Sharif Digital Repository

Organizations increasingly prioritize and utilize their intangible assets in a combined manner to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and success in a volatile market environment. In this research, the most important intangible assets of organizations have been identified. Using the Generalized Method of Moments, a suitable regression method for the statistical analysis of panel data, the impact of intangible assets on organizational profitability—specifically the return on assets—is examined separately and simultaneously across manufacturing and service industries. These assets include innovation, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. The population of this study consists of... 

Suspension system is one of the most influential components of vehicle in the area of stability and comfort. The suspension system is designed based on the use of the vehicle and stable characteristics. Obviously, being distant from the designed spots and applying various gates, its optimized performance is lost. Semi-active suspensions by changing their features get floating designed spots to be created and suspension system is always in optimum conditions through a suitable control. This research covers the efficacy of using damper Magneto Rheological which is called damper (MR) on the performance of seat suspension system in reducing vibrations. This damper is considered as a device in... 

Although much progress has been made in eliminating, conserving, and reducing migration and emissions of radioactive materials, the risk of radioactive material release into the environment is still one of the most important hazards in the use of nuclear energy. In this study, graphene compounds have been used as adsorbents for the removal of radioactive materials due to their high level, cost-effectiveness and simplicity of the synthesis process of various composites. In this regard, the removal of strontium and cobalt by graphene compounds has been investigated. Magnetite nanoparticles were anchored on the surface of graphene by sol-gel method and adsorption in batch mode was investigated.... 

Aerodynamics loads and aeroheating during reentry, are one of the challenging issues in designing One of the main challenges in the design and application of reusable spacecrafts is the aerodynamic and thermal loads acting on their structures during reentry into the atmosphere. For this reason, all the concepts/prototypes presented in the 20th century were either not fully reusable, or were partially canceled, or did not have economic justification. In this report, the aerodynamic loads on the first stage of a launch vehicle during the launch and return phases have been investigated. Due to the fact that the main part of the first stage of the vehicle includes fuel and oxidizer tanks, the... 

The collision of moderately large asteroids and comets also referred to as Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) with earth would have catastrophic consequences. Such events have occurred in the past and may occur again in the future. However, for the first time in known history, humanity may have the technology required to counter this threat. Methods studied for mitigation of this hazard are based on deflecting asteroid's trajectory and are normally divided into two basic categories: high energy impulsive methods, and long-duration low-thrust methods. Two parts of mission to be optimized are the trajectory of spacecraft to reach the target and the deflection strategy which could be analyzed by the... 

The main purpose of the present thesis is to establish a decentralized controller for some car–like multi robots to follow and hunt moving targets. Robots are very similar to actual cars considering geometric dimensions, mass and moment of inertia and so on; and outputs of the controller are steering-wheel and driving-wheel torques appropriately. Dynamics of the moving target is so that it escapes from the robots. Robots are equipped with antenna for getting wireless sensory signals, including range and bearing sensors. Kalman filter is used for estimation the target relative position and speed and robots state variables. The controller is designed for doing the above mentioned group... 

In recent years the advent of internet and web has transformed the process of data collection and make organizational and environmental data more accessible. On the one hand, many organizations have realized that the knowledge in these huge databases is key to supporting the various organizational decisions. Particularly, the knowledge about customers from these databases is critical for the marketing function. But, much of this useful knowledge is hidden and untapped. On the other hand, the intense competition and increased choices available for customers have created new pressures on marketing decision-makers and there has emerged a need to manage customers in a long-term relationship.... 

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are a type of marine vehicles which are currently being used for exploration, maintenance, repairing of marine structures and military appliances. Unmanned underwater vehicles categorize in two types: ROVs and AUVs, ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) usually are connected to the mother vessel with a cable, conduction signals transfer through this cable and there is an operator in the control loop. The vehicle may be fed up with this cable, AUVs are modern underwater vehicles which the operator on controlling and conducting is removed, there is no connection between the vehicle and mother vessel, energy sources and controlling orders are set up in the... 

The aeroelastic behavior of wings made of functionally graded materials in supersonic flow is studied. For this purpose the flutter speed is calculated and in the next step the post flutter behavior is investigated. The structural model is based on the classical plate theory and material properties are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according the power law distribution in terms of the volume fraction of material constituents. The linear piston theory which is modified to include thickness effects is used for supersonic aerodynamic modeling. The nonlinear structural model based on the Von-Karman strains is considered for prediction of the post-flutter behavior of the wing.... 

