Sharif Digital Repository

Eye and vision are the most important tools and the perceptual sense of human. This important vital member is one of the most vulnerable organs of human body. For example in the United States 1.9 million eye surgery are being done yearly which include 9 thousand globe rupture and 30 thousand blindness due to impacts on the eye. Eye traumas could have occurred as mechanical, radiation, thermal, chemical, etc. among these, the damages related to the airbag impact which is subset of mechanical damages, take a significant percentage. Presenting a model of human eye in car airbag blunt impacts during accident could be effective for receiving helpful information from damage of the internal parts... 

Hepatitis B is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV) which affects the liver. Several dynamic models have been developed to mathematically describe the HBV infection and antiviral therapy. In this thesis, a nonlinear adaptive control strategy is developed for the treatment of the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection inside a body. The considered nonlinear HBV model has three state variables, the numbers of uninfected and infected cells and free viruses. The proposed control law is designed for the antiviral drug input such that the number of free viruses per unit volume of the blood and consequently the number of infected cells decrease to some desired values. The... 

The set of human arm, forearm, and wrist has the ability of performing very miscellaneous movements which has led to human inspiration for designing sorts of robots for various tasks. The aim of the present study is the design and simulation of a robot, similar to the human hand and arm. In the beginning, a shape-adaptive 2 DOF under-actuated mechanism which is actuated by one motor, is selected as the second and third phalanges of the human finger. Also the first phalanx of the finger moves independently by another motor. By adding a ratchet to the second joint of the finger, with the help of only two actuators, the feasibility of exerting isotropic force to the object in three phalanges... 

One of the best methods of gait analysis is to use analytical models. In this project, first, the normal human gait was simulated using a two-dimensional biped model with 7 segments, i.e., a HAT segment representing head, arms and trunk, and 6 segments representing thighs, shanks and feet of the two legs. The foot-ground contact was simulated using a five-point penetration contact model. The elastic impact and friction effects are considered in the ground reaction force modeling. Optimization of the normal human walking model provided constant coefficients for simple PD controllers’ (driving torque) equations that could reasonably reproduce the normal kinematical pattern. Then, in the second... 

Ocean waves are a huge, renewable energy resource, and the potential for extracting energy from waves is high. So a lot of different systems have been designed but most of them are hydraulically and have a lot of problems and they are very complex. In this thesis, the mechanism designed is purely mechanical and very simple and innovative. It has some gears in special combination with together. The mechanism can convert any form of oscillation to rotation movement; this event has been shown in results and prototype. According to the results and discussion, Designed mechanism needs very low maintenance and has low lost. So, efficiency is between 80-95%  

Mechanosensitive membrane channels are indispensable part of cells that sense and respond to mechanical signals. Hence, malfunction of these channels may cause various diseases. Despite numerous studies of these channels, there are still many unanswered questions surrounding these channels and their gating mechanism. Although there have been valuable experimental studies in this field, the need for modelling and computational studies are still felt since experiments face many limitations in this area. Thus, a channel that its crystallographic structure has been recently determined was chosen and studied using computational tools. In this study, gating of the channel under surface tension has... 

Aerodynamics loads and aeroheating during reentry, are one of the challenging issues in designing One of the main challenges in the design and application of reusable spacecrafts is the aerodynamic and thermal loads acting on their structures during reentry into the atmosphere. For this reason, all the concepts/prototypes presented in the 20th century were either not fully reusable, or were partially canceled, or did not have economic justification. In this report, the aerodynamic loads on the first stage of a launch vehicle during the launch and return phases have been investigated. Due to the fact that the main part of the first stage of the vehicle includes fuel and oxidizer tanks, the... 

The collision of moderately large asteroids and comets also referred to as Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) with earth would have catastrophic consequences. Such events have occurred in the past and may occur again in the future. However, for the first time in known history, humanity may have the technology required to counter this threat. Methods studied for mitigation of this hazard are based on deflecting asteroid's trajectory and are normally divided into two basic categories: high energy impulsive methods, and long-duration low-thrust methods. Two parts of mission to be optimized are the trajectory of spacecraft to reach the target and the deflection strategy which could be analyzed by the... 

The main purpose of the present thesis is to establish a decentralized controller for some car–like multi robots to follow and hunt moving targets. Robots are very similar to actual cars considering geometric dimensions, mass and moment of inertia and so on; and outputs of the controller are steering-wheel and driving-wheel torques appropriately. Dynamics of the moving target is so that it escapes from the robots. Robots are equipped with antenna for getting wireless sensory signals, including range and bearing sensors. Kalman filter is used for estimation the target relative position and speed and robots state variables. The controller is designed for doing the above mentioned group... 

