Sharif Digital Repository

Anti-reflection and self-cleaning coatings on the glass substrate are used to improve the performance of solar systems. TiO2 are one of the most used semiconductors for this application. In this research meso-porous TiO2 coatings (that synthesized by the sol-gel process) with the various extent of porosity (using different concentrations of Pluronic F127, as pore-forming agent) have been investigated. The coating's thickness and porosity and anti-reflective properties were studied by FE-SEM and UV/VIS spectrometer (transmission spectra test), respectively. It was found that the use of F127 leads to the formation of pores smaller than 30 nm and increases the surface roughness from 1.5 (for... 

Veronica genus (Plantaginaceae) is broadly distributed in different habitats. In this study, the inhibitory activity of free soluble and conjugated phenolic extracts of Veronica persica on key enzymes associated to type 2 diabetes (α-glucosidase and α-amylase) and hypertension (angiotensin I converting enzyme, ACE) was assessed, as well as their antioxidant power. Our results showed that both the extracts inhibited α-amylase, α-glucosidase and ACE in a dose-dependent manner. In particular, free phenolic extract significantly (P < 0.05) inhibited α-glucosidase (IC50 532.97 μg/mL), whereas conjugated phenolic extract significantly (P < 0.05) inhibited a-amylase (IC50 489.73 μg/mL) and ACE... 

Lithium ion batteries as one of the most important energy storage equipments, have several challenges including capacity drop as number of cycles increases. Cathode particle coating is an effective approach in improvement of electrochemical performance of the batteries. In this study, TiO2-Ag coating was used to improve NCM cathode performance. The microstructure and crystal structure properties of coated NCMs were evaluated by the FE-SEM and XRD. Electrochemical behavior of the batteries was investigated by cycling performance analysis and EIS. TiO2 coating was deposited as a uniform layer and Ag coating was precipitated as dispersed nanoparticles. The results shows that using of TiO2-Ag... 

Pipelines are one of the most important and efficient ways for transporting energy like water, gas, oil and etc. between different places all across the world. As these pipelines are located in different conditions and situations, they are all sensitive to a wide variety of damages like vibration, so monitoring their structural behavior is an essential task. Monitoring pipeline vibration caused by cavitation through an orifice by a piezoelectric sensor is presented in this paper  

In this paper, we list four different interpretations of synchronizability, study their profile in different network structures and give evidence that they do not coincide, in general. By changing the network topological properties, their behavior is tracked and compared with each other. It is shown that their trend goes in different directions in heterogeneous networks such as scale-free ones, whereas in homogeneous ones such as random networks they go hand in hand, as networks' structural parameters change. We also consider networks whose synchronization properties are enhanced through proper weighting or rewiring. The weighting procedure considers information on the node-degrees, node and... 

Synchronizability of dynamical networks can be defined as the ease by which the network synchronizes its activity. We propose a method for enhancing the synchronizability of dynamical networks by efficient rewirings. The method is based on the eigenvectors corresponding to the second smallest and the largest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix and a modified version of the simulated annealing approach is used to perform the optimization task. Starting from a simple network, i.e. an undirected and unweighted network, and at each step, an edge is selected for disconnection and two non-adjacent nodes for creating at edge in between. The effectiveness of the algorithm is tested on artificially... 

An efficient algorithm for the design optimization of the compressible fluid flow problem through a flexible structure is presented. The methodology has three essential parts: first the behavior of compressible flow in a supersonic diffuser was studied numerically in quasi-one-dimensional form using a flux splitting method. Second, a fully coupled sequential iterative procedure was used to solve the steady state aeroelastic problem of a flexible wall diffuser. Finally, a robust Genetic Algorithm was implemented and used to calculate the optimum shape of the flexible wall diffuser for a prescribed pressure distribution. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

In this paper, the authors analyze conditions under which they can be certain on the intensity addition of a given device, such as tapped-delay lines, used in digital incoherent all-optical communication systems. A general expression for phase-induced intensity noise that is applicable to all types of semiconductor lasers is derived by defining an optical self-SNR expression that can be used to analyze and measure phase-induced intensity noise. The result shows that in order to have a minimal phase-induced intensity noise in most digital optical incoherent systems, a large optical self-SNR, e.g., 20 dB or more, is needed. This in turn is shown to place a limit on the maximum rate of... 

In this paper, a novel algorithm for correcting the error of attitude in inertial navigation systems is introduced. Since the oftenly used differential equations of the navigation errors show the small rotation angles instead of the error of Euler angles, the nonlinear equation between the small rotation angles and the error of Euler angles, are derived. To obtain an approximative solution for the derived equations, third order multiplication of the small rotation angles are ignored and error of Euler angles are expressed explicitly as functions of the Euler angles and the small rotation angles. Based on the obtained solution, a new algorithm for attitude correction in inertial navigation is... 

