Sharif Digital Repository

Nowadays, advanced and inexpensive pre-clinical methods for investigating the effects of anti-cancer drugs are expanding. One of the latest three-dimensional laboratory modeling for evaluating the effects of drugs is the use of tumor-on-chip technology, which actually models the physiological system of the body through three-dimensional scaffolds, multicellular cultures, and shaped vascular systems. In this study, three-dimensional culture of cancer cells was performed in the form of spheroids. A chip of U-shaped microstructures with and without gaps was used to trap cells and form cancer spheroids. We simulated the simultaneous effect of drug and oxygen concentration distribution inside the... 

Data collected from street networks show that travel time in urban street networks is a stochastic variable, whose range of variation increases with the congestion level. Work and school trips comprise the major part of morning peak volumes, whose common characteristic is that they need to be made on time. For this reason, these travelers are pessimistic in their route choice, and try to choose routes which are more reliable. Travel time standard deviation is one of the common measures for estimating travel time reliability that is related to properties of day-to-day travel time distribution on a particular route. Based on the empirical data collected from Tehran street network, this paper... 

Noise or noise pollution, is defined as an unwanted sound, produced mostly by motor vehicles in urban areas. If the noise exceeds its limit, adverse effects on users and citizens are expected. Thus the assessment of the noise level and its comparison with allowable values is mandatory. Traffic induced noise depends upon different factors such as traffic, weather, and, sound barriers. Noise pollution study has a long history all over the world. Many studies, mostly representing the outdoor noise pollution models, have been done in recent years. This paper presents an assessment of traffic-induced noise in a heavily traveled tunnel, locally referred to as Resalat tunnel, which is located in... 

In this thesis, we introduce a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) system inspired by the philosophical and psychoanalytical concept of imagination as a ``Re-construction of Experiences". Our AI system is equipped with an imagination-inspired module that bridges the gap between textual inputs and other modalities, enriching the derived information based on previously learned experiences. A unique feature of our system is its ability to formulate independent perceptions of inputs. This leads to unique interpretations of a concept that may differ from human interpretations but are equally valid, a phenomenon we term as ``Interpretable Misunderstanding". We employ large-scale models,... 

Modeling and performance evaluation of the real time distributed systems is a significant problem. Stochastic activity network is one of the high level models used for this purpose. This network is an extension of generalized stochastic Petri net which is more powerful and flexible than other Petri net extensions. Checking the satisfiability of properties such as performance, dependability and user's expected properties is considerable in these models. Thus, using the approaches and generating modeling and model checking tools with the mentioned purpose is attractive. A model checker automatically checks the correctness of the system behaviors as properties against the model by getting the... 

Cardiovascular diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide. For instance, in 2015, almost 31% of the world’s mortality rate was due to these causes. One of these diseases is cardiac coronary vessels’ occlusion which leads to the insufficient blood supply to the heart tissue and cardiomyocytes death after Myocardial Infarction (MI). After MI, a hierarchy of events in the heart tissue changes heart muscle and forms cardiac fibrosis. This fibrotic tissue does not have the native one’s properties and function, so it will cause cardiac arrest and patient death. Therefore, it is obvious that vascular network plays a crucial role in the heart function. The importance of cardiac... 

This study has focused on the important problem of landing on a planet as an important current and future space mission. In this regard, dynamics modeling and integrated state estimation and control problems have been investigated in different views. To this aim, first a novel concurrent representation for translational and rotational kinematics has been developed based on the extension of modified Rodrigues parameters to dual space. This parameter set, called dual modified Rodrigues parameters (DMRP), is then utilized to establish an integrated roto-translational dynamic. The proposed DMRP-based kinematics and dynamics have been verified via comparison to traditional methods of... 

This thesis addresses the problem of optimal distributed control of unknown interconnected systems. In order to deal with this problem, a data-driven learning framework for finding the optimal centralized and the suboptimal distributed controllers has been developed via convex optimization.First of all, the linear quadratic regulation (LQR) problem is formulated into a nonconvex optimization problem. Using Lagrangian duality theories, a semidefinite program is then developed that requires information about the system dynamics. It is shown that the optimal solution to this problem is independent of the initial conditions and represents the Q-function, an important concept in reinforcement... 

