Sharif Digital Repository

This paper proposes a decentralized market-based model for long-term capacity investment decisions in a liberalized electricity market. Investment decisions are fundamentally based on total revenues gained by investors. In most electricity markets, the complementary mechanisms are designed to ensure a desired level of reliability while covering investment costs of the suppliers. In such an environment, investment decisions are highly sensitive to expectation of price signals in both of energy market and capacity mechanisms. In this work, the system dynamics concepts are used to model the structural characteristics of electricity market such as, long-term firms' behavior and relationships... 

Catalysts as the dynamo of chemical reactions along with solvents play paramount roles in organic transformations in long-lasting modes. Thus, developing effective and biobased catalysts in nontoxic solvents is highly in demand. In this report, carbon quantum dots (CQDs) functionalized with-lysine (Lys-CQDs) were generated from entirely nature-derived materials; they were demonstrated to be a promising catalyst for C-N bond formation in choline chloride urea (ChCl/U), a natural deep eutectic solvent (NADES). Among a number of synthesized CQDs, Lys-CQD turned out to be a powerful catalyst in the model reaction with aniline to afford phenyl urea. This type of transformation is important... 

In the present research, proton exchange membranes based on partially sulfonated poly (ether sulfone) (S-PES) with various degrees of sulfonation were synthesized. It was found that the increasing of sulfonation degree up to 40% results in the enhancement of water uptake, ion exchange capacity and proton conductivity properties of the prepared membranes to 28.1%, 1.59 meq g -1, and 0.145 S cm -1, respectively. Afterwards, nanocomposite membranes based on S-PES (at the predetermined optimum sulfonation degree) containing various loading weights of organically treated montmorillonite (OMMT) were prepared via the solution intercalation technique. X-ray diffraction patterns revealed the... 

This paper develops a system dynamics model to analyze the impacts of different kinds of capacity payment as investment incentive mechanisms in Iranian electricity market. Since it is aimed that the incurred capital and operating costs of generation technologies be recovered in Iranian electricity pool, the noncompetitive capacity payment mechanism has been introduced for this purpose in order to encourage new investments in electric power generation system. In the current mechanism, the capacity payments are designated to the generating units in the whole country electricity market. An annual base value of capacity payment is proposed based on recovering the capital cost of a benchmark... 

This paper proposes a time simulation model for long-term wind capacity investment decisions in the presence of electricity market and tradable green certificate (TGC) market. Investment decisions and wind capacity development are fundamentally based on incentives gained from both these markets. In TGC market, the tradable certificates are issued to renewable generation companies for each megawatt-hour of electricity generation. Distribution companies are obligated to support fraction of their electricity consumptions from renewable sources. The dynamics of prices in both markets are simulated in a system dynamics model to trace the dynamics of wind capacity investment. Such a decision model... 

This paper proposes a decentralized market-based model for long-term capacity investment decisions in a liberalized electricity market with significant wind power generation. In such an environment, investment and construction decisions are based on price signal feedbacks and imperfect foresight of future conditions in electricity market. System dynamics concepts are used to model structural characteristics of power market such as, long-term firms' behavior and relationships between variables, feedbacks and time delays. For conventional generation units, short-term price feedback for generation dispatching of forward market is implemented as well as long-term price expectation for... 

This paper proposes a dynamic time simulation model for long-term generation capacity investment decisions in the presence of either perfect or imperfect electricity market. The model is based on system dynamics concept in which the dynamics of capacity construction is traced using the forecast of electricity price cleared in the short-term electricity market. Both the perfect and oligopolistic competitions are considered and a market power index is defined to evaluate the competition level of the electricity market. The short-term and long-term dynamic analysis are used to represent the generation firms' behavior in bidding strategy and capacity investment, respectively. Both possibilities... 

In this study, a time simulation model for long-term wind capacity investment decisions in the presence of an electricity market and a tradable green certificate (TGC) market is proposed. Decisions related to the investments in the wind capacity are fundamentally based on incentives gained from both of these markets. Fundamental concepts and models of these markets are described. The TGC price trend-following and value-trading strategies for both generation and distribution companies and the regulatory policies for the limitation of TGC holding time and TGC borrowing fraction are included. In this study, a new dynamic model of coupled TGC and electricity markets is considered in order to... 

Three different wire drawing schedules were attempted to examine the effects of reduction of area, die-angle and friction coefficient on the strain inhomogeneity of drawn copper wires. The microhardness distribution was studied over the transverse and longitudinal cross-sections. Inhomogeneity factor (I. F.) curves; I. F. = f(r), I. F. = g(2α) and I. F. = h(μ) were determined from the measurements. The results indicate that less strain inhomogeneity is achieved in drawing wires through dies with low angle, low friction coefficient and high reduction of area. Despite the variation in reduction of area and die-angle, the strain was distributed evenly at the center of the drawn wires. Contrary... 

