Sharif Digital Repository

A central problem in motor control is to understand how the many biomechanical degrees of freedom are coordinated to achieve a goal. A common assumption is that Central Nervous System (CNS) would minimize a performance index to achieve this goal which is called objective function. In this paper, two popular objective functions are utilized to design the optimal trajectory of trunk movements. A 3D computational method incorporated with 18 anatomically oriented muscles is used to simulate human trunk system. Inverse dynamics allows us to compute torque which is generated around Lumbosacral joint. This torque is divided among muscles by static stability-based optimization. Trunk movement from... 

In recent years, PM steel parts have been used due to materials saving and cost. Mechanical properties of PM parts made of Ultrapac-LA (Fe-.5Mo-1.5Cu-1. 75Ni) with 0.2 and 0.5% graphite addition have been studied. The chemical composition of Ultrapac-LA is similar to Distaloy AB. Specimens with dimensions of 89×6×5.5 mm were prepared. The green compacts were sintered at 1120°C in a 75 H2 -25 N2 atmosphere for 40 minutes to densities in the range of 6.7g/cm3 to 7 g/cm3. They were tested in static and cyclic loading, and their microstructures were studied by optical microscopy. Results show that porosity has a definite effect on fatigue resistance of this alloy. The formation of bainite and... 

Semi-active devices are low-cost as well as small and by changing the properties of low-power intensive structures, the aims of control are accomplished. On the other hand, the limited control force which can be applied to the structure for each damper causes more dampers to be used in the structures compared to the larger and stronger control devices which are more costly. These dampers coupled with sensors and the structure themselves make a complex dynamic system which is best controlled by a decentralized method such as Market-Based Control (MBC). In MBC, the actuators and the supply energy are modeled as buyer and seller respectively in the market place. To define the demand function of... 

A central problem in motor control is to understand how the many biomechanical degrees of freedom are coordinated to achieve a goal. A common assumption is that Central Nervous System (CNS) will plan tasks based on open-loop optimal control theory which simultaneously predicts state variables and motor commands based on a compound objective function. A 3D computational method incorporated with 18 anatomically oriented muscles is used to simulate human trunk system. Direct collocation method allows us to convert a constrained optimal control problem to a common nonlinear programming problem to assume the spinal stability condition. Trunk movement from the upright standing to 60 degrees of... 

Developing a computational model for studying tribological performance is essential for computing accurate life cycle of various materials. Caused by the existence of complicated and nonlinear interactions between material surfaces, exact modeling of wear behavior is very difficult. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in distinguishing similar patterns in experimental data and predictive modeling of a certain material’s wear behavior. In this paper, artificial neural networks (ANNs) approach, adaptive neural-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) technique, and fuzzy clustering method (FCM) are used to develop a simple, accurate, and applicable model for predicting the wear behavior of... 

In this study, microstructural aspects that control fracture and deformation resistance of P/M materials are evaluated. Several low-alloy steels were produced under both experimental and commercial conditions for achieving different matrix phases and porosity levels with varying shape factors. A 'porosity map' was constructed and used for a quantified study of the dominant mechanism controlling mechanical behaviors. The role of inclusion gathering and secondary pores, as well as sintering mechanism and alloying method is considered and discussed. The mechanism assessment was performed by using microstructure examination through optical and scanning electron microscopy. The results... 

User-generated data in TripAdvisor.com consists of considerable amount of useful information that can help managers to provide better services to their customers. This study aims to forecast a new user's rate to a hotel based on information of the hotel and user. To do so, all reviews on all hotels of Tehran on TripAdvisor.com as real data are selected and 8 different supervised machine learning models are applied to the data to select the best method including K-nearest neighbors (KNN), Naïve Bayes, decision tree, logistic regression, support vector machine, neural network, random forest, and gradient boosting. KNN algorithm which uses similarity and distance measures for classification is... 

The powder metallurgy process is ideally suited to the mass production of structural parts of complicated shape and with tight tolerances without appreciable loss of material. Because of its unique attributes such as reducing weight and production cost, powder metallurgy has made very significant in roads as a substitution technology in automotive parts, such as cams and gears in this process, we can improve the mechanical properties such as fatigue resistance of PM materials by changing of manufacturing parameters, for example, density, sintering temperature, sintering time, etc. In this research, the fatigue behaviour of sintered steel (Fe - 1.5 Mo - 3 Mn - 0.7 C) was investigated with... 

