Sharif Digital Repository

Irrigated agriculture is the principal consumer of fresh water resources. Most countries do not have a precise measurement of water consumption for irrigation. In this study, an innovative approach is proposed that allows for estimation of irrigation water use at the catchment scale based on satellite soil moisture data. To this end, the SM2RAIN algorithm, which had been originally developed for estimation of rainfall from the soil moisture observations, is adopted. The satellite soil moisture observations obtained from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) along with different rainfall and evapotranspiration (ET) products in the period 2012–2015 are used as the input to the... 

Despite the popularity of the permeable pavements in urban areas in recent years, a few empirical equations have been developed to estimate the time of concentration (Tc) on pervious surfaces, and almost none of them is evaluated over the permeable pavements. In this paper, we aim to investigate the effect of low impact development (LID) on Tc and develop a new equation for estimating overland flow Tc compatible with both permeable and impermeable pavements in small urban watersheds with a semi-arid climate. An experimental model was devised to determine the new equation. Synthetic rainfall (22–40 mm.h−1) was applied to a rectangular shaped (6 m × 1 m) test watershed with an adjustable... 

The large heterogeneity in soil surface conditions makes it impracticable to obtain reliable estimates of soil hydraulic parameters for areas larger than few squared kilometers. However, identifying these parameters on a global scale is essential for many hydrological and climatic applications. In this study, a new approach named Drainage from Drydown (DfD) is proposed to estimate the coefficients of drainage using soil moisture observations. DfD firstly selects multiple drydown events when surface runoff and evapotranspiration rates are negligible compared to the drainage rate. Secondly, by inverting the soil water balance equation, the drainage coefficients are obtained. Synthetic... 

A passive image steganalysis method is proposed to universally detect spatial-domain steganography schemes. It is shown to have better performance than universal steganalyzers known to be powerful in spatial domain, including the WFLogSv and the WAM methods. This level of accuracy is the result of improving the WFLogSv steganalyzer by considering a more comprehensive relationship between the singular values of each image block and the linear correlation of the rows and the columns. That is, instead of the closeness of the lower singular values to zero, the energy distribution of the singular values is investigated. An innovative measure is proposed for this investigation, which is inspired... 

The heat transfer enhancement of natural convection using an electrohydrodynamic technique inside a horizontal enclosure heated from below is studied numerically. The interactions between the electric field, flow field, and temperature field are investigated by computational fluid dynamics methods. The flow and temperature fields are affected by voltage applied to the wire electrodes. For different voltages and numbers of electrodes, it is noticed that the Nusselt number increases in all cases and the best enhancement is obtained at lower Rayleigh numbers. It is also shown that increasing the number of electrodes does not always cause an increase in the heat transfer enhancement. Actually,... 

The purpose of this study is to carry out a numerical investigation of injection type EHD pumps. To this end, the flow is considered laminar, steady and incompressible flow. The flow model is based on the assumptions that the fluid is Newtonian and the fluid properties are constant. The results show that all of the ions emitted from emitter are not collected by next collector electrode, but some of this injected ions move to the previous one, which causes back flow. Although this back flow is smaller than net pumping flow but it would reduce the net flow. Because of existence of this back flow, finding the optimum distance of electrodes from each other is necessary. This study shows that... 

Iron oxyhydroxide (α-FeOOH, Goethite) is one of the most thermodynamically stable iron oxides and a widespread soil mineral. In this study, a mixture of two phenolic extracts of rosemary and Echinacea was utilized as stabilizing and reducing agents for the synthesis of Goethite (FeOOH) nanoparticles without utilizing harmful toxic solvents. The resulting nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM)-energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM), thermogravimetry/differential thermal analysis (TG/DTA), and Brunauer–Emmett-Teller (BET). MTT assay was... 

The heat transfer enhancement of natural convection, using electrohydrodynamic technique inside a horizontal enclosure heated from below, is studied numerically. The interactions between electric field, flow field, and temperature field are investigated by CFD methods. The flow and temperature fields are affected by voltage applied at the wire electrodes. For different voltages and number of electrodes, it is noticed that the Nusselt number increased in all cases and the best enhancement is obtained at lower Rayleigh numbers. It is also shown that increasing the number of electrodes doesn't always cause an increase in the heat transfer enhancement. Actually, when the number of electrodes is... 

A passive universal image steganalysis method is proposed that is shown to be of higher detection accuracy than existing truly blind steganalysis methods including Farid's and the WAM. This is achieved by improving some weaknesses of Farid's steganalysis scheme in feature extraction, that is, instead of deriving an over-determined equation system for each sub band of the wavelet decomposition, the sub bands are divided into overlapping blocks and an over-determined equation system is constructed for each block. To guarantee the existence of finite answers, the over-determined equation systems are solved in a way different from Farid's by using Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse concept. Further... 

