Sharif Digital Repository

Asphaltic concrete has been used as waterproofing core in embankment dams, since 1948. In this application, the asphaltic core is surrounded by granular filter materials. The interaction of the asphaltic concrete and the granular materials has not been sufficiently investigated. In this paper the mechanical behavior of the interface between a natural smooth sand filter and asphaltic concrete at different levels of normal stresses and a constant shear strain rate has been studied. Small scale direct shear test has been conducted in this study, in which the shear surface is considered as the interface. Asphalt concrete specimens used in the shear test were cut in square shape (10×10×2.5 cm)... 

The state of solids mixing can be considered as a key factor in accomplishment of high efficiency and a uniform product in gas-solid fluidized-beds operating with several different particle sizes. In the present work, coupled DEM-CFD approach was used to carefully investigate the mixing process of binary particles in flat-bottom spouted beds. In this regard, simultaneous effects of particle specifications, operating conditions, and bed dimensions on the equilibrium mixing state of solid mixture were evaluated in detail. Moreover, taking into account the contribution of various parameters, the obtained simulation results were used to draw a correlation for predicting the equilibrium mixing... 

Sanctions imposed by a country against another country are considered as a foreign policy tool. Many studies have investigated different aspects of sanctions including the efficacy of sanctions to alter the target country’s behaviour. However, the effects of a potential fight-back strategy adopted by a target country have been discussed rarely. In this paper, the outcomes of a possible fight-back strategy are simulated using game theoretical analysis. To find the matching state of game theory and sanction regimes, we have conducted a critical and systematic review of 12 sanctions, from 1950 to 2012. The results show that the capability of a target country to implement fight-back strategies... 

In the present work, we report a chemically modified polyacrylamide/silica nanoporous composite adsorbent for the removal of reactive black 5 (RB5) azo dye from aqueous solutions. The composite adsorbent was synthesized in a packed bed and modified by ethylenediamine (EDA). The adsorbent was characterized by Fourier transformation infrared (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), thermoporometry, Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) method and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Mechanical stability of the adsorbent was examined in a packed bed by following the back-pressure of the column. Pore diameter of the composite adsorbent in dry and wet states was estimated to be about 18.71 nm and... 

Fracture tests on Sn93Pb37 solder joints in a double cantilever beam (DCB) configuration were performed at two different strain rates of 10−5 and 0.03 s−1 under mode I loading conditions. In each case, the critical strain energy release rate for crack initiation, Jci, was obtained. Effects of storing specimens at a constant temperature of 75 °C and cyclic temperature varying between 32 and 75 °C were examined at these strain rates. In the strain rate of 0.03 s−1, storing samples in a constant or cyclic temperature caused the fracture energy to decrease significantly with respect to the specimens maintained in ambient temperature. The significant reduction in fracture energy by placing the... 

Double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens were prepared according to standard surface mount technology (SMT). The samples were stored inside an environmental chamber at two different relative humidity values (i.e. 40 or 100%) for either 2 or 4 h. Then they were aged at 25 °C, 75 °C or 125℃ for the same time. Finally, after being cooled to room temperature, fracture tests were performed under mode-I loading conditions at a strain rate of 0.03 s−1 at room temperature. Storage time did not have a significant effect on the fracture behavior. The fracture load and energy of the solder joints decreased significantly when the temperature was increased from 25 to 75℃. By further increase in the... 

In this study, a blind steganalysis approach which accurately discloses low rate data hiding schemes is proposed. The absolute values of neighbouring joint density (absNJ) are used for feature extraction. In this way, the intra- and inter-block situations are employed providing a variety of different features. Aside from the absolute values of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients, the differential DCT coefficients are also exploited to extract the features. Moreover, the absNJ features will be extended and used over differential DCT coefficients. It is shown that applying the Pth power of the DCT coefficients instead of their first power gains more discriminative features. Then,... 

Here, the design of a wideband absorber operating at terahertz frequencies is presented. The design is based on an analytical circuit model of graphene arrays of rectangular patches obtained from the presented circuit model of graphene arrays of disks. A recently proposed method is generalised for the design of wideband absorbers at higher frequencies The bandwidth is increased by correct tuning of the input impedance for a structure composed of two layers of graphene arrays and a metal-backed dielectric layer. Using two-layer graphene arrays, the authors decrease the slope of the imaginary part of the input impedance to increase the bandwidth. The designed absorber works at a frequency of... 

