Sharif Digital Repository

In this article, the problem of combined forced and free convection in vertical porous and regular channels for both regular fluids and nanofluids has been solved using the CFD technique in the entrance regions of momentum and heat transfer taking into account the influences of viscous heating and inertial force. In this regard, various types of viscous dissipation models reported in the literature such as the Darcy model, the power of the drag force model, and the clear fluid-compatible model were applied. In the case of nanofluid flow, both the Brownian and thermophoresis molecular transfer mechanisms were considered. The dimensionless distributions of velocity, temperature, and the volume... 

In this article, a new method for solving multidimensional population balance (PB) equations for agglomeration is presented. First, discretized 2-dimensional PB (DPB) is derived and by applying probability approach, this method is extended to n-dimensional PB. The discretization of size intervals is in the form of v(j) = 2j-i v(i) and the volume based PB is used. Because of conservative nature of volume, all internal coordinates are converted to some independent volumes. A simple and clear procedure for solving multidimensional PB is proposed using probability concept. In addition, various types of birth and death mechanisms involved in PB are analyzed separately. Moreover, results of... 

A comprehensive mathematical model has been developed for the simulation of simultaneous chemical absorption of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide by means of Monoethanolamine (MEA) aqueous solution in hollow fiber membrane reactors is described. In this regard, a perfect model considering the entrance regions of momentum, energy, and mass transfers was developed. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques were applied to solve governing equations, and the model predictions were validated against experimental data reported in the literature and excellent agreement was found. Effects of different disturbances on the dynamic behavior of the reactor were investigated. Moreover, effects of... 

In this article, the problem of simultaneous heat, mass, and momentum transfer in the developing region of tubular reactors with homogeneous chemical reaction and laminar power-law fluid flow under unsteady-state conditions has been solved. In this regard, the general governing equations were solved using finite-difference method and analyzed carefully. Moreover, the influences of various parameters and dimensionless numbers such as power-law index, heat of reaction, reaction order, and Damköhler number value on the numerical results were investigated. In addition, the numerical results obtained for the fully-developed velocity distribution of Newtonian fluid flow and Sherwood number value... 

The preparation of microcapsules containing perphenazine by solvent evaporation using ethyl cellulose is described. The microparticles are formed after solvent evaporation and polymer precipitation. The drug was dissolved in a polymer solution and emulsified into an aqueous phase to form microcapsules. To study the effects on particle size, encapsulation efficiency and morphology, three different molecular weights of ethyl cellulose (Mw=47000, 71000 and 99000) were used. Covalent bonding of drugs to polymers via hydrolytically or enzymatically cleavable covalent bond was achieved for sustained drug delivery. The release rate of perphenazine from these systems was investigated  

This article is focused on a simple approach for determining the natural frequency and mode shape of laminated angle-ply plates with various shapes by rectangular orthotropy. Since the boundary of the domain for all shapes are not natural to the material coordinate axes it seems appropriate to express the plate displacement amplitude in terms of a polynomial and a general shape function multiplication in the x and y coordinates. The boundary conditions considered are clamped and simply supported edges. The effect of the fiber orientation, layer number, and lamination sequence on the natural frequencies of plates is also considered. The natural frequency determinant has been generated using... 

We study the trade-off between throughput and memory footprint of embedded software that is synthesized from acyclic static dataflow (task graph) specifications targeting distributed memory multiprocessors. We identify iteration overlapping as a knob in the synthesis process by which one can trade application throughput for its memory requirement. Given an initial processor assignment and non-overlapped task schedule, we formally present underlying properties of the problem, such as constraints on a valid iteration overlapping, maximum possible throughput, and minimum memory footprint. Moreover, we develop an effective algorithm for generation of a rich set of design points that provide a... 

Many mobile applications running on smartphones and wear- able devices would potentially benefit from the accuracy and scalability of deep CNN-based machine learning algorithms. However, performance and energy consumption limitations make the execution of such computationally intensive algorithms on mobile devices prohibitive. We present a GPU- accelerated library, dubbed CNNdroid [1], for execution of trained deep CNNs on Android-based mobile devices. Empirical evaluations show that CNNdroid achieves up to 60X speedup and 130X energy saving on current mobile devices. The CNNdroid open source library is available for download at https://github.com/ENCP/CNNdroid  

This paper proposes a novel multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework for performance measurement in higher education institutions (HEIs) using semi-structured interviews, expert panels, and questionnaires. The proposed method comprises the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and Best-Worst Method (BWM). Fuzzy set theory is used to address the vagueness and uncertainty of experts’ judgments, and the group decision-making process is handled by the Delphi method. The FDM filters out the criteria extracted from the literature, and BWM finds the relative weight of the criteria and indicators. A real-world case from a public university is employed to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness... 

