Sharif Digital Repository

Spontaneous water imbibition into the matrix blocks is known as the main mechanism for increased oil recovery from naturally fractured oil reservoirs. The rate of oil recovery and its ultimate value is mostly affected by wettability of the rocks and their pore structure. Oil viscosity also greatly influences the rate of oil recovery. A novel experimental model was utilized to study the imbibition mechanism under different wettability conditions. Matrix blocks made from different grain types and size distributions of glass beads were saturated with two different types of synthetic oil, to mimic the oil-saturated matrixes. The wetting characteristic of the models used in this study were... 

Equations of state based on the statistical associating fluid theory for potentials of variable range (SAFT-VR) and the perturbed chain statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT) have been used to model the PVT behavior of ionic liquids and the solubility of H2S in six imidazolium-based ionic liquids. The studied systems included [bmim][PF6], [hmim][PF6], [bmim][BF4], [hmim][BF4], [bmim][NTF2] and [hmim][NTF2] at various temperatures and pressures.For pure components, parameters of the models have been obtained by fitting the models to experimental data on liquid densities; the average relative deviation between the calculated and experimental densities for ionic liquids is less than... 

A Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) is a renewable energy-based HVAC system that extracts or supplies heat from/to the ground via a Ground Heat Exchanger (GHE). One of the most commonly used types of GHE in GSHP systems is the energy pile. In this realm, the GSHP system with a triple helix energy pile has become the focus of attention. To this aim, a comprehensive three-dimensional transient Computational Fluid Dynamics model of the energy pile with triple helix GHE and the surrounding soil is developed. The effect of several parameters, including helix pitch, helix diameter and pipe diameter, on the thermal performance of the system, is investigated. Simulated cases are chosen using the design... 

Diversion in heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs plays the most important role to the success of acidizing. Without the use of diversion, more acid preferentially flows into the high-permeability region and leaves the low-permeability region underreacted. But a clear understanding of diverting agents, such as polymer-based in-situ-gelled acids, can help uniformly stimulate the near-wellbore region. In this paper, we correct the rheological model that was developed by Ratnakar et al. (2013) according to experimental data from Gomaa and Nasr-El-Din (2010b) by considering shear-rate effect in a two-scale continuum model. It is found that the rheology parameters and shear rate are influential... 

The HIGHT algorithm is a 64-bit block cipher with 128-bit key length, at CHES'06 as a lightweight cryptographic algorithm. In this paper, a new related-key impossible differential attack on the full-round algorithm is introduced. Our cryptanalysis requires time complexity of 2127.276 HIGHT evaluations which is slightly faster than exhaustive search attack. This is the first related-key impossible differential cryptanalysis on the full-round HIGHT block cipher. Copyright  

Growing needs for energy and the essential role of fossil fuels in energy market require attempts such as carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration in saline aquifers to stabilize and mitigate atmospheric carbon concentrations. The possibility of co-injection of impurities along with CO2 allows for the direct disposal of flue gas and hence a significant reduction in the cost of CO2 sequestration projects by eliminating the separation process. In this study, the results of series of novel experiments in a high-pressure visual porous cell are reported, which allow for visually and quantitatively examining the dynamics of convective dissolution in brine-saturated porous media in the presence of an... 

Gravity drainage is known as the controlling mechanism of oil recovery in naturally fractured reservoirs. The efficiency of this mechanism is controlled by block-to-block interactions through capillary continuity and/or reinfiltration processes. In this study, at first, several free-fall gravity drainage experiments were conducted on a well-designed three-block apparatus and the role of tilt angle, spacers’ permeability, wettability and effective contact area (representing a different status of the block-to-block interactions between matrix blocks) on the recovery efficiency were investigated. Then, an experimental-based numerical model of free-fall gravity drainage process was developed,... 

