Sharif Digital Repository

Steganography is the art and technique of concealing secret message in ordinary data cover, transmitted over a public channel, in a way that eavesdroppers, as well as the channel users, cannot detect the presence of the secret message. However, steganalysis tries to detect this type of covert communication using some effective analysis techniques. Steganalysis is often based on statistical properties of the suspicious signal that are expected to change due to the message embedding process. Secret message (which mostly is a set of pseudo-random bits because of cryptography) affects the statistical features of the cover signal. So far, many steganalysis techniques have been reported that are... 

Subdural hemorrhage (SDH) is one of the most common traumatic brain injuries. The mortality rate of SDH is over 30 percent. In addition, patients require to visit hospital for treatment and further healthcare. According to the costs of treatment and frequency of injuries, prevention of SDH is essential. 3D-Finite element modeling of human head is an appropriate tool for evaluation of injury risk and setting up a prevention tolerance criteria. The aim of this study is to create a 3D finite element model of human head with special consideration of vessels. Vessels are modeled by truss elements at current finite element models of human head; however, geometry of vessels is regarded as simple... 

Studying the behavior of materials at high strain rate is necessary for design and analysis of structures subjected to impact loading. Therefore, design and construction of apparatuses that enable us for testing various materials under impact loading is very important. The split Hopkinson pressure bar test -one of the most important impact tests- is utilized for dynamic loading at constant strain rates ranging from 100 to 10000 1/s.
In this thesis, first we explain about the behavior of materials at high strain rates and then focus on the behavior of polymers -that are widely used in different industries- under impact loading. Also, basic concepts of polymeric Hopkinson pressure bar and... 

It is very important to determine why there is still external corrosion on pipelines even though NACE RP0169 criteria are satisfied. The cathodic shielding problem is the most relevant finding to this kind of situation. In this research, the shielding behavior of three types of coatings (FBE, 3LPE and Polyurethane) used in Iranian gas industries are evaluated under laboratory condition by four major procedures. It has been found out that the FBE coating has no shielding effect and instead 3LPE coating has a shielding effect by not allowing electrical conductivity through the coating. Finally, the Polyurethane coating presented a mid-behavior effect but almost near to non-shielding behavior.... 

This thesis has been done in two parts. In part I,a rupture disc wasdesigned. The rupture disc is an important part of a gas gun and is used as a fast response valve whichburst at a predefined pressure. Afterdesign,it has been used instead of an electric valve to increase the maximum velocity that can be achieved by the gas gun. Toavoid fragmentation and to have a better control on rupture pressure,a groove isusuallygraved on the disc. Cross and circumferential grooves werestudied in this thesis. It was found that in most cases the discs with a cross groovewere not fully opened because they have four independent failure paths and these paths should be opened simultaneously. However, having... 

In this thesis, employing the definition of an effective configuration in the Continuum Damage-Healing Mechanics (CDHM), mechanical responses of elf-healing materials are investigated. Firstly, a constitutive model is proposed to investigate damage and healing phenomena in concrete materials. In order to consider the different behavior of concretes in tension and compression, a spectral decomposition of the stress is utilized. In addition, employing the Clausius-Duhem inequality and considering the irreversible thermodynamics, conjugate forces of the damage and healing are expressed. The Gibbs potential energy is decomposed into three parts; elastic, damage and healing. In the next section,... 

Thin film solar cells have low efficiency compared to crystalline silicon solar cells; however, they are low-cost and flexible. In manufacturing these solar cells, thin films are deposited at high temperatures (higher than 200℃) on a thick metal, plastic, or glass substrate using sputtering and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) methods. Since the thin films and substrate have different thermal expansion coefficients, cooling the system from deposition temperature to room temperature induces thermal residual stresses in both the films and substrate. In addition, these stresses, especially those induced in the amorphous silicon layer can change the carrier mobility and band gap... 

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are smart materials with the ability to recover their original shape. Growing the industrial and laboratory applications of SMAs, the study of their mechanical behavior is extremely important. Recently, the shape memory alloys have been investigated by empirical and experimental methods. The results show that these materials also in nano scale keep up their particular properties to a critical size. Because of the size dependence of the material properties at the nano scale, the constitutive models based on classical continuum mechanics cannot describe phenomena observed in the nano scale. For a successful application of SMAs at nano scale, nonlocal theory can be... 