Thiomorpholine 1,1-dioxides were prepared with double Michael addition reaction of aromatic amines to divinyl sulfone catalyzed by boric acid/glycerol in water. This catalyst system was also used for the Michael addition reaction of aromatic amines to electron-deficient alkenes. The reaction is simple and green and gives good to excellent yields  

A simple and mild procedure for the trimethylsilylation of a wide variety of phenols with hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) on the surface of silica gel dispersed with NaHSO4 at r.t. in a few minutes with excellent yields under neutral conditions is reported. This procedure also allows an excellent selectivity for the silylation of phenols in the presence of amine and CO 2H groups  

Variants of dataflow specification models are widely used to synthesize streaming applications for distributed-memory parallel processors. We argue that current practice of specifying streaming applications using rigid dataflow models, implicitly prohibits a number of platform oriented optimizations and hence limits portability and scalability with respect to number of processors. We motivate Functionally-cOnsistent stRucturally-MalLEabe Streaming Specification, dubbed FORMLESS, which refers to raising the abstraction level beyond fixed-structure dataflow to address its portability and scalability limitations. To demonstrate the potential of the idea, we develop a design space exploration... 

Surface settlement is considered as an adverse effect induced by tunneling in the civil projects. This paper proposes the use of the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) for predicting the maximum surface settlement (MMS) resulting from the tunneling. For this work, three forms of equations, i.e., linear, quadratic and power are developed and their weights are then optimized/updated with the ICA. The requirement datasets were collected from the line No. 2 of Karaj urban railway, in Iran. In the ICA models, vertical to horizontal stress ratio, cohesion and Young’s modulus, as the effective parameters on the MSS, are adopted as the inputs. The statistical performance parameters such as root... 

Surface settlement is considered as an adverse effect induced by tunneling in the civil projects. This paper proposes the use of the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) for predicting the maximum surface settlement (MMS) resulting from the tunneling. For this work, three forms of equations, i.e., linear, quadratic and power are developed and their weights are then optimized/updated with the ICA. The requirement datasets were collected from the line No. 2 of Karaj urban railway, in Iran. In the ICA models, vertical to horizontal stress ratio, cohesion and Young’s modulus, as the effective parameters on the MSS, are adopted as the inputs. The statistical performance parameters such as root... 

The depth of anaesthesia estimation has been of a great interest in recent decades. In this paper we present a new methodology to quantify the depth of anaesthesia by quantifying the power-law correlations of the EEG signal. Extraction of useful information about the nonlinear dynamics of the brain during anaesthesia has been proposed with the optimum fractal scaling exponent. This optimum solution is based on the best domain of box sizes in the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) algorithm which have meaningful changes at different depth of anaesthesia. The experimental results confirm that our new algorithm on the raw EEG data can clearly discriminate between aware to moderate and deep... 

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... 

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... 

The present paper addresses an analytical method to determine the overall behavior of piezocomposite materials containing body centered cubic (BCC) distribution of arbitrary oriented ellipsoidal heterogeneities. This approach is based on the extension of the electromechanical equivalent inclusion method (EMEIM) to interacting multi-inhomogeneities. In this treatment the short and long range interactions of the piezoelectric particles are appropriately incorporated through the homogenizing eigenstrainelectric field. The periodicity of the microstructure of the medium suggests representing the eigenfields in terms of Fourier series, accounting for the matrixparticle, interparticle and... 

A highly efficient magnetic Brønsted acid catalyst was synthesized based on immobilization of 2-methylimidazole functionalized by chlorosulfonic acid on the surface of silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4@SiO2-2mimSO3H). The catalyst has an excellent activity and recyclable for at least 6 reaction runs and is proven to be highly effective in the synthes is of α-aminophosphonate compounds in a green way. The facile recovery of the catalyst is carried out by applying an external magnet device. It is both "green" and efficient. The catalyst was fully characterized by techniques of TEM, SEM, FT-IR, TGA, and elemental analysis (CHNS)