Sharif Digital Repository

In this study the investigation of large deflections subject in compliant mechanisms is presented using homotopy perturbation method (HPM). The main purpose is to propose a convenient method of solution for the large deflection problem in compliant mechanisms in order to overcome the difficulty and complexity of conventional methods, as well as for the purpose of mathematical modeling and optimization. For simplicity, a cantilever beam of linear elastic material under horizontal, vertical and bending moment end point load is considered. The results show that the applied method is very accurate and capable for cantilever beams and can be used for a large category of practical problems for the... 

This study presents a novel perspective on pressure-transient analysis (PTA) of downhole-pressure and flow-rate data by use of system-identification (SI) techniques as widely used in advanced process engineering. Key features of the paper are that it considers the classic PTA process from a system-theoretical perspective; derives the causal structure of the flow dynamics; proposes a method to deal with continuously varying pressure and flow-rate signals contaminated with correlated noise, which estimates physical reservoir parameters through a systematic matching procedure in the frequency domain; and can cope with arbitrary (i.e., not necessarily piecewise constant) flow-rate signals. To... 

Development of a new micro gas sensor is essential for the analysis of the outcome of gas separation devices. In this paper, direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) modeling of low-pressure gas sensor was performed to investigate the effect of physical parameters on the performance and main characteristics of this type of actuator in various operating conditions. Extensive parametric studies were done and the effect of ambient pressure, temperature and gap of arms were comprehensively investigated. Our findings showed that gap size significantly influences the flow features and force generation inside the sensor. © 2018 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Union of Chemists in Bulgaria  

Much research has been conducted and published on the examination of the behavior of reinforced steel and concrete structures with a FRP system. Nevertheless, the performance of FRP differs from that of FRCM, particularly at high temperature and ultimate strength. The present study provides a review of previous research on structural elements (viz. beams, columns, arches, slabs, and walls) retrofitted with FRCM systems, taking account of various parameters, such as layers, composite types, configurations, and anchors for controlling or delaying failure modes (FMs). Additionally, this paper discussed the details of different FMs observed during experimental tests, such as crushed concrete or... 

Many classes of applications require Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees from the system interconnect. In Networks-on-Chip (NoC) QoS guarantees usually translate into bandwidth and latency constraints for the traffic flows and require hardware support in the NoC fabric and its interfaces. In this article we present a novel NoC synthesis framework to automatically build networks that meet hard latency constraints of end-to-end traffic streams without requiring specialized hardware for the network components. The hard latency constraints are met by carefully designing the NoC topology and selecting the appropriate routes for flow using lean best-effort network components. We perform... 

This work focuses on transient thermal behavior of radial fins of rectangular, triangular and hyperbolic profiles with temperature-dependent properties. A hybrid numerical algorithm which combines differential transformation (DTM) and finite difference (FDM) methods is utilized to theoretically study the present problem. DTM and FDM are applied to the time and space domains of the problem, respectively. The accuracy of this method solution is checked against the numerical solution. Then, the effects of some applicable parameters were studied comparatively. Since a broad range of governing parameters are investigated, the results could be useful in a number of industrial and engineering... 

Histidine rich protein II derived peptide (HRP II 169-182) was investigated by molecular dynamics, MD, simulation and 17O electric field gradient, EFG, tensor calculations. MD simulation was performed in water at 300 K with α-helix initial structure. It was found that peptide loses its initial α-helix structure rapidly and is converted to random coil and bent secondary structures. To understand how peptide structure affects EFG tensors, initial structure and final conformations resulting from MD simulations were used to calculate 17O EFG tensors of backbone carbonyl oxygens. Calculations were performed using B3LYP method and 6-31 + G* basis set. Calculated 17O EFG tensors were used to... 

This paper reports on the recovery of zinc, cobalt and manganese by two-step leaching of zinc-plants purification residue with sulfuric acid. The residue, hot filter press cake (HFC), contains 14 % ZnO, 4.8 % Co 3O4 and 22.9 % MnO. Effects of different parameters are determined and used to optimize the process. With acid to hot filter press cake (HFC) stoichiometry of 0.85, acid concentration of 30 g/L and temperature of 25°C, it took two minutes to separate zinc from zinc plant residue. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was used as an oxidation agent. The most suitable acid concentration for leaching of both cobalt and manganese was 50 g/L. Recovery of cobalt and manganese increased with peroxide... 

The learning vector quantization (LVQ) neural network is a useful tool for pattern recognition. Based on the network weights obtained from the training set, prediction can be made for the unknown objects. In this paper, discrimination of wines based on 2D NMR spectra is performed using LVQ neural networks with orthogonal signal correction (OSC). OSC has been proposed as a data preprocessing method that removes from X information not correlated to Y. Moreover, the partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) method has also been used to treat the same data set. It has been found that the OSC-LVQ neural networks method gives slightly better prediction results than OSC-PLS-DA © 2005... 

Gamma-ray observations in the low and medium energy range (0.1-100 MeV) with sufficiently sensitive telescopes will provide unique insights into many outstanding high-energy astrophysics questions. The University of California, Riverside (UCR) Tracking and Imaging Gamma-Ray Telescope (TIGRE) Compton gamma-ray telescope uses multilayers of silicon strip detectors to, for the first time, track the Compton electron and CsI(Tl)-photodiode detectors to measure the scattered photon energy. By combining the Compton telescope's inherent imaging capability with improved background discrimination, a larger field-of-view and improved spectral and spatial resolutions, a significant improvement in... 

