Sharif Digital Repository

According to statistics in 2012, around 14 million people worldwide have cancer, and 8 million have died that year, according to estimates, this number will increase to 21 millions new cancer case and 13 million mortality in 2030. Despite years of research on cancer, many questions about the mechanism of the spread of cancer in the body remain unanswered so far. The proposed models identify that the cells isolated from the primary tumor and transmit them to the circulatory system in the form of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) or in the form of clusters as responsible for the incidence of cancer. This process is called metastasis. Recent studies have reported the high potential of metastasis... 

The recent breakthroughs in the lab-on-a-chip technology will not be directly used as clinical devices unless the specific applications are carefully tested and certified. As there is a growing trend towards microfluidic devices for biomedical research, an active microfluidic device was developed. Common microfabrication methods were used to develop a microchip to separate and concentrate exosome and particular cell based on the dielectrophoresis phenomenon. Unique capabilities of the dielectrophoresis phenomenon make it a powerful tool for micro particle manipulation in micro scale. In this research, geometry for the mentioned purpose is designed and optimized. Three-dimensional... 

Sedimentation basins are one of the most important and costly processes of water treatment, in which the process of particle settling takes place using gravity. There are two types of sedimentation basins namely, primary and secondary basins. In the primary basins, due to the low concentration of particles, in simulation, it is possible to ignore the effect of particles on the equation of motion. But in the secondary type because of buoyancy forces (which is dependent on particle concentration), the particles affect the flow field. So far, various studies have been done on the simulation of sedimentation basins with numerical methods, but a comprehensive research on the simulation of... 

Polymerase chain reaction, abbreviated as PCR, is a method of amplifying the number of copies of a desired DNA sequence through special protocols. The rapid advance of microfluidic devices and the emerging concept of digital microfluidics has resulted into the development of digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) systems with their significant uses in the detection of rare mutations, cancer diagnosis, and surveillance. In this study, an integrated ddPCR microfluidic chip alongside its thermoelectric thermal cycler and optical analysis systems have been designed, fabricated and their performance has been tested and evaluated. It was shown that the effect of master mold’s surface quality, the material of... 

The network of actin filaments is one of the three elements of the Cytoskeleton and plays a role in cell shape and migration. The actin network is dynamic; it (de)polymerizes, and in migrating and spreading cells, it is in a retrograde motion from the cell periphery toward cell nucleus. Adhesion points, which link the cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix, interact with the actin retrograde flow. Actin filaments can be identified in two distinct regions in which their structure, flow velocity, driving force and size of the adhesions are different; the outer region is called Lamellipodium and the inner one Lamellum. In macro scale and regarding spreading cells, considering adhesions... 

Al-Mg alloys are used in many industrial fields, thus improvement of their mechanical properties is so important. Expressing mathematical models on the basis of physical and microstructural properties can be useful for this purpose. In this research, in order to study the microstructural evolutions and mechanical properties of the material, a dislocation based model and microstructural parameters such as grains and subgrains during plastic deformation and subsequent annealing are considered. In addition, a modification is used to make the model capable of justify the solute atom and temperature effect simultaneously. This makes the results to be more precise and accurate considering... 

A typical problem in applied mathematics and science is to estimate the future state of a dynamical system given its current state. One approach aimed at understanding one or more aspects determining the behavior of the system is mathematical modeling. This method frequently entails formulation of a set of equations, usually a system of partial or ordinary differential equations. Model parameters are then measured from experimental data or estimated from computer simulation or other methods. Solutions to the model are then studied through mathematical analysis and numerical simulation usually for qualitative fit to the dynamical system of interest and any relative time-series data that is... 

