Sharif Digital Repository

Low swirl flame characteristics under external flow excitations are numerically investigated using large eddy simulations with a dynamically thickened flame combustion model. A finite volume scheme on a Cartesian grid with a dynamic one equation eddy viscosity subgrid scale model is used for large eddy simulations. The excitations are imposed on inlet velocity profiles by a sinusoidal forcing function over a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies. Present investigation shows that although, the swirling motion of the low swirl flame is not intense enough to induce a recirculation zone in ensemble averaged results, external flow excitations increase the local swirl number upstream of the... 

The low swirl flow is a novel method for stabilizing lean premixed combustion to achieve low emissions of nitrogen oxides. Understanding the characteristics of low swirl flows is of both practical and fundamental interest. In this paper, in order to gain better insight into low swirl stabilized combustion, large eddy simulation and dynamically thickened flame combustion modeling are used to characterize various features of non-reacting and reacting low swirl flows including vortex breakdown, shear layers’ instability, and coherent structures. Furthermore, four test cases with different equivalence ratios are studied to evaluate the effects of equivalence ratio on the flame and flow... 

Thermopneumatic micropump is one type of positive displacement micropump, which has many applications due to its relatively large stroke volume, low working voltage, and simple fabrication in microscale. In this paper, a numerical study of heat transfer and fluid flow in a valveless thermopneumatically driven micropump is presented. For rectifying the bidirectional flow, a nozzle and a diffuser are used as the inlet and outlet channels of the chamber. Since the fluid flow is induced by the motion of a diaphragm, the numerical simulation includes fluid structure interaction, which requires applying a dynamic mesh. The domain of solution is divided into two sections; the actuator unit, which... 

This study attempts to examine the natural gas fired power plants in Iran. The required data from natural gas fired power plants were gathered during 2008. The characteristics of thirty two gas turbine power plants and twenty steam power plants have been measured. Their emission factor values were then compared with the standards of Energy Protection Agency, Euro Union and World Bank. Emission factors of gas turbine and steam power plants show that gas turbine power plants have a better performance than steam power plants. For economic analysis, fuel consumption and environmental damages caused by the emitted pollutants are considered as cost functions; and electricity sales revenue are... 

Today, the production of energy and electricity is one of the major concerns of mankind. Electricity generation by solar energy is considered as one of the alternatives to fossil fuels. Solar chimneys mechanism is based on a natural phenomenon. In this process the solar energy heat up the earth's surface and the surrounding air. Due to the density difference between cold air and warm air, heated air ascends and causes air circulation. In this study, mathematical modelling of solar chimney and governing equations of this system will be discussed. In order to validate the numerical results, upwind velocity in chimney has been compared with a reliable reference results. As well as, the... 

Swirling flows have been widely used to stabilize lean premixed combustion in various gas turbines and furnaces. In such flows, understanding and characterizing the flame stabilization are of both practical and fundamental interests. It is known that the swirling motion decreases the flow velocity at the burner outlet, which contributes to flame stabilization. In low swirl flows, such a deceleration stabilizes a premixed flame aerodynamically. The present investigations, using large eddy simulations, study flame–flow interactions in lean premixed lifted flame stabilized in a low swirl flow. The results show that in addition to the swirling motion, combustion heat release reduces axial... 

Swirling flows have been widely used to stabilize lean premixed combustion in various gas turbines and furnaces. In such flows, understanding and characterizing the flame stabilization are of both practical and fundamental interests. It is known that the swirling motion decreases the flow velocity at the burner outlet, which contributes to flame stabilization. In low swirl flows, such a deceleration stabilizes a premixed flame aerodynamically. The present investigations, using large eddy simulations, study flame–flow interactions in lean premixed lifted flame stabilized in a low swirl flow. The results show that in addition to the swirling motion, combustion heat release reduces axial... 

In this study, scaling effects on fiber metal laminates under tensile and three-point bending tests were investigated numerically and experimentally. The fiber metal laminate specimens were made of aluminum 1050 and unidirectional glass-epoxy. Two scaled sizes of specimens were prepared based on A1n, 0n=90n s. Some specified mechanical properties of these samples were investigated and results showed that fiber metal laminates obey scaling law under quasi-static loading. Explicit finite element code LS-DYNA was utilized for numerical simulation. After validating numerical simulation with experiments, scaling law was studied numerically for four different... 

Time, cost and quality are among the crucial aspects of each project. In recent years, the demands of project stakeholders regarding reductions in the total cost and time of a project along with achieving the acceptable quality of the project have risen significantly. This leads researchers to developing models that incorporate the quality factor to previously existing time cost trade-off models.We develop a model for discrete time-cost-quality trade-off problem. For each activity, an execution mode can be selected from a number of possible ones. The time and cost of each mode are assumed to be crisp but the quality of each mode is a linguistic variable. Therefore, in this paper, fuzzy logic... 

In this paper, employing the definition of an effective configuration in the continuum damage mechanics, mechanical response of a compressible viscoelastic-viscoplastic material is investigated. We present a phenomenological viscoelastic-viscoplastic-viscodamage constitutive model, developed within the framework of irreversible thermodynamics. The formulation is based on the additive decomposition of the total strain into elastic, viscoelastic, and viscoplastic parts in the effective configuration. Thus, the Helmholtz energy is partitioned into elastic, elastic-viscoelastic, and viscoplastic parts. Then, each one is divided into deviatoric and volumetric energies. Considering the... 

