Sharif Digital Repository

Diffusivity equation which can provide us with the pressure distribution, is a Partial Differential Equation (PDE) describing fluid flow in porous media. The quadratic pressure gradient term in the diffusivity equation is nearly neglected in hydrology and petroleum engineering problems such as well test analysis. When a compressible liquid is injected into a well at high pressure gradient or when the reservoir possess a small permeability value, the effect of ignoring this term increases. In such cases, neglecting this parameter can result in high errors. Previous models basically focused on numerical and semi-analytical methods for semi-infinite domain. To the best of our knowledge, no... 

This article presents the cyclic behavior of the A356.0 aluminum alloy under low-cycle fatigue (or isothermal) and thermo-mechanical fatigue loadings. Since the thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) test is time consuming and has high costs in comparison to low-cycle fatigue (LCF) tests, the purpose of this research is to use LCF test results to predict the TMF behavior of the material. A time-independent model, considering the combined nonlinear isotropic/kinematic hardening law, was used to predict the TMF behavior of the material. Material constants of this model were calibrated based on room-temperature and high-temperature low-cycle fatigue tests. The nonlinear isotropic/kinematic hardening... 

This paper presents a precise solution to predict the behavior of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) under the four point bending test (FPBT). All the force components at the beam section (before and after cracking) are formulated by applying these assumptions: a realistic stress-strain model is used for concrete behavior in compression, a linear response is considered for the uncracked tension region in a concrete constitutive model, and an exponential relationship is proposed as a stress-crack opening in the crack region which requires two parameters. Then the moment capacity of the critical cracked section is calculated by using these forces and satisfying equilibrium law at the... 

Demand response (DR) and flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) devices can be effectively used for congestion management in power transmission systems. However, demand response program (DRP) implementation can itself affect the optimum location of FACTS devices, which is one of the main issues in power system planning. This paper investigates the impact of DRPs on unified power flow controller (UPFC) placement. The harmony search algorithm is employed to determine the optimum locations and parameter setting of UPFC in a long-term framework. The optimization problem is solved with different objectives including generation and congestion cost reduction, as well as loss reduction. In this... 

A new poly(acrylamidrazone) chelating resin was prepared from carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) via a two-step process. First, acrylonitrile was graft polymerized onto the substrate. The CMC-polyacrylonitrile graft copolymer was then treated with hydrazine to yield a triply modified cellulose containing amidrazone functional groups. The resin was characterized using infrared spectroscopy. The sorption capacity of the resin towards bivalent metal ions was evaluated versus variation of pH and hydrochloric acid concentration. The adsorption capacities at pH 6 were found to be in order Cu2+> Zn2+>Cd2+>Co2+>Ni2+. The metal ion sorption capacities were varied in the range of 2.0-20.0 mmol metal per... 

Carboxymethylcellulose sodium salt (CMC) was doubly modified to prepare a novel poly(acrylamidoxime) chelating resin. Acrylonitrile was firstly graft polymerized onto CMC using cerium ammonium nitrate as an initiator. The polyacrylonitrile (PAN) grafted CMC was then amidoximized via treatment with hydroxylamine to prepare the ion exchange resin. The sorption capacity of the resin towards bivalent metal ions was evaluated while varying the pH, the loading of the PAN and the initial metal ion concentration. The adsorption kinetics were investigated for the cupric ion. The chelating resin exhibited very high metal sorption capacity in comparison with either synthetic or polysaccharide-based... 

In this paper, using an analytical optimization method, optimum design of multi-layer compound cylinders with different materials in layers is investigated. For this purpose, considering Tresca criterion, maximum shear stress in each layer is minimized. At the optimum condition, the maximum shear stress at all layers occurs simultaneously. The general analytical relations for optimum dimension of layers, residual pressures and radial interferences are derived. The existence condition of the optimum solution is also investigated and the constraints for materials selection are derived too. It is shown that the allowable shear stress ratio of materials must be close to their geometric mean... 

In this paper, employing an analytical method, optimum design of multi-layer compound cylinders is investigated. To this end, considering Tresca criterion, maximum shear stress in each layer is minimized. Analytical relations for optimum values of a layer dimension, residual pressures and radial interferences are derived. A technique for shrink-fitting of layers is also proposed and relationships for radial interferences, residual pressures and required temperature differences during the shrink-fitting process are derived. Three different examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that increasing the number of layers makes shear stress distribution... 

In this paper, the three-dimensional adaptive finite element modeling is presented for cohesive fracture analysis of non-planer crack growth. The technique is performed based on the Zienkiewicz-Zhu error estimator by employing the modified superconvergent patch recovery procedure for the stress recovery. The Espinosa-Zavattieri bilinear constitutive equation is used to describe the cohesive tractions and displacement jumps. The 3D cohesive fracture element is employed to simulate the crack growth in a non-planar curved pattern. The crack growth criterion is proposed in terms of the principal stress and its direction. Finally, several numerical examples are analyzed to demonstrate the... 

Optimal trajectory and muscle forces of a human-like musculoskeletal arm are predicted for planar point-to-point movements using optimal control theory. The central nervous system (CNS) is modeled as an optimal controller that performs a reaching motion to final states via minimization of an objective function. For the CNS strategy, a cubic function of muscles stresses is considered as an appropriate objective function that minimizes muscles fatigue. A two-DOF nonlinear musculoskeletal planar arm model with four states and six muscle actuators is used for the evaluation of the proposed optimal strategy. The nonlinear variational formulation of the corresponding optimal control problem is... 

