Sharif Digital Repository

The 3D point clouds are increasingly being used in various application including safety-critical fields. It has recently been demonstrated that deep neural networks can successfully process 3D point clouds. However, these deep networks can be misclassified via 3D adversarial attacks intentionality designed to perturb some point cloud's features. These misclassifications may be due to the network's overreliance on features with unnecessary information in training sets. As such, identifying the features used by deep classifiers and removing features with unnecessary information from the training data can improve network's robustness against adversarial attacks. In this paper, the LPF-Defense... 

In software testing, different metrics are proposed to predict and compare test suites effectiveness. In this regard, Mutation Score (MS) is one of most accurate metrics. However, calculating MS needs executing test suites many times and it is not commonly used in industry. On the other hand, Line Coverage (LC) is a widely used metric which is calculated by executing test suites only once, although it is not as accurate as MS in terms of predicting and comparing test suites effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a novel test coverage metric, called Program State Coverage (PSC), which improves the accuracy of LC. PSC works almost the same as LC and it can be calculated by executing test... 

In this research, Araldite 2011 has been reinforced using different weight fractions of Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analyses were conducted and it has been shown that introduction of the RGO greatly changes the film morphology of the neat adhesive. Uni-axial tests were carried out to obtain the mechanical characteristics of the adhesive-RGO composites. It has been observed that introducing 0.5 wt% RGO enhances the ultimate tensile strength of the composites by 30%. In addition, single lap joints using neat adhesive and adhesive-RGO composites were fabricated to... 

Cellular networks provide widespread and reliable voice communications among subscribers through mobile voice channels. These channels benefit from superior priority and higher availability compared with conventional cellular data communication services, such as General Packet Radio Service, Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution, and High-Speed Downlink Packet Access. These properties are of major interest to applications that require transmitting small volumes of data urgently and reliably, such as an emergency call in vehicular applications. This encourages excessive research to make digital communication through voice channels feasible, leading to the emergence of Data over Voice (DoV)... 

The simulation results on viscoelastic fluid flows i sudden expansion geometry with different expansion ratios are presented. Oldroyd-B, linear Phan-Thien-Tanner (L-PTT) and Finitely Extensible Nonlinear Elastic (FENE-P) based constitutive equations were applied in two-dimensional Cartesian coordinates. The governing equations in transient and fully developed regions were solved using open source software called OpenFOAM. The flow patterns, including velocity profiles, shear stresses and first normal stress differences in some horizontal and vertical sections are illustrated. In addition, effects of the fluid type, flow dynamics and expansion ratio on the flow and vortex patterns in... 

Context: During the development process of a software program, regression testing is used to ensure that the correct behavior of the software is retained after updates to the source code. This regression testing becomes costly over time as the number of test cases increases and it makes sense to prioritize test cases in order to execute fault-detecting test cases as soon as possible. There are many coverage-based test case prioritization (TCP) methods that only use the code coverage data to prioritize test cases. By incorporating the fault-proneness estimations of code units into the coverage-based TCP methods, we can improve such techniques. Objective: In this paper, we aim to propose an... 

Holding yokes made of investment cast 17-4PH stainless steel were too soft (below 20. HRC). Optical microscopy of the parts showed that there is a high fraction of retained austenite after oil quench due to high amount of molybdenum found in parts as an impurity. Subzero treatment in liquid nitrogen after solution heat treating was used to convert retained austenite to martensite but parts became too brittle and fractured during post-heat treating machining. Double and triple aging at 538 °C (1000 °F) after subzero cooling was done on parts. Detailed fractography and tensile testing along with optical microscopy (OM) investigation proved that repeated aging at 538 °C (1000 °F) led to lower... 

Heavy-duty gas turbines are usually devised in power plants to generate electrical energy. Sudden failure in any of its parts or subdivisions will result in a decrement of the efficiency of the system or emergency shutdown of the system. The highest risk of failure in these turbines is subjected to the hot gas path (HGP) of the turbine. Due to the existence of uncertainty in diagnosing process or damage growth, in this research, a modified risk-based probabilistic failure analysis model using Bayesian networks (BN) was developed. First, a failure model was developed using the Fault Tree Analysis, and then it is transformed into a BN model. This model is capable of predicting and diagnosing... 

First stage nozzles are considered as one of the most critical components in the heavy-duty gas turbines because of their operational in-service condition in the hot gas path. In the present research, the failure analysis of a first stage nozzle in a 159 MW gas turbine is investigated in order to specify the modes and mechanisms of the failure and their root causes. Various examinations including macroscopic and visual inspection of the nozzle outer surface, the micro examination of the fracture surface, chemical analysis and metallographic analysis were carried out to complete the investigation. The micro and macro examinations revealed cracks, erosion and oxidation damages in the nozzle... 

Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) is a widely spread, reliable and P2P channel through all over the world. These characteristics make GSM a channel suitable for a variety of applications in different domains especially security applications such as secure voice communication. Performance and usage of GSM applications extremely depends on the transmission data rate. Hence, transmitting data over GSM is still an attractive topic for research. This paper considers the problem of digital data transmission through the GSM voice channel. A lower capacity bound for data transmission through the GSM Adaptive Multi Rate (AMR) voice codec is presented. The GSM channel is modeled in a... 

