Sharif Digital Repository

As a method of cancer treatment or improvement of cancer-related complications, external radiation therapy is prescribed by physicians, in case of detection of a tumor in a region of patient’s body. Over time, various techniques have been developed for external beam radiation therapy. Among which, Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), due to its ability to adjust the intensity of radiation beams, has a higher capacity to generate appropriate dose distribution based on tumor size and volume and it is one of the most widely used techniques in cancer treatment centers.The core process in treatment planning is using appropriate computer algorithms which results in posing enough damage to... 

One of the ways for semantic modelling of natural languages is to use the distributed representations of words. Formerly in order to produce the distributed representations of words several methods like LSA, LDA and other techniques taken from information retrieval were applied. The main idea presented by these methods is that the whole document consists of one central topic that has become hidden by the words it is made of. These models assign one general meaning to the whole document and do not regard words as semantically independent. However, each of the words of a document have specific senses that these models are not able to reflect. On the other hand efforts done in the field of... 

This research responds to the problem of how to optimize maintenance and repair planning for oil and gas industry gas turbines. With three questions driving the study—how to optimize maintenance planning, what are the drivers of its success, and what methodologies are currently available to be adopted—the research critically discusses existing methods and analytical procedures. The Nourabad case study in the Fars Province supports the empirical aspect through application of IPCMMS software data and historical performance records in five top-performing turbine subsystems. The core methodology integrates condition-based maintenance (CBM) concepts with a modified failure rate model from Rykov... 

In practice, structures made of concrete are full of cracks. The strength of concrete is mainly determined by the tensile strength, which is about 10% of the compressive strength. As long as cracking in concrete is unavoidable, we have to try to minimize their detrimental effects. This objective can be achieved by resisting (or limiting) propagation of existing cracks. Because of this, reinforcement (mostly steel) is used to increase the carrying capacity of the material and to control the development of cracks. Concrete structures that fail, already shows a large number of large and small cracks before their maximum carrying capacity is reached. The failure of concrete can be characterized... 

Gas-Assisted-Gravity-Drainage (GAGD) is a new enhanced oil recovery method which utilizes the natural tendency of gas and oil to segregate due to gravity. Higher recovery of GAGD, compared to continuous gas injection (CGI) and Water-Alternating-Gas (WAG) makes it the focus of researches in recent years. This work is trying to propose a surrogate model based on Artificial Neural Networks for GAGD process. The proposed model should be able to mimic the behavior the process in a short time in order to be used as an alternative computationally expensive simulator where a large number of simulations are needed, such as sensitivity analysis, optimization of the process, or risk analysis. A... 

The main goal of partake quake-attenuating in buildings is to absorb energy and to attenuate the exerted forces into structures as a result of ground motions. Notwithstanding achievements and developments in the field of dampers production, applying of dampers in structures is proportional to following complicated technology and subtle engineering. Installation and initiation of dampers depend on educated and expert crew; moreover, such attenuating systems need maintenance and repair during the useful structural life time. Therefore, nowadays civil engineering suffers from the lack of such quake-attenuating systems to be able to respond simply but applicable mechanism at the same time for... 

Earthquakes cause considerable damages and human and financial losses all around the world. Without doubt, the most important earthquake injuries are those that arise as a result of building failure in an earthquake. Conventional design codes provided a minimum level of protection against strong ground shaking to mitigate earthquake effects on structure by utilizing structural elements such as shear walls, braced frames, etc. Although, these provisions guarantee only that the building will not collapse, but it does not protect the buildings from structural damage. This method considers strengthening of structural lateral resistance system to verify earthquake forces. However, new methods... 

This research introduces a novel thermo-mechanical multiscale technique, utilizing machine learning, for simulating the compaction process of aluminum nanopowders with surface oxidation at various temperatures. The methodology employed involves the utilization of nonlinear thermo-mechanical Finite Element Method (FEM) for macro scale analysis, while employing the Molecular Dynamics (MD) method to calculate the mechanical and thermal characteristics of aluminum nanopowders at the nano-scale. The first part of the research presents a comprehensive study on the thermal conductivity of alumina-coated aluminum nanopowders, which is a crucial property for their application in powder metallurgy,... 

Fracture is one of the most important engineering problems, and the lack of knowledge about this phenomenon will result in loss of life and property. Before the computer age, fracture mechanics has been studied by many analytical mechanics researchers; and after that, lots of attempts have been done to accurately model this phenomenon.
Finite element method, one of the best methods in Computational Mechanics, is common in computational fracture mechanics. Polygonal finite element is a new concept which has been recently applied in finite element analysis. This research utilized this concept in com-putational fracture mechanics. In another word, the crack discontinuity and crack tip... 

