Sharif Digital Repository

This article presents the design and implementation of a microcontroller-based system for the automatic movement of control rods in nuclear reactors of either power or research types. This system is controlled automatically, is linked to a personal computer system, and has manual controlling ability as well. The important features of this system are: automatic scram of the control rods, activation of alarm in emergency situations, and the ability to tune the control rod movement course both upwards and downwards. In this system, a small tank has been improvised as a coolant reservoir for pool type reactors such as Tehran Research Reactor and its water level is continuously adjusted by... 

Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane process has become the most promising technology for desalination to produce purified water. Among numerous polymeric materials used to fabricate RO membranes, aromatic polyamide thin film composite (TFC) membranes are dominant in commercial RO membrane processes because of their high salt rejection and water permeability as well as their excellent chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability. However, the major hindrance to the effective application of polyamide TFC RO membranes is membrane fouling. Furthermore, polyamide TFC RO membranes have limited stability to chlorine, which is commonly used as disinfect to control membrane biofouling. These two factors... 

In this study, Ti3C2Tx MXene nanosheets were synthesized and loaded into UV-curable acrylate polyvinyl alcohol (APVA) to fabricate a novel APVA-MXene mixed matrix membrane (MMM) for ethanol dehydration by pervaporation (PV) process. UV-curable APVA was synthesized by substituting the hydroxyl groups of PVA with the methacryloyl groups of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA). A rapid and energy-efficient method for fabricating the active layer was achieved by UV-crosslinking of APVA over a 2-min period. The morphology, crystal structure, chemical composition, and thermo-mechanical properties of the membranes were investigated by FESEM, XRD, FTIR, TGA, and static mechanical stretching. Incorporating... 

A new method for image registration has been previously proposed by the authors, which the registration is based on physical forces. The registration parameters are translation and rotation. This method assumes images like charged materials that attract each other. In this case, one of the images moves in the same direction as the applied force while the other one is still. The movement of the image continues until the resultant force becomes zero. This approach estimates the registration parameters simultaneously and leading to a better optimized set of registration parameters. The registration error for this method is 1 to 3 pixels. In this paper we aim to develop this method for the... 

In this paper, two online path planning methods are presented for SURENA III humanoid robot by using model predictive control scheme. The methods are general control schemes which can generate the online motions for walking of a humanoid robot. For lowering computational costs a three dimensional linear inverted pendulum model is used instead of the full dynamical model of the robot. The generated trajectories are then used for computing the zero-moment point (ZMP) of the robot and the joint torques. The resulted joint torques of the two methods are compared to torques obtained from Genetic Algorithm (GA) path planning method presented for SURENA III humanoid robot in previous studies. The... 

The purpose of this study was the production of copolymers and terpolymers with highly hydrophilic–hydrophobic properties, using inexpensive and available monomers as potential enhancing oil recovery (EOR) and water production control agents for high-temperature and high-salinity (HTHS) oil reservoirs. For this purpose, several copolymers and terpolymers with different molar percentage of acrylamide/styrene, acrylamide/maleic anhydride, and acrylamide/styrene/maleic anhydride were synthesized by the inverse emulsion polymerization technique. The presence of hydrophobic styrene and hydrophilic maleic anhydride monomers in the copolymer and terpolymer structure, provided some unique properties... 

This paper addresses a model-based audio content analysis for classification of speech-music mixed audio signals into speech and music. A set of new features is presented and evaluated based on sinusoidal modeling of audio signals. The new feature set, including variance of the birth frequencies and duration of the longest frequency track in sinusoidal model, as a measure of the harmony and signal continuity, is introduced and discussed in detail. These features are used and compared to typical features as inputs to an audio classifier. Performance of these sinusoidal model features is evaluated through classification of audio into speech and music using both the GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model)... 

In this paper, a new feature set is presented and evaluated based on sinusoidal modeling of audio signals. Duration of the longest sinusoidal model frequency track, as a measure of the harmony, is used and compared to typical features as input into an audio classifier. The performance of this sinusoidal model feature is evaluated through classification of audio to speech and music using both the GMM and the SVM classifiers. Classification results show the proposed feature, which could be used for the first time in such an audio classification, is quite successful in speech/music classification. Experimental comparisons with popular features for audio classification, such as HZCRR and LSTER,... 

Gel-fiber structure with the potential of extracellular matrix (ECM) mimics can be introduced as a suitable candidate for bioengineering applications. In this study, piezoelectric gellan gel-fiber was prepared with incorporating poly(vinylidenefluoride) (PVDF)/glass-flake in the gellan matrix. Glass-flake nanoparticles were modified with silane group, PVDF/glass-flake nanofibers were synthesized and short-strand nanofibers were fabricated using the mechanical homogenizer method. Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) analyses were used for surface modification study, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM),... 

The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world’s population by causing changes in behavior, such as social distancing, masking, restricting people’s movement, and evaluating existing medication as potential therapies. Many pre-existing medications such as tocilizumab, ivermectin, colchicine, interferon, and steroids have been evaluated for being repurposed to use for the treatment of COVID-19. None of these agents have been effective except for steroids and, to a lesser degree, tocilizumab. Ivermectin has been one of the suggested repurposed medications which exhibit an in vitro inhibitory activity on SARS-CoV-2 replication. The most recommended dose of ivermectin for the treatment of... 

