Sharif Digital Repository

In this thesis, at first upstream transient error propagation and amplification phenomenon is introduced. Then, the previous methods to attenuate this phenomenon are presented. To overcome this drawback, a new method that is based on feed-forward and off-take disturbance estimation and lost data reconstruction in wireless communication is presented. In this thesis, an estimation of unknown off-take disturbance at the present time is approximated or in fact predicted using the last data. Also, in the presented method, the lost data is reconstructed using two different methods. At the end, the satisfactory performance of the proposed control method is illustrated by many computer simulations  

Particle retention and clearance is a major concern in the treatment of pulmonary diseases. Inhaled materials into the nasal and lung airways include gases/vapors, liquid droplets and soluble/insoluble particulate matter which can be toxic or therapeutic (or both). For example, nanoparticles (NPs), as part of nanomedicine, are now being used as drug carriers for passive and active targeting of solid tumors and inflamed tissue. However, natural and especially manmade NPs can also be harmful, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), asbestos fibers and ambient toxic pollutants, based on epidemiological and pathological studies of occupational and environmental exposures. In fact, ultrafine particles... 

Density currents are occurred as a result of the intrusion of a dense fluid into a fluid with a different density. Density differences are typically caused by the difference in temperature, existence of solution or insoluble material and suspended solids. A special kind of density current is called a turbidity current which is a sediment-laden density current. This is a kind of flow which is driven by the force of gravity on suspended sediment particles that causes an excess fractional density with respect to the surrounding ambient fluid. In this work, the 2-D sediment-laden density current on a sloping surface of the channel is investigated through experiments. The channel is 12 m long,... 

Density currents are occurred as a result of the intrusion of a dense fluid into a fluid with a different density. Density difference is the main agent of current’s movement. These currents are observed in nature numerously and they are one of the main reasons of the erosion and transportation of deposition in oceans, seas and rivers. Investigation of these currents is of great importance especially in dams’ reservoir as major cause of deposition and reduction of reservoir’s efficency. Density differences are typically caused by the difference in temperature, existence of solution or insoluble material and suspended solids. In this work, density current is studied experimentally. Density... 

Sedimentation tanks are channels designed for sedimentation of suspended solids in water. These tanks are one of the most important parts of water treatment plants and their performance directly affects the functionality of water treatment plants. Therefore, researchers have tried to find better designs of sedimentation tanks. Among several design methods have been presented, modification of the geometry of tanks by installing baffles is one of the most effective and economic methods. According to the importance of performance improvement of industrial sedimentation tanks as well as the diversity in reported results, development and completion of previous studies seem to be necessary. In... 

The results of numerical simulation of underground flows are greatly affected not only by the discretization method of flow equations, but also by the way that the geological domain is upscaled. Including the detailed knowledge of heterogeneous permeability distribution is mostly neither feasible nor computationally efficient. So it is important to develop efficient grid generation and upscaling methods to simplify the fine-scale flow model while still including the impact of the heterogeneities as far as possible. Thus regions where parameters of interest have larger values or higher changes require finer grid blocks and regions with lower values or minor changes should have coarser grid... 

Advanced reservoir characterization methods can yield geological models at a very fine resolution, containing 1011-1018 cells while the common reservoir simulators can handle much fewer numbers of cells due to computer hardware limitations. The process of coarsening the fine-scale model to simulation models is known as upscaling. There are three fundamental steps in the procedure of upscaling, i.e. defining the coarse grid geometry, calculating the average properties for the generated coarse grid and simulation of the two-phase flow equations on the generated coarse-scale model. In this thesis, the focus will be on investigating the applicability of optimization in the context of coarse grid... 

The advent of microfluidics as suitable environments for culturing cells is associated with some challenges such as shear stresses applied on the cells. In fact, hepatocytes lose their function as exposed to high shear stresses similar to other cell types. Moreover, among all factors needed for cell viability, feeding hepatocytes with adequate oxygen is of great importance due to their high demand for oxygen compared the other cells. In this thesis, different types of cultures including 2D and 3D has been used in order that shear stresses would be in allowed range and provision of hepatocytes with sufficient oxygen concentrations has been ensured as well. In addition to supplying hepatocytes... 

Today, due to the decline of drinkable water, many desalination plants have been established and operated around the world. Disposal of these brines, which have higher density and temperature than receiving water, causes many environmental impacts. Industrial power plants discharge these effluents into the seawater body mostly as submerged jets due to their higher effectiveness. Many experimental researches have been done on the negative and positive buoyant jet that discharged form desalination plants. But a few numerical studies have been done with investigating the full Navior-Stokes equations and they have been flawed in modeling. For example, some of these models have been able to... 

