Sharif Digital Repository

Nanopositioning systems are devices with the ability of moving objects within nanometer resolution. In the recent years according to the advancements in the nanotechnology fields, there is an urgent and growing need for these systems as precision motion drivers. In the most of the nanopositiong devices some active materials such as piezoelectric elements are widely used as actuators. Piezoelectric materials can generate a mechanical deformation proportional to the applied electrical field. Therefore, theoretically these devices have the ability to set the desired position with the infinite precision.Design, optimization and fabrication of an ultrasonic piezoelectric motor are performed in... 

Majority of the oil and gas reservoirs, in the main hydrocarbon production regions around the world, are naturally fractured reservoirs. Fractures play an important role in reservoir fluid flow either in the form of high permeable complex conduits or strong permeability anisotropies. Realistic characterization of naturally fractured reservoirs requires an exhaustive understanding of fracture connectivity and fracture pattern geometry. These subsequently demand description of many fracture parameters such as density (intensity), spacing, orientation, size and aperture. Therefore, a first step in fractured reservoirs characterization is the static geometric modeling of the subsurface fracture... 

In this thesis, we aim to study the elastic-plastic behavior of short fiber reinforced composites experimentally and analytically. The experimental investigation is applied to glass fiber-polypropylene composites (PP/GF). The samples are produced by injection process with maximum temperature of 190C. Fibers are randomly oriented in this procedure of fabrication. The samples are tested in tension, and the mechanical strength is measured by changes in fiber content. The Young's modulus is also investigated in these experiments.Also in this thesis, an analytical model for calculation of Young’s modulus of fiber reinforced composite materials is proposed. In this analysis a displacement field is... 

Al-Mg alloys are used in many industrial fields, thus improvement of their mechanical properties is so important. Expressing mathematical models on the basis of physical and microstructural properties can be useful for this purpose. In this research, in order to study the microstructural evolutions and mechanical properties of the material, a dislocation based model and microstructural parameters such as grains and subgrains during plastic deformation and subsequent annealing are considered. In addition, a modification is used to make the model capable of justify the solute atom and temperature effect simultaneously. This makes the results to be more precise and accurate considering... 

Free fall gravity drainage is one of the most effective mechanisms of producing the oil from the matrix blocks in the gas invaded zone of the naturally fractured reservoirs. Although several analytical models have been proposed to characterize this mechanism in a matrix block, but these models suffer from the practical or theoretical viewpoints. In this study, a new analytical model was presented to predict the oil production rate versus time from a homogeneous matrix block under free fall gravity drainage mechanism. The model was developed by considering the balance between involved forces in the gas-oil gravity drainage process. By simplifying the equation derived from the momentum... 

The Self-Consolidating (Compacting) Concrete (SCC) is a high performance concrete. Due to preventing it from segregation, SCC is known by its need to higher dosage of super plasticizer and viscose modifying agents. This increases the cost and reduces the popularity of SCC in construction industry. In this thesis, the production of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) from a controlled burning process using a special designed furnace, and cement replacement feasibility in the concrete mixture by low cost RHA, as an active pozzulanic additive have been investigated. Finding an appropriate ratio of replacement with cement for RHA and further effects on mechanical properties of SCC have been evaluated. The... 

Stress tensors and their rates are fundamental quantities in modeling the behavior of materials in the field of nonlinear continuum mechanics. One of the most remarkable applications of stress rates is their presence in the rate type constitutive equations of materials.
Co-rotational rates are corresponding to the rates which are measured by an observer who is in a reference rotating coordinate system. In general, under some specific conditions for the spin of a co-rotational rate, the rate of an Eulerian tensor would be objective. In this thesis, the objective co-rotational rates of Eulerian stress tensors for isotropic elastic materials under large deformations are obtained for the... 

Strong van der Waals (vdW) potential fields of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) makes them capable to encapsulate some nanostructures inside their hollow space, which leads to the construction of new hybrid nanostructures under specific conditions. Carbon nano-peapods, carbon nanowires and the hybrid of DNA and CNT are the main categories of hybrid nanostructures of CNT. Characteristics of hybrid nanotubes are unique and different from those of CNT. In nanostructures, the lattice spacing between individual atoms is considerable with respect to the structural dimensions. Also, the range of internal characteristic length is relatively close to external ones. So that utilizing the classical continuum... 

Social network is a map of relationships among individuals or organizations. With the development of social network sites (SNS), security protection of private information online has been a serious and important research topic. Information in social networks is online all the time and available to a large number of visitors. The main problem in current SNSs is that, people are not able to define different categories for their relations and then they cannot have good self-defined privacy policies. Also default policies cannot satisfy different environments and cultures and will serve information to strangers. After that different social networks with different interfaces are not... 

Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) Processes have drawn lots of attention due to their ability to refine grain size and develop some properties of bulk metals and alloys. After deformation, however, ductility and formability of metals are reduced. Annealing has been used as a solution for improvement of these characteristics after deformations even after SPD processes. On the other hand, there is a possibility that during annealing grains could grow, therefore it can neutralize the effect of SPD process. Consequently, predicting behavior and evolution of microstructure during annealing finds an important role. In this research, accordingly, vertex model have been used in order to predict... 

