Sharif Digital Repository

The three-dimensional power law fluid flow through rough microchannels has been studied numerically to determine the effects of the topographic structures on the thermal and hydrodynamic characteristics of the system. Rectangular, triangular and sinusoidal element shapes have been considered in order to investigate the effects of roughness height, width, pitch and channel separation on the pressure drop and heat transfer. Uniform wall heat flux boundary condition has been applied for all the peripheral walls. The results indicate that the global heat transfer performance can be improved or reduced by the roughness elements at the expense of pressure head when compared with the smooth... 

The data mining activities done for making a data warehouse are too extensive and going through such a process is hardly possible in such cases. Therefore, there is a need for a new method which would be capable of prioritizing such activities according to organizational goals and missions. In this paper a new method based on the detection of necessary components of the data warehouse is offered for assessment and measurement of the data warehouse capacity and quality. Indeed the presented method serves as a complementary process alongside current methodologies to improve data warehouses. The presented method provides the possibility to assess and compare different data warehouses in terms... 

A thermodynamically consistent phase field approach for fracture including surface stresses is presented. The surface stresses which are distributed inside a finite width layer at the crack surface are introduced as a result of employing some geometrical nonlinearities, i.e., by defining energy terms per unit volume at the current time and evaluating gradient of the order parameter in the current configuration. A double-well barrier term is included in the structure of the Helmholtz free energy which allows one to use the energy terms per unit volume at the current time when introducing the surface stresses in the current approach. Thus, the surface stresses are introduced in a similar way... 

A thermodynamically consistent phase field approach for fracture including surface stresses is presented. The surface stresses which are distributed inside a finite width layer at the crack surface are introduced as a result of employing some geometrical nonlinearities, i.e., by defining energy terms per unit volume at the current time and evaluating gradient of the order parameter in the current configuration. A double-well barrier term is included in the structure of the Helmholtz free energy which allows one to use the energy terms per unit volume at the current time when introducing the surface stresses in the current approach. Thus, the surface stresses are introduced in a similar way... 

A thermodynamically consistent phase field approach for fracture including surface stresses is presented. The surface stresses which are distributed inside a finite width layer at the crack surface are introduced as a result of employing some geometrical nonlinearities, i.e., by defining energy terms per unit volume at the current time and evaluating gradient of the order parameter in the current configuration. A double-well barrier term is included in the structure of the Helmholtz free energy which allows one to use the energy terms per unit volume at the current time when introducing the surface stresses in the current approach. Thus, the surface stresses are introduced in a similar way... 

Pure Zn and Zn matrix composite coatings containing nano-sized SiC particles with an average size of 50 nm were prepared from the zinc sulfate bath. The effects of the pulse frequency, maximum current density and duty cycle on the amount of particles embedded were examined. Electron microscopic studies revealed that the coating morphology was modified by the presence of SiC nanoparticles. In the presence of SiC nanoparticles deposit grows in outgrowth mode resulting in a very rough and porous microstructure. However, at very low and very high duty cycles a smooth and pore free microstructure was obtained. Corrosion resistance properties of the coatings were studied using potentiodynamic... 

A thermodynamically-consistent phase field approach for crack propagation which includes the following novel features is presented. (1) Scale dependency was included by relating the length scale to the number of cohesive interatomic planes at the crack tip. Because of this, the developed theory is applicable from the atomistic to the macroscopic scales. (2) The surface stresses (tension) are introduced by employing some geometrical nonlinearities even in small strain theory. They produce multiple contributions to the Ginzburg-Landau equation for crack propagation. (3) Crack propagation in the region with compressive closing stresses is eliminated by employing a stress-state-dependent kinetic... 

The phase field approach (PFA) for the interaction of fracture and martensitic phase transformation (PT) is developed, which includes the change in surface energy during PT and the effect of unexplored scale parameters proportional to the ratio of the widths of the crack surface and the phase interface, both at the nanometer scale. The variation of these two parameters causes unexpected qualitative and quantitative effects: shift of PT away from the crack tip, "wetting" of the crack surface by martensite, change in the structure and geometry of the transformed region, crack trajectory, and process of interfacial damage evolution, as well as transformation toughening. The results suggest... 

Phase field theory for fracture is developed at large strains with an emphasis on a correct introduction of surface stresses at nanoscale. This is achieved by multiplying the cohesion and gradient energies by the local ratio of the crack surface areas in the deformed and undeformed configurations and with the gradient energy in terms of the gradient of the order parameter in the reference configuration. This results in an expression for the surface stresses which is consistent with the sharp surface approach. Namely, the structural part of the Cauchy surface stress represents an isotropic biaxial tension, with the magnitude of a force per unit length equal to the surface energy. The surface... 

Graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) were synthesized using an oxidative unzipping of multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The interactions of the GONRs with various concentrations of fetal bovine serum or human plasma serum indicated that the GONRs were functionalized substantially by the albumin originated from the two different protein sources. Then, concentration-dependent cytotoxicity of the protein-functionalized GONRs on human epithelial cells was studied. Although the GONRs with concentrations ≤50 μg/mL did not exhibit significant cytotoxicity on the cells (with the cell viability >85%), the concentration of 100 μg/mL exhibited significant cytotoxicity including prevention of cell... 

This paper is a counterfactual analysis investigating the consequences of the formation of a currency union for Canada and the USA: whether outputs increase and prices decrease if these countries form a currency union. We use a two-country cointegrated model to conduct the counterfactual analysis, where the conditional forecasts are generated based on the Gaussian assumption. To deal with structural breaks and model uncertainty, conditional forecasts are generated from different models/estimation windows and the model-averaging technique is used to combine the forecasts. We also examine the robustness of our results to parameter uncertainty using the wild bootstrap method. The results show...