Sharif Digital Repository

One of the most crucial factors affecting the service life of reinforced concrete (RC) structures attacked by aggressive ions is reinforcement corrosion. As the steel corrosion progresses, crack propagation in concrete medium endangers the serviceability and the strength of RC structural members. In this study, a nonlinear mathematical model for determining the displacement and stress fields in RC structures subjected to reinforcement corrosion is introduced. For corrosion products, a nonlinear stress-strain relation which has been previously confirmed by experimental data is incorporated in the present analysis. In formulation of the governing equations for steel-rust-concrete composite,... 

An accurate numerical methodology for capturing the field quantities across the interfaces between material discontinuities, in the context of reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM), is of particular interest. For this purpose the innovative numerical technique, so-called augmented corrected collocation method is introduced; this technique is an extension of the corrected collocation method used for imposing essential boundary conditions (EBCs). The robustness of this methodology is shown by utilizing it to solve two benchmark problems of material discontinuities, namely the problem of circular inhomogeneity with uniform radial eigenstrain, and the problem of interaction between a crack... 

There are hundreds models of reticulated structures including the squared reticulated cylindrical shells. It is considered as comprising of a number of circumferential and longitudinal rods. Analytical governing equation for natural frequencies has been derived for this type of structures and to verify the validity of solutions, Finite Element Method (FEM) is used. The comparison of results demonstrate close agreement between analytical and FE solutions. Also a comparison is preformed between a reticulated and equivalent solid hollow cylinder shell. The equivalent solid hollow cylinder has equal weight, length and outer diameter with the squared reticulated cylindrical shell. This comparison... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze a squared lattice cylindrical shell under compressive axial load and to optimize the geometric parameters to achieve the maximum buckling load. Also a comparison between buckling loads of a squared lattice cylinder and a solid hollow cylinder with equal weight, length and outer diameter is performed to reveal the superior performance of the squared lattice cylindrical shells. Design/methodology/ approach - A cylindrical lattice shell includes circumferential and longitudinal rods with geometric parameters such as crosssection areas of the rods, distances and angles between them. In this study, the governing differential equation for buckling... 

Modern Latticed composite materials whose high specific strength and stiffness are utilized in spacecraft and rocket structures to a sufficiently high extent are now widely used in primary airframe structures. In this work a comparison between squared latticed composite cylinder shells and the equivalent hollow cylinder with same weight, outer radius, length and material is done. An analytical equation is derived for natural frequency of square latticed composite shells. The first fifth modes are taken to be compared. The analytical and FEM results are shown and compared to each other. Also, as discussed, the squared lattice cylinder shell reaches to their natural frequencies easily than the... 

A new meshless method called gradient reproducing kernel particle method (GRKPM) is proposed for numerical solutions of one-dimensional Burgers' equation with various values of viscosity and different initial and boundary conditions. Discretization is first done in the space via GRKPM, and subsequently, the reduced system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations is discretized in time by the Gear's method. Comparison with the exact solutions, which are only available for restricted initial conditions and values of viscosity, approves the efficacy of the proposed method. For challenging cases involving small viscosities, comparison with the results obtained using other numerical schemes... 

Prediction of the anti-plane moduli of solids consisting of a given distribution of unidirectionally aligned elliptic multi-coated fibers with interfacial damage is the focus of this paper. The fibers and their coating layers may be in the order of nano or micro scales. All the constituent phases of the composite are supposed to be described in terms of couple stress elasticity. Accordingly, the bounds for the overall shear moduli of the aforementioned composites are provided by employing the principles of minimum potential and complementary energies. Certain subtleties associated with the elliptic multi-coated fibers for three cases of pure sliding (completely damaged), imperfect (partially... 

This paper presents an innovative formulation of the RKPM (reproducing kernel particle method) pioneered by Liu. A major weakness of the conventional RKPM is in dealing with the derivative boundary conditions. The EFGM (element free Galerkin method) pioneered by Belytschko shares the same difficulty. The proposed RKPM referred to as GRKPM (gradient RKPM), incorporates the first gradients of the function in the reproducing equation. Therefore in three-dimensional space GRKPM consists of four independent types of shape functions. It is due to this feature that the corrected collocation method can be readily generalized and combined with GRKPM to enforce the EBCs (essential boundary... 