In this thesis, first, the modeling method of neural fields is precisely presented. Then, Existence and Stability of different solutions of one dimensional neural fields like Standing Pulses, Traveling Waves and ... are investigated in three different models of neural fields. In order for proving Existence and Stability of the solutions the mathematical tools like Fourier transform and Evans function are applied. All the models which analysed in this thesis have the following Integro-Differential Equation form:
τ
∂u(x, t)
∂t
= −u(x, t) +
∫ +∞
−∞
w(x, y)f[u(y, t)]dy + I(x, t) + s(x, t)
and also in some models the parameters might be changed  

The current study is dedicated to free vibration analysis of a thin cylindrical shell with an oblique end. To this end, governing equations of motion and the corresponding boundary conditions are derived using Hamiltonian formulations. The differential form of equations is obtained by applying by part integration to the integral form of equations of motion. Equations of motions have been solved by Galerkin method for two different kinds of boundary conditions. Convergence process for different kinds of conditions has been done and results compared with papers. The effect of different parameters such as, length of cylinder, oblique angle, thickness etc. on the fundamental frequencies has been... 

Density currents are occurred as a result of the intrusion of a dense fluid into a fluid with a different density. Density difference is the main agent of current’s movement. These currents are observed in nature numerously and they are one of the main reasons of the erosion and transportation of deposition in oceans, seas and rivers. Investigation of these currents is of great importance especially in dams’ reservoir as major cause of deposition and reduction of reservoir’s efficency. Density differences are typically caused by the difference in temperature, existence of solution or insoluble material and suspended solids. In this work, density current is studied experimentally. Density... 

The results of numerical simulation of underground flows are greatly affected not only by the discretization method of flow equations, but also by the way that the geological domain is upscaled. Including the detailed knowledge of heterogeneous permeability distribution is mostly neither feasible nor computationally efficient. So it is important to develop efficient grid generation and upscaling methods to simplify the fine-scale flow model while still including the impact of the heterogeneities as far as possible. Thus regions where parameters of interest have larger values or higher changes require finer grid blocks and regions with lower values or minor changes should have coarser grid... 

The advent of microfluidics as suitable environments for culturing cells is associated with some challenges such as shear stresses applied on the cells. In fact, hepatocytes lose their function as exposed to high shear stresses similar to other cell types. Moreover, among all factors needed for cell viability, feeding hepatocytes with adequate oxygen is of great importance due to their high demand for oxygen compared the other cells. In this thesis, different types of cultures including 2D and 3D has been used in order that shear stresses would be in allowed range and provision of hepatocytes with sufficient oxygen concentrations has been ensured as well. In addition to supplying hepatocytes... 

Advanced reservoir characterization methods can yield geological models at a very fine resolution, containing 1011-1018 cells while the common reservoir simulators can handle much fewer numbers of cells due to computer hardware limitations. The process of coarsening the fine-scale model to simulation models is known as upscaling. There are three fundamental steps in the procedure of upscaling, i.e. defining the coarse grid geometry, calculating the average properties for the generated coarse grid and simulation of the two-phase flow equations on the generated coarse-scale model. In this thesis, the focus will be on investigating the applicability of optimization in the context of coarse grid... 

Density currents are occurred as a result of the intrusion of a dense fluid into a fluid with a different density. Density differences are typically caused by the difference in temperature, existence of solution or insoluble material and suspended solids. A special kind of density current is called a turbidity current which is a sediment-laden density current. This is a kind of flow which is driven by the force of gravity on suspended sediment particles that causes an excess fractional density with respect to the surrounding ambient fluid. In this work, the 2-D sediment-laden density current on a sloping surface of the channel is investigated through experiments. The channel is 12 m long,... 

Sedimentation tanks are channels designed for sedimentation of suspended solids in water. These tanks are one of the most important parts of water treatment plants and their performance directly affects the functionality of water treatment plants. Therefore, researchers have tried to find better designs of sedimentation tanks. Among several design methods have been presented, modification of the geometry of tanks by installing baffles is one of the most effective and economic methods. According to the importance of performance improvement of industrial sedimentation tanks as well as the diversity in reported results, development and completion of previous studies seem to be necessary. In... 

A large number of desalination plants have been established to overcome the drinkable water scarcity in the world. These plants produce saline water as effluent, which is often discharged into local sea water. One of the applicable methods to dispose these kinds of effluents is to install an inclined nozzle below the water’s surface. Hence, an inclined negatively buoyant jet (INBJ) forms which is often fully turbulent due to the high discharge velocity. Local environmental characteristics affect the dynamics and mixing behavior of INBJs. One of these characteristics is the sea bed slope, on which the present study has been focused. Large eddy simulations (LES) are performed in the present...