Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents the fuzzy logic computing for the design and implementation of fuel controller for gas turbine engines. For this purpose, a fuzz controller is designed in order to be implemented on an electronic control unit where it is used to drive a servo operated fuel control valve. The fuzzy logic computing approach for different parts of the controller including fuzzification, rule base, inference engine and defuzzification are then described. Finally, computer simulation of the fuzzy controllers integrated with the engine model is performed to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy controller on the performance of a turbojet engine. The results are provided to show... 

This article presents a new method for determination of meshing stiffness of the gear teeth using three dimensional analysis of tooth stiffness. The teeth are treated as explicit capacitive fields and their compliance matrix is determined by considering virtual interconnected springs located at defined nodes on tooth profile. The stiffness of any arbitrary point on the profile can then be determined as a linear function of neighboring nodes stiffness. The results of this analysis help in determination of load distribution for a pair of meshing gears under real operation conditions where deflections and misalignments are inevitable. Copyright © 2005 by ASME  

Monitoring embankment dams is of crucial importance. In earth dams, the pore pressures, earth pressures, and displacements occurring during construction and function are measured at the time of the first impounding and exploitation by installing essential instruments, and so the dam's performance is evaluated and analyzed. Scope of the present research is the evaluation of Siah-Sang Dam performance through the results of instruments and back analysis, conducted by FLAC software. The Mohr-Coulomb elasticplastic model has been considered as the behavioral model of the dam, and the effect of the upstream shell's materials deformation has been modeled at the time of the initial impounding.... 

A nonlinear robust adaptive sliding mode admittance controller is proposed for exoskeleton rehabilitation robots. The proposed controller has robustness against uncertainties of dynamic parameters using an adaptation law. Furthermore, an adaptive Sliding Mode Control (SMC) scheme is employed in the control law to provide robustness against disturbances (non-parametric uncertainties) with unknown bounds. For this purpose, another adaptation law is defined for the variation of the SMC gain. The proposed scheme is augmented with an admittance control method to provide the patient with compliance during interaction with the rehabilitation robot. The stability of the proposed controller and the... 

The interaction energies of 3,5 di-methyl pyridine (A) and 2,4 di-methyl pyridine (B) on the (100) surface of body-centered cubic (bcc) iron were determined via a cluster model and ab initio quantum chemical calculations at density functional theory level. The obtained energies were used to compare the inhibition behavior of these molecules for iron corrosion in hydrochloric acid solution. The iron surface and its adsorption sites (on-top, bridge, hollow) were considered as some clusters taken from two-layered 〈100〉 planes, i.e. Fe1(1), Fe4(2,2), and Fe5(4,1). So, the process for which quantum chemical calculations was carried out consists of adsorption of molecule A (B) on these clusters.... 

Neural activity is very important source for data mining and can be used as a control signal for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Particularly, Magnetic signals of neurons are enriched with information about the movement of different part of the body such as wrist movement. In this paper, we use MEG (Magneto encephalography) signals of two subjects recorded during wrist movement task in four directions. Data were prepared for BCI competition 2008 for multiclass classification. Our approach for this classification problem consists of PCA as a noise reduction method, ULDA for feature reduction and various linear classifiers such as Bayesian, KNN and SVM. Final results (58%-62% for subject 1... 

Cascaded split-source inverter (CSSI) is a new single-stage modular multilevel topology. Each cell of this converter converts dc to ac power in the buck or boost operation mode without any additional power switch. This article develops a design method based on a detailed model for CSSI. This model shows that energy storage elements experience double-fundamental frequency ripples besides high-frequency ones. It accurately calculates voltage gains and capacitor voltage and inductor current ripples. On the other hand, common carrier-based multilevel modulations have been modified in terms of both reference and carrier signals to control the inverter under symmetric and asymmetric conditions.... 

In this paper, performance of power system stabilizer (PSS) of a large thermal power plant, as tuned by the manufacturer, is investigated. Then, the stabilizer is redesigned based on extended phase compensation of the exciter input - electrical torque transfer function and root locus analysis; and its effect on local, interplant and inter-area electromechanical oscillations is thoroughly analyzed. As Bisotoun PSS has a special structure with two inputs, frequency and power, its performance is compared with power-speed PSS. The effect of PSS with existing and new tunings on transient stability is also studied. Simulation results are verified by experimental test records. © 2007 JD  

Ab initio quantum chemical calculations at the density functional theory (DFT) level were performed on eight pyridine derivative molecules as corrosion inhibitors for iron in an acidic solution. In this regard, the geometry of the molecules were optimized using the B3LYP/6-31G method first, and then interactions of these optimized structures with the iron atom were explored using the B3LYP/LANL1MB method. Two modes of adsorption were considered, i.e., planar adsorption (P) via the pyridine ring and vertical adsorption (V) through a nitrogen atom. The interaction energy was minimized through the variation of the inhibitor molecule-iron atom distance. These minimum energy values, along with... 

In this research, copper matrix composites reinforced with different amounts of titanium carbide particles were produced by mechanical milling and in-situ formation of reinforcements. Morphology and size of milled powders were inspected by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) several times during milling process. Changes in lattice parameter, crystallite size, lattice strain, dislocation density and Gibbs free energy changes (due to increasing in dislocation densities and grain boundaries) in different samples (with different TiC particles contents) were studied by X-Ray Diffraction technique with Cu-kα radiation and using Nelson-Riley method and Williamson-Hall equation. Microstructure of... 