Nanocomposites containing ZrO2 and HA have been considered in various fields due to their unique mechanical properties. The principal purpose of this paper is to select the models with the maximum accuracy for the prediction of microhardness of CHA/ZrO2 nanocomposite. For this purpose, three models, including gene expression programming (GEP), gray wolf optimization algorithm (GWOA), and least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM), were implemented to predict and optimize the microhardness of the CHA/ZrO2 nanocomposite. Finally, the results showed that the data obtained from the LS-SVM model were closer to the preliminary data than the others. According to the results, the LS-SVM could... 

Titanium carbonated hydroxyapatite (Ti/CHA) nanobiocomposites have extensive biological applications due to the excellent biocompatibility and similar characteristics to the human bone. Ti/CHA nanobiocomposite has good biological properties but it suffer from diverse characteristics especially in hardness, Young's modulus, apparent porosity and relative density. This investigation is an attempt to propose the predictive models using gene expression programming (GEP) to estimate these characteristics. In this regards, GEP is used to model and compare the effect of practical variables including pressure, Ti/CHA contents and sintering temperature on their monitored properties. To achieve this... 

In this paper, application of Endurance Time (ET) method in nonlinear seismic analysis of offshore pile supported systems has been studied. The ET method is a time-history analysis in which structures are subjected to intensifying artificial acceleration functions. The ET method reduces complexity and computational demand of conventional nonlinear seismic analysis, and it provides response at different seismic levels in a single ET analysis. The aforementioned methodology has been applied to a typical model of single pile and then to a functional jacket offshore platform in Persian Gulf region. Seismic response of aforesaid models by ET method has been compared with conventional time-history... 

This paper presents the results of a thorough analysis of applying power quality standards to a granite factory. It explains the procedure of determining power quality indices in a power system. The paper presents the field data and provides the results of statistical analysis in order to extract power quality indices. A comparison against standard limits is also given. The case study gives an overview of power quality in such customers and brings up some practical limitations when applying power quality standards. ©2006 IEEE  

Sludge handling is a common issue in all biological wastewater treatment methods. In this study, sonication technique as a state-of-the-art technology has been applied to a continuous MBBR system with the aim of sludge reduction. A novel configuration of MBBR with an additional recycle stream of sonicated sludge was used as the experimental setup. Based on exposed energy and sludge disruption performance, optimized sonication density and exposure time were obtained 1.5 W/mL and 15 min, respectively. This condition provided 42.2% increase in soluble COD as a result of sludge disintegration. Our results revealed that the performance of MBBR and excess sludge reduction were affected by... 

A modified two-surface critical state plasticity model for saturated and unsaturated soil is presented in this study. The key modification in new model is inclusion of an alternative yield surface used to simulate the behavior of unsaturated soils in addition to corresponding saturated conditions. Moreover, a numerical technique is used to obtain an incremental stress–strain response from loading curves. Modification is applied continuously in each incremental step to return the final stress states and hardening parameters to the yield surface. Results revealed that the adopted modeling approach can predict two independent sets of laboratory unsaturated experiments under various conditions... 

In order to reduce the possibility of buckling problems related to the railway ballasted tracks, necessary measurements should be applied to improve the lateral resistance of tracks. There are different procedures for increasing the lateral force resistance of railway tracks that can be implemented using different materials to change the size, geometry, and dimensions of track components, especially sleepers. Although several studies have been conducted on winged sleepers, the present study investigates the application of mid-winged sleepers with a modified geometry and a dimension in the form of a novel approach. In this regard, several experimental tests and numerical modeling were... 

In this paper, the effects of different parameters on the hairiness of siro-jet spun yarns, such as the nozzle pressure, the distance between the front roller nip and inlet of the nozzle, and jet structure were investigated. Using the Taguchi method, it was concluded that the factor air pressure has the strongest effect and the factor distance between the front roller nip and inlet of the nozzle does not have a significant effect on the performance of the siro-jet spinning system in reducing yarn hairiness. A computational fluid dynamics model was developed to simulate the airflow pattern inside the jets. The effect of air pressure and the jet structure was simulated using Fluent 6.3... 

Different analysis methods have been used for voltage stability assessment. In comparison with static analysis methods, little work has been done on dynamic analysis of large interconnected power systems. Voltage instability can be studied effectively with a combination of static approaches and time simulations. This paper discusses voltage stability assessment using mixed static and dynamic techniques. Using static methods, a voltage stability based ranking is carried out to specify faint buses, generators and links in power system. The system is analyzed for most severe conditions. Then, time domain simulation is performed for the conditions determined by voltage instability ranking. The... 

The numerical modeling of natural convection fluid flow and heat transfer in a quarter of gearwheel-shaped heat exchanger is carried out. The heat exchanger is included with internal active square bodies. These bodies have hot and cold temperatures with different thermal arrangements. Three different thermal arrangements are considered and showed with Case A, Case B and Case C. The CuO-water nanofluid is selected as operating fluid. The Koo-Kleinstreuer-Li (KKL) correlation is utilized to estimate the dynamic viscosity and thermal conductivity. In addition, the shapes of nanoparticles are taken account in the analysis. The Rayleigh number, nanoparticle concentration and thermal arrangements...