We explore the dictionary learning problem for sparse representation when the signals are dependent. In this paper, a first-order Markovian model is considered for dependency of the signals, that has many applications especially in medical signals. It is shown that the considered dependency among the signals can degrade the performance of the existing dictionary learning algorithms. Hence, we propose a method using the Maximum Log-likelihood Estimator (MLE) and the Expectation Minimization (EM) algorithm to learn the dictionary from the signals generated under the first-order Markovian model. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed method in comparison with the... 

Alterations in the structure of a magnetron, e.g., the A6 relativistic magnetron, are proposed, which considerably increase the device's build-up speed. We cover the magnetron vane surfaces with semiconductor layers of nonzero electric conductivity, with an exact geometrical design. Semiconductor layers with considerable mechanical strength also provide excellent shielding for the vanes against the high-energy relativistic electrons' bombardment. The novel structure introduces several new free parameters to the magnetron design procedure and considerably increases the design flexibility. A multistage exact optimization procedure, performed by extensive computer simulations, shows that... 

Iran experiences insufficient precipitation, resulting in excessive use of groundwater resources, leading to negative water balances in many plains. As a result, the Ministry of Energy began implementing the Groundwater Rehabilitation and Balancing Plan (GRBP) in 2006 to replenish the aquifers. The plan includes measures such as Blocking Illegal Wells (BIW), Equipping Wells with Volumetric Meters (EWVM), Increasing Patrol and Control (IPC), and inspecting the degree of exploitation of groundwater, etc. In this study, researchers examined the level of social agreement between farmers and experts on the effectiveness of the Ministry of Energy's policies for the GRBP and assessed the farmers'... 

In this paper, a novel method of retrofit design in total site cogeneration systems based on constructal theory is presented. In this regard, the total site cogeneration system is decomposed into three constructs: turbines, turbine arrays, and steam generators. The objective function to be minimised is the total annual cost of existing total site. Using constructal theory simplifies the optimisation procedure of total site in addition to reaching better conceptual design especially in more sophisticated systems. A case study from literatures has been taken up to examine the applicability of the algorithm and excellent agreement has been observed. Copyright  

In this paper a novel algorithm for detection, parameter estimation, and image formation of a moving target in ground-based circular strip-map synthetic aperture radar (GBCSAR) is proposed. Because multiple similar scans of the scene with short revisit time are possible, moving target detection is performed by clutter cancellation. Despite of the frequency-domain or multi-antenna clutter cancellation methods, this system has the capability of removing the clutter completely regardless of the target speed or the signal to clutter ratio (SCR). Estimation of target parameters and range-cell migration correction (RCMC) is based on comparing two consecutive target images. Finally the azimuth... 

The Ugi reaction goes fast with high yields in a recyclable and biodegradable low-melting mixture of choline chloride and urea (DES) as a novel and efficient reaction medium. The DES is applicable to a wide range of aldehydes, amines, isocyanides, and acids in good to excellent isolated yields (60-92%) and short reaction times (2-5 h) and can be reused four times without any loss of activity  

A chemoselective synthesis of tetraketone and xanthene derivatives, by means of tandem Knoevenagel condensation and Michael addition in choline chloride-based deep eutectic solvents (DESs), is presented. The reaction of readily available aldehydes and active methylene compounds in malonic acid- and ZnCl2-based DES gives various xanthenes derivatives with good to excellent yields under mild reaction conditions. On the other hand, tetraketones were synthesized in almost quantitative yields by simple condensation of an aldehyde and active methylene compounds in milder deep eutectic solvents of urea and SnCl2. In addition, the reaction of other types of choline chloride-based DES leads to a... 

Three isomers of diethyl 3,3-thiodipropenoate (DETDP) have been prepared as new compounds by the solvent free reaction of ethyl propiolate and thioamides or sodium sulfide in a short time and high yields  

Localization and quantification of structural damage and estimating the failure probability are key outputs in the reliability assessment of structures. In this study, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used to reduce the computational effort required for reliability analysis and damage detection. Toward this end, one demonstrative structure is modeled and then several damage scenarios are defined. These scenarios are considered as training data sets for establishing an ANN model. In this regard, the relationship between structural response (input) and structural stiffness (output) is established using ANN models. The established ANN is more economical and achieves reasonable accuracy in... 

Tight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) autonomous missions such as formation flight and aerial refueling (AR) requires an active controller that works in conjunction with a precise vision-based sensor that is able to extract In-front aircraft relative position and orientation from captured images. A key point in implementing such a sensor is its robustness in the presence of noises and other uncertainties. In this paper, a new vision-based algorithm that uses neural networks to estimate the In-front aircraft relative orientation and position is developed. The accuracy and robustness of the proposed algorithm has been validated via a detailed modeling and a complete virtual environment based on...