Sharif Digital Repository

Filtrate and solid invasion from drilling fluids are two key sources of formation damage, and can result in formation permeability impairment. Typically, spurt invasion of mud solids causes the evolution of an external mud cake which tends to reduce further solids and filtrate influx. However, uncontrolled spurt and filtrate invasion are detrimental because they reduce the permeability of the formation. Mud composition, formation rock's permeability and porosity, and temperature can influence both spurt and filtrate invasion. The sizes of mud solids relative to the average pore size of a rock are also important in predicting the extent of mud invasion and permeability impairment. In this... 

In an ac microgrid, a common frequency exists for coordinating active power sharing among droop-controlled sources. A common frequency is absent in a dc microgrid, leaving only the dc source voltages for coordinating active power sharing. That causes sharing error and poorer voltage regulation in dc microgrids, which in most cases, are solved by a secondary control layer reinforced by an extensive communication network. To avoid such an infrastructure and its accompanied complications, this paper proposes an alternative droop scheme for low-voltage dc microgrid with both primary power sharing and secondary voltage regulation merged. The main idea is to introduce a non-zero unifying frequency... 

In a classical ac microgrid (MG), a common frequency exists for coordinating active power sharing among droop-controlled sources. Like the frequency-droop method, a voltage-based droop approach has been employed to control the converters in low voltage direct current (LVDC) MGs. However, voltage variation due to the droop gains and line resistances causes poor power sharing and voltage regulation in dc MG, which in most cases are solved by a secondary controller by using a communication network. To avoid such an infrastructure and its accompanied complications, this paper proposes a new droop scheme to control dc sources by introducing a small ac voltage superimposed onto the output dc... 

Centralized or decentralized secondary controller is commonly employed to regulate the voltage drop raised by the primary controller. However, in the case of high capacity microgrids (MGs) and long feeders with much voltage drop on the line resistances, the conventional methods may not guarantee the voltage regulation on the load busses within a suitable range. Therefore, in addition to compensate the voltage drop of the primary controller, it is necessary to regulate the voltage of critical loads. In this paper, a new voltage regulation strategy is proposed to regulate the voltage of MG by employing the average voltage of identified critical busses, which are determined by the proposed... 

In this paper a novel droop approach for power management in low voltage dc MicroGrids (MGs) based on a master-slave concept is presented. A virtual frequency is injected by a master unit, which is proportional to its output power. Other slave units determine their output power according to the corresponding frequency based droop characteristics. Unlike the dc voltage-droop methods, the proposed virtual frequency-droop approach can be smartly applied for proportional power management among the energy units and loads as well as adding zero net energy capability to the MG. Both power flow and energy flow can be performed without utilizing an extra communication system. Simulation results... 

The authors regret that there was an error in the SEM images presented in Fig. 4 of the article. The corrected SEM images as presented here. It is noteworthy that this change does not affect any of the conclusions. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd  

We develop a concept for a waveguide that exploits spatial control of nonlinear surface-polaritonic waves. Our scheme includes an optical cavity with four-level N-type atoms in a lossless dielectric placed above a negative-index metamaterial layer. We propose exciting a polaritonic Akhmediev breather at a certain position of the interface between the atomic medium and the metamaterial by modifying laser-field intensities and detunings. Furthermore, we propose generating position-dependent polaritonic frequency combs by engineering widths of the electromagnetically induced transparency window commensurate with the surface-polaritonic modulation instability. Therefore, this waveguide acts as a... 

In ecological systems, heterogeneous interactions between pathogens take place simultaneously. This occurs, for instance, when two pathogens cooperate, while at the same time, multiple strains of these pathogens co-circulate and compete. Notable examples include the cooperation of human immunodeficiency virus with antibiotic-resistant and susceptible strains of tuberculosis or some respiratory infections with Streptococcus pneumoniae strains. Models focusing on competition or cooperation separately fail to describe how these concurrent interactions shape the epidemiology of such diseases. We studied this problem considering two cooperating pathogens, where one pathogen is further structured... 

Due to the boom in world trade, port authorities are looking into ways of making existing facilities more efficient. One way to improve efficiency, increase capacity, and meet future demand is to use advanced technologies and automation in order to speed up terminal operations. In this paper, we design, analyze, and evaluate four different automated container terminal (ACT) concepts. These concepts include automated container terminals based on the use of automated guidance vehicles (AGVs), a linear motor conveyance system (LMCS), an overhead grid rail system (GR), and a high-rise automated storage and retrieval structure (AS/RS). We use future demand scenarios to design the characteristics... 

Interfacial tension of both 36 binary and 6 ternary liquid-liquid systems at 298 K, has been predicted through a reliable thermodynamic model. To properly predict interfacial tension, it is necessary to calculate interfacial area of each constituent of the mixtures. For such estimation, two empirical correlations have been proposed for binary mixtures whose one component is water and experimental data have been used to calculate interfacial area of ternary mixtures. The UNIQUAUC Excess Gibbs Free energy model and its parameters have been used to calculate the concentration and activity coefficients in the bulk and interface phases. The overall average deviation of the predicted binary... 