Self-healing concrete materials have the capability to recover a part of the weakened mechanical properties induced by damage. In this paper, a constitutive model is proposed to investigate damage and healing phenomena in concrete materials. In order to consider the different behavior of concretes in tension and compression, a spectral decomposition of the stress is utilized. In addition, employing the Clausius-Duhem inequality and considering the irreversible thermodynamics, conjugate forces of the damage and healing are expressed. The Gibbs potential energy is decomposed into three parts: elastic, damage and healing. In this regard, damage and healing behavior are distinguished from the... 

In this paper, employing the Hencky strain, viscoelastic-viscoplastic response of self-healing materials is investigated. Considering the irreversible thermodynamics and using the effective configuration in the Continuum Damage-Healing Mechanics (CDHM), a phenomenological finite strain viscoelastic-viscoplastic constitutive model is presented. Considering finite viscoelastic and viscoplastic deformations, total deformation gradient is multiplicatively decomposed into viscoelastic and viscoplastic parts. Due to mathematical advantages and physical meaning of Hencky strain, this measure of strain is employed in the constitutive model development. In this regard, defining the damage and healing... 

Self-healing materials, as a class of intelligent materials, are capable to recover a part of the weakened mechanical properties induced by damage. In this article, based on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, employing the effective configuration in the continuum damage-healing mechanics, a viscoelastic–viscoplastic constitutive model is presented. In the constitutive model development, we adopt an additive decomposition of the total strain into elastic, viscoelastic, and viscoplastic parts. In this regard, defining the damage and healing variables and employing the strain energy equivalence hypothesis, stress and strain tensors in the effective configuration are obtained.... 

In this study, the semi-clathrate hydrate dissociation pressure for the CO2+N2, CO2+H2, CO2+CH4, and pure CO2 systems in the presence of different concentrations of TBAB aqueous solutions is predicted using a strong machine learning technique of multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP-NN). The developed model, with an overall correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.9961 and mean square error (MSE) of 5.96E−02, presented an excellent accuracy in prognosticating experimental data. A complete statistical evaluation performed to promise the strength and generality of the multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP-ANN). In addition, the applicability of the proposed network and quality of... 

Purpose: Motivated by the high cost of material movements in road construction projects, past studies have used analytical methods to optimize materials logistics plans. A key shortcoming of these methods is their inability to capture the uncertain, dynamic and complex characteristics of the road construction material logistics. Failure to incorporate these characteristics can lead to sub-optimal results. The purpose of this study is to propose the use of discrete event simulation (DES) to address the existing shortfall. Design/methodology/approach: Despite the powerful capabilities of DES models in capturing the operational complexities of construction projects, they have not been... 

Time, cost and quality are among the major objectives of any project. In recent years, the demands of project stakeholders regarding reductions in the total cost and time of a project along with achieving the desirable quality of the project have risen significantly. This leads researchers to developing models that incorporate the quality factor to previously existing time-cost trade-off models. This study presents a model for the discrete time-cost-quality trade-off problem. In this model there are a number of execution modes to select for each activity, and the best execution mode (t, c, q) of the activities should be determined to optimize total cost and time objectives, subjected to... 

In this study, the dynamics of the accelerated and steady-state motion of a single bubble in a quiescent highly viscous Newtonian liquid was investigated theoretically and experimentally. The presented mathematical model was based on Newton's second law of motion and a balance of buoyancy, drag, history, and added-mass forces. Due to the presence of non-linear terms in the equation of motion, homotopy perturbation method was used as a powerful analytical method to calculate the velocity analytically. To obtain accurate results in the experiments, a high-speed camera was used to record the bubble motion from the moment of detachment to the time at which the terminal velocity is reached.... 

In this study, the dynamics of the accelerated and steady-state motion of a single bubble in a quiescent highly viscous Newtonian liquid was investigated theoretically and experimentally. The presented mathematical model was based on Newton's second law of motion and a balance of buoyancy, drag, history, and added-mass forces. Due to the presence of non-linear terms in the equation of motion, homotopy perturbation method was used as a powerful analytical method to calculate the velocity analytically. To obtain accurate results in the experiments, a high-speed camera was used to record the bubble motion from the moment of detachment to the time at which the terminal velocity is reached.... 

Comprehensive structural/molecular simulations have been undertaken to study the poly(benzimidazoles) (PBI) membrane combined with four different nano-oxide materials (ZnO, Al2O3, SiO2 and TiO2) for purification and production of hydrogen from natural gases. Composite membranes were built with different amounts of nano-oxide materials to investigate the influence of nano-oxide content on the PBI membrane performance. Several structural characterizations such as FFV, WAXD and also a thermal one (glass transition temperature) were done to study the structural properties of all simulated membrane cells. Moreover, MSD and adsorption isotherms tasks were used to estimate the diffusivity and... 

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are a class of smart materials which can recover their shape even after many shape changes in application of an external stimulus. In this paper, flexural behavior of a composite beam, constructed of a corrugated part filled with SMPs, is studied. This composite beam is applicable in sensor and actuator applications. Since the corrugated profiles display higher stiffness-to-mass ratio in the transverse to the corrugation direction, the beams with a corrugated part along the transverse direction are stiffer than ones with a corrugated part along the length. Employing a developed constitutive model for SMPs and the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory, the behavior of the...