Sharif Digital Repository

Contraction sections are an integral part of all wind tunnels, whether designed for basic fluid flow research or model testing. The location of the contraction, just upstream of the test section, makes it very important to achieve a high quality contraction design. The effect of a contraction on unsteady velocity variations is significant to increase the mean velocity. Furthermore, contraction has a suitable role on the turbulence reduction in a wind tunnel. The contraction itself further reduces the turbulence in terms of percentage of the wind speed. This is due to the increase of the wind speed by a factor equal to the contraction ratio. In this research, to investigation flow quality in... 

Obesity is a worldwide growing health challenge affecting ~30% of the world's population. Increased rate of disc degeneration and herniation, low back pain and surgery has been reported in obese individuals. Although obesity-related low back diseases have multifactorial etiology, presumably greater mechanical loads on the spine of heavier individuals during their daily activities may be considered as a risk factor. Likely larger trunk muscle sizes, disc sizes and thus passive stiffness in heavier individuals may however partly or fully offset the effect of their additional body weight on the spinal loads. In absence of in vivo approaches, the present study aims to construct subject-specific... 

Recently, many studies show that Augmented Reality (AR) and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) can help people with disabilities. In this thesis we examine the ability of combining AR and ASR technologies to implement a new system for helping deaf people. This system can instantly take a narrator's speech and convert it into a readable text and show it directly on AR display. Also, with this system, people do not need to learn sign-language to communicate with deaf people. To improve the accuracy of the system, we use Audio-Visual Speech Recognition (AVSR) as a backup for the ASR engine in noisy environments. AVSR is one of the advances in ASR technology that combines audio, video and facial... 

This research focuses on physics-informed neural networks, which are trained to solve supervised machine learning tasks while adhering to physical laws described by general nonlinear partial differential equations. Previous studies utilized Gaussian process regression to develop functional representations designed for a given linear operator. However, despite the flexibility of Gaussian processes, solving nonlinear problems presents two major limitations: first, authors had to linearize each nonlinear term over time, and second, the Bayesian nature of Gaussian process regression requires specific assumptions that may limit the model’s representational capacity. For these reasons, data-driven... 

Obesity is a worldwide growing health challenge affecting ~30% of the world's population. Increased rate of disc degeneration and herniation, low back pain and surgery has been reported in obese individuals. Although obesity-related low back diseases have multifactorial etiology, presumably greater mechanical loads on the spine of heavier individuals during their daily activities may be considered as a risk factor. Likely larger trunk muscle sizes, disc sizes and thus passive stiffness in heavier individuals may however partly or fully offset the effect of their additional body weight on the spinal loads. In absence of in vivo approaches, the present study aims to construct subject-specific... 

Due to adverse health problems with lumbar spine among professional drivers associated with exposure to whole body vibration (WBV), studying the effect of vibrations and parameters influencing WBV is of great importance. This study aims to simulate whole body vibration for a ground vehicle occupant and calculate loads that lumbar spine tolerate during harmonic sinusoidal vibrations. Moreover, this study determines the effect of lumbar spine angle, seat specifications (angles and materials), and vibration frequency on the results. To this end, a detailed viscoelastic lumbar spine (L1-S1) has been modeled using FE method which has been replaced with the simplified spine model in HYBRID III... 

the purpose of this research is to construct the facial image of a person from corresponding DNA. In this problem, we have a set of DNAs and facial images and we want to find the relation between the DNA and the features of facial images.using this relation we can find the facial Image of a person using the DNA. for this purpose we should first extract the features of faces that have the most variation among the population. by studying the feature extraction methods in this field, we borrow the deep neural network method that is used in face recognition fields.we found significant relations between DNA and extracted features from this network. finally using this relation we can predict the... 

The effect of alloying elements such as Chrome, Molybdenum and Chrome-Molybdenum on microstructure and mechanical properties of submerged-arc weld of structural St37 and 4135 Chromoly Steel was investigated. Addition of alloying elements was done through flux and slag-weld metal reactions. Bonded flux was used to achieve this purpose. Mechanical properties were studied by means of Longitudinal Tensile, Hardness and Charpy V-notch tests. Microstructure was studied by means of Optical and Scanning Electron Microscope. The results show that chromium increase Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) and impairs Impact Toughness (IT), although it increases the percentage of acicular ferrite (AF). In the... 

High mixing efficiency and high liquid-liquid mass transfer rate are two key features of spinning disk contactors. This work presents the experimental investigation of mixing and liquid-liquid mass transfer characteristics in a new double coaxial spinning disks contactor. The micromixing efficiency was investigated using a standard system of competitive parallel reaction known as iodide/iodate test reaction. The influences of various operating conditions such as the rotational speed of the disks, the direction of rotation, the feed radial location, the feed distribution pattern, the distance between the disks, and the feed flow rate on the mixing quality were examined carefully. The obtained... 

