Sharif Digital Repository

Electrical behavior of hybrid conductive composites made of phenolic resin, graphite woven, glass woven and graphite nano powder has been studied for the first time in the present research to apply as collecting plates in electro static precipitators. To this purpose, two types of four-layer composites smeared with phenolic resin by different amounts of graphite nano powder then produced at 120°C and 200 bars with proper curing cycle. Finally, electrical resistivity of all the plates undergoing impact loading after different rapping cycles was measured by means of a repetitive rapping tester system particularly manufactured for this task. This study performs changes in mechanical behavior of... 

In this paper a novel form of the familiar E-shaped patch antenna is presented. In the presented approach, by using the genetic algorithm (GA) based on fuzzy decision-making, some modifications have been implemented to the incorporated slots which lead to even more enhancement in the antenna bandwidth. The MOM (Method of Moment) is employed for analysis at the frequency band of 1.8GHz-2.6GHz by the optimization parameters of supply locations and slot dimensions. In the implemented fuzzy system, inputs are parameters like population, and outputs are parameters like recombination to produce the next generation. Fuzzy inference system (FIS) is used for the control of GA parameters. The design... 

In this paper an optimized E-shaped patch antenna is presented, the bandwidth of the E-shaped microstrip antenna is optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA) based on fuzzy decision-making. In the implemented fuzzy system, inputs are parameters like population, and outputs are parameters such as recombination to produce the next generation. Fuzzy inference system is used for the control of the parameters of the genetic algorithm. Simulation results show the high ability of genetic optimization based on fuzzy system for about 33% BW. Dimensions of the slots have been optimized with the novel design approach presented herein. A prototype element is also constructed in order to validate the... 

This paper presents the design performance characteristics of a novel Robotic Mannequin, “RoMa”, developed for the fashion industry. RoMa, a full-body humanoid social robot platform, is currently in the final stages of development for visual merchandising to promote customer appeal. RoMa is characterized by nine features which are listed as: appealing appearance, avoiding the uncanny valley, easy maintenance, interactive, light weight, low developmental cost, suitable body movements, suitable color, and user friendly. In this paper, important design procedures and considerations are briefly presented and discussed. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG  

Many quantum systems are being investigated in the hope of building a large-scale quantum computer. All of these systems suffer from decoherence, resulting in errors during the execution of quantum gates. Quantum error correction enables reliable quantum computation given unreliable hardware. Unoptimized topological quantum error correction (TQEC), while still effective, performs very suboptimally, especially at low error rates. Hand optimizing the classical processing associated with a TQEC scheme for a specific system to achieve better error tolerance can be extremely laborious. We describe a tool, AUTOTUNE, capable of performing this optimization automatically, and give two highly... 

Optical fiber doped with lead salts quantum dots (QDs) of different radii, has previously been proposed as a wide-band amplifier in the optical communication range. The emission and absorption spectra of QDs are size-dependent. Optical fiber amplifier doped with QDs of different sizes is an inhomogeneous gain medium. This inhomogeneity is the principle of operation of wide-band quantum-dot-doped fiber amplifiers (QDFAs). To study the effects of inhomogeneity such as spectral hole burning on the amplifier behavior, a fiber amplifier with an arbitrary size distribution of QDs is taken into consideration. The light propagation equations and rate equations for the inhomogeneous medium are... 

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is performed in slurry reactors and it is essential to employ a continuous separation method to separate the catalyst particles suspended in the product wax. A study was conducted to where the separation process was carried out by internal filtration method using a sintered metal filter. The filtrate flow rate increased by increasing the temperature. Increasing the pressure difference had positive effects on the filtrate flow rate at the beginning of the process. Backwashing by both liquid and gas was more effective than by performing the backwashing operation only by gas. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 7th European Congress of Chemical... 

In this paper, the variational method is employed for minimizing the gain ripple of multi-wavelength fiber Raman amplifiers. The variance of gain spectrum of the fiber Raman amplifier is regarded as the cost function, restriction on total pump power and average gain is given as the constraints of the minimization problem. It is shown that the minimization problem with any necessary constraints on the pump powers, average gain and signal to noise ratio, is reduced to a two-point boundary value problem. The method gives the entire possible local and global solutions. The method is applied to different examples of fiber Raman amplifiers with different lengths from 25 km to 100 km and different... 

Treatment of cancer involves many invasive procedures that could be a source of distress in kids suffering from cancer. Distress itself can be an important obstacle in patients' acceptance of treatment and their adaptation to it, consequently reducing its efficiency. Distress symptoms, in a spectrum from mild to critical, are shown to be widespread in children struggling with cancer. In recent years to alleviate this psychological condition, researchers have proposed and examined several methods such as relaxation, hypnosis, desensitization, and distraction. This study presents a new approach to explore the impact of utilizing a humanoid robot as a therapy-assistant in dealing with patients'... 

