Sharif Digital Repository

Investigation of response of reinforced concrete (RC) structures due to axisymmetric macrocell corrosion of rebars is of concern after propagation of microcracks within the concrete medium. The geometry, boundary and interfaces conditions of the present problem are identical to those stated in part I. As seen in the companion paper, the exact solution to the boundary value problem corresponding to the uncracked steel-rust-concrete composite was possible. After appearance of the microcracks the concrete behavior becomes nonlinear anisotropic with post-cracking softening, and the associated problem is analytically intractable. Therefore, it is proposed to employ a novel meshless method, namely... 

Consider a steel-rust-concrete composite consisting of a circular cylindrical concrete cover and a coaxial uniformly corroding steel reinforcement. Prediction of the amount of rust penetrated into the microcracks of concrete cover from a set of data measured at the surface of the concrete is of particular interest. The steel is assumed to be linear isotropic and rust follows a power law stress-strain relation. For the concrete, anisotropic behavior and post-cracking softening model is employed. The formulations lead to a nonlinear boundary value problem which is solved analytically. A key parameter β, defined as the ratio of the volume of corrosion products inside the cracks to the volume of... 

Assessment of the macrocell corrosion which deteriorates reinforced concrete (RC) structures have attracted the attention of many researchers during recent years. In this type of rebar corrosion, the reduction in cross-section of the rebar is significantly accelerated due to the large ratio of the cathode's area to the anode's area. In order to examine the problem, an analytical solution is proposed for prediction of the response of the RC structure from the time of steel depassivation to the stage just prior to the onset of microcrack propagation. To this end, a circular cylindrical RC member under axisymmetric macrocell corrosion of the reinforcement is considered. Both cases of the... 

Let D be a noncommutative finite dimensional F-central division algebra, and let N be a normal subgroup of GLn(D) with n≥1. Given a maximal subgroup M of N, it is proved that either M contains a noncyclic free subgroup, or there exists an abelian subgroup A and a finite family {Ki}1 r of fields properly containing F with Ki* ∩ N ⊃ M for all 1 ≤ i ≤ r such that M/A is finite if Char F = 0 and M/A is locally finite if Char F = p > 0, where A ⊆ K1* ×...× Kr*  

Let D be a division ring with centre F. Assume that M is a maximal subgroup of GLn(D) (n ≥ 1) such that Z(M) is algebraic over F. Group identities on M and polynomial identities on the F-linear hull F[M] are investigated. It is shown that if F[M] is a PI-algebra, then [D : F] < ∞. When D is non-commutative and F is infinite, it is also proved that if M satisfies a group identity and F[M] is algebraic over F, then we have either M = K* where K is a field and [D : F] < ∞, or M is absolutely irreducible. For a finite dimensional division algebra D, assume that N is a subnormal subgroup of GLn(D) and M is a maximal subgroup of N. If M satisfies a group identity, it is shown that M is... 

Let D be an F-central division algebra of degree pr, p a prime. A set of criteria is given for D to be a crossed product in terms of irreducible soluble or abelian-by-finite subgroups of the multiplicative group D* of D. Using the Amitsur's classification of finite subgroups of D* and the Tits alternative, it is shown that D is a crossed product if and only if D* contains an irreducible soluble subgroup. Further criteria are also presented in terms of irreducible abelian-by-finite subgroups and irreducible subgroups satisfying a group identity. Using the above results, it is shown that if D* contains an irreducible finite subgroup, then D is a crossed product. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights... 

This paper presents a low voltage low noise open loop automatic amplitude control method for voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO's). In this method a feedback mechanism keeps the VCO at its optimum amplitude over temperature and process variations and then the loop is broken to avoid noise injection form the control circuitry to the VCO. The loop does not add extra noise to the VCO. Based on the proposed method, a low voltage low noise LC-VCO was designed for a low phase noise application in TSMC 0.18 micron RFCMOS technology. Simulations show considerable improvement in the phase noise with the application of the proposed method  

The present work was aimed to account a green and eco-friendly synthesis of palladium nanoparticles using Rosmarinus officinalis leaves extracts for the first time, therefore, that can be an acceptable replacement for chemical media to improve potential biological properties. The synthesized palladium nanoparticles were fully characterized using FT-IR, XRD, FESEM, TEM and UV/Vis spectroscopy techniques. Catalytic activity was investigated by Mizoroki-Heck reaction, and optimized based on solvent, temperature and time of the reaction, and the best results were found in water as a green media without any additional reagents. Biological activity of the synthesized nanoparticles were evaluated... 

A 6-bit passive phase shifter for 2.5- to 3.2-GHz frequency band has been designed and implemented in a standard 0.18- μm CMOS technology. A new switched-network topology has been proposed for implementing the 5.625 ° phase shift step. The insertion loss of the circuit is compensated with an on-chip bidirectional amplifier. The measured return losses of the circuit are better than 8 dB with output 1-dB compression point of +9.5 dBm in the transmit mode and noise figure of 7.1 dB in the receive mode. The fabricated phase shifter demonstrates an average rms phase error of less than 2° over the entire operation bandwidth, which makes it suitable for high-precision applications  

Due to problems followed by asphaltene deposition, which cause many remedial processes and costs, it seemed necessary to develop equations for determining asphaltene precipitation quantitatively or qualitatively. In this study a new scaling equation as a function of temperature, molecular weight, and dilution ratio (solvent) has been developed. This equation can be used to determine the weight percent of precipitated asphaltene in the presence of different precipitants (solvents). The proposed methodology utilizes least square support vector machines/regression (LSSVM/LSSVR) to perform nonlinear modeling. This paper proposes a new feature selection mechanism based on coupled simulated... 