Facility location decisions play a prominent role in strategic planning of many firms, companies and governmental organizations. Since in many real-world facility location problems, the data are subject to uncertainty, in this thesis, we consider the P-center problem under uncertainty of demand nodes. Using Bertsimas and Sim approach, we modeled the problem as a linear optimization model. Furthermore, we develop a tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. Finally we designed some experiments to adjust the parameters of tabu search algorithm. We presented the numerical result accordingly  

Success in forecasting and analyzing sales for a given good or service can mean the difference between profit and loss for an accounting period and, ultimately, the success or failure of the business itself. Therefore reliable prediction of sales becomes a very important task. This thesis presents a novel sales forecasting approach by integration of Genetic Fuzzy Systems (GFS) and Data Clustering to construct a sales forecasting expert system. At first, we use stepwise regression analysis (SRA) to determine factors which have most influence on sales. At the next stage we divide our raw data into k clusters by means of K-means algorithm. Finally, all clusters will be fed into independent... 

Dynamic and vibration behavior of AFM microcantilever beam subject to the tip-sample interaction and/or contact is systematically investigated. An Euler-Bernoli microcantilever in 2D plane is considered with longitudinal and bending displacements. Inextensibility assumption and extended Hamilton’s principle is utilized to extract the single-variable integro partial equation of motion under: 1) tip-nanoparticle interactions, 2) tip-surface interactions in non-contact mode and 3) tip-surface interactions and contacts in intermittent-contact mode. Galerkin’s first mode approximation is then used to discretize the derived equations; and multiple time scales method is adopted to analyze the... 

In this research, an anistropic thin-walled beam composite is used to consider the effects of fiber orientation and lay-up configuration on the aeroelastic stability and response of an aircraft wing. The circum ferentially asymmetric stiffness (CAS) model consists of a group of non-classical effects; such as transverse shear, material anisotropic, warping inhibition, etc. The aerodynamic load has been modeled based on the strip theory and compressible unsteady flow in the finite- state form. In addition, to form the mass, stiffness and damping matrices of non-conservative aeroelastic systems the extended Galerkin’s method (EGM) and the method of separation of variables has been used. After... 

This thesis presents the results of an experimental and analytical study on the application of the strapping technique for seismic retrofit of reinforced concrete columns. In this technique, the columns are externally confined by post-tensioned metal strips. In the first phase of the experiments, the compressive stress-strain behavior of strapped cylindrical and prismatic specimens was studied. Effects of several parameters were studied including shape and size of specimens, strength of plain concrete, mechanical characteristics of confining strips and the level of pre-tensioning of the strips. The second phase of the tests included studying the lateral performance of strapped RC columns.... 

In order to reduce structural and nonstructural damages and associated financial losses during intense seismic events such as Bam earthquake, seismic retrofitting of existing structures should be considered as a special issue. In this regard, for quantifying the seismic performance of structures a guideline termed “instruction for seismic rehabilitation of existing building No.360” is issued which is mainly borrowed from performance-based assessment procedures FEMA 356. In contrast to conventional seismic design methods which are based on controlling stress ratio for different load combinations, in performance-based earthquake engineering methodology, the displacement control of structural... 

In the last decade, Intrusion Detection Systems has attracted attention due to their importance in network security, but still they've shortcomings. Generating a lot of low level alerts is the main problem. Many of these alerts are actually false positives. One suggested solution is Alert Correlation Analysis. Because of false positives alert correlation techniques are not able to build accurate scenarios, but the accuracy of alerts can be verified with the aid of the information logged in the host systems. In this dissertation after surveying the current alert correlation techniques, a model will be introduced to effectively verify the generated alerts and to apply correlation techniques to... 

Considering the role of fluid storage tanks within or after an earthquake and the irreparable damages from their destruction that arise from the nature of the fluids of flammable or toxic nature stored in those tanks, it is very important to ensure stability and durability of the tanks when an earthquake is occurring. One of the most important damages to storage tanks within the past earthquakes has been lack of stability of their walls taking place in the form of elephant buckling. A certain storage tank was subject to a case study in this research and the tank's body, foundation, anchorages, the tread between the fluid and tank's body and between the bottom sheet and foundation were... 

This research proposes a novel hybrid method for stock price index forecasting relying on technical analysis, the fundamental analysis of capital market, neural networks technology, and fuzzy logic. The new method shows a good performance comparing complicated and time-consuming forecasting methods. Several factors influence stock price; for example, an important one is the previous trend of stock price. Fortunately, by developing technical analysis and introducing the various indices of this method the maximum use of historical data is made in order to forecast future prices. Another kind of factors is macro-economic variables that their influence on the long-term trends of the stock...