Sharif Digital Repository

The deployment of multi-agent systems in presence of obstacle deals with autonomous motion of agents toward a specified target by sensing each other and boundaries of obstacles. In this paper, asynchronous, scalable, distributed algorithm is used to deploy agents. Boundaries of obstacles are modeled by virtual agents. Algorithm was implemented by solving continuous n-median problem called generalized Fermat-Weber problem. It is shown that deployment is performed when position of real agents are the geometric median of their Voronoi cells. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed algorithm very well  

In this letter, a spatially weighted sparse unmixing approach is proposed as a front-end for hyperspectral image classification using a linear SVM. The idea is to partition the pixels of a hyperspectral image into a number of disjoint spatial neighborhoods. Since neighboring pixels are often composed of similar materials, their sparse codes are encouraged to have similar sparsity patterns. This is accomplished by means of a reweighted ℓ1 framework where it is assumed that fractional abundances of neighboring pixels are distributed according to a common Laplacian Scale Mixture (LSM) prior with a shared scale parameter. This shared parameter determines which endmembers contribute to the group... 

Reinforced concrete slabs are common structural elements that could be exposed to impact loading. Although use of reinforced concrete slabs and utilization of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) as alternative to traditional steel reinforcement slabs are growing, but the influence of various parameters on their response under impact loads is not properly evaluated. This study investigated the effect of rebar's material, amount and arrangement of reinforcements, concrete strength and slab thickness on dynamic behavior of reinforced concrete slabs using both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. Performance of fifteen 1000 × 1000 mm concrete slabs, including two 75 mm thick plain slabs,... 

Recently, to improve the dynamic behavior of Reinforced Concrete (RC) slabs under impact load, the methods of externally bonding Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) sheets to slab and internally reinforcing concrete by steel fibers have been proposed. Nevertheless, it is required to investigate the comparison between these two methods on response of RC slabs under impact loads. In this study, the influence of volume fraction of steel fibers, the number of GFRP sheet layers (one or two) and the arrangement of GFRP sheets (covering the whole or parts of surface), are examined. Performance of fourteen 1000 × 1000 × 75 mm concrete slabs including one plain slab, one steel RC slab, three steel... 

A series of low speed wind tunnel tests on a section of a 660 Kw wind turbine blade which is under constructer were conducted to examine the effects of distributed surface contamination on its performance characteristics. At first model was tested in the clean condition and after that it was tested with tree different types of roughness. The data shows that this particular airfoil is very sensitive to the applied surface roughness. For the contaminated model the roughness, 0.5mm height was distributed over the entire upper surface of the airfoil such that the distribution pattern was denser in the vicinity of the leading edge and thinner in the trailing edge area. Statistical data show that... 

A series of low speed wind tunnel tests on a section of a 660 Kw wind turbine blade were conducted to examine the effects of distributed surface contamination on its performance. The airfoil was a section of a wind turbine blade under construction. The performance of the section was measured in the following conditions: 1. Clean airfoil 2. Two types of zigzag roughness 3. Strip tape 4. Distributed contamination roughness Our preliminary data shows that the airfoil is very sensitive to the applied surface roughness. For the contamination model the roughness, 0.5mm height, is distributed over the entire upper surface of the airfoil. By putting the contamination roughness on the airfoil the... 

Herein, the effect of electrodeposition time on the super-capacitive performance of three-dimensional (3D) MnO2/g-C3N4 heterostructured electrodes was investigated. MnO2 nanoparticles were electrodeposited on the g-C3N4 nanosheets drop-casted on the Ni foam substrate. The microstructural analysis, carried out by FE-SEM and TEM, confirmed the homogeneous distribution of MnO2 nanoparticles on g-C3N4 nano-sheet layers. The electrochemical capacitive performances of the MnO2/g-C3N4 electrodes were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge/discharge tests, and electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS). The obtained results suggested that the supercapacitor (SC) performance of all... 

An analytical procedure for supersonic flutter analysis of two-dimensional panels was developed using unsteady potential flow aerodynamic theory. The local spatial influence was considered as an integral over the plate area. The U-g method was used for flutter prediction. Results indicate a stabilizing effect of the unsteady potential flow aerodynamics theory compared to the quasi-steady first-order piston theory  

Wind tunnel experiments were conducted to evaluate surface pressure distribution over a semi span swept wing with a sweep angle of 33°. The wing section has a laminar flow airfoil similar to that of the NACA 6-series. The tests were conducted at speeds ranging from 50 to 70 m/s with and without surface roughness. Surface static pressure was measured on the wing upper surface at three different chordwise rows located at the inboard, middle, and outboard stations. The differences between pressure distributions on the three sections of the wing were studied and the experimental results showed that roughness elements do not influence the pressure distribution significantly, except at the inboard... 

This article presents a multi-scale progressive micro-mechanical fatigue model. The model employs fundamental equation of the kinetic theory of fracture to calculate damage parameters of both fiber and matrix during cyclic loading. In order to adapt the equation, required material coefficients of the constituents can be achieved from fatigue test results of longitudinal and transverse unidirectional composites, only. Sharing stress capacities of fiber and matrix are determined using a modified progressive micro-mechanical bridging model in the presence of damage. The damage parameters in the constituents are calculated employing two different equivalent scalars. However, during sinusoidal... 