This article reports experimental results on laser sintering of A356 aluminum alloy and A356/SiC composite powders. Effects of scan rate, sintering atmosphere, hatch spacing, and SiC volume fraction (up to 20%), and particle size (7 and 17 μm) on the densification were studied. The phase formation and microstructural development were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Laser sintering under argon atmosphere exhibited higher densification compared to nitrogen. A faster sintering kinetics was observed as the scan rate decreased. Except at a low SiC content (5 vol%), the composite powders exhibited... 

We study mix-nets with randomized partial checking (RPC) as proposed by Jakobsson, Juels, and Rivest (2002). RPC is a technique to verify the correctness of an execution both for Chaumian and homomorphic mix-nets. The idea is to relax the correctness and privacy requirements to achieve a more efficient mix-net. We identify serious issues in the original description of mix-nets with RPC and show how to exploit these to break both correctness and privacy, both for Chaumian and homomorphic mix-nets. Our attacks are practical and applicable to real world mix-net implementations, e.g., the Civitas and the Scantegrity voting systems  

The mass transfer between two immiscible liquids in butanol-succinic acid-water system was experimentally and numerically studied in axisymmetric and asymmetric jetting flow regimes. Full Navier-Stokes equations were solved for a Newtonian fluid. In all flow regimes, the rising Reynolds number caused mass transfer coefficient increment. The obtained results for mass transfer coefficient in axisymmetric jetting regime agreed with penetration theory. However, in the asymmetric regime, there was deviation from this theory due to the perturbation existing on the jet. The mass transfer coefficient of jet before breakup was twice the drops produced after breakup and raising the Reynolds number... 

An investigation was performed on the static strain aging behavior of warm-rolled low carbon steel during a nearly 1-year aging period, from the view point concerning with influence of changing the deformation speed and cooling media. Mechanical response of the examined material during aging period was evaluated through variations occurred in strength and hardness of the warm-deformed steel. It was shown that changing the rolling speed as well as cooling rate, may result in the occurrence of different metallurgical phenomena, consequently altering the aging kinetics of the material. It was also found that by increasing rolling speed, an increase in the value of hardness and UTS takes place,... 

Application of Volterra series to the modeling of static and dynamic nonlinear systems is investigated in this paper and compared to other methods. For nonlinear systems with memory, Volterra series serves as a generalization of convolution integral. To parameterize the Volterra kernels for limited dimension series, different methods are discussed. We use Laguerre functions and wavelet packets as orthonormal basis and we find the poles for the basis through a genetic algorithm search. Our test system is a hydraulic actuator with a highly nonlinear dynamics which is modeled with Volterra series. The results show that dynamic model with wavelet packets give a more accurate model with respect... 

In the present work, we used direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process to fabricate Al-SiC composite parts directly from a three-dimensional CAD model. Al-7Si-0.3Mg powders were blended with various amounts of SiC particles (5, 10, 15, 20 vol%) at two different sizes (7 and 17 μm) and subjected to direct laser sintering using a 200 W continuous wave CO2 laser beam at various scan rates. The densification and microstructural features of the laser-sintered parts were studied. It is shown that the highest density is obtained for the Al alloy-5% SiC (7 μm) composite powder. The melt stability is also found to be improved in the presence of SiC particles. The microstructure of the... 

A gyroless deterministic attitude determination algorithm based on simulation of sun in eclipse is stated in this paper and has been compared to stochastic filters like extended Kalman filter and unscented Kalman filter. Attitude determination with low cost sensors such as magnometer and sun sensor results in usage of recursive algorithms such as Kalman filter which has the probability of divergence, but with deterministic point to point algorithm such as the one introduced in this paper we can be sure to have an attitude determination with a fixed maximum error. Proposed method has been compared with Extended Kalman Filter and Unscented Kalman filter due to its modeling error, robustness... 

Gas detectors play an important role in safety of process plants. In-time detection of flammable gas releases may prevent major fire and explosion as well as property loss in process plants. One of the challenges of the gas detection system design is determining the best layout for detectors in order to reduce the risk of gas releases as much as possible. However, current methods do not address the risk concept in placement of detectors quantitatively. A risk-based methodology is proposed for optimal placement of point type flammable gas detectors in which first the risk (defined as a combination of scenario frequency, delayed ignition probability and damage) is estimated for any release... 

A new adaptive real-coded memetic algorithm has been developed for continuous optimization problems. The proposed algorithm utilizes an adaptive variant of Continuous Ant Colony System for local search. Here new adaptive strategies are utilized for online tuning of the number of local search steps and the width of the search interval over each dimension of the search space. A new crossover scheme is also developed and utilized. The new algorithm has been examined with CEC 2005 benchmarks and compared with three other state of the art works in the field. The comparisons have showed relatively better results. © 2009 IEEE  

Amphibious single wheel robot consists of a sharp-edged wheel actuated by a spinning flywheel for steering and a drive motor for propulsion. The spinning flywheel acts as a gyroscope to stabilize the robot and also can be tilted to achieve steering. In this paper, the kinematics of a single wheel robot in water, Gyrover, is analyzed and then a simple mechanism for driving it is proposed. In previous studies, Lagrange approach is used for hydrodynamic modeling of the robot. A nonlinear position controller is designed to bring the robot to any desired position. Based on the designed controller, a tracking controller is augmented to the robot. For simplicity the added mass effect has been...