Sharif Digital Repository

Herein we report for the first time on efficient and environmentally friendly bioenergy production from bacteriorhodopsin (bR) and green florescent protein (GFP) as co-sensitizers. bR as a transmembrane protein, acts like a light-driven proton pump in Halobacterium salinarum, converting light energy into a proton gradient. Employing GFP beside bR can enhance the photo-bioenergy production efficiency in two aspects: GFP can increase short circuit current by improvement in light absorption either by extending the sensitizingspectrumor making fluorescence in absorption region of bR. It can also enhance open circuit voltage more than 150 mV by improvement in photoelectrode converging and... 

The main objective of this paper is to provide comparative quantitative examinations on the capabilities of two-dimensional horizontal and pseudo-three-dimensional (3D) modelling approaches for simulating spatial and temporal variability of the flow and salinity in Lake Urmia, Iran. The water quality in the lake has been an environmentally important subject partly because this shallow hypersaline aquatic ecosystem is considered to be one of the largest natural habitats of a unique multicellular organism, Artemia urmiana. This brine shrimp is the major food source for many of the protected and rare shorebirds that visit the lake. A.urmiana can grow and survive in certain ranges of salinity,... 

Tapered circular cylinders are employed in a variety of ocean engineering applications. While being geometrically simple, this configuration creates a complex flow pattern in the near wake of the structure. Most previous experimental studies on tapered circular cylinders were dealing with stationary cylinders to explore the wake flow field and vortex shedding patterns past the cylinder. Few studies paid attentions to the vortex induced vibration of the tapered cylinders. This paper reports some results from in-water towing-tank experiments on the vortex-excited vibrations of tapered circular cylinders in a uniform flow. Cylinders with different mean diameters (28 and 78 mm), mass ratios (6.1... 

Urmia Lake, located in a closed basin in north-west Iran, is the largest lake (5000-6000 km2) in the Middle East. It is very saline with total dissolved salts reaching 200 g/l compared with a normal seawater salinity of about 35 g/l. The construction of a causeway, which was initiated in 1979 but then abandoned until the early 2000s, is near completion and will provide road access between the western and eastern provinces. The causeway has an opening 1.25 km long and divides Urmia Lake into a northern and southern basin and restricts water exchange. The flow and salinity regimes are affected by the presence of this new causeway, and there are concerns over the well being of the Artemia... 

This paper introduces a novel methodology for design and assessment of offshore structures exposed to irregular sea waves. For this, Constrained NewWave (CNW) is integrated with the Endurance Time Analysis (ETA) methodology, which is basically developed for the performance based analysis of onshore structures to earthquake loads. In this approach, the offshore structure is simulated in time-domain under a set of calibrated intensifying wave functions. They are devised to represent a gradually increasing roughness of the sea state by time. A performance index such as base shear, drift or stress in a critical structural members are monitored until they reach to a predefined maximum value. A... 

Underwater surface of man-made structures is quickly covered by unwanted aquatic organisms. They change the flow regime around the structure. Despite the important contributions of previous studies on the vortex induced vibration (VIV) of bluff bodies, the flow induced vibration of non-stationary cylinders covered by marine fouling appears not to have received due attentions in the literature. The current paper reports on an attempt for better understanding the marine fouling effects on the VIV of circular cylinders. A structured review of the literature related to the fluid structure interactions in marine fouled cylinders is first presented. Results of an experimental study on the VIV of... 

The unbounded linearly increasing responses in galloping instability make sharp-edge oscillators a beneficial solution for bladeless energy harvesting. While the performance of single square oscillators has been the subject of several studies in the past, there is still little knowledge about their hydrokinetic energy performance in tandem configurations. An optimal oscillator should display high performance in a group when all bodies are free to harness energy. In this study, the energy harvesting performance of square oscillators is examined in multiple tandem configurations under free and fixed square wakes. The harmonic oscillator model is coupled with the electromagnetic transducer to... 

This in-water experimental study deals with the effects of the after-body on the FIV response of round and sharp edge cylinders. Different circular, square, diamond, and right-angle isosceles triangular cross-sections are investigated. The triangular cylinder is examined in four different symmetrical and unsymmetrical configurations with respect to the incident flow. The current towing tank experiments form a basis for the feasibility study of the isosceles triangular cylinders for FIV energy converters. The results indicate that the cylinders with a flat side perpendicular to the flow have a galloping type of response. In contrast, the cylinders with a sharp vertex pointing the flow show a... 

In the present study, an adaptive sliding mode control method was employed to control a fish robotic system using hardware in the loop methodology. Up to now, few researches have focused on autonomous control of fish robot in dynamic environments which may be the result of difficulties in modeling of hydrodynamic effects on fish robot. Therefore, following the introduction of the nonlinear model for the robot, elongated body theory, suggested by Lighthill, was used to analyze fish movements. Then, kinematics control to track desired trajectories was designed for under-actuated model of robot. Adaptive sliding mode controller, capable of adapting according to changes and uncertainties, was... 

