Sharif Digital Repository

The normalization theory in relational database design is a classical subject investigated in different papers. The results of these research works are the stronger normal forms such as 5NF, DKNF and 6NF. In these normal forms, there are less anomalies and redundancies, but it does not mean that these stronger normal forms are free of anomalies and redundancies. Each normal form discussion is based on a particular constraint. In this paper, we introduce relations which contain a new kind of constraint called "combinational constraint". We. distinguish two important kinds of this constraints, namely Strong and Weak. Also we classify the. Combinationally Constrained Relations as Single and... 

In the most of the drilling operations a considerable amount of money is spent for drilling related problems; including stuck pipe, lost circulation, and excessive mud cost. In order to decrease the percentage of non-productive time (NPT) caused by these kind of problems, the aim is to control annular frictional pressure losses especially in the fields where pore pressure and fracture pressure gradient is too close which is called narrow drilling window. By solving these problems, drilling cost will fall, therefore enabling the industry to be able to drill wells that were previously uneconomical. Managed pressure drilling (MPD) is a new technology that enables a driller to more precisely... 

Polystyrene resin was functionalized by diethanolamine for the efficient removal of p-toluenesulfonic acid (p-TSA) from aqueous solution. Functionalized adsorbent (DEA-PS) was characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, point of zero charge measurement and field-emission scanning electron microscopy. According to the results, maximum removal of p-TSA was observed at the pH range of 2.5-5. The adsorption kinetics of p-TSA onto DEA-PS was represented by pseudo-first-order model and the equilibrium data followed Langmuir model well. The adsorption process was endothermic and spontaneous, along with the positive change of entropy. The regeneration of DEA-PS was... 

SAPO-34 zeolite-like particles were successfully synthesized at high temperature environment. An L9 orthogonal array of the Taguchi method was implemented to investigate the effects of experimental conditions to prepare SAPO-34 with respect to crystallinity of the final product phase. The results showed that the favorable phase crystallinity was improved by increasing the hydrothermal synthesis temperature and organic template content, whereas increasing the water content in synthesis mixture decreased the crystallinity. No significant changes in crystallinity of the final products were observed by increasing the synthesis duration. In addition, zeolite SAPO-5, which was formed as the... 

Decreasing particle size results in larger increase of external surface area and shorter diffusion path, both reducing mass and heat transfer resistances in catalysis and sorption. A rapid high-temperature hydrothermal synthesis method was developed to synthesize uniform nanoparticles of SAPO-34 zeolite with high crystallinity. To investigate the effects of temperature and synthesis time on purity and crystallinity of the final products, the crystallization temperature was increased from 468 to 673 K while the synthesis time was decreased from 24 h to 45 min. The products were characterized by XRD and SEM techniques. It was found that high temperature and short synthesis time reduce the... 

Identification and minimization of error sources are important issues in experimental investigations. Mainly in micro-scale problems, precise settings should be applied to high-tech test beds to reduce disturbance and induced motion. An experimental study is conducted to assess the role of induced forces and velocity fields in a particulate system used for particle identification and separation. Two main effects caused by disturbances are sampling errors and induced motion in the channel, either on fluid or dispersed phases. Different disturbance scenarios are implemented on the test bed and then the system response is reported. In order to assess induced motion as a result of applied... 

Spectrophotometric analysis method based on the combination of the principal component analysis (PCA) with the feed-forward neural network (FFNN) and the radial basis function network (RBFN) was proposed for the simultaneous determination of paracetamol (PAC) and p-aminophenol (PAP). This technique relies on the difference between the kinetic rates of the reactions between analytes and silver nitrate as the oxidizing agent in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) which is the stabilizer. The reactions are monitored at the analytical wavelength of 420 nm of the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) band of the formed silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs). Under the optimized conditions, the... 

