Sharif Digital Repository

Flows which density difference in a gravity field is their driven force are called Density Currents. Such flows are present in both nature and man made environments. Due to their importance, there have been large efforts to analyse them in both experimental and numerical way. In the present thesis, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is introduced as a new tool to simulate such flows. As the method is Lagrangian and particle based, simulation of Density Currents with particles can be addressed more naturally that can be accounted as the method preference to traditional mesh based methods. SPH projection method is incorporated to impose incompressibility. To precisely simulate Density... 

Today, obesity, as a major global health challenge, affects more than 30 percent of the world's population. To investigate the effect of obesity on spinal function, a common method is motion analysis (kinematic method). This method is based on the claim that the abnormal mechanical function of the spine is directly related to its abnormal motions.The aim of this study is to measure and compare the range of motions (RoMs) of different segments of the spine in all anatomical plates between obese and normal individuals, as well as to calculate and compare some motion rhythms between the lumbar spine and the pelvis in these two groups. Comparing the posture of the spine between obese and normal... 

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... 

Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide NPs (SPIONs) because of their multi-task capabilities (e.g. magnetic labeling, cell isolation, hyperthermiaand controlled drug release) have been recognized as one of the most promising NPs for theranosis applications.When NPs come in contact with a biological medium, the surfaces of them are covered by biomolecules (e.g., proteins, natural organic materials, and enzymes). Therefore, what a biological entity, such as cells, tissues, and organs, sees when interacting with NPs is different original pristine surface of the NPs and actually is hard protein corona. Shape of NPs has a great impact on proteins adsorb onto its surface and consequently on the way that... 

The objective of this research is to design a drug delivery system that allows anti-inflammatory drugs to be injected directly into the joint (intra-articular injection) for the treatment of arthritis so that reduce the side effects associated with oral consumption of these drugs, increase the duration of drug retention in the joint environment, and reduce the side effects caused by repeated injections while improving effectiveness. To achieve this, first, desirable features were determined by considering the anatomy of the joint environment, the biological changes caused by the disease, and reviewing published articles and commercial products in the field; appropriate drug and raw materials... 

Despite many advantages of granular sludge in anaerobic reactors (e.g. UASB), over the past few years research attention had turned towards developing aerobic granular sludge. Although much research is carried out on the formation of aerobic granules, less work is reported on how to enhance granules characteristics such as increasing in granule size, concentration, durability and stability. The aims of this study are to investigate the effects of cationic polymer on granule formation and the way to improve granule characteristics. For this purpose two SBR reactors (0.15 m diameter and 1.8 m height, R1 and R2) were used by feeding synthetic wastewater (diluted molasses, COD ranging from 1400... 

This paper presents finite-element simulation results for hydraulic fracture’s initiation, propagation at reservoirs with damaged zone and naturally fractured reservoirs that likely finds in Iranian oil fields. To address this objective, a two-dimensional poro-elastic model was solved and cohesive zone modeling was used as the methodology for simulation fractures. This enables us to assign individual criteria for fracture initiation and propagation in each model. Our results demonstrate that hydraulic fracturing is not useful in reservoir with strongly damaged zone around the wellbore, because pore pressure increases at that zone and plastic flow of fracture wall happens, so it is better to... 

Multiple distortion coding is a promising solution for video transmission over lossy channels. In MDC multiple descriptions of a source are generated which are independently decodable and mutually refinable. When all descriptions are available, the corresponding quality is called central quality; otherwise it is called side quality. Generally, there exist a trade-off between side and central quality in all MDC schemes. The MDC methods which provide better central-side quality trade-off are of more interest to the designers.In this thesis a new MDC scheme is introduced which has better trade-off between side and central quality. In other words, for the same central quality, it provides higher... 

The aim of this project is to fabricate and study heterogeneous CaO-based nanocatalysts with lithium and zinc enhancers for the esterification reaction of rapeseed oil and methanol to produce biodiesel as a renewable and alternative fuel for fossil fuels. Is. First, Zn-Li / CaO catalysts with weight ratio Li: Zn: CaO, 2: 2: 7 and by combining different percentages of Li100% promoter, Li75% -Zn25%, Li50% -Zn50%, Li25% -Zn75%, 100% Zn were made on the basis of CaO by wet inoculation. Characterization tests to evaluate the structure and characterization such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (EDX) spectroscopy, Bruner-Emmett-Teller... 

In the proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEM, the produced water would be divided into two phases of vapor and liquid. distribution of both liquid and vapor phases in different cell layers affects the performance, the efficiency and the life of a fuel cell significantly. Moreover, Nano pores of the cathode catalyst layer are involved with some phenomena such as electrochemical reaction kinetics, heat and mass transfer and interface phase change. One of the most important problems in the performance of fuel cells is distribution of liquid water in the porous areas. Water flooding in fuel cells causes to delay in oxygen transport to active sites in the catalyst layer because the pores of... 

The propagation behavior of Love wave in functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic half-spaces with a quadratic variation is addressed. The magneto-electromechanical coupling factor, the dispersion relations, electric potential, magnetic potential and displacement are obtained analytically for both magneto-electrically open and short conditions. The effect of gradient coefficient on phase velocity, group velocity and magneto-electromechanical coupling factor are plotted and discussed. Research on the wave propagation in magneto-electro-elastic materials is still very limited. This work provides us with a theoretical foundation to design and practically apply SAW devices with high... 

In this study, the interaction between thin plate completely bonded to the transversely isotropic halfspace and a concentrated force applied horizontally (Mindlin-type force) are considered. This problem has been solved analytically. This problem is used as sample for thin solid films and surface coating technology, where the surface of solid is covered by thethin plate for increasing its stiffness. Moreover, this problem is a good sample when homogenous solid is subjected to contact loading and can be seen that mechanical properties of material which is near the solid surface varies; consequently, a two-phase solid is created.Because of the influence of noted inhomogeneity, solid is... 

Hydrodynamics plays a crucial role in defining the performance of fluidized beds. The numerical simulation of fluidized bed is very important in the prediction of its behaviour. From this point of view, in the present study a dynamic two dimensioanl model is developed for the modeling of regenerator system of a UOP fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit of Abadan refinery with a high-efficiency regenerator. Of the various modeling and simulation techniques, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed in this thesis. Effects of gas velocity, the transient local solid volume fraction, pressure drop for gas and solid phase, solid holdup distribution and solid circulation pattern have been... 

Privacy preserving data mining helps organizations and companies not only to deal with privacy concerns of customers and regular limitations, but also to benefit from collaborative data mining. Utilizing cryptographic techniques and secure multiparty computation (SMC) are among widely employed approaches for preserving privacy in distributed data mining. The general purpose of secure multiparty computation protocols to compute specific functions on private inputs of parties in a collaborative manner and without revealing their private inputs. Providing rigorous security proof of secure multiparty computation makes it a good choice for privacy preservation, despite of its cryptographic...