Effects of suppression devices on the vortex induced vibration (VIV) of inclined cylinders appear not to have received previous due attentions. The current paper reports the results of some towing tank experiments on the vortex induced cross-flow vibrations of bare and helically straked cylinders in vertical and inclined arrangements. Rigid test cylinders were mounted on a single degree of freedom elastic support. The inclination angles examined were θ=0°, ±20° and ±45°. The Reynolds number ranged from 4000 to 45. 000 and the reduced velocity from 1 to 16. With all tests the mass ratio and the mass-damping parameters were kept constant.Test results on "inclined bare" and "inclined helically... 

This in-water experimental study deals with the effects of the after-body on the FIV response of round and sharp edge cylinders. Different circular, square, diamond, and right-angle isosceles triangular cross-sections are investigated. The triangular cylinder is examined in four different symmetrical and unsymmetrical configurations with respect to the incident flow. The current towing tank experiments form a basis for the feasibility study of the isosceles triangular cylinders for FIV energy converters. The results indicate that the cylinders with a flat side perpendicular to the flow have a galloping type of response. In contrast, the cylinders with a sharp vertex pointing the flow show a... 

Endurance Wave Analysis (EWA) is a novel, simple, economical but yet reliable method for the integrity assessment of offshore platforms against extreme irregular waves. The current paper presents a framework for the probabilistic assessment of offshore platforms based on EWA. The stochastic nature and the uncertainties in the ocean waves were taken into account by introducing a set of artificial, random and gradually intensifying wave trains. To simulate other uncertainties in the loading and the strength of the structure a Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) type of Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) was employed. The EWA methodology and different structural performance criteria were considered. The... 

The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel approach, called Endurance Wave Analysis (EWA), for non-linear dynamic analysis and assessment of offshore structures subjected to irregular wave forces. This is, in fact, an extension of the Endurance Time Analysis (ETA) already presented by previous researchers for the seismic assessment of onshore structures. With the EWA method, the offshore structure is simulated under a predefined Intensifying Wave Train Function (IWTF), corresponding to a gradually deteriorating sea state at a specific site. The function is designed so that the roughness of the sea state represented by them increases over the time and even goes well beyond the design sea... 

The global demand for renewable energy sources has arisen significant research interests in marine hydrokinetic energy harvesting from flow induced vibrations. The current study deals with the hydrokinetic energy harvesting potentials of diamond and square oscillators at various inline configurations. Both the sharp edge sections and the wake induced vibrations in tandem arrangement can lead to galloping type of instability with high energy efficiency ratios. The present in-water towing tank experiments comprise 1DoF vibrating systems at Re ranging from 2 × 103 to 4.8 × 104. The results show that the upstream wake generally enhances the system efficiency and the mechanical work done by the... 

Using multiple antennas at the transmit and receive sides of a passive radar brings both the benefits of MIMO radar and passive radar. However one of the obstacles arisen in such configuration is the receive antennas placement in proper positions so that the radar performance is improved. Here we just consider the case of positioning one receiver among multiple illuminators of opportunity. Indeed it is a start for the solution of optimizing the geometry of the multiple receivers in a passive radar  

SbCl3 supported on montmorillonite K-10 is an efficient catalyst for the ring opening of epoxides with aromatic amines under solvent-free conditions and microwave irradiation to give the corresponding b-amino alcohols in high yields with high regioselectivity  

In this paper, we consider an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system with wireless power transfer (WPT) where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based radar serves a group of energy-limited communication users in addition to its sensing functionality. In this architecture, the radar senses the environment in phase 1 (namely sensing phase) and mean-while, the communications users (nodes) harvest and store the energy from the radar transmit signal. The stored energy is then used for information transmission from the nodes to UAV in phase 2, i.e., uplink phase. Performance of the radar system depends on the transmit signal as well as the receive filter; the energy of the transmit... 

One of the important obstacles in MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) radars is the issue of designing proper transmit signals. Indeed, the capability of signal design is a significant advantage in MIMO radars, through which, the system can achieve much better performance. Many different aspects of this performance improvement have been considered yet, and the transmit signals have been designed to attain such goal, e.g., getting higher SNR or better detector's performance at the receiver. However, an important tool for evaluating the radar's performance is its ambiguity function. In this paper, we consider the problem of transmit signal design, in order to optimize the ambiguity function... 

Two gains play key roles in recently developed MIMO wireless communication systems: "spatial diversity" gain and "spatial multiplexing" gain. The diversity gain refers to the capability to decrease the error rate of the MIMO channel, while the multiplexing gain implicitly refers to the amount of increase in the capacity of the MIMO channel. It has been shown that there is a fundamental tradeoff between these two types of gains, meaning interplay between increasing reliability (via an increase in the diversity gain) and increasing data rate (via an increase in the multiplexing gain). On the other hand, recently, MIMO radars have attracted much attention for their superior ability to enhance...