Gravity drainage is known as the controlling mechanism of oil recovery in naturally fractured reservoirs. The efficiency of this mechanism is controlled by block-to-block interactions through capillary continuity and/or reinfiltration processes. In this study, at first, several free-fall gravity drainage experiments were conducted on a well-designed three-block apparatus and the role of tilt angle, spacers’ permeability, wettability and effective contact area (representing a different status of the block-to-block interactions between matrix blocks) on the recovery efficiency were investigated. Then, an experimental-based numerical model of free-fall gravity drainage process was developed,... 

Penetration of distributed generation (DG) in distribution networks is rapidly increasing. DGs' application enhances system's reliability and power quality. However, along their benefits, there are some issues. One of the most important issues of DGs' application is the islanding. This paper presents a novel passive islanding detection scheme for synchronous DG based. In the proposed scheme, rate of change of exciter voltage over rate of change of reactive power at the DG-side (dE/dQDG) is taken into account. In reality, the voltage and reactive power of load depend on the exciter of the synchronous generator. Therefore, due to lack of inertia, response of these parameters to small changes... 

Tumor metastasis is responsible for the vast majority of cancer-associated morbidities and mortalities. Recent studies have disclosed the higher metastatic potential of circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters than single CTCs. Despite long-term study on metastasis, the characterizations of its most potent cellular drivers, i.e., CTC clusters have only recently been investigated. The analysis of CTC clusters offers new intuitions into the mechanism of tumor metastasis and can lead to the development of cancer diagnosis and prognosis, drug screening, detection of gene mutations, and anti-metastatic therapeutics. In recent years, considerable attention has been dedicated to the development of... 

This paper studies unamped oscillations of fractional-order Duffing system. Stability theorems for fractional order systems are used to determine the characteristic polynomial of the system in order to find the parametric ranges for undamped oscillations in this system. We also derive relations for estimating the frequency and the amplitude of the oscillations in this system using a describing function method. Finally numerical simulation results are provided to justify the analysis  

This paper deals with the existence and the characteristics of the limit cycles in the fractional-order Arneodo system. The analysis is done using the describing function method. Our focus is on a special case where two limit cycles exist. The parametric range for the case of interest is derived, and the frequency and the amplitude of the oscillation are predicted. Numerical simulation results are presented to further demonstrate the reliability of the analysis  

This paper studies undamped oscillations of fractional-order Duffing system. Stability theorems for fractional order systems are used to determine the characteristic polynomial of the system in order to find the parametric ranges for undamped oscillations in this system. We also derive relations for estimating the frequency and the amplitude of the oscillations in this system using a describing function method. Finally numerical simulation results are provided to justify the analysis  

As steel plate shear walls are typically used in the building central cores around the elevators and stairs, introduction of an opening as door seems to be inevitable in steel plate shear wall spans. Due to the weakening of the steel plate shear walls’ performance caused by this particular type of opening, the use of stiffeners around the opening is necessary. Nevertheless, introduction of stiffeners around all sides of the opening, which does continue to boundary elements, is very expensive and inefficient. Therefore, the study on the effect of different arrangements of stiffeners on the behavior of steel plate shear walls is significant. In this research, a number of steel plate shear... 

In this study, a combination of energy and exergy analysis is applied for the industrial sulfur recovery unit (SRU) in commercial simulation software. The data of energy and exergy are obtained from the simulator and Excel (for physical and chemical exergy), respectively. In doing so, five intensified SRU configurations namely: (1) hot gas bypass (2) acid gas bypass (3) inlet stream preheating (4) acid gas enrichment and (5) oxygen (air) enrichment are compared in terms of energy production, reaction furnace temperature, sulfur recovery and pollutant emission into environment. Then, irreversibility in these five arrangements is compared and all the proposed methods show higher useful exergy... 

In overlay networks, the mechanism of a peer randomly joining and leaving a network, causes a topology mismatch between the overlay and the underlying physical topology. This causes a large volume of redundant traffic in the underlying physical network as well as an extra delay in message delivery in the overlay network. Topology mismatch occurs because overlay networks are not aware of their underlying physical networks. In this paper we present a mathematical model for topology awareness of overlay networks (degree of matching between an overlay and its underlying physical network) and the efficiency of message delivery on them. Then we experimentally show that the model is precise in the...