Accurate and fast attitude estimation of a rigid body plays an essential role in the performance of a vehicle’s control system, especially aerospace vehicles. Ample works have been done to increase the accuracy and speed of the attitude estimation process, but all have been developed according to a model-based approach. This approach assumes that the torques acting on the body have a known dynamical model that is used for the attitude estimation. The purpose of the present research is to estimate the attitude via a model-free approach, i. e. dynamics of the torques acting on the body are no longer assumed to be known, and its learning is the next step. Thus, the problem formulation of this... 

This thesis presents a new approach to design structural output feedback controllers with stabilization and pole-placement at desired points on the S plane. It is assumed that the linear time-invariant system has no fixed mode corresponding to the specified control structure, outside the desired region of the closed-loop poles, such that the structural controller design problem is theoretically feasible. To this end, the structural output controller design problem is first transformed into a structurally equivalent problem based on the solution of a set of discrete linear programs. Then, by using the resultant structure, a new method is proposed for designing static and dynamic control loops... 

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) currently remains a considerable challenge for clinical treatments. CVDs account for N17.5 million deaths per year and will predictably increase to 23.6 million by 2030. The main purpose is to create human model systems to study the effect of disease mutations or drug treatment on the heart. In addition, engineered cardiac tissues are considered promising candidates to be transplanted to improve the function of diseased hearts. For engineered active tissues/organs, 3D bioprinting can fabricate complex tissue architecture with a spatiotemporal distribution of bioactive substances (cells, growth factors, and others) to better guide tissue regeneration. However,... 

Understanding biological systems requires extensive knowledge of individual parameters, and to study the processes of cell differentiation and cell behavior, a suitable environment must be created with the physiological conditions of the human body. For this purpose, with the knowledge of microfluidics, a microenvironment can be provided to study the behavior of cells on a small scale. The use of bone tissue model microfluidic chips is an alternative and new method in which it is possible to study the behavior of cells to differentiate into bone and to examine the toxicity of drugs, which in itself can help in the effective and successful treatment of these cases show. Therefore, in this... 

Prevalent deployment of Distributed Energy Resources(DERs) in the demand side of electrical energy grids has several advantages such as greenhouse gases emission reduction, mitigation of power losses in the distribution grids and abatement of the dependency on the wholesale generation companies. At the same time, it paves the way for the advent of local interactive energy trading frameworks. In the following thesis, a distributed data-driven algorithm is developed for market-clearing in a community-based local energy market. The social welfare maximization is considered as the objective of the energy trading. The production and demand of electricity are the decision variables of sellers and... 

The main topic of this research is the navigation and control of a free-flying satellite with a robot manipulator while transferring and placing cargo on a space station. After connecting the cargo module, astronauts and robots need to deliver the available loads to the desired modules in a space station. Capturing an object or cargo is a critical issue studied extensively so far. However, delivery and placing of the cargo at the target point have not been investigated yet, to the best of the author’s knowledge; hence, this is a primary motivation for conducting the proposed research. After capturing the payload, the position and attitude of the manipulator with respect to the station’s... 

In this research, non-isothermal annealing process at temperatures ranging between 400°C to 830 °C was investigated in warm and cold-rolled austenitic stainless steel 304L. First, the wide variety of austenitic to martensitic structure was produced by the multi-pass rolling process at room temperature -8 °C, 200 °C, and 280°C. The n exponent in Olson-Cohen equation was governed 2.83 after non-linear curve fitting to assess the fraction of deformation-induced martensite as a function of strain. Afterward, Abaqus/Explicit method was utilized to achieve the stored energy and plastic strains distribution through the thickness. Then, Cellular automata and Galerkin-finite element models were... 

In this thesis, a new method is proposed to find the class of stabilizing control structures for interconnected systems from a graphtheoretic
perspective. The objective is to classify all possible control structures (static or dynamic), capable of stabilizing the closedloop system. The method can be formulated by using the characteristics of fixed modes of the system for arbitrary control structures.To this end, first, a method is proposed based on solving a set of discrete linear programming to determine whether a system is stabilizable via a decentralized controller. Subsequently, by solving a set of discrete linear feasibility problems, all possible stabilizing controller structures... 

The importance of New Product Development (NPD) projects has been realized more and more in recent years. Among different decisions to be made in NPD process, one of the most critical decisions is about the best time to launch new product(s). Due to existence of many internal and external influential factors, determining the optimal launch time is often too complicated and it is quite hard to systematically analyze it. Despite risky nature of NPD, risk considerations in determining the optimal launch time have not been addressed in literature due to the mentioned complexity. In this research, we developed a model that takes in to account risk considerations while systematically determining...