Treating cancer encompasses many invasive procedures that can be a source of distress in oncology patients. Distress itself can be a major obstruction in the path of acceptance of treatment and the patient's adaptation to it, thereby reducing its efficiency. These distress symptoms have been found to be prevalent in children suffering from cancer, in a spectrum from mild to critical. In the past years in response to this psychological suffering, researchers have proposed and tested several methods such as relaxation, hypnosis, desensitization, and distraction. This paper propounds a new approach by exploring the effect of utilizing a humanoid robot as a therapy-assistive tool in dealing with... 

A series of ZIF-8/OND hybrid nanostructures with different percentages of oxidized nanodiamond (OND) was prepared. Then, the adsorptive removal performance of pristine ZIF-8 and its nanohybrids with OND towards methylene blue (MB) was investigated. The fabricated adsorbents were characterized via thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption/desorption, field emission scanning electron microscopy and zeta potential measurements. The maximal adsorption capacity of ZIF-8 (242 mg/g) was found to grow steadily with the increment in OND content and reached an approximate plateau at 343 mg/g for the nanohybrid containing 5 wt% OND, i.e.... 

Cell temperature in fuel cells is an important parameter which highly affects fuel cell stack efficiency. A suitable cooling system should satisfy an acceptable temperature range. In this research a relevant cooling system for a specified PEM fuel cell stack has been proposed complying with the criteria and cooling requirements of the fuel cell. The effect of various parameters on the entropy generation and temperature distribution in the cooling plates are surveyed. The number of cooling plates, the number of channels in each cooling plate and the channel width is determined. Two flow regimes namely laminar and turbulent flows of the cooling fluid in channels are analyzed and a design... 

The fabrication of supported noble metal nanocrystals (NCs) with well-controlled morphologies have been attracted considerable interests due to their merits in a wide variety of applications. Photodeposition is a facile and effective method to load metals over semiconductors in a simple slurry reactor under irradiation. By optimizing the photodeposition process, the size, chemical states, and the geometrical distribution of metal NCs have been successfully tuned. However, metal NCs with well-controlled shapes through the photodeposition process have not been reported until now. Here, we report our important advances in the controlled photodeposition process to load regular noble metal NCs.... 

The economic production quantity (EPQ) is one of the most commonly used models for production planning and inventory control problems. In this paper, a multi-product single- machine EPQ inventory model with imperfect production is extended under production capacity. In this system, produced items do not have perfect quality; they either are reworked or are scrapped. Moreover, the limited warehouse space for each item and the limited total available capital lead to constraints for storage and budget, respectively. Besides, the setup cost/time for each product depends on the quantity produced. The objective function of the developed EPQ inventory model is shown to be a convex non-linear... 

A simple analytic formula is derived to extract tiny dispersion fluctuations along highly nonlinear fibers from distributed measurements of parametric gain. A refined BOTDA scheme, suitable to track Kerr processes, enables low noise measurements  

In industrial scale of Gas to Liquid (GTL) process in Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a part of reactor outlet gases such as CO2 and CH4 as side reaction products, is usually recycled. In this study, the influence of CO2 and CH4 on the performance and selectivity of Co-Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is investigated by injection of these gases (0-20 vol. % of feed) to the feed stream. The effect of temperature and feed flow rate, are also inspected. The results show that low amounts of CO2 in the feed stream, doesn't change the catalyst activity significantly but increasing the amount of CO2 (more than 10 vol. %) cause the CO conversion to decrease and the selectivity of heavy components to increase.... 

A resin-bound 1,2,4-triazolium ionic tag has been used as support for the preparation of solid palladium nanoparticles (Pd(0)-POLI-TAG-Pd). Owing to the pincer-type architecture of the triazolium ligand, the stabilization of a high amount of palladium nanoparticles (16 wt %) has been possible. The catalytic system has been fully characterized and used in low amounts (i.e., 0.1 mol % palladium loading) in representative Heck-Mizoroki cross-coupling processes. A negligible release of the metal was demonstrated, and a high activity was obtained over more runs. Besides, the protocol has been optimized for the use of safe biomass-derived γ-valerolactone reaction medium  

Clarification of rough nonalcoholic beer using microfiltration as an alternative to conventional filtration with filter aids presents scientific and technical challenges for the brewing industry. An experimental pilot plant was used to evaluate the permeability and selectivity of polymeric membranes in the clarification process. Cellulose acetate (CA) with pore sizes of 0.2, 0.45, 0.8, and 1.2 μm, together with cellulose nitrate (CN), nylon (NY), and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) with a pore size of 0.45 μm, were used at transmembrane pressures (TMP) of 1.0 and 2.0 bar. The data corroborated that the flux values of the CA, CN, and NY membranes were almost the same and reduced drastically,...