This paper presents a new robust composite nonlinear feedback control law for accurate, smooth, and fast regulation in the presence of parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and input saturation for a class of spacecraft rendezvous systems. The novel proposed method consists of the original composite nonlinear feedback part for good transient performance plus a nonlinear disturbance rejection part for reducing the steady-state error stemming from variable disturbances and simultaneously producing feasible control input. The nonlinear disturbance rejection relies on sliding-mode observer for disturbance estimation. Closed-loop system stability has been proved with the Lyapunov... 

A new heuristic filter, called firefly filter, is proposed for state estimation of nonlinear stochastic systems. The new filter formulates the state estimation problem as a stochastic dynamic optimization and utilizes the firefly optimization algorithm to find and track the best estimation. The fireflies search the state space dynamically and are attracted to one other based on the perceived brightness. The performance of the proposed filter is evaluated for a set of benchmarks and the results are compared with the well-known filters like extended Kalman filter and particle filter, showing improvements in terms of estimation accuracy. © 2016 IEEE  

This paper presents a new robust composite nonlinear feedback control law for accurate, smooth, and fast regulation in the presence of parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and input saturation for a class of spacecraft rendezvous systems. The novel proposed method consists of the original composite nonlinear feedback part for good transient performance plus a nonlinear disturbance rejection part for reducing the steady-state error stemming from variable disturbances and simultaneously producing feasible control input. The nonlinear disturbance rejection relies on sliding-mode observer for disturbance estimation. Closed-loop system stability has been proved with the Lyapunov... 

The lazy bureaucrat scheduling is a new class of scheduling problems that was introduced in [1]. In these problems, there is one employee (or more) who should perform the assigned jobs. The objective of the employee is to minimize the amount of work he performs and to be as inefficient as possible. He is subject to a constraint, however, that he should be busy when there is some work to do. In this paper, we focus on the cases of this problem where all jobs have the same common deadline. We show that with this constraint, the problem is still NP-hard, and prove some hardness results. We then present a tight 2-approximation algorithm for this problem under one of the defined objective... 

Modern societies are strongly dependent on the continuous and efficient operation of electric power systems as a critical infrastructure. Besides, information and communication systems play a crucial role in the resiliency enhancement of the power system. As power communication systems are vulnerable against physical and cyber attack, these systems themselves can be an internal source of threat for power grids. Therefore, there is a need to identify and study the threats and weaknesses of power communication systems using a comprehensive framework. This framework helps power communication network planners evaluate all challenges and their numerous effects on the system, as a very important... 

In this paper, the compressible gas flow through a pipe subjected to wall heat flux in unsteady condition in the entrance region is investigated numerically. The coupled conservation equations governing turbulent compressible viscous flow in the developing region of a pipe are solved numerically under different thermal boundary conditions. The numerical procedure is a finite-volume-based finite-element method applied to unstructured grids. The convection terms are discretized by the well-defined Roe method, whereas the diffusion terms are discretized by a Galerkin finite-element formulation. The temporal terms are evaluated based on an explicit fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme. The effect of... 

In this paper, the authors analyze conditions under which they can be certain on the intensity addition of a given device, such as tapped-delay lines, used in digital incoherent all-optical communication systems. A general expression for phase-induced intensity noise that is applicable to all types of semiconductor lasers is derived by defining an optical self-SNR expression that can be used to analyze and measure phase-induced intensity noise. The result shows that in order to have a minimal phase-induced intensity noise in most digital optical incoherent systems, a large optical self-SNR, e.g., 20 dB or more, is needed. This in turn is shown to place a limit on the maximum rate of... 

Adaptive Model Predictive Transmission Control Protocol (AMP-TCP) as a new TCP delay-based congestion control algorithm is introduced. Both aspects of design and implementation of the algorithm are described using simulations on the ns-2 network simulator. The design stage is composed of two steps. First, a recursive system identification approach is proposed to capture the network delay dynamics from TCP source view. Second, the proposed modeling is employed to develop an adaptive model predictive TCP congestion control strategy in the absence of any explicit congestion notification. The characteristics and performance of AMP-TCP are investigated using several network simulations. Finally a... 

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) uses multiple timers to do its work. The most important of these is the retransmission timer. In this paper, the TCP retransmission timer adjustment mechanism is approached from a system point of view and a new mechanism is proposed. A simple recursive system identification algorithm is used to capture both time variant and time invariant Internet behavior. Also a dynamic model-based Round-Trip Time (RTT) predictor was provided. Based on network simulation and real Internet data collection, it was observed that when the retransmission timer is adjusted by the proposed predictor instead of the traditional RTT estimator, performance increased significantly  

With the significant role that warehouse plays in connection to suppliers, distributors, and clients, and considering the costliness of storage systems, efforts have focused on the reduction of procedural expenses. Among the most significant expenses, one involves the distance traveled by operators or S/R machinery for the selection of ordered items; the common solution to which has been through the classification of stored items. Previous articles have focused on linear solutions to the abovementioned problem, such as P-Median. This article shall focus on the problems arising from the said solution, and instead a non-linear method proposed. Further, a heuristic algorithm is produced for the...