Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, the performance of a novel HDH solar desalination system equipped with a combination of heat pipe (HP), evacuated tube collector (ETC) and air bubble column humidifier is experimentally investigated. This novel HDH system uses advantages of ETC-HP as a highly efficient thermal absorption and conductor device, and at the same time employs the advantages of an air bubble column humidifier, i.e. high interface area and effective mixing in order to heat the water and humidify the air, respectively. The effects of various parameters including incoming air flow rate into the humidifier, initial depth of water in the humidifier, and adding fluids such as oil and water in the space... 

Image fusion means to integrate information from one image to another image. Medical images according to the nature of the images are divided into structural (such as CT and MRI) and functional (such as SPECT, PET). This article fused MRI and PET images and the purpose is adding structural information from MRI to functional information of PET images. The images decomposed with Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform and then two images were fused with applying fusion rules. The coefficients of the low frequency band are combined by a maximal energy rule and coefficients of the high frequency bands are combined by a maximal variance rule. Finally, visual and quantitative criteria were used to... 

Echocardiography as a common place device has been widely used for diagnosis. Segmentation of left ventricle just using the standard level set formulation based on the magnitude of intensity cannot restrict the contour evolution completely due to the lack of sharp edges. This paper aims to introduce a robust method for segmentation of three-dimensional echocardiography images based on two boundary maps namely distance map and probabilistic map as stopping criteria of contour evolution which are extracted using two different approaches. The distance map is extracted by applying Free Form Deformation (FFD) method on manually determined landmarks of initial spherical volume to register the... 

In this paper, an efficient approach for ultrasonic object segmentation with special application for left ventricle segmentation in echocardiography images is proposed. At first, an efficient hybrid trend for ultrasonic image edge detection is suggested. Then, a modified level set approach is introduced based on the extracted edges and the computed probabilistic map as the stopping criteria for the contour evolution. Both synthetic and clinical images are utilized as validation measures with respect to the prior techniques which indicate outperform results quantitatively and qualitatively. Left ventricle segmentation using proposed method illustrates expert-approved performance, providing a... 

The substitution of conventional mathematical models with fast and accurate modeling tools can result in the further development of desalination technologies and tackling the need for freshwater. Due to the great capability of data-driven methods in analyzing complex systems, several attempts have been made to study various desalination systems using data-driven approaches. In this state-of-the-art review, the application of various artificial intelligence and design of experiment data-driven methods for analyzing different desalination technologies have been thoroughly investigated. According to the applications of data-driven methods in the field of desalination, the reviewed... 

Within elasticity theory, the reduced form of a displacement field is obtained for general cross-ply composite laminates subjected to a bending moment. The firstorder shear deformation theory of plates and Reddy's layerwise theory are then utilized to determine the global deformation parameters and the local deformation parameters appearing in the displacement fields, respectively. For a special set of boundary conditions an elasticity solution is developed to verify the validity and accuracy of the layerwise theory. Finally, various numerical results are presented within the layerwise theory for edge-effect problems of several cross-ply laminates under the bending moment. The results... 

Automatic extraction of the varying regions of magnetic resonance images is required as a prior step in a diagnostic intelligent system. The sparsest representation and high-dimensional feature are provided based on learned dictionary. The classification is done by employing the technique that computes the reconstruction error locally and non-locally of each pixel. The acquired results from the real and simulated images are superior to the best MRI segmentation method with regard to the stability advantages. In addition, it is segmented exactly through a formula taken from the distance and sparse factors. Also, it is done automatically taking sparse factor in unsupervised clustering methods... 

Sparse representation is a powerful tool for image processing, including noise removal. It is an effective method for Gaussian noise removal by taking advantage of a fixed and learned dictionary. In this study, the variable distribution of Rician noise is reduced in magnetic resonance (MR) images by sparse representation based on reconstruction error sets. Standard deviation of Gaussian noise is used to find these errors locally. The proposed method represents two formulas for local error calculation using standard deviation of noise. The acquired results from the real and simulated images are comparable, and in some cases, better than the best Rician noise removal method due to the... 

A novel combined power and refrigeration cycle is introduced and analyzed from the thermodynamic standpoint. The proposed cycle is an integration of a Kalina cycle equipped with an ejector (EKalina) and an ejector refrigeration cycle (ERC). In order to enhance the overall cycle performance, the possibility of employing two-phase ejectors in combined power and refrigeration cycles is studied. A parametric analysis is conducted to investigate the effects of the key thermodynamic parameters namely turbine inlet pressure, split ratio, basic ammonia concentration, heat source and evaporator temperatures on the cycle performance. The developed model is also verified with available data and it is... 

In this paper, we derive a theoretical model for the higher-order four-wave mixing (FWM) power in wavelength division multiplexing networks with non-zero dispersion shifted fibers for the first time. We have investigated the higher-order FWM power theoretically and by numerical simulations. Dividing the fiber into a finite number of elements and applying the boundary conditions allow us to derive an expression for the second-order power penalty. At the end of each element, we derive the first-order FWM power for all wavelengths and use these values to calculate the second-order FWM power in the next element. Consequently, for each channel we can compute the total second-order FWM power... 