Detecting out-of-distribution (OOD) input samples at the inference time is a key element in the trustworthy deployment of intelligent models. While there has been a tremendous improvement in various flavors of OOD detection in recent years, the detection performance under adversarial settings lags far behind the performance in the standard setting. In order to bridge this gap, we introduce RODEO in this paper, a data-centric approach that generates effective outliers for robust OOD detection. More specifically, we first show that targeting the classification of adversarially perturbed in- and out-of-distribution samples through outlier exposure (OE) could be an effective strategy for the... 

Several geometrically-detailed passive finite element (FE) models of the lumbar spine have been developed and validated under in vitro loading conditions. As these models are devoid of muscles, they are either not used to simulate in vivo activities or muscle forces are modeled by a hypothetical compressive follower load (FL). A number of symmetric and asymmetric static tasks were first simulated using a validated musculoskeletal model of the thoracolumbar spine to predict trunk muscle forces. The predicted muscle forces along with the gravity loading were then applied to a passive FE model of the L4-L5 motion segment (developed and validated here) to estimate load sharing among the disc,... 

In this project we plan to propose a mechanism for controlling the profile of vertebra displacment and intera-discal pressure in in-vitro tests. Spineis the one of the most important members of the human musculoskeletal system. Health and stability of the spine help the people to moves on two legs. So any problems with this organ, causing movement problems and pain. For the treatment of spinal diseases, several methods such as surgery, insertion of implants and stabilizing were used. To ensure the accuracy of these methods, laboratory examination is essential. One of the ways to test these interventions, the implementation of in vitro tests on samples obtained from the bodies of the spine.... 

Cancer invasion of tissue is a key aspect of the growth and spread of cancer and is crucial in the process of metastatic spread i.e. the growth of secondary cancers. Invasion consists in cancer cells secreting various matrix degrading enzymes (MDEs) which destroy the surronding tissue or extracellular matrix (ECM). Through a combination of proliferation and migration, the cancer cells then actively spread locally into the surrounding tissue. Thus processes occuring at the level of individual cells eventually give rise to processes occuring at the tissue level. In this thesis we introduce a new type of multiscale model describing the process of cancer invasion of tissue.Our multiscale model... 

80% of people in all over the world, experience Low Back Pain (LBP) once in their lives. LBP leads to dysfunction of spine. About 25% of LBP relates to the intervertebral disks which in the critical cases, a Posterior Lumbar Surgery (PLS) on the one or more lumbar disks should be done. Due to the some procedure such as retracting, cutting or denervation of muscles, PLS can hurt trunk muscles and spine. Thus, investigation of LBP and postoperative complications of PLS can help us in recognition of causes of LBP and PLS complications and modification of PLS approaches. The objective of this research was investigation of effects of LBP and PLS on the biomechanical function of spine. Pattern of... 

Manual material handling (MMH) activities are identified as risk factors for occupational low back pain (LBP). Task-related variables including load and posture characteristics are required as input into these models and tools for estimation of trunk external moment. Biomechanical modeling studies that aim to mathematically estimate low back loads currently need an inevitable parallel time-consuming in vivo study in an equipped laboratory to measure trunk posture under physical activities. Inertial sensors as a portable, accurate, almost inexpensive, and small device could be very helpful in order to capture the kinematic data of movement in human activities. My master thesis aims to... 

Biomechanical models are indispensable tools in predictions of muscle forces and joint loads towards design of prevention and treatment programs. In most of these models intervertebral joints are modeled as hinge joints thus neglecting the existing translational degrees of freedom (DOFs). This simplification can alter the results of the model as changes in model kinematics affect the prediction of the joint and muscle forces. The current study aims to evaluate the likely effect of this simplification on the predictions of the musculoskeletal model of AnyBody Modeling System (AMS) for muscle forces and spinal loads. Clinical application of this study is in assessing the limitation of... 

Nowadays, we are witnesses of deaths caused by cancer in large statistical amounts. Vast number of investigations are conducted for anticancer drug evaluation on human and animal cells using traditional two-dimensional and three-dimensional culturing platforms. However, most of them are not successful due to the lack of in-vivo relevant microenvironment in these platforms. One of the best cancer in-vitro cultures is the tumor spheroid which is a spherical cellular aggregation. By culturing these tumor spheroids in a microfluidic chip, it is possible to mimic the in-vivo microenvironment elements such as nutrient and metabolite gradients. Here we present a microfluidic device fabricated using... 

Vibration control is one of the most critical aspects of designing space structures, as it can significantly impact the performance and operational lifespan of satellites. The launch phase is the most sensitive and critical stage in the satellite mission lifecycle, as intense vibrations are generated and transmitted to the satellite during this phase. To mitigate the severity of these transmitted vibrations, vibration isolators are employed. The objective of this study is to design and model a vibration isolator to control the vibrations transmitted from the launcher to the satellite during launch. To achieve this, an extensive investigation into vibration isolators used in the space...