Interface engineering has emerged as a great strategy for fabrication of high efficiency and stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, we deposit a thin layer of ZnS as a buffer layer at the interface of the perovskite absorber and electron transporting layer (ETL) using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) process. The impact of the ZnS layer on the photovoltaic characteristics of PSCs was investigated by comparison of two mesoscopic configurations, in which the ZnS layer is grown on compact TiO2 and on mesoporous TiO2 surfaces. Our results revealed that the addition of an ultrathin ZnS layer between the perovskite and ETL drastically improves the charge extraction properties and reduces... 

In this paper, CuO/CNT nanocomposite was synthesized and its photocatalytic dye degradation ability for colored textile wastewater was studied. The characteristics of the nanocomposite were investigated by XRD, SEM and FTIR. The photodegradation of Direct Red 31 (DR31) and Reactive Red 120 (RR120) by CuO/CNT in presence of H2O2 was investigated. Photocatalytic dye degradation was determined by UV-vis spectrophotometer. Effects of catalyst dosage, initial dye concentration and salt on photodegradation performance were studied. The photocatalytic dye degradation ability of pure CuO and CuO/CNT nanocomposite is 78 % and 89 % for DR31 and 70 % and 87 % for RR120, respectively. The results showed... 

Given a 2-(v,k,λ) design, S=(X,B), a zero-sumn-flow of S is a map f:B⟶{±1,…,±(n−1)} such that for any point x∈X, the sum of f over all the blocks incident with x is zero. It has been conjectured that every Steiner triple system, STS(v), on v points (v>7) admits a zero-sum 3-flow. We show that for every pair (v,λ) for which a triple system, TS(v,λ), exists, there exists one which has a zero-sum 3-flow, except when (v,λ)∈{(3,1),(4,2),(6,2),(7,1)}. We also give a O(λ2v2) bound on n and a recursive result which shows that every STS(v) with a zero-sum 3-flow can be embedded in an STS(2v+1) with a zero-sum 3-flow if v≡3(mod4), a zero-sum 4-flow if v≡3(mod6) and with a zero-sum 5-flow if v≡1(mod4).... 

In this study, the dynamic adsorption of asphaltene on a calcite surface is investigated. This study investigates the effect of mixed-salt brines on asphaltene adsorption. The results of this work can facilitate the understanding of the complex wettability behaviour of carbonate reservoirs. All experiments were performed in porous media, which were sand-packs filled with calcite powder, to study the influence of the type and concentration of salt on adsorption. The experiments were conducted with asphaltene concentration of 500 mg/L for brines of NaCl, Na2SO4, and a mixture of the two at various ionic strengths. In addition, two tests were performed with an asphaltene concentration of 2000... 

One of the major problems in underdetermined Sparse Component Analysis (SCA) is the appropriate estimation of the mixing matrix, A, in the linear model x(t) = As(t), especially where more than one source is active at each instant of time (It is called 'multiple dominant problem'). Most of the previous algorithms were restricted to single dominant problem in which it is assumed that at each instant, there is at most one single dominant component. Moreover, because of high computational load, all present methods for multiple dominant problem are practical only for small scale cases (By 'small scale' we mean that the average number of active sources at each instant, k, is less than 5). In this... 

Permutation and scaling ambiguities are relevant issues in tensor decomposition and source separation algorithms. Although these ambiguities are inevitable when working on real data sets, it is preferred to eliminate these uncertainties for evaluating algorithms on synthetic data sets. As shown in the paper, the existing performance indices for this purpose are either greedy and unreliable or computationally costly. In this paper, we propose a new performance index, called CorrIndex, whose reliability can be proved theoretically. Moreover, compared to previous performance indices, it has a low computational cost. Theoretical results and computer experiments demonstrate these advantages of... 

We present high-precision photometry of two transit events of the extrasolar planetary system WASP-5, obtained with the Danish 1.54-m telescope at European Southern Obseratory La Silla. In order to minimize both random and flat-fielding errors, we defocused the telescope so its point spread function approximated an annulus of diameter 40 pixel (16 arcsec). Data reduction was undertaken using standard aperture photometry plus an algorithm for optimally combining the ensemble of comparison stars. The resulting light curves have point-to-point scatters of 0.50 mmag for the first transit and 0.59 mmag for the second. We construct detailed signal-to-noise ratio calculations for defocused... 

In this paper, we study two important transmission strategies in full-duplex two-way relaying in the presence of channel estimation errors. In analog network coding (ANC), the relay transmits the combined signals that were received from both sources, with the aim of achieving better spectral efficiency. However, due to imperfect channel-state information (CSI), sources cannot perfectly cancel their own data in the relayed signal. We derive an achievable information rate for ANC in imperfect-CSI conditions and show how the ANC performance can significantly be degraded as a result. Moreover, we derive cut-set bounds with channel estimation errors for traditional routing (TR), in which time... 

Finemet bulk soft magnetic alloy was fabricated by spark plasma sintering of the milled ribbons. The amorphous melt-spun ribbons were milled for 36min by high energy vibrational mill and then sieved to separate particles smaller than 125μm. The size distribution of particles was determined by a laser diffraction particle size analyzer. Spark plasma sintering was carried out at super-cooled liquid region for short times of 7 and 21min. The structure of bulk samples was characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and transmission electron microscopy techniques. The magnetization and coercivity of samples were measured using SQUID...