Sharif Digital Repository

Linear eigenvalue analysis of cracked cylindrical shells under combined internal pressure and axial compression is carried out to study the effect of crack type, size and orientation on the buckling behavior of cylindrical thin shells. Two types of crack are considered; through crack and thumbnail crack. Our calculations indicate that depending on the crack type, length, orientation and the internal pressure, local buckling may precede the global buckling of the cylindrical shell. The internal pressure, in general, increases the buckling load associated with the global buckling mode of the cylindrical shells. In contrast, the effect of internal pressure on buckling loads associated with the... 

Cylindrical shells constitute the main structural component in pressure vessels and pipelines. Buckling is one of the main failure considerations when designing these cylindrical shells. Defects such as cracks may develop during manufacturing or service life of these structures. These defects can severely affect their buckling behavior due to high stress field generated around these defects. Finite Element Analyses are performed to study the buckling behavior of cylindrical shells with and without a crack, under various internal pressures. Effects of crack length and its orientation on the buckling loads of cylindrical shells having a through or a thumbnail crack are studied. The results... 

Sub-surface cracks in pipelines with internal pressure may severely affect their dynamic response. The extreme cases of these cracks are when these cracks go through the thickness of the pipes. Dynamic responses of cracked and un-cracked pipes with fixed ends and under various internal pressures were evaluated experimentally and theoretically. In the experimental part, the effects of pipe internal pressure on the resonant frequencies and damping of the pipe were evaluated. In the theoretical part, finite element analyses were performed to find dynamic response of pipes with various crack length and orientation respect to the axis of the pipe. The experimental results showed resonant... 

Cylindrical shells constitute the main structural component in pressure vessels and pipelines. Buckling is one of the main failure considerations when designing these cylindrical shells. Defects such as cracks may develop during manufacturing or service life of these structures. These defects can severely affect their buckling behavior due to high stress field generated around these defects. Finite Element Analyses are performed to study the buckling behavior of cylindrical shells with and without a crack, under various internal pressures. Effects of crack length and its orientation on the buckling loads of cylindrical shells having a through or a thumbnail crack are studied. The results... 

The resonant second harmonic generation in the presence of a wiggler magnetic field by twisted laser plasma interaction is surveyed. The wiggler magnetic field provides additional momentum required for the phase matching. The Laguerre-Gaussian modes can be used to control the self-focusing and improve the second harmonic generation in laser plasma interaction. The wave equations for the fundamental and the second harmonic fields have been solved in the paraxial approximation. The generation of the second harmonic considering self-focusing is investigated. Also, the dependence of the second harmonic power on the propagation distance for different values of initial fundamental beam intensity,... 

Infrastructure visual impact assessment based on an opinion survey and fuzzy set modeling was attempted. Photographs reflecting various transportation infrastructure and environment features were displayed to a group of transportation professionals and users. The group was asked to complete a relevant questionnaire regarding the highway infrastructure appearance acceptability of photographs. A set of visual impact descriptive variables was identified and directly measured from the photographs. Information about the descriptive variables, questionnaire responses and fuzzy set theory was used to develop membership functions of visual acceptability. More than two hundred candidate membership... 

Cylindrical shells constitute the main structural components in pressure vessels and pipelines. Cylindrical shells made of fiber-reinforced composites are now being considered in the design of many components due to their high specific strength and stiffness. Buckling is one of the main failure considerations, when designing the cylindrical shells. The buckling behavior of the composite cylindrical shells can severely be compromised by introducing defect in the structure, due to high stress field generated around these defects. Defects could be generated during service due to cyclic loading or during manufacturing. A reliable operation of these structures require to understand the effects of... 

We develop heuristic procedures for concurrent design of block layout, material flow network, and input and output stations. Unlike the common practice in the flexible bay structure layout design, our objective function includes both loaded and empty flow between pairs of I/O stations. This measure of effectiveness is the main determinant of the fleet size of the vehicles, which in turn is the major driver of the total investment and operational costs in vehicle-based material handling. Our work is the first to design flexible bay structure layouts for loop-based material flow patterns. We first develop heuristic algorithms to configure the layout on the foundations of a unidirectional loop... 

This paper is an endeavour to give an alternative definition for sustainable development (SD). It reviews the previous works in this area, and finds common grounds of these works, namely dynamism and quantification of the system. The paper then discusses dynamic stability and relates it to the concept of sustainability. It constructs an analogy between sustainability objectives and dynamic stability. The discussion continues to introduce chaos as one inherent characteristic of socio-economic systems because of their nonlinear behaviour. A new definition of SD is then proposed. It is applied to the dynamic models that describe the inter-relationships of environmental, economic and social... 

The photon orbital and/or spin angular-momentum absorption in absorbing plasma medium causes the circular motion of electrons and generate the azimuthal component of current density. The axial magnetic field generation due to the azimuthal component of generated current density is known as inverse Faraday effect. In this paper, the axial magnetic field generation in an absorbing plasma with ramped density by the propagation of linear polarized Laguerre-Gaussian beam is taken into consideration. It is shown that the positive slope of the initial electron density causes a considerable enhancement of self-generated axial magnetic field. The magnetic field enhancement depends on the twisted... 