Periodic solutions and their existence are one of the most important subjects in dynamical systems. Fractional order systems like integer ones are no exception to this rule. Tavazoei and Haeri (2009) have shown that a time-invariant fractional order system does not have any periodic solution. In this article, this claim has been investigated and it is shown that although in any finite interval of time the solutions do not show any periodic behavior, when the steady state responses of fractional order systems are considered, periodic orbits can be detected  

In most existing works on the flocking problem, results were obtained for the case where a double integrator dynamic is used to describe motion of agents and virtual leader. These results, however, may not be generalised to agents with general linear dynamic. In this study, it is shown that in the flocking of agents with a linear dynamic, the velocity convergence of agents does not generally lead to the position convergence of informed agents and the position convergence is possible only for a specified group of linear dynamics. In this study, a control protocol is proposed to flock agents with specified linear dynamics and guarantee the velocity convergence of all agents as well as average... 

In this study, flocking of multi-agent systems with virtual leader and linear dynamics is investigated. It is assumed that the dynamics of agents in each dimension is represented by a general second-order linear model. The proposed control protocol is composed of two terms, one for feed backing each agent's states and one for cooperative control. At first, the flocking problem of multi-agent systems with identical agents is discussed and then the proposed protocol is generalised to flock heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Under the proposed algorithm, the velocity convergence of whole group to a velocity of virtual leader is guaranteed while the connectivity of network is preserved and... 

In this work, we study the flocking problem of multi-agent systems with uncertain dynamics subject to actuator failure and external disturbances. By considering some standard assumptions, we propose a robust adaptive fault tolerant protocol for compensating of the actuator bias fault, the partial loss of actuator effectiveness fault, the model uncertainties, and external disturbances. Under the designed protocol, velocity convergence of agents to that of virtual leader is guaranteed while the connectivity preservation of network and collision avoidance among agents are ensured as well. © 2017 ISA  

This paper investigates a new algorithm for flocking of multi-Agent systems with virtual leader. In this algorithm, unlike the existing algorithms, receiving of information by agents are not continuous and it is assumed that each agents receives information of neighbors and virtual leader as sampled data in fixed time intervals. A sufficient condition on sampling period is derived to guarantee the velocity convergence of agents to that of virtual leader, preserve network connectivity, and ensure collision avoidance. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2017 IEEE  

Dual active bridge isolated bidirectional DC converter (DAB-IBDC) has a poor efficiency at light loads and non-unity voltage conversion ratio. In this paper the current stress of the converter is analyzed and the effect of maximum phase shift ratio and leakage inductance on the current stress of the converter is investigated. In order to increase the efficiency of the converter and reduce the current stress, the current stress optimization has been done and the design procedure is presented. Simulation results are used to validate the results of the theoretical analysis. © 2017 IEEE  

This paper studies the leader-follower flocking of multi-agent systems for the linear second-order dynamics, subject to the external disturbance problem. It is assumed that the dynamic of the leader is Lipschitz-type. Also, the velocity is the output of the system, and full-state information is not available for feedback. A distributed full-order observer is employed to estimate every agent's states and external disturbance. A control protocol for each agent is designed based on the measurement of its output/velocity and relative velocity of its neighbors. Under the proposed protocol, the velocity convergence of whole agents to the velocity of the virtual leader is guaranteed as well as the... 

In this paper we will present some approaches on Reynolds stress production by vortex transport phenomena and nonlinear voracity generation in momentum equation. First of all we represent a history of recent works to describe how fluid particle motions can be associated with Reynolds stress through either displacement or acceleration terms. In the next section we will describe how vortex stretching causes the Reynolds stress production and what is the dominant effect near and far from the boundary where viscous effects have to be considered. On the other hand, some vortex considered methodologies such as those synthesize boundary layer, as a collection of vortical objects seem to be... 

In this paper we will present some approaches on Reynolds stress production by vortex transport phenomena and nonlinear vorticity generation in momentum equation. First of all we represent a history of recent works to describe how fluid particle motions can be associated with Reynolds stress through either displacement or acceleration terms. In the next section we will describe how vortex stretching causes the Reynolds stress production and what is the dominant effect near and far from the boundary where viscous effects have to be considered. On the other hand, some vortex considered methodologies such as those synthesize boundary layer, as a collection of vortical objects seem to be... 

This paper provides an approach based on the genetic algorithm for the dimensional synthesis of a six-bar mechanism for a shaper machine. The main purpose of the optimization algorithm is to maintain the velocity of the mechanism’s slider constant within a specified range of the rotational motion of the input link. Therefore, first, an objective function is defined for the slider. Then, the velocity function of the slider is calculated using a set of mathematical relationships and the mechanism’s kinematic constraints. In order for this function to reach the objective function, a cost function is defined. This cost function is minimized, and the output approaches the objective function by...