Sharif Digital Repository

Nanostructured and mesoporous TiO2-Ta2O5 films and powders with various TiO2:Ta2O5 molar ratios and high specific surface area (SSA) have been prepared by a straightforward particulate sol-gel route. Titanium isopropoxide and tantalum ethoxide were used as precursors and hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) was used as a polymeric fugitive agent (PFA) in order to increase the SSA. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed that powders contained both hexagonal δ-Ta2O5 and monoclinic β-Ta2O5 phases, as well as anatase and rutile. It was observed that Ta2O5 retarded anatase-to-rutile transformation. Furthermore, δ → β phase transformation temperature increased... 

Discrete-time Markov Chains (MCs) and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are two standard formalisms in system analysis. Their main associated quantitative objectives are hitting probabilities, discounted sum, and mean payoff. Although there are many techniques for computing these objectives in general MCs/MDPs, they have not been thoroughly studied in terms of parameterized algorithms, particularly when treewidth is used as the parameter. This is in sharp contrast to qualitative objectives for MCs, MDPs and graph games, for which treewidth-based algorithms yield significant complexity improvements. In this work, we show that treewidth can also be used to obtain faster algorithms for the... 

The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of acoustic emission (AE) technique to evaluate delamination crack in glass/epoxy composite laminates under quasi-static and fatigue loading. To this aim, double cantilever beam specimens were subjected to mode I quasi-static and fatigue loading conditions and the generated AE signals were recorded during the tests. By analyzing the mechanical and AE results, an analytical correlation between the AE energy with the released strain energy and the crack growth was established. It was found that there is a 3rd degree polynomial correlation between the crack growth and the cumulative AE energy. Using this correlation the delamination... 

Featuring a nonlinear novel design, Gimbal transmission, is a replacement for traditional robotic joints like gearboxes and revolute joints. This mechanism is one of the most recent types of nonlinear direct transmission (DT) methods in robots. As an alternative for traditional drive methodologies - herein called direct drive transmission (DD) methods, DT provides dynamic coupling and joint interaction attenuation while its capability to be adjusted for a desired task space point, smooth input-output characteristic, and varying reduction ratio lead to a desired force and motion behavior for the whole manipulator. In this paper, design optimization of a gimbal mechanism used as a replacement... 

Gimbal transmissions are non-linear direct transmissions and can be used in robotic arms replacing the traditional revolute joints. To investigate manipulability of robotic manipulators, the classical criterion of Manipulability Ellipsoid has been formulated. Thus by keeping a constant norm for robot joint torques vector, the effects of replacing some traditional revolute joints in robotic arms with Gimbal transmissions, have been analyzed. The results show that the magnitude of the maximum force applicable when employing Gimbal transmission can be considerably larger. Also, the joint angles in which this maximum occurs, can be adjusted, thanks to the behavior of Gimbal transmission. Two... 

Background and aims of the study: Mechanical heart valves (MHV) are widely used to replace dysfunctional and failed heart valves. The bileaflet MHV design is very popular due to its superior hemodynamics. Since their introduction in 1977, the hemodynamics of bileaflet prostheses has been extensively studied. In this study the dynamic behaviour during the closing phase of a bileaflet MHV under normal physiological conditions has been investigated. Methods: Fluid analysis is based on the control volume with moving boundaries in the vicinity of the occluder. Unsteady continuity equation, unsteady momentum equation on the control volume and unsteady Bernoulli's equation have been used to... 

With the increasing tendency to use the Additive manufacturing (AM) process and especially the Selective laser melting (SLM), improving the properties of the AM part becomes essential. Among the governing parameters for producing an AM part, part build orientation (PBO) is the most important one that can improve the properties by an appropriate adjusting. In this study, the surface roughness, build time, and mechanical properties of AM part are optimized and the results will be selected based on each objective function (OF) importance. To achieve this purpose, the OF for each property is derived from the literature. Then the OFs meta-modeled through the Kriging method and sample points of... 

Osmotic power generation is one of the cleaner and sustainable methods for energy generation. This paper presents a study on the optimal size and design of pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) power plant as a viable source of renewable energy in the selected site in Bahmanshir river of Iran. The optimal sizing and design problem is formulated as a Non-Linear Programming (NLP) optimization problem and solved using the standard optimization software titled generalized algebraic modeling system (GAMS). The objective function is minimizing the total cost while considering the technical and economic constraints. Optimization results show that the optimal capacity of the PRO osmotic power plant is... 

Abstract Cu-15%NbC (volume fraction) powder was synthesized using the starting powders of Cu, Nb and graphite in a high energy vibratory disc mill for 7 h of milling under argon atmosphere. A composite sample and a Cu/NbC functionally graded material (FGM) sample were produced by using the two-step press and sintering at 900 °C for 1 h under vacuum. The microstructure and physical and mechanical properties of the specimens were investigated. The field emission scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray and X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the synthesis of the nanostructure matrix of 18-27 nm with the nanoparticles reinforcement of 42 nm after sintering, verifying the thermal... 

E-commerce is one of the industries most affected by big data, from collection to analytics in the highly competitive market. Previous research on big data analytics in E-commerce focused only on particular applications, and there is still a gap in presenting a framework to evaluate big data applications from a challenges-values point of view. This study employs a three-phase methodology to evaluate big data applications in E-commerce with respect to big data challenges and values using a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making technique that combines BWM and fuzzy TOPSIS. The results showed process challenge and the strategic value obtained the highest weight for challenges and values... 

