Sharif Digital Repository

Asphaltene deposition in the early stage of the oil reservoir life and later during any stimulation process emerges critical problems to the petroleum industry. Deposition of asphaltene aggregates raises strict problems in industries and demands markedly a practical and scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of aggregation and precipitation. Fluorescence emission spectroscopy has been widely used to illuminate the fundamental properties of crude oils and asphaltenes. It proposes analysis of some details of equilibrium, dynamic behavior, and aggregation composition of crude oil under specific condition. In this work, the fluorescence spectra of crude-oil extracted asphaltene samples were... 

The global demand for renewable energy sources has arisen significant research interests in marine hydrokinetic energy harvesting from flow induced vibrations. The current study deals with the hydrokinetic energy harvesting potentials of diamond and square oscillators at various inline configurations. Both the sharp edge sections and the wake induced vibrations in tandem arrangement can lead to galloping type of instability with high energy efficiency ratios. The present in-water towing tank experiments comprise 1DoF vibrating systems at Re ranging from 2 × 103 to 4.8 × 104. The results show that the upstream wake generally enhances the system efficiency and the mechanical work done by the... 

Silica nanoparticles, which have a broad range of sizes and specific surface features, have been used in many industrial applications. This study was conducted to synthesize monodispersed silica nanoparticles directly from tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) with an alkaline catalyst (NH3) based on the sol–gel process and the Stöber method. A central composite design (CCD) is used to build a second-order (quadratic) model for the response variables without requiring a complete threelevel factorial experiment. The process was then optimized to achieve the minimum particle size with the lowest concentration of TEOS. Dynamic light scattering and scanning electron microscopy were used to analyze the... 

Vertically aligned ZnO@CdS nanorod heterostructure films with various loadings of CdS nanoparticle shell were synthesized and applied in photoinactivation of Escherichia coli bacteria under visible light irradiation. While neither the bare ZnO nanorods (with band-gap energy (Eg) of ∼3.28 eV) under visible light irradiation nor the nanorod heterostructures in dark exhibited any significant antibacterial activity, the ZnO@CdS nanorod heterostructures (with Eg ∼2.5-2.6 eV) could successfully inactivate the bacteria under visible light irradiation. Furthermore, it was found that an optimum loading of the CdS shell (corresponding to the effective thickness less than ∼15 nm) is required to achieve... 

This paper presents the measurements results of simulated partial discharge propagation on a compact three phase XLPE cable, and shows how the high frequency signal on one phase of the cable is induced on the other two phases. A frequency dependent three phase cable model is employed to simulate this phenomena. © 2008 Australasian Universities Power Engineering Conference (AUPEC'08)  

This paper experimentally investigates the influence of hydrogen enrichment on the combustion and emission characteristics of a diesel HCCI engine using a modified Cooperative Fuel Research (CFR) engine. Three fuels, n-heptane and two middle distillates with cetane numbers of 46.6 and 36.6, are studied. The results show that hydrogen enrichment retards the combustion phasing and reduces the combustion duration of a diesel HCCI engine. Besides, hydrogen enrichment increases the power output and fuel conversion efficiency, and improves the combustion stability. However, hydrogen enrichment may narrow the operational compression ratio range and increase the knocking tendency. Both the overall... 

Producing mature and functional cardiomyocytes (CMs) by in vitro differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using only biochemical cues is challenging. To mimic the biophysical and biomechanical complexity of the native in vivo environment during the differentiation and maturation process, polydimethylsiloxane substrates with 3D topography at the micrometer and sub-micrometer levels are developed and used as cell-culture substrates. The results show that while cylindrical patterns on the substrates resembling mature CMs enhance the maturation of iPSC-derived CMs, sub-micrometer-level topographical features derived by imprinting primary human CMs further accelerate both the... 

Resonant sensors based on micro- A nd nano-electro mechanical systems (M/NEMS) are ubiquitous in many sensing applications due to their outstanding performance capabilities, which are directly proportional to the quality factor (Q) of the devices. We address here a recurrent question in the field: Do dynamical techniques that modify the effective Q (namely parametric pumping and direct drive velocity feedback) affect the performance of said sensors? We develop analytical models of both cases, while remaining in the linear regime, and introduce noise in the system from two separate sources: Thermomechanical and amplifier (read-out) noise. We observe that parametric pumping enhances the... 

The insulation lifetime of power cables is determined by several factors. One of the more important of these is the occurrence of partial discharge (PD) at the dielectric. The ability to detect and locate a PD source is limited by attenuation of the high frequency PD pulses as they propagate through the cable. Therefore it is necessary to understand the high frequency response of such cables. Further, to enable reconstruction of PD signals as emitted a viable high frequency model for simulation is needed. This paper presents results of measurements of PD calibration pulse and high frequency sinusoid propagation in HV XLPE cables. In addition to the tests a cable model was developed using the... 