Conductive self -electrical stimuli bioactive scaffolds could be used the potential for peripheral nerve regeneration with the maximum efficiency. To produce such conductive self-electrical stimuli bioactive scaffolds, chopped spun piezoelectric nanofibers of polyvinylidene fluoride/mesoporous silica nanoparticle (PVDF/MCM41) are prepared and incorporated in gellan/polyaniline/graphene (gellan/PAG) nanocomposites which have been previously prepared by incorporation of polyaniline/graphene (PAG) nanoparticles in gellan gel at 80 °C. Highly conductive binary doped polyaniline/graphene nanoparticles are prepared by chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline monomer using in-suite... 

In this paper, a set of features is presented and evaluated based on sinusoidal modeling of audio signals. Amplitude, frequency, and phase parameters of the sinusoidal model are used and compared as input features into an audio classifier system. The performance of sinusoidal model features is evaluated for classification of audio into speech and music classes using both the Gaussian and the GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) classifiers. Experimental results show superiority of the amplitude parameters of the sinusoidal model, which could be used for the first time for such an audio classification, as compared to the popular cepstral features. By using a set of 40 sinusoidal features, we achieved... 

This paper presents an FPGA-based fault injection tool, called FITO that supports several synthesizable fault models for dependability analysis of digital systems modeled by Verilog HDL. Using the FITO, experiments can be performed in real-time with good controllability and observability. As a case study, an OpenRISC 1200 microprocessor was evaluated using an FPGA circuit. About 4000 permanent, transient, and SEU faults were injected into this microprocessor. The results show that the FITO tool is more than 79 times faster than a pure simulation-based fault injection with only 2.5% FPGA area overhead. © 2008 IEEE  

An anatomically detailed eighteen-rotational-degrees-of-freedom model of the human spine using optimization constrained to equilibrium and stability requirements is developed and used to simulate several symmetric tasks in upright and flexed standing postures. Predictions of this stability and kinematics-driven (S. +. KD) model for trunk muscle forces and spine compressive/shear loads are compared to those of our existing kinematics-driven (KD) model where both translational and rotational degrees-of-freedom are included but redundancy is resolved using equilibrium conditions alone. Unlike the KD model, the S. +. KD model predicted abdominal co-contractions that, in agreement with... 

In this paper, the performance of three imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) including 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([HMIM][Cl] or IL6), 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([OMIM][Cl] or IL8), and 1- dodecyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([DMIM][Cl] or IL12) in reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between crude oil and IL solutions was analyzed for the first time under a wide range of salinities (1000 to 195 476 ppm) at a reservoir temperature of 80 °C. The purpose was to microscopically analyze the occurring phenomenon at the fluid-fluid interface to determine the mechanism leading to oil extraction and to address the existing ambiguities in the literature concerning the... 

Ultrafiltration (UF) membranes were prepared from poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) as main polymer, poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) as additive, and 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvent using Design Expert software for designing the experiments. The membranes were characterized by SEM, contact angle measurement, and atomic force microscopy. The performance of UF membranes was evaluated by pure water flux (PWF) and blue indigo dye particle rejection. In addition, the molecular weight cutoff of UF membranes was determined by poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) rejection. The UF membranes were used as substrates for fabrication of polyamide thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The... 

Acidizing is one of the most effective techniques to remove the formation damage and restore (or even increase) the permeability of the near wellbore region. Although this technique is widely used to resolve the skin problem, it could initiate new damages itself that hinder the fluid flow and decrease the well production, consequently. Acid-oil emulsion and sludge formation are known as two major induced formation damage and the main reasons for the oil well acid treatment failures. Despite its critical effects, no comprehensive study has been addressed this specific type of formation damages in details. In this study, the acid-oil emulsion and asphaltic sludge formation were evaluated... 

A probabilistic formulation for semantic image annotation and retrieval is proposed. Annotation and retrieval are posed as classification problems where each class is defined as the group of database images labeled with a common semantic label. It is shown that, by establishing this one-to-one correspondence between semantic labels and semantic classes, a minimum probability of error annotation and retrieval are feasible with algorithms that are 1) conceptually simple and 2) computationally efficient. In this article, a content-based image retrieval and annotation architecture is proposed. Its attitude is decreasing the semantic gap by partitioning the image to its semantic regions and using... 

This paper discusses the optimal deployment of a cluster consisting of connected AC-coupled, low voltage (48 V) multi-carrier microgrids within an integrated framework. The utilization of this integrated framework proves to be an effective approach for enhancing the reliability, resiliency, and operational quality of the clustered multi-carrier microgrids. Furthermore, it enables improved utilization of distributed energy resources in both grid-connected and stand-alone scenarios. In order to address local objectives, this paper presents a hybrid approach to determine the optimal integration and size of distributed energy resources in autonomous multi-carrier microgrids. Additionally, the...