Functional behavior of the brain can be captured using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Even though fMRI signals have temporal and spatial structures, most studies have neglected the temporal structure when inferring mental states (brain decoding). This has two main side effects: 1. Degradation in brain decoding performance due to lack of temporal information in the model, 2. Inability to provide temporal interpretability. Few studies have targeted this issue but have had less success due to the burdening challenges related to high feature-to-instance ratio. In this study, a novel model for incorporating temporal information while maintaining a low feature-to-instance ratio, is... 

The growing number of Internet users and the prevalence of web applications make it necessary to deal with very complex software and applications in the network. This results in an increasing number of new vulnerabilities in the systems, and leading to an increase in cyber threats and, in particular, zero-day attacks. The cost of generating appropriate signatures for these attacks is a potential motive for using machine learning-based methodologies. Although there are many studies on using learning-based methods for attack detection, they generally use extracted features and overlook raw contents. This approach can lessen the performance of detection systems against content-based attacks... 

The growing number of Internet users and the prevalence of web applications make it necessary to deal with very complex software and applications in the network. This results in an increasing number of new vulnerabilities in the systems, and leading to an increase in cyber threats and, in particular, zero-day attacks. The cost of generating appropriate signatures for these attacks is a potential motive for using machine learning-based methodologies. Although there are many studies on using learning-based methods for attack detection, they generally use extracted features and overlook raw contents. This approach can lessen the performance of detection systems against content-based attacks... 

A series of low speed wind tunnel tests were conducted on a section of a 660 kW wind turbine blade to examine the effects of distributed surface contamination on its performance characteristics. The selected airfoil was tested with a clean surface, two types of zigzag roughness, strip tape roughness and distributed contamination roughness. The straight and zigzag leading edge roughness models simplify the contamination results in an early turbulence transition. In this study, surface contamination was simulated by applying 0.5 mm height roughness over the entire upper surface of the airfoil. The distribution density varied from the leading edge to the trailing edge of the model. Our data... 

An experimental study was carried out on an axisymmetric supersonic inlet with external compression. The scope of this study was to investigate the general characteristics of the inlet buzz under various design and off-design conditions. The model was equipped with accurate and high frequency pressure sensors and the tests were conducted at Mach numbers varying from 1.8 to 2.5, at various angles of attack, and at different mass flow rates. Shadowgraph flow visualization, together with a high speed camera, was used to capture the external shock structure in front of the inlet. Frequencies of buzz were obtained from both the shadowgraph pictures and analysis of the pressure data. The amplitude... 

This paper presents a structured dictionary-based model for hyperspectral data that incorporates both spectral and contextual characteristics of spectral samples. The idea is to partition the pixels of a hyperspectral image into a number of spatial neighborhoods called contextual groups and to model the pixels inside a group as members of a common subspace. That is, each pixel is represented using a linear combination of a few dictionary elements learned from the data, but since pixels inside a contextual group are often made up of the same materials, their linear combinations are constrained to use common elements from the dictionary. To this end, dictionary learning is carried out with a... 

Effects of reduced frequency, stop angle, and pause duration have been studied on a thin supercritical airfoil undergoing a pitch-pause-return motion, which is one of the classic maneuvers introduced by the AIAA Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee. Experiments were conducted in a low-speed wind tunnel at both a constant mean angle of attack and an oscillation amplitude with a reduced frequency ranging from 0.01 to 0.12. The desired stop angles of the airfoil were set to occur during the upstroke motion. The unsteady pressure distribution on the airfoil was measured for below, near, and beyond static stall conditions. Results showed that the reduced frequency and stop angle were the dominant... 

A series of unsteady low speed wind tunnel tests on a section of a 660 Kw wind turbine blade under construction were conducted to examine the effects of distributed surface contamination on its performance characteristics. Our data shows that the airfoil is very sensitive to the applied surface roughness. Results show that contamination decreases static maximum lift coefficient more than 40 percent. In the dynamic test this effect is the same and is about 38 percent. Contamination decreases the width of the dynamic diagrams loop such and leads to the smooth stall on the airfoil  

A series of unsteady low speed wind tunnel tests on a section of a 660 Kw wind turbine blade which is under construction were conducted to examine the effects of distributed surface contamination on its performance characteristics. Model was tested at three mean angles of attack, 5, 10 and 18 degrees at the fixed oscillation domain of 5 degrees. Results show that contamination decreases the maximum lift coefficient more than 40 percent. However Reynolds number and oscillation frequency increase, have a positive effect on the maximum lift coefficient in the contaminated model and it decreased the difference between maximum lift coefficient in the clean airfoil and the contaminated one  

A general three-dimensional aeroelastic solver is developed based on coupled finite element and boundary element methods and applied to investigate the flutter boundaries in supersonic flows. The boundary element method is applied to three-dimensional unsteady supersonic potential flow as the aerodynamic model and coupled with the finite element method for structural modelling, in order to construct the system of aeroelastic equations. The aeroelastic equations are solved for the flutter prediction using the frequency domain approach. Flutter boundaries for two types of wing planforms at supersonic speeds are determined and compared with the existing experimental results and previous...