Sharif Digital Repository

In cloud investment markets, consumers are looking for the lowest cost and a desirable fairness while providers are looking for strategies to achieve the highest possible profit and return. Most existing models for auction-based resource allocation in cloud environments only consider the overall profit increase and ignore the profit of each participant individually or the difference between the rich and the poor participants. This paper proposes a multi-dimensional fairness combinatorial double auction (MDFCDA) model which strikes a balance between the revenue and the fairness among participants. We solve a winner determination problem (WDP) through integer programming which incorporates the... 

In this paper, a three-invariant cap plasticity is developed for description of powder behavior under cold compaction process. The constitutive elasto-plastic matrix and its components are derived as the nonlinear functions of powder relative density. Different aspects of 2D and 3D cap plasticity models are illustrated and the procedure for determination of powder parameters is described. It is shown how the proposed model could generate the elliptical yield surface, double-surface cap plasticity and the irregular hexagonal pyramid of the Mohr-Coulomb and cone-cap yield surface, as special cases. The single-cap plasticity is performed within the framework of large finite element deformation,... 

The principal purpose of tissue engineering is to stimulate the injured or unhealthy tissues to revive their primary function through the simultaneous use of chemical agents, cells, and biocompatible materials. One of the most recently used cellular materials is metallic wood, which possesses the strength of titanium as well as the density of natural materials, such as wood and water. Aside from its density, its cellular structure is also efficient, in which some parts are thick and dense, which hold the structure, and others are porous, which supports biological functions. This material has been predicted to be effective in bone tissue engineering in addition to several industrial... 

In this study, a multi-item economic order quantity model with shortage under vendor managed inventory policy in a single vendor single buyer supply chain is developed. This model explicitly includes warehouse capacity and delivery constraints, bounds order quantity, and limits the number of pallets. Not only the demands are considered imprecise, but also resources such as available storage and total order quantity of all items can be vaguely defined in different ways. An ant colony optimization is employed to find a near-optimum solution of the fuzzy nonlinear integer-programming problem with the objective of minimizing the total cost of the supply chain. Since no benchmark is available in... 

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-item economic order quantity (EOQ) model with shortage for a single-buyer single-supplier supply chain under green vendor managed inventory (VMI) policy. This model explicitly includes the VMI contractual agreement between the vendor and the buyer such as warehouse capacity and delivery constraints, bounds for each order, and limits on the number of pallets. To create a kind of green supply chain, tax cost of green house gas (GHG) emissions and limitation on total emissions of all items are considered in the model. A hybrid genetic and imperialist competitive algorithm (HGA) is employed to find a near-optimum solution of a nonlinear... 

In this paper the effects of the first reservoir filling on rockfill dams were studied numerically. To simulate the problem a simplified coupled formulation based on Biot's theory associated with unsaturated soils was presented. The finite element method was applied to the governing equations for the spatial discretization, followed by a generalized Newmark scheme used for the time domain discretization. The three effects of reservoir filling, collapse settlement produced by wetting the rockfill, water load on the dam body and buoyancy in the upstream shell were introduced. The nature of collapse settlement and how to numerically capture that by using the proper constitutive model is... 

In this paper, we apply elliptic second-order differential operators to distance functions. As a result, we extend the mean curvature comparison theorem using lower bounds on the extended Ricci tensor. Then, we extend the Bishop–Gromov volume comparison theorem and some of its consequences on the topology of manifolds. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG  

Recent researches have shown the importance of improving the supply chain competitiveness by means of strategic alliances. This study considers the retailer-supplier partnership through a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) system and develops an analytical model to explore the effect of important supply chain parameters on the cost savings realized from collaborative initiatives. This model is developed for a two-level supply chain consisting of a single supplier and a single retailer and examines the inventory management practices before and after implementation of VMI. The results of analytical examination show that VMI implementation in economic order quantity model when shortage is... 

Na3MnCO3PO4 (NMCP) is considered one of the promising cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries due to its high theoretical capacity. The hydrothermal method is an efficient, environmental-friendly, and simple route with low instrument cost to prepare active cathode materials such as NMCP. In this research, magnetic stirring was applied to promote the hydrothermal synthesis, and NMCP was produced by controlling different stirring times. This method results in the formation of pure NMCP upon only 45 min processing time. According to the ICP results, the Na to Mn ratio in the NMCP approached the stoichiometric value of 3 by prolonging the stirring time. By analyzing the charge-discharge... 

Considering the prominence attached to written corrective feedback (WCF) within the domain of second/foreign language (L2) acquisition, automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools have steadily gained ground over the last two decades. The current study was an attempt to investigate the extent incorporating an AWE program, known as Criterion®, within a process writing framework would affect learners' writing quality in an English as a foreign language context. Moreover, we drew a comparison between the overall effects of computer- versus teacher-generated WCF. Participants consisted of 53 tertiary level students from two intact essay-writing classes. The within-group findings revealed that the... 

While research into various dimensions of language learning strategies has been thriving over the recent years, grammar learning strategies (GLS) have largely remained under-explored. The present mixed methods research aimed to explore GLS in the three stages of classroom grammar tasks, while striving to determine the sequence of GLS and their contribution to grammar proficiency. In the qualitative phase, 13 participants partook in stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews after completing consciousness-raising (CR) tasks. Then, the grounded theory (GT) methodology was applied to conceptualize a theoretical model. For the quantitative phase, a modified version of Pawlak’s Grammar... 

Naturalness in Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems is very important in achieving high quality waveform. The naturalness of the waveform is highly correlated to phonetic coverage and prosodic features such as loudness, duration and pitch. This paper addresses the implementation of a prosodic TTS for Azeri. The TTS system to which the prosodic information is added, is a concatenative synthesizer based on diphones. For adding prosody and increasing naturalness, we have obtained a primary pitch curve for each word, based on the location of the stressed syllable. Also using sentence type effects, the final pitch contour has been modified. As far as we know, the output speech that is produced with this... 

In this paper, a three-invariant cap plasticity with a kinematic hardening rule is presented for powder materials. A general form is developed for the cap plasticity which can be compared with some common double-surface plasticity models proposed for powders in literature. The constitutive elasto-plastic matrix and its components are derived based on the definition of yield surface, hardening parameter and non-linear elastic behavior, as function of relative density of powder. The procedure for determination of powder parameters is described. Finally, the applicability of the proposed model is demonstrated in numerical simulation of triaxial and confining pressure tests. © 2006 Elsevier B.V.... 

In this paper, an application of the reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM) is presented in plasticity behavior of pressure-sensitive material. The RKPM technique is implemented in large deformation analysis of powder compaction process. The RKPM shape function and its derivatives are constructed by imposing the consistency conditions. The essential boundary conditions are enforced by the use of the penalty approach. The support of the RKPM shape function covers the same set of particles during powder compaction, hence no instability is encountered in the large deformation computation. A double-surface plasticity model is developed in numerical simulation of pressure-sensitive material.... 

In this paper, a new computational technique is presented based on the eXtended Finite Element Method (X-FEM) in pressure-sensitive plasticity of powder compaction considering frictional contact. In X-FEM, the need for mesh adaption to discontinuity interface is neglected and the process is accomplished by partitioning the domain with some triangular sub-elements whose Gauss points are used for integration of the domain of the elements. The technique is applied by employing additional functions, which are added to approximate the displacement field of the elements located on the interface. The double-surface cap plasticity model is employed within the X-FEM framework in numerical simulation...