Sharif Digital Repository

Bi2O3 compositions were prepared to investigate the effect of rare earth metal oxides as co-dopants on phase stability of bismuth oxide. Compositions containing 9-14 mol% of Y2O3 and Er2O3 were synthesized by solid state reaction. The structural characterization was carried out using X-ray powder diffraction. The XRD results show that the samples containing 12 and 14 mol% total dopants had cubic structure, whereas the samples with lower dopant concentrations were tetragonal. Comparing the lattice parameters of the cubic phases of (Bi 2O3)0.88(Y2O3) 0.06(Er2O3)0.06 and (Bi 2O3)0.86(Y2O3) 0.07(Er2O3)0.07 revealed that lattice parameter decreases by increasing the dopant concentration. The XRD... 

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become widely popular in recent years. In spite of users' interest to join OSNs, sharing vast amounts of personal information and resources in these networks might result in privacy issues for them. In the centralized OSNs, access control policies defined by users are enforced by OSN providers. Moreover, as these shared resources are stored by providers, they can access them. To avoid such problems, various architectures for decentralized OSNs are proposed. But the proposed architectures for P2P OSNs yet do not support any mechanism for collaborative privacy management on the shared content. By increasing the amount of resources such as photos which is... 

Gas turbine hot-section parts can be very expensive components with a finite lifetime. Their durability is strongly dependent on the operating service conditions which control the maintenance intervals and associated expenses. Blade damage is the most frequent reason for failures in gas turbine engines and also oxidation is one of the most critical degradation mechanisms when the power system operates in partially loading condition. This paper describes the methodology of oxidation life assessment for uncoated and coated blades with various metallic coatings in the first stage of a typical gas turbine engine. The resultant weight-change curves were validated by comparing them with the... 

In this paper, a method for increasing the temporal resolution of a temporal imaging system has been developed. Analogously to the conventional spatial imaging systems in which resolution limit is due to the finite aperture of the lens, in a temporal imaging system, the finite temporal aperture of the time lens is responsible for limited temporal resolution. Based on the method used in spatial structured illumination super-resolution microscopy in spatial optics, we have utilized frequency converters (time prisms), to shift the elusive frequency components of the input signal to become captured by the time lens. This method proved numerically to enhance the temporal resolution by a factor of... 

A novel magnetic nanocarrier with long spacer length and high colloidal stability has been prepared for effective delivery of doxorubicin (DOX). First, poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer was grown up onto the surface of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles to increase the loading amount of amine groups. Then, terminal amine groups were functionalized by polyethylene glycol dimethylester to increase the spacer length. Then anticancer drug DOX was covalently attached onto the system by hydrazone bond to forms a pH-sensitive nanocarrier. This system is designed to combine the advantage of magnetic targeting, high drug loading capacity, and controlled release  

Mechanical alloying and sintering were used to fabricate nanostructured Ti6Al4V scaffolds of highly controllable pore geometry and fully interconnected porous network. Elemental powders were milled for different periods of time (10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 h), mixed with 40-60 vol.-% of 200-400 μm cuboidal NaCl, compacted at 500-600 MPa and sintered according to single or double stage heat treatment regimes at 790 and 950°C under vacuum. After sintering, the samples were soaked in distilled water to washout the NaCl. Foamy microstructures were obtained showing well shaped biopores and fragmentary embedded micropores. The shape of initial NaCl was copied into the biopores which had highly... 

Multiphase flows appear in many scientific and engineering applications. On the other hand, there has been a tremendous experimental and numerical investigation trying to understand complex fluid-fluid interfaces better. However, conventional CFD have certain limitations in complicated situations. Fortunately in the past two decades, new approaches, namely SPH and LBM (sometimes called meshless methods) have been developed. Since they are mesoscopic, they have been able to perform much better than conventional CFD. Especially, LBM is becoming more and more popular and has already been divided to many branches  

Economists and policy-makers believe that the Fiscal Decentralization is an effective strategy to promote economic growth. Thereby Economic Growth is seen as an objective of Fiscal Decentralization and efficiency in the allocation of resources in the public sector. This study analyzed the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth in Iran for the period 2001-2007.We used data for 28 provinces of the country estimated the model using a panel data regression with Fixed Effect. We find that fiscal decentralization has a positive effect on Iran's economic growth  

Scaling analysis of fluid displacement in porous media is a reliable, fast method to evaluate the displacement performance of different oil production processes under various conditions. This paper presents the scaling studies of multiphase fluid flow through permeable media with a special attention to the three-phase immiscible water alternating gas (WAG) flooding under conditions prevailing in many oil reservoirs. The investigations are performed on a heterogeneous reservoir to study in detail the sensitivity of the displacement process to the scaling groups using various combinations of the process controlling parameters. The procedure of Inspectional analysis (IA) was utilized to... 

In this paper, nano/microstructured-conducting polypyrrole has been prepared on Cu/Au interdigital electrode surfaces by using constant potential amperometry technique. The Fe(II) ions were used as catalyst and X = ClO4 -, pTs-, Cl-, TCA-, DS-, DBS- was implemented as anion dopants. The morphologies of the films were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscope. A remarkable dependence was observed between the type of anion dopant and the morphology of polypyrrole (PPy). The sensing behavior of the PPy-X sensor has been studied toward acetone, methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, 2-propanol, nitromethane, propylamine, pyridine, and gas mixtures of aliphatic alcohols. The responses... 