In this thesis, a fully coupled numerical model is developed for the modeling of dynamic cohesive crack propagation and hydraulic fracture in saturated porous media using extended finite element method. Many engineering structures like concrete or soil dams and buildings foundation are built with porous materials like concrete, rock and soil. Behavior of these materials in which void among the solid particles are filled with one or more fluids are so complicated rather than single solid phase. Dynamic analysis of porous mediums containing a discontinuity has many applications in various civil engineering fields including structure, earthquake, hydraulic structures, etc. For instance... 

The band gap offset is an effect of coordination numbers (CNs) of atoms reduction at the edge of transversal cross-section Si nanowires (SiNWs) which would be of increasingly important for greater shell-core ratio sections. In this paper, a hierarchical multi-scale modeling has been developed to simulate edge effect on the band gap shift of SiNWs due to geometry effect induced strain in the self-equilibrium state. Classical Molecular Dynamics (MD) approach and Finite Element Method (FEM) are used in the micro (atomic) and macro scale levels, respectively. Using the Cauchy-Born (CB) hypothesis as a correlator of continuum and atomic properties, the atomic positions are related to the... 

In present research forming process of nanopowders, which is a part of powder metallurgy was investigated by molecular dynamics method. Powder metallurgy is a relatively new method for production of industrial parts by pouring powder into die and compaction to desired density. One can reach parts with higher quality and strength by decreasing size of powder’s particles and entering the nano scale. Particle with smaller size have higher specific surface and due more intensity to react. Classic methods for investigation of this process don’t cover the atomic scale effects, so using newer procedures such as molecular dynamics is highly recommended. In present research, at first compaction of... 

In this thesis, a coarse-grained multi-scale method for 2D crystallyn solids based-on finite element consepts has presented. In this method, both scales are atomic scale and similar to what we see in non-local QC method, the entire atomic structure will be intact. Accordingly, calculations of potential functions and forces in the domain will have the atomic accuracy. In the presented method to reduce the domain’s degrees of freedom, the classical finite-element meshing concept to mesh the elastic linear areas in the domain is used and the MD calculations will done on the mesh nodes. Therefore, degrees of freedom in the system will reduce and consequently, the computational cost will reduce.... 

Contact between different parts of a system and their interactions on each other is one of the most important phenomena that we face in modeling a variety of mechanical issues which should be carefully considered. Sometimes, this phenomenon occurs between different components in a phase and some other times between several phases, which, causes changes in the performance and response of the system. Therefore, in order to investigate its effect in particular on dynamic problems that are subject to severe changes over a short period of time, and to provide more effective methods for dealing with it, the subject of this research has been devoted to dynamic contact modeling with large... 

Wellbore instability is one of the serious problems during drilling. This can cause delay in drilling, increasing drilling costs and in some cases well abandonment. The present project investigates the effects of non- isothermal drilling and the difference in salt concentration between formation fluid and drilling fluid on the stability of wellbores drilled in the saturated porous shale formations subjected to an arbitrary stress field. This project also focuses on the analysis of wellbore stability in shale formations in which the thermal diffusivity is higher than fluid invasion and the mechanism of heat transfer is dominated by conduction. The governing equations used in this dissertation... 

Damage detection and rehabiltation is one of the most economical methods of increasing safety and service life of the structures. In this research, a wave-based methodology is introduced for laminar damage location in single axial members and combined axial-flexural members within a structure. Laminar damage is a kind of local damage in which the cross section area of a member decreases within a specific length. In the proposed wave-based methodology, a structure with a laminar damage is analyzed using a Finite Element (FE) software under a high frequency loading, and the strain values in specific points of the structure is collected. Thereafter, using the wave propagation theories and the... 

In the limit case of incompressibility, the displacement-based finite element methods are not capable of finding the solutions with adequate accuracy. Moreover, discontinuities in displacement field or strain field which exist in the interior of the elements should be dealt with appropriately. The u/p mixed formulation provides a suitable context for modeling the incompressible problems. It is capable of solving general problems in which there exist geometrical or material nonlinearities. In the case of employing the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM), uniform meshes can be used for problems with discontinuities and in fact the discontinuities can be decoupled from the mesh. In this... 

Isogeometric Analysis method is a newly introduced method for the analysis of problems governed by partial differential equations. The method has some features in common with the finite element method and some in common with the mesh-less methods. This method uses the Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) functions as basis function for analysis. With this basis functions, the refinement procedure is much easier than the classical finite element method by eliminating the need to communicate with the CAD model. Modeling cracks in classical finite element method requires very fine mesh near the crack tip. One can model crack propagation by means of classical finite element, using an updating... 

The probability of crack appearance in soil structures and porous media is not avoidable, which could be the reason of structures collapse. According to the important affects, which they play in the vulnerability of the structures, they should be taking into account. The cracks have different effects on various materials. The most properties that cracks have, is their ability of conveying the fluid flow. For the most accurate analysis of discontinues domains, their governing equations should be taken and solved. Finite Element Method is one of the best solutions of differential governing equations. However, the appearance of some problems in the modeling of discontinues domain, was the...