Purpose. Drug release from nanosystems at the sites of either absorption or effect biophase is a major determinant of its biological action. Thus, in vitro drug release is of paramount importance in gaining insight for the systems performance in vivo. Methods. A novel in vitro in vivo correlation, IVIVC, model denoted as double reciprocal area method was presented and applied to 19 drugs from 55 nano formulations with total 336 data, gathered from literature. Results. The proposed model correlated the in vitro with in vivo parameters with overall error of 12.4 ± 3.9%. Also the trained version of the model predicted the test formulations with overall error of 15.8 ± 3.7% indicating the... 

Numerous applications in engineering and biotechnology have attracted the attention of many researchers to the analysis of underlying physical phenomena during the droplet pinch-off. In this study, the neck evolution during the formation of a ferrofluid droplet from a capillary is investigated under two types of magnetic field for a drop-on-demand system. The two types are steady and Pulse-Width Modulated (PWM) magnetic fields. First, under steady magnetic field, the necking process is studied for different values of magnetic Bond number and various angles between magnetic coil centerline and gravity. Subsequently, self-similar behavior in the vicinity of the detachment moment is observed.... 

In this study, the self-adaptive evolutionary (SaE) agent is employed to structure the contributing elements to process the management of extreme learning machine (ELM) architecture based on a logical procedure. In fact, the SaE algorithm is utilized for possibility of enhancing the performance of the ELM to estimate daily soil temperature (ST) at 6 different depths of 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 cm. In the developed SaE-ELM model, the network hidden node parameters of the ELM are optimized using SaE algorithm. The precision of the SaE-ELM is then compared with the ELM model. Daily weather data sets including minimum, maximum and average air temperatures (Tmin, Tmax and Tavg), atmospheric... 

Fabrication of well-ordered and bio-mimetic scaffolds is one of the most important research lines in tissue engineering. Different techniques have been utilized to achieve this goal, however, each method has its own disadvantages. Recently, melt electrowriting (MEW) as a technique for fabrication of well-organized scaffolds has attracted the researchers’ attention due to simultaneous use of principles of additive manufacturing and electrohydrodynamic phenomena. In previous research studies, polycaprolactone (PCL) has been mostly used in MEW process. PCL is a biocompatible polymer with characteristics that make it easy to fabricate well-arranged structures using MEW device. However, the... 

The effects of water vapor on CO2/CH4 separation using commercially available poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPO) and Cardo-type polyimide hollow fiber membranes were investigated. Pure methane and CO2/CH4 mixture permeation experiments were carried out in the absence and presence of water vapor (60% RH). Pure methane permeance decreased in the presence of water vapor for both membrane types. The decrease was 28% for hydrophilic Cardo-type polyimide and 6% for hydrophobic PPO membranes. The decline in the permeance was also observed for CO2/CH4 mixture separation through both membranes. However, selectivities of the two membranes were affected differently by water vapor. The... 

Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) are one category of composites suitable for situations requiring conflicting properties in one component. Due to the limitations of conventional manufacturing techniques for FGMs, Additive Manufacturing (AM) as a promising candidate has been widely utilized in recent years. Among AM methods, photo-curing 3D printing is a high-precision method that can produce FGMs. In this article, for the first time, a novel practical technique for printing FGMs is introduced based on changing exposure time without additional cost and equipment. For evaluation, a sample whose layers were printed with different exposure times from 4 s to 46 s with 6 s intervals and a... 

In this study, a general 3D distributed modeling of Trolling-Mode AFM (TR-AFM) as a nanorobot is presented to analyze the 2D manipulation process of a spherical cell. To this aim, the analysis is categorized into 3 sections. In the first section, 6 deformations of TR-AFM are taken into account, and the standard model of the system is obtained. Moreover, the system is simulated in ANSYS Workbench. The results of modal and transient analyses of the system from both analytical and software methods reveal high agreement, which confirms the accuracy of the presented analytical model. In the second section, by utilizing the 3D derived model, displacement of a spherical yeast single cell (W303)... 

The anatase phase of titania was stabilised with physically modifying particulate sol-gel process. Two major parameters, peptisation temperature and drying temperature, were identified which were responsible for retarding the anatase to rutile phase transformation, crystal growth and packing of primary particles. The critical nucleus size of transformation was controlled by natural (at 25 °C) and artificial (at 50 and 70 °C) peptisation techniques. Moreover, sintering of primary particles was controlled by cool (at 0 and 5 °C) and normal (at 25 °C) drying techniques. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis confirmed that a full conversion of titanium isopropoxide is obtained... 

The present research aims to investigate the development of brass reinforced aluminum composites during dissimilar friction stir welding of brass and aluminum. Moreover, to probe the effect of such a metal matrix composite on its bed, the cross-sectional properties of joint area are studied in two aspects of corrosion behavior and hardness distribution. Microstructural investigations through optical and electron microscopy show development of lamellar composites within the top site of the stir zone and aluminum surface. The measured iso-hardness contours indicate that evolved composite structures increase the cross-sectional hardness of aluminum locally. Also, the electrochemical assessment... 

This paper presents an event-driven simulation-based optimization method for solving the train timetabling problem to minimize the total traveling time in the hybrid single and double track railway networks. The simulation approach is well applied for solving the train timetabling problems. In present simulation model, the stations and block sections of the railway network are respectively considered as the nodes and edges of the network model. The developed software named SIMARAIL has the capability of scheduling trains in large scale networks respecting the capacity constraints and infrastructure characteristics. This simulation model for railway timetabling is based on a detailed...