Generally concrete dams have not been sited at location where there were faults classified as active. However, there may be sites suitable for concrete dams where there is some possibility of fault displacement occurring underneath the dam. In addition, there may be situations where an existing dam was constructed over a fault thought to be inactive and later determined to be active, due to different approaches of classification of a fault whether it is active or not. Also some discontinuities may be observed during construction. For these cases nonlinear analysis and criteria will be required to assess the capability of concrete dams to safely withstand fault displacements. In this thesis,... 

Characterization and simulation of carbon nanotube-reinforced composites at large scale have been a concern of researchers in the past decade. This is due to the computational complication of considering many embedded carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However a simple meshing of organized CNT distribution in the matrix can ease this obstacle. In this study, a finite element approach is employed to investigate the elastodynamic behavior of a wavy CNT-reinforced composite structure. A three dimensional structure with up to 6400 uniformly distributed wavy CNTs is embedded in a polymer matrix. Each wavy nanotube is represented by a set of beam elements. The effect of nanotube waviness and volume fraction... 

In recent earthquakes piles have been severely damaged due to liquefaction-induced lateral spreading. Liquefaction causes lateral spreading in gently sloped saturated soft granular soils, leading to significant damage in structures and deep foundations. Although in recent years many studies have focused on different aspects of this phenomenon, the complex nature of the dynamic interaction between piles and liquefied soil is not yet fully understood. Thus more studies in this regard is inevitable. The present research focuses on the discussion and analysis of two large scale shaking table tests of 2x2 and 3x3 group piles. A three layer soil profile was used for the model, consisting of one... 

The conventional approach to investigate the reservoir performance is to build a detailed geological model, upscale it, and finally run flow simulation which is computationally very expensive. In addition, during the early stage of life of a reservoir, due to the lake of certain data, this method is usually based on analogues or rules of thumb and not detailed reservoir modelling. Therefore, there is a great incentive to produce much simpler physically-based methodologies. The main focus of this thesis is to use percolation approach to estimate the uncertainty in the reservoir properties. This method considers a hypothesis that the reservoir can be split into either permeable (i.e.... 

The rapid growth of information on the web and the need for information sharing on one hand and also as news plays an important role in our life and internet becomes the biggest repository for keeping this news on the other hand, lead us to research in this domain.
In this thesis, we introduce a new framework for searching news by considering the relation between news and events. This framework called NewsSe. NewsSe considers news as a series of events in order to cover all aspects of news. NewsSe uses Domain Ontology and Event Ontology to extract the concepts and relations existed in news. NewsSe consists of 4 different modules. NewsCr is a crawler which uses a new methodology for... 

In recent years, the application of base isolation as a seismic design strategy for reducing the effects of earthquake ground motion has become an advantageous method and much effort has been devoted to base isolation research and there has been a growing acceptance of this approach. In this research, the effect of using base isolators in reducing the dynamic forces of piers and abutments of bridges is studied. More specifically double-span bridges are the target of this research. After modeling a regular bridge in a typical analysis program, it is excited by different earthquake accelerograms and then the effect of using base isolators in dissipating the earthquake energy is investigated  

Selection of muscle activation pattern to reach a specific goal by considering the complexities of neuromuscular system and the way it overcomes these complications, are of researchers’ space interest in motor control. One proposed solution for resolving these complexities is the concept of simple module (synergies) that suggests the combination of them leads to more complex activities. In the present work, the existence and arrangement of synergies in the lumbar spine have been studied. For this purpose, a model with 18- muscles at level of L4-L5 under utilized in the static condition. In order to obtain the muscular and stability synergies, a biomechanical model predicting muscle... 

Asset allocation is one of the core economic functions of security markets. By purchasing and selling securities individuals are able to effectively time their stream of consumption and to allocate their temporarily unused wealth among competing investments. To time the stream of future consumption optimally, the question arises as to how wealth is allocated most effciently on security markets. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an optimal Asset Allocation with Hidden Markov Regime Switching means and volatilities. We use the historical weekly information of three Indices in Wallstreet stock exchange: Stock, bond and commodity. First we use these historical information from... 

The concept of generalized strains is a well-established subject in the classical continuum mechanics. The characteristics and various applications of the generalized strains have been the point of interest of many researchers in the classical continuum mechanics. The aim of this thesis is the introduction of generalized strains in the micropolar theory, as a non-classical continuum theory. A set of generalized strains is suggested for the deformation of macro-elements. Moreover, a set of generalized strains is proposed for the micro-structures. Since the rate of strains possesses a significant importance in the constitutive equations of nonlinear analysis of solids, expressions for the rate... 

Several SPD methods have been invented for processing rods and sheets, and their physical and mechanical properties have been investigated so far. The materials processed by these methods have not been industrialized thoroughly. Moreover, in previous investigations, few works have been carried out on tubular types of materials. Thus, in this study, aluminum tube goes through a tubular channel in order to achieve different values of strains. This method is named Tube Channel Pressing. The mechanical and microstructural investigations on aluminum tubes which have been processed up to 5 passes shows that ultimate strength increases 1.7 times and sub-grains size reaches to 360 nm. Applying final...