Very fine alumina nanoparticles were loaded in novolac type phenolic resin (PF) using solution mixing method. The concentration of nanoalumina in PF was varied between 2.5 to 20 wt%. All the compounds were compression molded and then subjected to scanning electron microscopy (SEM), tensile, flexural, and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) tests. SEM analysis showed that the nanoalumina were dispersed uniformly at low concentrations, however, at high concentrations, dispersion was suppressed leading to agglomerates in the composites. Mechanical testing revealed that the nanoalumina had a great influence on the strength and stiffness of PF resin particularly at concentrations below 5 wt%.... 

In this study, the authors propose an analytical model to evaluate the maximum stable throughput for unicast services in vehicular ad hoc networks. In this respect, the authors employ two queueing networks (QNs) to model the mobility patterns of the vehicles as well as the multi-hop packet transmission scenario. In the proposed model, the authors map the features of IEEE 802.11, as well as the details of multi-hop packet transmission, regarding the dynamic status of vehicles, onto suitable parameters of the QNs. In the authors' modelling approach, they take the details of MAC and routing schemes into account by classifying the vehicles based on their mobility patterns and considering their... 

Water adsorption by bis-2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) during the extraction of zinc, cobalt and nickel using a D2EHPA-kerosene/H2O mixture is investigated. Based on the experimental results, about 1 mol of water is adsorbed by 2 mol of D2EHPA (which exists in the form of a dimer), irrespective of the pH. Water adsorption decreases with presence of zinc, cobalt and nickel. The stoichiometric coefficients of D2EHPA in water adsorption reactions are determined with and without zinc, cobalt and nickel by applying the slope-analysis method. It is experimentally confirmed that 1.0, 1.8 and 1.2 mol of adsorbed water will be rejected from the organic phase when zinc, cobalt and nickel are... 

Few works has been focused on the problem of joint distributed data compression and network coding. In this paper we give some examples showing the advantage of broadcast nature of wireless environment as a basis for joint codes design. Also we show that joint coding is possible in the case of multiple unicasts. The idea of this paper can be exploited in an opportunistic manner. Actually, the foundation of our idea is nothing but combining opportunistic network coding (COPE) and distributed source coding using syndromes (DISCUS) for wireless applications. © 2009 IEEE  

Human parvovirus B19 (B19) is a small, non-enveloped virus and belongs to Parvoviridae family. B19 persists in many tissues such as thyroid tissue and even thyroid cancer. The main aim of this study was to determine the presence of B19, its association with increased inflammation in thyroid tissue, and thus its possible role in thyroid cancer progression. Studies have shown that virus replication in non-permissive tissue leads to overexpression of non-structural protein and results in upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha. A total of 36 paraffin-embedded thyroid specimens and serum were collected from patients and 12 samples were used... 

With the advent of various advanced materials, the idea of flying like birds has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In addition, aeroacoustics has become an important issue and is being widely studied. In this work, based on the shape of Owls’ wings, an attempt was made to improve the aeroacoustic and aerodynamic performances of conventional aircraft wings. For this purpose, wings with different elements, namely, square, triangular, and semicircular, on their top surface were examined. In addition, three different spatial distributions of the elements according to the Owl’s wings shape were considered. For incompressible airflow, aerodynamic and aeroacoustic parameters of wing... 

This paper approaches the topic of protection system reliability from an economic point of view by 1) designing an optimal modern protective relay based on a prescribed level of reliability subject to economic constraints and 2) determining optimal routine test intervals by balancing the cost of routine tests and losses due to relay failure. This paper proposes a method that enables the designer to optimally select hardware and software components of a digital protective relay to gain the highest possible overall reliability with a restricted budget. This design can be viewed as a reliability and redundancy allocation problem for which a new easy-to-implement algorithm is proposed. In... 

Protective relay technologies have evolved from single-function electromechanical and static relays to modern multifunction digital relays over the past few years. Protection systems play a vital role in maintaining a desirable level of reliability in power systems. Thus, their own reliability should be evaluated and any cause of their malfunction should be fully comprehended. In this paper, a new reliability model is proposed that associates protection system failures to four main causes: 1) relay hardware, 2) relay software, 3) ancillary equipment, and 4) human error. In addition, this model can take other aspects of the protection system into consideration, such as human error during... 

Brake friction materials filled with nanoalumina were produced by both conventional and solvent-assisted mixing methods. It was shown that nanoalumina loading led to the reduction of friction coefficient and improvement in mechanical, wear and thermal behaviors. Such behavior was attributed to the role of nanoalumina in producing stable friction layer and easy conduction path in matrix. It was postulated that nanoalumina is able to attach on the surface of microalumina facilitating the rolling of microalumina at interface. Solution-processed samples exhibited lower improvement in tribological and mechanical properties compared to the conventional mixing due to the limited interaction between...