Abstract- Benefits of PSS application for electromechanical oscillations damping is clarified. A major difficulty of PSS application is its tuning such that its damping characteristics do not fall into overcompensation facing continuously changing power systems. This paper presents an approach for wide area monitoring and control based PSS tuning. The presented approach originated from adaptive tuning based on real time power system state estimation. © 2008 IEEE  

Operation of transmission lines are usually limited by stability limits rather than thermal capacity limits. Thermal limit of transmission lines is a physical limitation of their components and not related with the overall power system characteristics, but stability limits are strictly related with power system characteristics. This paper presents an approach for increasing stability limits using PSS. © 2008 IEEE  

In this manuscript, synthesis of cobalt/poly vinyl alcohol (PVA)/gamma alumina nanocomposite via a simple room temperature, as well as its catalyst performance were explored. Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were conducted. The surface area of the polymeric composite was obtained to be 280 m2/g. The cobalt loading on the nanocomposite was measured using inductivity couple plasma. Transmission electron microscopy analysis showed that the size of cobalt crystalline encapsulate inside the polymer was confined to 5 nm. Magnetic property analysis, using vibrating sample magnetometer, confirmed... 

Background: Remote cardiac monitoring and screening have already become an integral telemedicine component. The wide usage of several different wireless electrocardiography (ECG) devices warrants a validation study on their accuracy and reliability. Methods: Totally, 300 inpatients with the Nabz Hooshmand-1 handheld ECG device and the GE MAC 1200 ECG system (as the reference) were studied to check the accuracy of the devices in 1 and 6-limb lead performance. Simultaneous 10-second resting ECGs were assessed for the most common ECG parameters in lead I. Afterward, 6-lead ECGs (limb leads), were performed immediately and studied for their morphologies. Results: Of the 300 patients, 297 had... 

Background While several studies have investigated the traditional linear measures in patients with knee osteoarthritis, no study has yet reported the non-linear structure of postural sway in these patients. Methods We used two non-linear methods, recurrence quantification analysis (percent of determinism-%DET) and central tendency measure, to respectively investigate differences in the complexity and variability of sway dynamics between two groups of knee osteoarthritis patients (n = 27) and healthy controls (n = 27) under different conditions of postural and cognitive tasks. The experimental conditions included standing on (1) rigid surface with open eyes; (2) rigid surface with closed... 

Diffusivity equation which can provide us with the pressure distribution, is a Partial Differential Equation (PDE) describing fluid flow in porous media. The quadratic pressure gradient term in the diffusivity equation is nearly neglected in hydrology and petroleum engineering problems such as well test analysis. When a compressible liquid is injected into a well at high pressure gradient or when the reservoir possess a small permeability value, the effect of ignoring this term increases. In such cases, neglecting this parameter can result in high errors. Previous models basically focused on numerical and semi-analytical methods for semi-infinite domain. To the best of our knowledge, no... 

Adsorption of Cr (VI) from aqueous solution was studied using a continuous fixed bed column which is packed with a new micro-porous composite particle developed in this study. This composite particle is composed of silica porous particle in which acrylamide is polymerized within the pore regions of the silica particles. The composite particle was supposed to maintain the mechanical properties of polyacrylamide as efficient absorbent to serve appropriately in the continuous processes. In order to enhance the adsorption capacity of the composite particle, it was modified with ethylenediamine. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and... 

Airlift pumps are devices with the ability to lift liquid phase by injecting the gas phase. Parameters that affect the performance of these pumps are divided into two groups. The first group contains design parameters such as diameter of the pipe, tapering angle of the upriser pipe, and the submergence ratio, which is the ratio of immersed length to the total length of the upriser. The second group includes operating parameters such as the gas flow rate, bubble diameter, bubble distribution, and inlet gas pressure. In this research, the performance of an airlift pump is investigated numerically for different submergence ratios and different diameter of the upriser pipe. For this purpose, an... 

Two phase lifting pumps are devices with the ability of lifting liquid phase by injecting the gas phase. Parameters which affect the performance of these pumps are divided into two groups. The first group contains design parameters such as diameter of the pipe, tapering angle of the upriser pipe and the submergence ratio which is the ratio of immersed length to the total length of the upriser. The second group includes operating parameters, such as the gas flow rate, bubble diameter, bubble distribution and inlet gas pressure. In this research, the performance of two phase lifting pump is investigated numerically for different submergence ratios and different diameter of the upriser pipe.... 

In this paper, the participation of wind farms in load frequency control (LFC) is studied. A previously proposed macromodel for the wind farm is employed to regulate its output power. The wind farm including its proposed control strategy is incorporated into the conventional LFC model. The proposed LFC structure is able to dynamically maintain the system frequency at the nominal value against the power imbalances. To achieve proper transient response, the integral control parameter of the LFC controller is optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA). To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, several simulation case studies are carried out. The results show that the wind farm can... 

In this paper we present a new fault model for testing bus components using their functionality. With the aim of a new fault model definition all components in a bus except cores of the SoC will be tested as fast as possible. According to the proposed method in this paper, at first, wires and small components will be tested by marching test patterns as the test data and, after that based on a proposed method; the new format faults for the bus will be used. Using AMBA-AHB as the experimental result, the new fault model shows efficiency in comparison with corresponding stuck-at  

In this paper we present a new fault model for testing standard On-Chip buses using a graph model. This method will be optimized for speed of testing. Using AMBA-AHB as the experimental result, the proposed fault model shows efficiency in comparison with corresponding stuck-At fault testing