The current article presents conceptual, preliminary and detailed aero-thermal redesign of a typical high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane. Design targets are lower coolant consumption, reduced manufacturing costs and improved durability. These goals are sought by 25% reduction in vane count number and lower number of airfoils per segment. Design challenges such as higher airfoil loading, associate aerodynamic losses and higher thermal loads are discussed. In order to maximize coolant flow reduction and avoid higher aerodynamic losses, airfoil Mach distribution is carefully controlled. There has been an effort to limit design changes so that the proven design features of the original vane... 

In this paper, we develop a phase inverting technique to improve the received power of an antenna array, with an emphasis on the simplicity of the receiver hardware and reducing the power consumption. The goal is to propose a simple array architecture to develop intelligent algorithms to enhance the received power of the array. A test set-up with 8-element switched array antenna at 28 GHz has been developed to implement the proposed algorithms. The measured results reveal that in a high scattering environment, the phase inverting technique provides about 13 dB enhancement in the received power compared to a fixed array. This significant enhancement plays a major role in establishing a robust... 

The inertial microfluidic technique, as a powerful new tool for accurate cell/particle separation based on the hydrodynamic phenomenon, has drawn considerable interest in recent years. Despite numerous microfluidic techniques of particle separation, there are few articles in the literature on separation techniques addressing external outlet geometry to increase the throughput efficiency and purity. In this work, we report on a spiral inertial microfluidic device with high efficiency (>98%). Herein, we demonstrate how changing the outlet geometry can improve the particle separation throughput. We present a complete separation of 4 and 6 μm from 10 μm particles potentially applicable to... 

In this paper a complete design of a high speed optical motion analyzer system has been described. The main core of the image processing unit has been implemented by the differential algorithm procedure. Some intelligent and conservative procedures that facilitate the search algorithm have also been proposed and implemented for the processing of human motions. Moreover, an optimized modified direct linear transformation (MDLT) method has been used to reconstruct 3D markers positions which are used for deriving kinematic characteristics of the motion. Consequently, a set of complete tests using some simple mechanical devices were conducted to verify the system outputs. Considering the system... 

In this paper a complete design of a high speed optical human motion tracking system has been described for biomechanical human motion analysis and animation craft applications. The main core of the image processing unit that is implemented by the differential algorithm procedure and some intelligent and conservative procedures that facilitate the search algorithm have also been proposed and implemented for the processing of human motions tracking images. In the next step an optimized modified direct linear transformation (MDLT) method has been used to reconstruct 3D locations of markers as an input data for animation unit. The low computational cost and the high precision in detecting and... 

The present work focuses on the preparation of V2C MXene from Al-V2O5-C mixture heated in a microwave and etched under HF-based process. In the first stage of process, microwave heating caused the formation of an uncommon periodic pattern of V2AlC-Al2O3 MAX phase. In the second stage of process the aggressive leaching (temperature of 80 °C for 96 h) was performed in HF to remove the interlayer aluminum and Al2O3 particles as impurities. The leaching was not completed at room temperature even after 24 h. XRD and FESEM analyses confirmed the successful formation of V2C MXene and its distorted layer, respectively. HRTEM, XPS and Raman analyses also confirmed a perfect structure of V2C MXene. It... 

The potential of carbon-based nanosheet membranes with functionalized pores is great as water treatment membranes. Using the molecular dynamic simulation technique, the dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) separation from the water/DMSO binary solution is investigated, and the functionalized graphene nanosheets are used as a membrane. This membrane was functionalized by –F (fluorine) and –H (hydrogen) functional groups. For the separation of DMSO, external hydrostatic pressures up to 100 MPa were applied to the considered systems. The separation mechanism was based on molecular size. Multiple analyses were done to study the capability of considered membranes for the separation of DMSO molecules from... 

The degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was investigated in the aqueous solution of coated ZnO onto magnetite nanoparticale based on an advanced photocatalytic oxidation process. The photocatalysts were synthesized by coating of ZnO onto magnetite using precipitation method. The sample was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and vibration sample magnetometer (VSM). Besides, specific surface area was also determined by BET method. The four effective factors including pH of the reaction mixture, Fe3O4/ZnO magnetic nanoparticles concentration, initial MTBE concentration and molar ratio of [H2O2]/ [MTBE] were optimized using response surface... 

A near fully dense mullite-TiB2-CNTs hybrid composite was prepared successfully trough spark plasma sintering. 1 wt%CNT and 10 wt%TiB2 were mixed with nano-sized mullite powders using a high energy mixer mill. Spark plasma sintering was carried out at 1350 °C under the primary and final pressure of 10 MPa and 30 MPa, respectively. XRD results showed mullite and TiB2 as dominant crystalline phases accompanied by tiny peaks of alumina. The microstructure of prepared composites demonstrated uniform distribution of TiB2 reinforcements in mullite matrix without any pores and porosities as a result of near fully densified spark plasma sintered composite. The fracture surface of composite revealed... 

We have examined the star formation history (SFH) of Andromeda VII (And VII), the brightest and most massive dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellite of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). Although M31 is surrounded by several dSph companions with old stellar populations and low metallicity, it has a metal-rich stellar halo with an age of 6-8 Gyr. This indicates that any evolutionary association between the stellar halo of M31 and its dSph system is frail. Therefore, the question is whether And VII (a high-metallicity dSph located ∼220 kpc from M31) can be associated with M31's young, metal-rich halo. Here we perform the first reconstruction of the SFH of And VII employing long-period variable (LPV) stars....