The influence of manufacturing parameters such as compacting pressure, heat treatment and microstructure on the static and dynamic properties of Fe-1.75 Ni-1.5 Cu-0.5 Mo-0.6 C was investigated. Wear and fatigue tests were carried out on reciprocate wearing and tension compression mode, respectively. The results show that delamination wear mechanism of sintered steel is similar to that of conventional wrought or cast materials. But, in sintered material, open porosity acts as sites of generation and collection of wear debris or formation of subsurface cracks. Wear rate is decreased and fatigue strength is increased by heat treatment. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved  

PM steel parts have become more widely used in recent years by reason of materials and cost savings. This paper deals with the mechanical properties of PM parts made of ULTRAPAC-LA (Fe-0.5Mo-1.5Cu-1.75Ni) with 0.2 and 0.5% graphite addition. ULTRAPAC-LA having the same chemical composition as Distaloy AB was investigated. Specimens with dimensions of 89×6×5.5 mm3 were prepared. The green compacts were sintered at 1120°C in a 75 H2-25 N2 atmosphere for 40 minutes to densities in the range of 6.7g/cm3 to 7g/cm3. They were tested in static and cyclic loading, and their microstructures were studied by optical microscope. The results show that porosity has a definite effect on fatigue resistance... 

Four 5-, 10-, 20- and 30-story moment frames, representing low-, mid-, and two high-rise structures, were subjected to a great number of idealized directivity pulses. The amplitudes and periods of pulses vary from 0.02 g to 1.0 g and 0.5 to 12 sec, respectively. Over 1400 nonlinear dynamic analyses of low- to high-rise moment frames were performed which were feasible through using modified fish-bone model. The distribution of interstory drift along the height was studied and two applied contours were proposed: (i) the maximum interstory drift contour, and (ii) the critical story contour. These contours were demonstrated versus the ratio of natural period of the structure to the pulse period... 

In this article singular points of a parallel manipulator are obtained based on a novel geometrical method. Here we introduce the constrained plain method (CPM) and some of its application in parallel mechanism. Given the definition of constraint plane (CP) and infinite constraint plane (ICP) the dependency conditions of constraints is achieved with the use of a new theorem based on the Ceva geometrical theorem. The direction of angular velocity of a body is achieved by having three ICPs with the use of another theorem. Finally, with the use of the above two novel theorems singularities of the 3UPF_PU mechanism are obtained. It should be emphasized that this method is completely geometrical,... 

An analytical model is proposed to study the effect of particle size on melting enthalpy and entropy of metallic nanoparticles (NPs). The Mott's and Regel's equations for melting entropy in the combination of core average coordination number (CAC) and surface average coordination number (SAC) of freestanding NPs are considered. Clusters of icosahedral (IC), body centered cubic (BCC), and body centered tetragonal (BCT) structure without any vacancies and defects are modeled. Using the variable coordination number made this model to be in good agreement with experimental and molecular dynamic (MD) results of different crystal structures. The model predicts melting entropy and enthalpy of... 

Grinding is widely used for manufacturing of components that require fine surface finish and good dimensional accuracy. In this study a thermo-mechanical finite element analysis is conducted to find out how grinding parameters can affect temperature and residual stress distribution in the workpiece. Results of parametric study presented in this work indicate, by carefully selecting the grinding parameters, minimum thermal and mechanical damage can be achieved. Higher workpiece velocities produce higher surface residual stress. By increasing depths of cut, depth of tensile residual stresses increases. Convection heat coefficient does not have any considerable effect on surface residual stress... 

Adaptive Noise Cancellation (ANC) is a well-known technique for background noise reduction in automobile and vehicular environments. The noise fields in automobile and other vehicle interior obey the diffuse noise field model closely. On the other hand, the ANC does not provide sufficient noise reduction in the diffuse noise fields. In this paper, a new multistage post-filter is designed for ANC as a solution to diffuse noise conditions. The designed post-filter is a single channel Linear Prediction (LP) based speech enhancement system. The LP is performed by an adaptive lattice filter and attempts to extract speech components by using intermediate ANC signals. The post-filter has no... 

Shot peening is widely used to improve the fretting fatigue strength of critical surfaces. Fretting fatigue occurs in contacting parts that are subjected to fluctuating loads and sliding movements at the same time. This paper presents a sequential finite element simulation to investigate the shot peening effects on normal stress, shear stress, bulk stress and slip amplitude, which are considered to be the controlling parameters of fretting damage. The results demonstrated that among the modifications related to shot peening, compressive residual stress has a dominant effect on the fretting parameters  

One-dimensional (1D) MgO structures were successfully synthesized via carbothermic reduction of mechanically activated mixture of MgO and graphite. Mechanical activation of source materials before carbothermic reduction can substantially enhance the formation of MgO products at a temperature (1000 °C) relatively lower than that required in previous approaches (≥1200 °C). However, the morphology of MgO formed is dependent on the degree of mechanical activation and the condition of the subsequent carbothermic reduction. Two distinctive morphologies were found for MgO products synthesized using our method: single crystalline nanorods with rectangular cross-sections whose diameters range from 50...