In this thesis, the effect of heart dynamic motion and pulsatile inflow on blood hemodynamics and LDL permeation into the arterial wall in a 3-D coronary artery bifurcation was investigated. To determine the effect of each factor alone and simultaneous effect of both factors i.e. heart dynamic motion and pulsatile inflow, flow simulations were performed in four cases i.e. steady-static, steady-dynamic, pulsatile-static, and pulsatile-dynamic. The results of flow simulations showed that dynamic geometry and pulsatile inflow have considerable impact on temporal variations of wall shear stress (WSS), even though the effect of pulsatile inflow on WSS variation dominates over the effect of... 

A large number of desalination plants have been established to overcome the drinkable water scarcity in the world. These plants produce saline water as effluent, which is often discharged into local sea water. One of the applicable methods to dispose these kinds of effluents is to install an inclined nozzle below the water’s surface. Hence, an inclined negatively buoyant jet (INBJ) forms which is often fully turbulent due to the high discharge velocity. Local environmental characteristics affect the dynamics and mixing behavior of INBJs. One of these characteristics is the sea bed slope, on which the present study has been focused. Large eddy simulations (LES) are performed in the present... 

Endothelial cells that cover the inner wall of blood cells and are sensitive to receiving mechanical signals play important role in regulating many vital activities of the human body especially the function of the cardiovascular system. One of the factors affecting the mechanical functions of these cells is the shear stress applied to them. Due to blood velocity increasing or decreasing the endothelial cells shear stress change and leads to some chemical reactions and finally releasing biochemical substances including Nitrogen-Monoxide and Calcium-ion. Nitrogen-Monoxide produced by endothelial cells by affecting the smooth muscle cells in the vessel wall causes dilating of the vessel wall,... 

Atherosclerosis is a vascular disorder caused by inflammation of the arterial wall. This inflammation leads to the accumulations of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, monocytes, macrophages and fat-laden foam cells at the site of inflammation, often referred to as plaque formation. This work uses a mathematical model for simulating the deposition of atheroma plaque in coronary arteries. In this study, the effect of time average wall shear stress (TAWSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI), non-Newtonian characteristics of blood and variable hematocrit values on the occurrence of atherosclerosis in a three-dimensional coronary artery was numerically investigated. Simulations was conducted... 

More than 80% of desalination units in the Persian Gulf use multi-stage flash (MSF) technology. The discharge of effluent from these units sometimes causes severe impacts to the marine environment due to the increase in temperature and salinity around the discharge point. In the current thesis, the geometrical, mixing and turbulence characteristics of the discharge of thermal-saline inclined jets under the water surface, similar to the effluent of MSF units, are numerically investigated by developing the buoyantBoussinesqPimpleFoam solver in the OpenFoam open-source software, using the LES turbulence model and the dynamic Smagorinsky subgrid scale and the UNESCO equation of state. The... 

Blood clotting and clot formation in damaged vessels are vital mechanisms of the body. Any disorder in performing this mechanism leads to various problems such as excessive bleeding or, on the contrary, causes vascular occlusion and diseases such as embolism. Due to the importance of this issue, extensive research has been done to understand this phenomenon and the factors affecting it. In this thesis, the effect of shear stress, coagulation factor concentration and wound location in coronary bifurcation on clot formation and growth and its interaction with velocity field is numerically investigated. Blood flow is modeled non-Newtonian with Carreau-Yasuda model. Various chemical species... 

An interesting theoretical and practical set of problems in computer science is concerned with the study of spatial relations among objects in a geometric space. Examples of such problems for a set of points P are finding the closest pair of the points P, partitioning space into regions such that all points of a region have minimum distance to the same point in P, and computing the Euclidean minimum spanning tree on P. Moreover, we need mechanisms to efficiently update these properties when the points P are allowed to move or may be inserted or deleted. This is to avoid re-computation of these properties from scratch. Here, we consider the Euclidean minimum spanning tree (EMST) of a set of... 

In robotic, Underactuated systems are interesting subject to study. Underactuated system, is a system that have fewer actuator than degrees of freedom. Underactuated systems are composed of active and passive joints. passive joints are existed, in order to decrease the weight, cost, and energy consumption. Usually, control of these systems are difficult. Underactuated systems have acceleration constraint. This property make the control method have fundamental constraint. So that controller dynamic could not be a smooth function of states of system. So most of standard method in control, such as feedback linearization, are not applicable. Local linearizing methods, because of...