Separators are one of the most critically important components of lithium-ion batteries to ensure the safe performance of the battery. Commercial polyolefin separators have high thermal shrinkage and low electrolyte uptake, which confines the application of the battery. By using the thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) method, we successfully prepared HDPE/sepiolite nanocomposite separators with high thermal stability and electrolyte wettability. The sepiolite nanofibers are modified with the Vinyltriethoxysilane (VTES) as a coupling agent for better dispersion and interaction in the HDPE matrix. The purpose of fabricating this separator is to decrease the thermal shrinkage and... 

We study the problem of power efficient tracking interval management for distributed target tracking wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We first analyze the performance of a distributed target tracking network with one moving object, using a quantitative mathematical analysis. We show that previously proposed algorithms are efficient only for constant average velocity objects; however, they do not ensure an optimal performance for moving objects with acceleration. Towards an optimal performance, first, we derive a closed-form mathematical expression for the estimation of the minimal achievable power consumption by an optimal adaptive tracking interval management algorithm. This can be used as... 

Harmonic State Estimation (HSE) is a technique for identifying harmonic distributions in power systems with limited measurements. The main problem in HSE is the optimal placement of measurement meters such that the estimation error is minimized, while making the system fully observable. The second issue is the HSE method. This method must be accurate and fast enough in order to have an accurate HSE. This paper presents a new algorithm that uses minimum variance criterion (MVC) and a sequential method for optimal meters placement, SVD method for observability analysis and finally WLS method for harmonic estimation. The proposed method minimizes the number of measurement devices and the error... 

Harmonic state estimation (HSE) method has been used to locate harmonic sources and estimate harmonic distribution in power systems with limited number of harmonic meters. This paper focuses on a new technique for optimal placement of measurement devices and observability analysis for power systems harmonic state estimation. The proposed method optimizes the number of measurements and minimizes the error of estimation at the same time. The method is tested on the IEEE 14-bus power system to show its precision  

With the rise in oil price and population growth, renewable energies are assumed to be the main source of energies for the next generation. Wind as a natural, eco-friendly and renewable source of energy has been at the center of concentration for decades. Recently there has been some ideas regarding the self-regulating urban wind turbines. Researchers have shown that a proper enclosure increases the wind velocity and therefore more torques can be exerted on the rotors, therefore more power can be generated. These enclosures are light and cheap, therefore they are applicable and effective. In the present study, an enclosure was modified to increase the exerted torque with implementing a step... 

We study the problem of power optimization for object tracking using distributed Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The accuracy of the object tracking is dependent on the tracking time interval. Smaller tracking time interval increases the accuracy of tracking a moving object. However, this increases the power consumption significantly. This paper proposes a modified adaptive sleep time management scheme called Modified Predict and Mesh (MPaM) to adapt tracking time interval such that it minimizes power consumption while keeping an acceptable tracking accuracy. Also a quantitative analysis to compare the performances of the conventional PaM and proposed Modified PaM (MPaM) schemes is... 

We consider the minimization of power consumption in target tracking wireless sensor networks (WSNs) using dynamic modification of tracking interval. In this context, we first analyze the performance of such networks, using a quantitative mathematical analysis. Then we calculate an upper bound for the achievable improvement in total power consumption, when using an adaptive time interval modification algorithm for tracking moving objects with acceleration. Towards this optimum functionality, we propose a novel adaptive algorithm (AHC) to adapt the tracking interval such that it minimizes power consumption while keeping an acceptable accuracy. Simulation results show that using the proposed... 

Non-Convex Economic Dispatch (NED) has been addressed as an open and demanding optimization problem in power systems. Due to the fact that realistic ED problems have non-convex cost functions with equality and inequality constraints, conventional search methods are unable to effectively find the global solution. In recent years, because of their great potential to achieve optimal or close-to-optimal solution, meta-heuristic optimization techniques have attracted significant attention to tackle the complexity of NED problems. In this paper, an efficient approach is proposed based on Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA). The proposed algorithm named multi-operator ICA (MuICA) merges the... 

By development of ocean exploration, autonomous vehicles are employed to perform on-water and underwater tasks. Using an extended Kalman filter, Inertial Navigation System/Doppler Velocity Log (INS/DVL) integrated systems are trying to navigate in oceans and underwater environments when Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are not accessible. The dependency of DVL signals on acoustic environments may cause any DVL malfunction due to sea creatures or strong wave-absorbing material. In this paper, an improved version of evolutionary TS-fuzzy (eTS) is proposed in order to predict DVL sensor outputs at DVL malfunction moment, by utilizing an artificial intelligent (AI) aided integrated... 

Large technology-intensive enterprises and companies face a constant challenge: How can a set of selected high-tech projects get done in a manner that would minimize the total cost across all projects? In majority of cases, projects are assumed independent, leading to a separate cost evaluation. This assumption often does not hold for real-world project portfolios, frequently sharing overlapping technologies. In this paper, we show how the order of the execution of the projects can directly affect the total cost of the portfolio, due to shared dependencies. Modeling the problems in this area can be achieved by combining two main fields: graph theory and technology mining. A novel method is...