The positive coupling effect decreases the condensate saturation as a result of very high flow rates in vicinity of the wellbore. The current work challenges the notion that the positive rate effect does not lead in falling trend of condensate saturation around the wellbore in the case of rich gas composition. According to the results obtained from this parameter case study, four distinct trends would appear in the condensate saturation profile of both lean and rich gas compositions. These quadruplet trends are consistent and their occurrence is mainly related to the considered base capillary number (Ncb) which is likely dependent to the composition of the fluid  

This paper describes an attempt to develop congestion indices for a developing country with a limited sampling. Speed and flow rate information was collected from urban highway traffic flow videotaping in Iran. Video display provided information for traffic modeling when, similar to most of the developing nations, Iran does not have locally developed highway capacity manuals. Processing of the extracted data and traffic modeling provided free and capacity flow information for the selected freeway and principal arterial sections for the capital city of Tehran. The congestion indices were associated, in simple and logical models, with five traffic descriptive variables of travel speed, travel... 

We numerically investigate the vacuum electron acceleration by a high-intensity linearly polarized twisted laser pulse. It is shown that the inherent spiral structure of a Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulse leads to improvement in trapping and acceleration of an electron to energies of the order of GeV in the off-axis case. Also, it is demonstrated that by employing a proper choice of initial injection parameters, the high-energetic electrons with very small scattering angles can be produced  

Controlling the safe distances between vehicles on freeways can be used to prevent many accidents. In this research, image-processing techniques have been used to develop an online system that calculates the longitudinal distances between vehicles. This system facilitates controlling safe distances between vehicles without the need for high technology devices. Our approach is real-time and simple, but efficient operations have been used to reduce the image occlusion problem. The main concept of this system is using simple, quick, and effective algorithms for calculating the position of each vehicle in each image. In this way, traffic parameters like speed and distances between vehicles can... 

In this study, the effect of nanoclay on the rheological and morphological properties of polyamide 6 (PA6)/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) blends was investigated. The scanning electron microscopy micrographs showed that with increment in the nanoclay content, the dispersed phase droplets size and their polydispersity index decreased, and the finer and more uniform dispersed phase was obtained. The transmission electron microscopy micrographs of nanocomposites indicated well-dispersed nanoclay tactoids in the polymer matrix produced by exfoliation of the nanoclay in the polymeric blends. Dynamic strain sweep experiments showed that the extent of the linear viscoelastic region is... 

Concentration procedures have always been implemented when trace analysis of compounds in real matrices is contemplated. A variety of concentration strategies have been reported aiming at decreasing the limits of detection (LODs). The optical concentration of the substance in solution is one of the novel concepts for the enhancement of the analytical sensitivity. In this study, the optical concentration has been measured by the trapping of gold nanoparticles ((Formula presented.) nm) dispersed in water at low-concentrations at the focal volume of the laser beam. The influence of factors such as the time of gold nanoparticle trapping, the size of the nanoparticles, the intensity of the laser... 

This paper describes an attempt to shed some light on road safety in Asia Pacific region by characterizing and assessing its road accidents. The relevant national road accident data were extracted from centralized data sources of international agencies. Due to data incompleteness and missing values, 21 Asia Pacific countries, presenting more than half of the world's population, were selected for detailed analysis. The study database consisted of 7 variables, covering years 1980 and 1995. The univariate and multivariate statistical analyses for the selected countries showed interesting results and relations for the selected variables. Accident rates, reflecting road accident risk and... 

Roadway traffic noise pollution for the Greater Tehran Metropolitan Area (GTMA) was analyzed. The study database consisted of relevant information about the noise level, traffic, roadway and meteorological characteristics. The collected noise level information at the roadway sound level meter receptor site included equivalent noise level. The equivalent noise level at reception points along the GTMA roadways was found often in breach of noise standards  

Development of a highway congestion index on the basis of expert and user opinions with fuzzy set theory was attempted. Forty 1-min videotape segments showing different highway traffic flow conditions were displayed to a group of highway experts and users. They were asked to complete the relevant questionnaires on the existence and acceptability of congestion for each video segment display. Five congestion-descriptive variables of travel speed, travel rate, delay rate, travel rate ratio, and delay ratio were determined for each video segment. Information about the values of congestion-descriptive variables for the displayed videos, questionnaire responses, and fuzzy set theory were used to... 

The municipalities of large Iranian cities require regular air pollutant emission monitoring for motor vehicles. The recorded data include information about commonly regulated air pollutants and motor vehicle characteristics which were randomly selected and studied from the Tehran database. Regression analysis was found ineffective in modeling the relationships among air pollutant, meteorological and motor vehicle characteristics. However, the artificial neural network, ANN, modeling seem to be a useful tool for prediction of air pollutants. The developed ANN models were found to be superior to the developed regression models. Application of the study approach and results could improve motor...