In this paper, we present a multi-user resource allocation framework using fragmented-spectrum synchronous OFDM-CDMA modulation over a frequency-selective fading channel. In particular, given pre-existing communications in the spectrum where the system is operating, a channel sensing and estimation method is used to obtain information of subcarrier availability. Given this information, some real-valued multi-level orthogonal codes, which are orthogonal codes with values of {±1, ±2, ±3, ±4,...}, are provided for emerging new users, i.e., cognitive radio users. Additionally, we have obtained a closed form expression for bit error rate of cognitive radio receivers in terms of detection... 

The principal intention of this work is to fabricate and characterize the polyamide/chitosan nanocomposite by a novel single solvent method through the electrospinning procedure. The thermal properties and morphology of prepared nanocomposite are studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). TGA exposed that the primary decomposition temperature is reduced with rising of chitosan content in the nanocomposites and origin disintegration temperature for polyamide/chitosan nanocomposites is perceived to be in the range from 300 to 500 °C. Also, FE-SEM images demonstrated that the nanofibers of chitosan have good adhesion on the matrix and... 

The principal intention of this work is to fabricate and characterize the polyamide/chitosan nanocomposite by a novel single solvent method through the electrospinning procedure. The thermal properties and morphology of prepared nanocomposite are studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). TGA exposed that the primary decomposition temperature is reduced with rising of chitosan content in the nanocomposites and origin disintegration temperature for polyamide/chitosan nanocomposites is perceived to be in the range from 300 to 500 °C. Also, FE-SEM images demonstrated that the nanofibers of chitosan have good adhesion on the matrix and... 

In this paper, we describe a carbon dioxide mineralization process and its associated solid products. These solid products include amorphous silica, iron hydroxides and magnesium carbonates. These products were subjected to various characterization tests, and the results are published here. It was found that the iron hydroxides from this process can have different crystalline properties, and their formation depended very much on the pH of the reaction conditions. Different forms of magnesium carbonate were also obtained, and the type of carbonate precipitated was found to be dependent on the carbonation temperature. Hydromagnesite was obtained mainly at low temperatures, while dypingite was... 

In Cognitive Radio (CR), in order to avoid interference in the Primary Users (PU), some subcarriers need to be deactivated. In systems based on Multicarrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA), this causes losing orthogonality among different spreading codes, leading to poor Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. The performance of such system can be improved by using Generalized Hadamard Codes (GHC) instead of conventional Hadamard codes which avoids the loss of orthogonality. This is due to the fact that unlike conventional Hadamard codes, GHC are conjectured to exist for any arbitrary length. In this paper, we propose using a novel spreading code, namely, GHC for synchronous MC-CDMA in CR... 

In this paper a method for selecting optimal wavelet is introduced, which is implemented for evaluating electrical measured partial discharges on a 66 kV/25 MVA fully interleaved winding of a power transformer. Applying wavelet transform to a signal produces a wavelet detail coefficient distribution throughout the time-scale, which depends on the wavelet chosen. This method is based on the capability of the chosen wavelet for generating coefficients with maximal values. The basic idea of this method is described and applications to partial discharge studies are explored. The paper demonstrates that the wavelet based de-noising method proposed in the paper can be employed in extracting the PD... 

Considering the globalization concept, all companies around the world are able to communicate with each other, share their technologies, and eliminate their production incapability issues. To achieve this goal, Cloud manufacturing system has been proposed. One of the most important issues in Cloud manufacturing is service composition, in which composition of cloud services is determined to meet customer orders. This paper considers a single-product supply network over one period in Cloud manufacturing system with the goal of service composition optimization. The network is designed in a layered structure considering transportation and production services and customers can be classified in... 

This paper presents a fragmented-spectrum synchronous OFDM-CDMA modulation and utilize it as secondary users modulation in a cognitive radio-based network to provide high data rate by efficiently exploiting available spectrum bands in a target spectral range while simultaneously offering multiple-access capability. In particular, given preexisting communications in the spectrum where the system is operating, a channel sensing and estimation method is used to obtain information of subcarrier availability. Given this information, some three-level codes are provided for emerging new cognitive radio users. Furthermore, analytical results of the system performance in a typical cognitive radio... 

Chitosan is a natural polymer with acceptable biocompatibility, biodegradability, and mechanical stability; hence, it has been widely appraised for drug and gene delivery applications. However, there has been no comprehensive assessment to tailor-make chitosan cross-linkers of various types and functionalities as well as complex chitosan-based semi- and full-interpenetrating networks for drug delivery systems (DDSs). Herein, various fabrication methods developed for chitosan hydrogels are deliberated, including chitosan crosslinking with and without diverse cross-linkers. Tripolyphosphate, genipin and multi-functional aldehydes, carboxylic acids, and epoxides are common cross-linkers used in... 

Graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) were synthesized using an oxidative unzipping of multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The interactions of the GONRs with various concentrations of fetal bovine serum or human plasma serum indicated that the GONRs were functionalized substantially by the albumin originated from the two different protein sources. Then, concentration-dependent cytotoxicity of the protein-functionalized GONRs on human epithelial cells was studied. Although the GONRs with concentrations ≤50 μg/mL did not exhibit significant cytotoxicity on the cells (with the cell viability >85%), the concentration of 100 μg/mL exhibited significant cytotoxicity including prevention of cell...