Sharif Digital Repository

The research methods presented in this dissertation are the result of the confrontation between medical science and engineering science. This contrast is intended to better understand the function of the middle ear system and the inner ear cochlea through modeling and finite element analysis and the effect of hearing aid use on the middle ear and cochlear function.The research began with the creation of a three-dimensional model of the middle ear using microCT imaging. Then the finite element model of the middle human ear was implemented using the same three-dimensional model. The results of the finite element model resulting from the loading on eardurm were calculated as displacement of... 

Varus-Valgus deformity increases local stress in cartilage and the other soft tissues of knee. This phenomenon may adversely influence patient’s walking pattern and also lead to worsen its existing impairments. In this situation, osteotomy is used to modify the alignment of the lower limb. Using CT-scan, radiography data, and their experiences, surgeons quantify the amount of modification. However, in many cases, the surgery does not result in desired output. It seems that the effects of soft tissues, which play an important role in this respect, should be taken into account. In order to design effectively for the osteotomy surgery, it is necessary to develop a patient-specific... 

Varus-Valgus deformity increases local stress in cartilage and the other soft tissues of knee. This phenomenon may adversely influence patient’s walking pattern and also lead to worsen its existing impairments. In this situation, osteotomy is used to modify the alignment of the lower limb. Using CT-scan, radiography data, and their experiences, surgeons quantify the amount of modification. However, in many cases, the surgery does not result in desired output. It seems that the effects of soft tissues, which play an important role in this respect, should be taken into account. In order to design effectively for the osteotomy surgery, it is necessary to develop a patient-specific... 

Magnetic shape memory alloys (MSMAs) are a new kind of smart materials which are great alternatives for energy harvesting systems due to some unmatched characteristics such as reversible large strain, high cycle fatigue and fast time response. In this work, an energy harvesting system using MSMA is studied. For this goal, a 3-D thermodynamic-based MSMA model is applied for predicting magnetomechanical behavior of the MSMA sample which is used in the energy harvester system. Since demagnetization effect, which has a great influence on the model’s outputs, has been neglected in the selected MSMA model, a new approach is presented for inserting demagnetization coefficients, regarding to the... 

The work reported in this dissertation is the result of a joint venture of biomedical scientists and engineers for understanding human middle ear mechanics through finite element modeling and analysis. The main objective of the research is to explore the middle ear dynamics by using an accurate finite element model of the human middle ear. The research started with developing a systematic and accurate geometric modeling method that can be employed to reconstruct the middle ear from the histological sections of a human temporal bone. Using the method, a solid model of human middle ear was constructed which reveals excellent accuracy in geometry. Then a finite element model of the human middle... 

Recent developments in technology resulted in the design of functionally graded materials (FGM) in which properties can be changed gradually. One of the applications of these materials is in the pressure vessels. These materials can be used in a manner which minimize the heat loss and corrosion and maximize the strength. Most of the vessels include a cylinder and a hemispherical cap which used for the storage of liquid or gas. The vessels should be strength enough to handle high pressure as well as base vibration due to earthquake. Static and dynamic analyses of these structures must be performed prior to any application. In this project by utilizing finite element method and cylindrical... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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,... 

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 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 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...