Noise population is one of the most important environmental pollution cases that cause some troubles for inhabitants and employees in city limit and it is seriously considered as a hygienic risky case and even immunity in the world (Abaspour, 1992).The population of khoramabad city as Lorestan state capital has been 305590, on the basis of population estimate in 2003. It has three-city area and it is located at north-southern corridor of country (management and planning organization of Lorestan province 2004).The matter lead to great bulk of jam that pass through the passageway and linking line that cross through khoramabad city and caused diffusion of many kinds of pollution specially noise... 

The motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD) have been shown to significantly improve by Levodopa. However, despite the widespread adoption of Levodopa as a standard pharmaceutical drug for the treatment of PD, cognitive impairments linked to PD do not show visible improvement with Levodopa treatment. Furthermore, the neuronal and network mechanisms behind the PD-induced cognitive impairments are not clearly understood. In this work, we aim to explain these cognitive impairments, as well as the ones exacerbated by Levodopa, through examining the differential dynamic patterns of the phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) during cognitive functions. EEG data recorded in an auditory oddball task... 

The preparation of composite manganese dioxide (MnO2) nanoparticles in an ordered mesoporous carbon (CMK-3) matrix and its use for constructing a new wide-potential-window supercapacitor is reported. CMK-3 is prepared using mesoporous silica as a hard template and sucrose as carbon source. The different ratios of MnO2/CMK-3 composite is synthesized by impregnating CMK-3 with a Mn(NO3)2·4H 2O solution followed by annealing in nitrogen. Physical properties, morphology, and specific surface area were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and nitrogen sorption measurements, respectively. The electrochemical properties of the composite were studied by cyclic... 

The state-of-art technologies keep generating new ways of improving on remote sensing and Earth monitoring like Synthetic Aperture Radars that is widely used in military applications such as reconnaissance and espionage especially on military and industrial sensitive and strategic areas. In order to protection of strategic fields and being aware of hostile activities and also do sufficient countermeasure action, in this research a simple SAR satellite detection and tracking is proposed by using a reliable fast search and tracking antenna considering the limitation of radio visibility duration of SAR satellites. The tracking antenna is a DBF phased array antenna with circular polarized patch... 

The present paper outlines the application of the recently proposed heat-flux model (Mazaheri et al., 2017) to high blowing-ratio film-cooling and corrugated heat-exchanger simulations. Here, the focus is mainly on the accuracy of the predicted thermal fields, while to find out the sources of inaccuracy detailed analysis of the adopted second-moment-closure hydrodynamic model is provided. To do so, fundamental benchmarks which contain the dominant phenomena in the main cases are thoroughly analyzed to identify the anomalies. Then, the main cases including leading-edge film-cooling, antivortex film-cooling and corrugated heat-exchanger are investigated. The numerical predictions indicate that... 

The present study addresses a new effort to improve the prediction of the thermal field in separating-reattaching flows by making modifications in a low-Reynolds-number (LRN) version of HOGGDH heat-flux model proposed by Suga and Abe (2000). The modifications are based on introducing non-equilibrium effects of hydrodynamic flow field in the heat-flux model. Using an analytical approach, we have implemented P/ε, ignored in the base version, to the modified version. To do so, the model structure was changed and a damping function which is more sensitive to non-equilibrium flow features is also applied to the model. The modified heat-flux formulation along with a second moment closure... 

The human brain continuously tries to predict sensory input in order to prepare for responding to new events. The brain develops a model for the incoming sensory information and updates it as new inputs arrive. It is hypothesized that the brain deduces a distribution for the input which is made more accurate with new observations. A notable question is how the brain perceives and reacts to new information. The oddball paradigm task is a simple experiment that can reveal the brain's ability in predicting the incoming input. We analyzed the EEG response of the brain recorded during oddball visual and auditory tasks in order to characterize its response to surprising instances embedded in a... 

Smoking is known as a major cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and hence immediate and effective interventions are required for its elimination. This study aimed to collect valid data with regard to cigarette smoking in adult population of north of Iran for policy making by a meta-analysis of the documents of national non-communicable disease risk factors surveillance system. We investigated relevant evidences by searching in published and non-electronic databases. Data were extracted based on variables such as year of the study, sex, age group and prevalence of smoking habit. Based on results of heterogeneity, we applied fixed or random effects model to estimate the... 

In this paper, high cycle fatigue behavior and thermal properties of blend specimens made of polylactic acid (PLA) and polycaprolactone (PCL) were studied and the influence of crystallization was investigated on the fatigue behavior. In this regard, fused deposition modeling method was employed to manufacture neat-PLA, neat-PCL, PLA/10wt.% PCL (90/10), and PLA/20wt.% PCL (80/20) specimens. The results show that the addition of 10wt.% and 20wt.% of PCL to the neat-PLA increases the elongation of the specimens by 32% and 284%, respectively, compared to that of the neat-PLA. However, Young’s modulus respectively decreases by 22% and 34%. According to the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)... 

Considering the desirable biodegradable properties and mechanical characteristics of poly lactic acid (PLA) and poly caprolactone (PCL), these polymers are recently widely utilized in medical applications including the fabrication of body-compatible implants. One of the most efficient manufacturing methods to fabricate polymer-based implants is 3D printing, due to its ability to rapidly produce parts with complex geometries. In this study, an effort has been made to study the impact of the dip-coating process on tensile and high cycle fatigue behavior of 3D printed PLA/PCL blends, using PCL/chloroform solution. The results demonstrate that after applying the PCL coating on the surface of the...