Using two techniques of thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry under O2 gas atmosphere from 25 to 600°C, the thermal behavior of laboratory-produced compound lead(IV) oxide α-PbO2 was investigated. The identity of products at different stages were confirmed by XRD technique. Both techniques produced similar results supporting the same decomposition stages for the compound. Three distinct energy changes were observed, namely, two endothermic and one exothermic in DSC. The amount of ΔH for each peak is also reported. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC  

The compound, alkaline lead acetate, Pb(CH3COO)2·PbO·H2O (ALA), was purchased from the Fluka Company. The X-ray diffraction film and SEM electron microgaph of this compound were obtained and reported in this paper for the first time. The thermal behavior of alkaline lead acetate (ALA) was studied using thermogravimetery (TGA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetery (DSC) techniques under an O2 gas atmosphere from 25 to 600°C. Four distinct energy changes associated with weight changes were observed, all of them being exothermic in the DSC results. The amount of ΔH for each peak is reported. © Sharif University of Technology  

The compound, lead hydroxide Pb6O4(OH)4, was prepared by a method used for the first time in the authors laboratory. The compound was identified by XRD and it's purity was determined by analytical methods (100%). The thermal characteristics of this compound were investigated by using a thermogravimetry (TGA). This compound was found to be stable at room temperature and at 160°C will decompose completely to produce lead (II) oxide. © Sharif University of Technology, April 2007  

Organic loading rate (OLR) is an important parameter significantly affecting microbial ecology and characteristics of UASB systems. In this study, UASB performance was evaluated in a 1000 1 reactor receiving feed from a traditional medium-size slaughterhouse. The initial seed for granules formed earlier was from a mesophilic municipal anaerobic digester sludge with a VSS content of 29gl-1. The temperature of influent was adjusted by an inline thermostat around 33°C. The reactor was started with an OLR of 5kg SCODm-3d-1 with gradual increase to 10kg SCOD m -3d-1 over a 2-week period. Examination of VSS data showed that on the average 89.3±11.3% of bioparticle mass was present at the lower 30%... 

In textile industry, advanced oxidation processes are used for degrading and removing color from dye baths which allow wastewater reuse. In this study, photochemical oxidation processes (UV-A/K2S2O8, UV-C/ K2S2O8) and chemical oxidation process (dark/K2S2O8), were investigated in a laboratory scale photoreactor for decolorization of the Reactive blue 19 (RB19) dye from synthetic textile wastewater. The effects of operating parameters such as potassium persulphate dosage, pH, reaction time and UV source, on decolorization have been evaluated. The results of direct chemical oxidation showed that 50% of the dye was been removed using K2S2O8 in dark condition after 5h reaction time and... 

The present study was conducted to investigate the impacts of retrofitted CNG vehicles on air pollutant emissions in Tehran over a 20 years period using available statistical data, precise automobile tests, data analysis, and LEAP Software. The obtained results revealed an increase in air pollutant emissions including CO (equal to 1030.77 thousand tons), NOx (equal to 1030.77 thousand tons), THC (269.02 thousand tons) and CO2 (equal to 38.43 thousand tons) resulting from utilizing retrofitted CNG vehicles within the studied period. Considering the obtained results, if the current trend of producing retrofitted CNG vehicles continues, a total cost of 435 million USD will impose on the... 

Site visits of selected factories and mines show large amounts of coal were collected as spoil and waste outside these locations due to un-efficiency of coal exploiting technology from mined material. The coal content of these waste materials is about 60%. In this work, we propose a method to be used for complete consumption of these materials in industry. In some samples, volume and weight of spoils could be decreased by half. This review also shows that aluminum oxide in industrial and minerals spoils are high, in some samples up to 25%. We suggest some remedies, e.g. we can use ashes produced by complete combustion of coal for production of aluminum hydroxide thus making it economical.... 

One of the main factors affecting membrane fouling in MBRs is operational conditions. In this study the influence of aeration rate, filtration mode, and SRT on hollow fiber membrane fouling was investigated using a triple fouling layers perspective. The sludge microbial population distribution was also determined by PCR method. Through various applied operational scenarios the optimal conditions were: aeration rate of 15 LPM; relaxation mode with 40s duration and 8 min. interval; and SRT of 30 days. The similarity between SMP variations in triple fouling layers with its corresponding hydraulic resistance confirmed the effect of SMP on membrane fouling. Among three fouling fractions, the... 

The feasibility of a mesophilic anaerobic treatment of an alcohol distillery wastewater (beet molasses stillage) was studied in a 1300 I Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor for a period of 180 days. The system was seeded with 600 L of mesophilic anaerobic sludge harvested from the bottom of a dairy anaerobic lagoon. Nutrients were added to acidified effluent and after adjusting the pH in an equalization tank, the system was fed with a diluted effluent containing COD in the range of 1000-11000 mg/L at 30°C. Initially, the system had an OLR of 1 kg COD m-3 d-1 and upflow velocity was maintained at 0.6 m/h (HRT= 6 h) throughout the study. A gradual increase in OLR, through increased... 

Adsorption of violet B azo dye from aqueous solutions was studied by different cellulose agricultural waste materials (almond shell (AS), pistachio shell (PS), walnut shell (WS), Tea waste (TW) and orange peel (OP)). Cellulose agriculturalwaste sorbents characterized by FTIR and SEM methods. The effects of different parameters such as contact time, pH, adsorbent dosage and initial dye concentration were studied. Maximum removal of dye was obtained at contact time of 90 min and pH 11. The adsorption of violet B was fitted by pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The Langmuir isotherm model was better fitted than Freundlichmodel. The results showed that the adsorption efficiency of violet B by...