannel. The results indicated that the... 

An extensive GIAO (gauge-including atomic orbital) calculation has been made within Hartree-Fock (HF), density functional theory (DFT) and second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2), in conjunction with selected basis sets for the prediction of 19F chemical shift values of 26 different F nuclei in small fluorine-containing molecules. The effect of four factors, namely, electron correlation treatment, triple-ξ valence shell, diffuse function and polarization function were assessed using a systematic comparison of the results. Based on types of series, the optimized wave functions were proposed for different molecules. An additional comparison of the principal components of the... 

The extensive quantum-chemical calculations are assessed for prediction of the 19F nuclear magnetic shielding constants. The methods within domain of density functional theory (DFT) and ab initio, Hartree-Fock (HF), and second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) are employed for calculation of the 19F chemical shielding constants for a series of 30 small fluorine-containing molecules. The importance of inclusion of four factors, namely, electron correlation treatment, triple-ξ valence shell, diffuse function, and polarization function on calculating the fluorine NMR chemical shieldings for a variety of Pople's standard basis sets at gauge invariant atomic orbital (GIAO) and... 

The effects of fluorine doping on the electronic structure of LaO1−xFxFeAs superconductor have been investigated by ab initio density functional theory using pseudopotential quantum espresso code. Firstly, we have studied the role of fluorine doping on the electronic structure of LaO1−xFxFeAs by calculation of band structure, density of states, and Fermi surfaces at various doping levels x = 0.00, 0.25, and 0.50. The lattice parameters and ionic position have been determined by optimizing crystal structure. Our results show that doping decreases cell volume similar to mechanical pressure and shifts the bands and states near the Fermi level toward the lower energies. According to the Fermi... 

Volatile components of saffron from different regions of Iran were extracted by ultrasonic-assisted solvent extraction (USE) and were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Self-modeling curve resolution (SMCR) was proposed for resolving the co-eluted GC-MS peak clusters into pure chromatograms and mass spectra. Multivariate curve resolution-objective function minimization (MCR-FMIN) and multivariate curve resolution-alternating least square (MCR-ALS) were successfully used for this purpose. The accuracy of the qualitative and quantitative results was improved considerably using SMCR techniques. Comparison of the results of saffron from different regions of Iran showed... 

The volatile components of Iranian saffron were extracted using ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE) technique and then were separated and detected by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Variables affecting the extraction procedure were screened by using a 25-1 fractional factorial design and among them; sample amount, solvent volume, solvent ratio and extraction time were optimized by applying a rotatable central composite design (CCD). The optimum values of factors were: 2.38 g sample, 29.04 mL solvent, 69.23% MeOH solvent ratio and 71.8 min for the extraction time. Forty constituents were identified for Iranian saffron by GC-MS representing 90% of the total peak area. The major... 

Targeted drug delivery using nanocarriers (NCs) is one of the novel techniques that has recently been used to improve drug delivery to the Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) disease. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the surface density of NCs (SDNC) adhered via ligand-receptor binding to the inner wall of AAA. For this purpose, fluid–structure interaction (FSI) analysis was first performed for the patient-specific and ideal AAA models. Then, by injecting NCs into the aortic artery, the values of SDNC adhered to and interacted with AAA wall were obtained. Two types of NCs, liposomes, and solid particles in four different diameters, were used to investigate the effect of the diameter and... 

Microfluidic experiments have found wide applications in medical sciences and engineering, such as cell separation and focusing. In the present study, focusing and separation of particles with different sizes and densities were investigated by designing inertial microfluidic devices. The microfluidic channel is designed by analyzing the induced forces on the particles. In the designing process, the objective was to focus and separate the particles in the shortest length of the channel with the lowest possible cycles and high efficiency. The simulation is then used for analyzing the two proposed geometries to evaluate their particle separation and focusing ability, named convergent and... 

Accurate power factor definitions are of great importance for industries due to the fact that they affect the billing strategy. They also considerably affect the generation and distribution losses of the power system. At the moment, there are some ambiguities in power definitions to be used for this purpose. In recent years, because of a rapid growth in industry and the use of variable loads such as electrical furnaces and variable speed motors, there is a need for fast compensators that are capable of tracking load changes. One of these facilities is TSC, a capacitor bank that is controlled by static switches (thyristors). In this paper, the performance of these compensators in power factor... 

We propose novel techniques to find the optimal location, size, and power factor of distributed generation (DG) to achieve the maximum loss reduction for distribution networks. Determining the optimal DG location and size is achieved simultaneously using the energy loss curves technique for a pre-selected power factor that gives the best DG operation. Based on the network's total load demand, four DG sizes are selected. They are used to form energy loss curves for each bus and then for determining the optimal DG options. The study shows that by defining the energy loss minimization as the objective function, the time-varying load demand significantly affects the sizing of DG resources in... 

The problem of distributed generation (DG) optimization in distribution systems has normally been assessed by assuming a constant power (real and reactive) load model. Such assumptions may lead to inconsistent and misleading results about loss reduction, DG optimization and other subsequent calculations. In this paper, the effect of different types of demand, e.g. industrial, residential and commercial, and its time varying effects on distribution networks is investigated. Customer demand type is defined by the load model that is voltage dependent and the load patterns from real life hourly demand data. The study shows that by defining the energy loss minimization as the objective function,...