The quality of an architectural design of a software system has a great influence on achieving nonfunctional requirements to the system. Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is the industry standard as a common object oriented modeling language needs a well-defined semantic base for its notation. Integrating formal methods Petri nets (PNs) with object oriented design concepts UML is useful to benefit from the strengths of both approaches. Formalization of the graphical notation enables automated processing and analysis tasks. In this paper we use a method to converting State Diagram to Generalized Stochastic Petri Net (GSPN) and then we derive the embedded Continues Time Markov Chain from... 

In this paper, the impact of three parameters including nanoparticles geometry, particles aggregation and borehole inclination on induced formation damage from water based drilling fluids were investigated by means of experimental studies. Accordingly, we designed a dynamic filtration setup capable to rotate and change well inclination. Nano-based drilling fluids consisting of spherical, cubical and tubular shapes nanoparticles as fluid loss additives were used. Mud cake quality, core permeability impairment and degree of formation damage at various well inclinations were examined. The cluster structure of aggregated particles were determined using fractal theory and applying dynamic light... 

Cascaded split-source inverter (CSSI) is a new single-stage modular multilevel topology. Each cell of this converter converts DC to AC power in the buck or boost operation mode without any additional power switch. This paper develops a design method based on a detailed model for CSSI. This model shows that energy storage elements experience double-fundamental frequency ripples besides high-frequency ones. It accurately calculates voltage gains and capacitor voltage and inductor current ripples. On the other hand, common carrier-based multilevel modulations have been modified in terms of both reference and carrier signals to control the inverter under symmetric and asymmetric conditions. With... 

A combination of molecular dynamics (MD), continuum elasticity and FEM is used to predict the effect of CNT orientation on the shear modulus of SWCNT-polymer nanocomposites. We first develop a transverse-isotropic elastic model of SWCNTs based on the continuum elasticity and MD to compute the transverse-isotropic elastic constants of SWCNTs. These constants are then used in an FEM-based simulation to investigate the effect of SWCNT alignment on the shear modulus of nanocomposites. Furthermore, shear stress distributions along the nanotube axis and over its cross-sectional area are investigated to study the effect of CNT orientation on the shear load transfer  

Various experimental and theoretical investigations have been carried out to determine the elastic properties of nanotubes in the axial direction. Their behavior in transverse directions, however, has not been well studied. In this paper, a combination of molecular dynamics (MD) and continuum-based elasticity model is used to predict the transverse-isotropic elastic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). From this modeling study, five independent elastic constants of an SWCNT in transverse directions are obtained by analyzing its deformations under four different loading conditions, namely, axial tension, torsion, uniform and non-uniform radial pressure. To find the elastic... 

Silver-based nanomaterials have attracted considerable attention due to their antimicrobial activities. In this work, a silver (Ag)-based metal organic framework (Ag-MOF) is embellished with graphene-oxide (GO), leading to the fabrication of a novel Ag-based nanocomposite (GO-Ag-MOF) whose biocidal activity is higher than those of Ag-MOF and GO nanomaterials. The nanocomposite is characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared spectra, ultraviolet−visible absorption spectra, X-ray powder diffraction, dynamic light scattering, and nitrogen gas adsorption/desorption. The characterization shows that... 

Shell and tube heat exchanger with single twisted tube bundle in five different twist angles, are studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and compared to the conventional shell and tube heat exchanger with single segmental baffles. Effect of shell-side nozzles configurations on heat exchanger performance is studied as well. Heat transfer rate and pressure drop are the main issues investigated in the paper. The results show that, for the same shell-side flow rate, the heat transfer coefficient of heat exchanger with twisted tube bundle is lower than that of the heat exchanger with segmental baffles while shell-side pressure drop of the former is even much lower than that of the... 

An experimental investigation is conducted here to study the effects of applying frictional sliding fuses (FSF) in concrete infilled steel frames. Firstly, the influences of some parameters on the behavior of the sliding fuse are studied: Methods of adjusting the FSF for a certain sliding strength are explained and influences of time duration, welding and corrosion are investigated as well. Based on the results, time duration does not significantly affect the FSF, however influences of welding and corrosion of the constitutive plates are substantial. Then, the results of testing two 1/3 scale single-storey single-bay concrete infilled steel frames having FSF are presented. The specimens were... 

In this article, a multiscale modeling procedure is implemented to study the effect of interphase on the Young's modulus of CNT/polymer composites. For this purpose, a three-phase RVE is introduced which consists of three components, i.e., a carbon nanotube, an interphase layer, and an outer polymer matrix. The nanotube is modeled at the atomistic scale using molecular structural mechanics. Moreover, three-dimensional elements are employed to model the interphase layer and polymer matrix. The nanotube and polymer matrix are assumed to be bonded by van der Waals interactions based on the Lennard-Jones potential at the interface. Using this Molecular Structural Mechanics/Finite Element... 

In this article, a Molecular Structural Mechanics/Finite Element (MSM/FE) multiscale modeling of carbon nanotube/polymer composites with viscoelastic (VE) polymer matrix is introduced. The nanotube is modeled at the atomistic scale using structural molecular mechanics. The matrix deformation is analyzed by nonlinear finite element method considering VE behavior. The nanotube and matrix are assumed to be bonded by van der Waals interactions based on the Lennard-Jones potential at the interface. Using the MSM/FE multiscale model, we investigate the effect of carbon nanotube (CNT) on the improvement of mechanical stability of the nanocomposite. Also, the buckling behavior of these...