A highly sensitive and simple indirect spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of trace amounts of inorganic mercury (Hg2 +) in aqueous media. The method is based on the inhibitory effect of Hg2 + on the activity of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) in the oxidation of ascorbic acid by hydrogen peroxide followed by the reduction of Au3 + to Au-NPs by unreacted ascorbic acid and the measurement of the absorbance of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak of gold nanoparticles (at 530 nm) which is directly proportional to the concentration of Hg2 +. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the concentration range of 1-220 ng mL- 1. Limits... 

Vapor pressure and liquid density of 20 pure alcohols were correlated using an artificial neural network (ANN) system and statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT) equation of state. The SAFT equation has five adjustable parameters as temperature-independent segment diameter, square-well energy, number of segment per chain, association energy and association volume. These parameters can be obtained by a non-linear regression method using the experimental vapor pressure and liquid density data. In continue, the vapor pressure and liquid densities of pure alcohols were estimated by using an artificial neural network (ANN) system. In the neural network system, it is assumed that thermodynamic... 

TiO2 and transition metal (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, and Zn) doped TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by the sol-gel method using 2-hydroxylethylammonium formate as an ionic liquid. All the prepared samples were calcined at 500 °C and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), BET surface area determination, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), and Fourier transformed infrared (FT-IR) techniques. The studies revealed that transition metal (TM) doped nanoparticles have smaller crystalline size and higher surface area than pure TiO2. Dopant ions in the TiO2 structure caused significant absorption shift into the visible region. The results of... 

Gas injection into reservoirs can be used to increase oil recovery. However, reservoir heterogeneity and high gas mobility reduce sweep efficiency and decrease recovery. Using foam can reduce gas mobility and therefore increase sweep efficiency. Foam is thermodynamically unstable, so it is important to predict the foam stability. In order to understand the influence of oil presence on foam stability, static experiments performed on foam by varying the type and amount of added oil and molecular weight of added alkane. Also static foam properties have been investigated by varying the surfactant concentration, ionic strength, composition of different salts in the sample, and addition of polymer... 

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... 

Ink drop spread (IDS) is the engine of an active learning method, which is the methodology of soft computing. IDS, as a pattern-based processing unit, extracts useful information from a system that is subjected to modeling. In spite of its excellent potential to solve problems such as classification and modeling compared with other soft-computing tools, finding its simple and fast hardware implementation is still a challenge. This paper describes a new hardware implementation of the IDS method that is based on the memristor crossbar structure. In addition to simplicity, being completely real time, having low latency, and the ability to continue working properly after the occurrence of power... 

In this research, a combination of the physical model based on Paris law and probability method is proposed for remaining useful life prediction of rolling element bearings. Level crossing is used as a feature that represents a linear relationship with defect size. Considering this linear relationship and using Paris law, a new model has been developed for bearings that follow degradation pattern with two stages. In this pattern, a bearing starts working in the healthy condition. Then it starts slow degradation stage and finally it goes to fast degradation stage until it reaches to the failure threshold. Considering a normal distribution for transition point from the slow degradation to the... 

Rolling element bearings (REBs) are usually considered among the most critical elements of rotating machines. Therefore, accurate prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) of REBs is a fundamental challenge to improve reliability of the machines. Vibration condition monitoring is the most popular method used for diagnosis of REBs and this is a motivating fact to use recorded vibration data in RUL prediction too. However, it is necessary to extract appropriate features from vibration signal that represent actual damage progress in the REB. In this paper, wavelet packet transform is used to extract signal features and artificial neural network is applied to estimate RUL of the REB. To obtain... 

Selecting appropriate features from the vibration condition monitoring data of ball-bearings is one of the main challenges in the application of data-driven methods for remaining useful life prediction purpose. In this article, a new feature based on the high-frequency vibration of ball-bearings is proposed. The feed forward neural network will be used for training and prediction. The experimental data of the bearing accelerated life in the PROGNOSTIA test (published in PHM 2012 IEEE conference) are used to verify the method. The results obtained by applying new features are compared with those of two popular features in the time domain (RMS and kurtosis) for prognostic purpose. Applying the...