In recent years the advent of internet and web has transformed the process of data collection and make organizational and environmental data more accessible. On the one hand, many organizations have realized that the knowledge in these huge databases is key to supporting the various organizational decisions. Particularly, the knowledge about customers from these databases is critical for the marketing function. But, much of this useful knowledge is hidden and untapped. On the other hand, the intense competition and increased choices available for customers have created new pressures on marketing decision-makers and there has emerged a need to manage customers in a long-term relationship.... 

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are a type of marine vehicles which are currently being used for exploration, maintenance, repairing of marine structures and military appliances. Unmanned underwater vehicles categorize in two types: ROVs and AUVs, ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) usually are connected to the mother vessel with a cable, conduction signals transfer through this cable and there is an operator in the control loop. The vehicle may be fed up with this cable, AUVs are modern underwater vehicles which the operator on controlling and conducting is removed, there is no connection between the vehicle and mother vessel, energy sources and controlling orders are set up in the... 

The aeroelastic behavior of wings made of functionally graded materials in supersonic flow is studied. For this purpose the flutter speed is calculated and in the next step the post flutter behavior is investigated. The structural model is based on the classical plate theory and material properties are assumed to be graded in the thickness direction according the power law distribution in terms of the volume fraction of material constituents. The linear piston theory which is modified to include thickness effects is used for supersonic aerodynamic modeling. The nonlinear structural model based on the Von-Karman strains is considered for prediction of the post-flutter behavior of the wing.... 

Facility location decisions play a prominent role in strategic planning of many firms, companies and governmental organizations. Since in many real-world facility location problems, the data are subject to uncertainty, in this thesis, we consider the P-center problem under uncertainty of demand nodes. Using Bertsimas and Sim approach, we modeled the problem as a linear optimization model. Furthermore, we develop a tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. Finally we designed some experiments to adjust the parameters of tabu search algorithm. We presented the numerical result accordingly  

Success in forecasting and analyzing sales for a given good or service can mean the difference between profit and loss for an accounting period and, ultimately, the success or failure of the business itself. Therefore reliable prediction of sales becomes a very important task. This thesis presents a novel sales forecasting approach by integration of Genetic Fuzzy Systems (GFS) and Data Clustering to construct a sales forecasting expert system. At first, we use stepwise regression analysis (SRA) to determine factors which have most influence on sales. At the next stage we divide our raw data into k clusters by means of K-means algorithm. Finally, all clusters will be fed into independent... 

Dynamic and vibration behavior of AFM microcantilever beam subject to the tip-sample interaction and/or contact is systematically investigated. An Euler-Bernoli microcantilever in 2D plane is considered with longitudinal and bending displacements. Inextensibility assumption and extended Hamilton’s principle is utilized to extract the single-variable integro partial equation of motion under: 1) tip-nanoparticle interactions, 2) tip-surface interactions in non-contact mode and 3) tip-surface interactions and contacts in intermittent-contact mode. Galerkin’s first mode approximation is then used to discretize the derived equations; and multiple time scales method is adopted to analyze the... 

In this research, an anistropic thin-walled beam composite is used to consider the effects of fiber orientation and lay-up configuration on the aeroelastic stability and response of an aircraft wing. The circum ferentially asymmetric stiffness (CAS) model consists of a group of non-classical effects; such as transverse shear, material anisotropic, warping inhibition, etc. The aerodynamic load has been modeled based on the strip theory and compressible unsteady flow in the finite- state form. In addition, to form the mass, stiffness and damping matrices of non-conservative aeroelastic systems the extended Galerkin’s method (EGM) and the method of separation of variables has been used. After... 

This thesis presents the results of an experimental and analytical study on the application of the strapping technique for seismic retrofit of reinforced concrete columns. In this technique, the columns are externally confined by post-tensioned metal strips. In the first phase of the experiments, the compressive stress-strain behavior of strapped cylindrical and prismatic specimens was studied. Effects of several parameters were studied including shape and size of specimens, strength of plain concrete, mechanical characteristics of confining strips and the level of pre-tensioning of the strips. The second phase of the tests included studying the lateral performance of strapped RC columns.... 

In order to reduce structural and nonstructural damages and associated financial losses during intense seismic events such as Bam earthquake, seismic retrofitting of existing structures should be considered as a special issue. In this regard, for quantifying the seismic performance of structures a guideline termed “instruction for seismic rehabilitation of existing building No.360” is issued which is mainly borrowed from performance-based assessment procedures FEMA 356. In contrast to conventional seismic design methods which are based on controlling stress ratio for different load combinations, in performance-based earthquake engineering methodology, the displacement control of structural...