In this thesis the tow-dimensional wave propagation in a functionally graded elastic medium is considered. It is assumed that the stiffness and density of the medium vary continuously in one direction. This work presents analysis in both time and frequency domain. In time domain, a graded element is presented for static and dynamic analyses in FGMs. This element clearly simulates wave propagation in inhomogeneous materials. The most important property which an element must have to be reasonable in wave propagation analyses in FGMs is simulating reflection only from boundaries. In frequency domain a dynamic stiffness matrix is generated using stiffness and mass matrix used in time domain... 

In this research, penetration in a new confined ceramic-metal structure is studied experimentally and numerically. In this new structure, ceramic tile is confined on its front face by an aluminum foil. First, penetration experiment in 5 mm thick Al 1100 plate carried out. The ballistic limit velocity is obtained about 140 m/s. The difference between experiment and numerical simulation is lower than 5 percent. Then penetration analysis of 10 mm thick Alumina tiles is carried out experimentally and numerically in confined and unconfined conditions. Ceramic tiles are in square shape with 50 mm side length. The ballistic limit velocity for unconfined and confined ceramic tiles are obtained about... 

Nanostructured materials are a new kind of engineering materials which attracted researchers’ interest because of their interesting mechanical /physical properties, as well as controllable microstructural design ability for desired applications. These new materials are homogeneous at the macroscale but at the microstructural level, may have heterogeneities including common nanostructures. Because of multiscale nature of these materials, new multiscale methods should be developed and used for better understanding the behavior of them. Multiscale methods could be categorized into concurrent and hierarchical methods. In concurrent methods, the domain under study is explicitly divided into... 

The efficiency of acidizing operation is usually assessed through Build up or Drawdown test (calculation of skin). These methods are performed only after the acidizing operation, so it is impossible to evaluate the efficiency of acidizing during the real time operation. Analysis of the acidizing efficiency during the operation by using the acidizing operation data is a viable approach to this costly and challenging process. In this project, it has been tried to present a well testing method for calculating changes of skin value of a carbonate reservoirs during acidizing operation by using the real field data (surface pressure, injection rate and etc.).
The estimation of skin changes... 

Cardiovascular diseases are the major cause of death worldwide. Atherosclerosis is one of the major types of cardiovascular diseases in which fibrous and fatty materials, called plaque, build up inside the artery and cause partial or total occlusion of the artery. Intravascular balloon angioplasty with or without stenting is the most common treatment of this disease. In 2010, approximately 954000 stent implantations were performed in the United States. The major issue associated with stenting is reclosure or renarrowing of the transverse section of the artery termed in-stent restenosis (ISR). Unfortunately, nearly one–third of the patients
who receive stent implantation require further... 

Gas-Assisted-Gravity-Drainage (GAGD) is a new enhanced oil recovery method which utilizes the natural tendency of gas and oil to segregate due to gravity. Higher recovery of GAGD, compared to continuous gas injection (CGI) and Water-Alternating-Gas (WAG) makes it the focus of researches in recent years. This work is trying to propose a surrogate model based on Artificial Neural Networks for GAGD process. The proposed model should be able to mimic the behavior the process in a short time in order to be used as an alternative computationally expensive simulator where a large number of simulations are needed, such as sensitivity analysis, optimization of the process, or risk analysis. A... 

Many petroleum engineering operations, such as drilling, well completions, and workover, may cause an alteration in the properties of hydrocarbon-bearing formations, including porosity and permeability. Solid and fluid influx into the reservoir in an overbalanced pressure condition can cause permeability reduction from formation damage in the invaded zone. While the solid invasion is limited to a few inches away from the wellbore, the fluids will invade significantly deeper into the formation. Therefore, the invasion of fluids may be considered as the primary mechanism that causes the near-wellbore damage. Correct quantification of the damage is an important component for predicting well... 

Chatter vibration is a major obstacle in high quality machining. This undesirable vibration decreases the production rate, surface quality, tool life and machine tool life. In the last few decades, a lot of models have been presented to predict chatter. Most of the models, whether linear or nonlinear, have focused on modeling of machine tool dynamics and either disregard the effective parameters of chip formation process or apply some of these parameters through simplified equations. In this research, a finite element simulation of chip formation is combined with the dynamics of machine tool to investigate chatter and its effective factors. The proposed approach, unlike common mathematical... 

Mechanical properties such as Young's and bulk modulus and strength of material is improved by adding Nano fillers to polymer substrates. Hence by adding Nano fillers such as graphene and carbon nanotubes to polymer substrates it is possible to achieve better properties in resultant nano composites. The aim of this study is to investigate the improvement in polymer-based composites properties by adding graphene Nano fillers for shock absorption. In this study, molecular dynamics method is used to model the molecular behavior of the material. First, a sample cell that have the properties of the whole material, is modeled, then by applying impact loading in modeling software, the response of...