Sharif Digital Repository

In the past 10 years Iran has been emerging as a major car producer in the world. However, due to delays in economic reforms, Iranian car exports have not increased as much as production. This paper presents a first estimation of the Iranian export potential in the car industry. Based on new theoretical developments of the gravity equation, an empirical bilateral trade model is proposed. It includes sectoral variables (car production, import tariffs), as well as other original variables, such as expectations and hysteresis. We then develop a dataset which includes the 40 major car-exporting countries in the world, 34 importing countries, a 10-year time period as well as four car production... 

New treatment technologies are currently being investigated for the treatment of contaminated drilling waste mud with oil. Supercritical fluid extraction is a promising technology that could be effectively used to extract this contaminated drilling waste mud. In this work, one step extraction efficiency of supercritical carbon dioxide to drilling waste mud of South Pars gas field has been investigated at a range of temperatures (55 to 79.5 °C), and over a pressure range of 160 to 220 bar. Extraction efficiencies were calculated based on cuttings weight loss. Results show that approximately 28.45% of cuttings weight loss in one step extraction at a pressure of 200 bar and temperature of 60 °C... 

Implementation of green management in sports complexes can ensure the continuous arrangement and assessment of activities from an environmental perspective and will end up with the control and prevention of contaminants. Enghelab Sports Complex in Iran was selected for this study due to its size and long-term activities. The establishment of Enghelab Sports Complex is among important national projects whose framework was founded in the late 1950s. Due to the comprehensive plan of the aforesaid sports complex, numerous centers and departments were established in this site in order to materialize its envisioned sports, recreational and cultural objectives. Green management pursues greater... 

According to one survey on energy consumption in Iran, commercial and building sector consume more energy than any other economic sectors. For example, about 38% of total energy that consumed in year 2001 has been used for space heating. Insulation in external walls of buildings has an important role to reduce the environmental effects on indoor space condition. Therefore, always using insulation is an alternative to avoid from the energy loss. In this paper, the effects of the using of a proper insulation on the energy saving in Iranian buildings are studied. For this purpose, an integrative modelling is used for simulation of the energy consumption in buildings. It is shown that energy... 

Integrated seismic attributes, coherency, acoustic impedance (AI), lambda-rho (λρ) and mu-rho (μρ), were used to delineate and to characterize a complex regional channel deposition system in a carbonate reservoir interval in the upper part of the Sarvak Formation. The study area incorporates three adjacent oil fields in SW Iran (Khuzestan Province) covered by three individual 3D seismic surveys having a total area of about 2800 km 2. We generated a regional horizon-based coherency cube using these three seismic surveys. This revealed a carbonate clastic deposition channelling system over the entire study area. We characterized this channel deposition system in agreement with regional... 

An unstructured grid, finite-volume, and three-dimensional (3D) primitive equation ocean model has been developed to predict oceanic pollutant dispersions in depth and surface of the Caspian Sea for non-chemical reactions of dissolved constituents. The model consists of momentum, continuity, temperature, salinity, and density equations. Physical and mathematical closure has been achieved using Mellor and Yamada turbulent closure sub-models. Since determining a practical definition of salinity that enjoys acceptable accuracy is difficult; therefore, various definitions have been used in this work. A recent definition of salinity stated in the UNESCO Practical Salinity Scale of 1978, PSS78,... 

Two new designs of wind towers were tested side by side with a conventional wind tower in the city of Yazd, Iran. All the towers were of identical dimensions. The two new designs were one with wetted column, consisting of wetted curtains hung in the tower column, and the other one with wetted surfaces, consisting of wetted evaporative cooling pads mounted at its entrance. The air temperature leaving the wind towers with evaporative cooling provisions were much lower than the air temperature leaving the conventional design, and its relative humidity much higher. The air-flow rate was reduced slightly in these new towers. It was found that the wind tower with wetted column performs better with... 

Owing to the devastating M7.6 earthquake of 20 June 1990 that occurred in the northern province of Iran, Sefid-rud concrete buttress dam located near the epicenter was severely shaken. The crack penetrated throughout the dam thickness near slope discontinuity, causing severe leakage, but with no general failure. In this study, nonlinear seismic response of the highest monolith with empty reservoir is investigated experimentally through model testing. A geometric-scaled model of 1:30 was tested on a shaking table with high-frequency capability to study dynamic cracking of the model and serve as data for nonlinear computer model calibration. Three construction joints are set up in the model to... 

Rock samples from the Asmary outcrop formation of the Ahwaz oil rich zone with a porosity of 16% and permeability of 1 md and MIS crude oil with an API value of 42.5 and moderate asphaltene content of 3%, were used to study the effect of the incubation time and flow rate of the displacing fluid in MEOR operations. Five species of rod shaped, gram positive, thermophile and facultative bacteria were isolated and purified from the crude. Due to the high sweep efficiency prevailing in the core flooding system, the effect of the displacing brine flow rate on the oil recovery efficiency was found not to be significant. On the other hand, a 100% increase in incubation time from 7 to 14 days... 

A mesophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, has been isolated (33°C) from a typical chalcopyrite copper concentrate of the Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine in the region of Kerman located in the south of Iran. In addition, a thermophilic iron oxidizing bacterium, Sulfobacillus spp., has been isolated (60°C) from the Kooshk Lead and Zinc Mine near the city of Yazd in the mid-west region of Iran. The variation of pH, ferrous and ferric concentration and cell growth on the time and effects of some factors, such as temperature and initial ferrous concentration, on the bioleaching of chalcopyrite concentrate obtained from Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine, were investigated. Bioleaching... 

This paper describes an attempt to develop congestion indices for a developing country with a limited sampling. Speed and flow rate information was collected from urban highway traffic flow videotaping in Iran. Video display provided information for traffic modeling when, similar to most of the developing nations, Iran does not have locally developed highway capacity manuals. Processing of the extracted data and traffic modeling provided free and capacity flow information for the selected freeway and principal arterial sections for the capital city of Tehran. The congestion indices were associated, in simple and logical models, with five traffic descriptive variables of travel speed, travel... 

Sarabs (spring-fed pools) are an important natural freshwater resource in Iran where they are used for potable, agricultural and recreational purposes. A survey of 17 Sarabs was undertaken in the Province of Kermanshah to obtain data on their water quality and biology which would help inform future management of these multifunctional resources. These Sarabs differed greatly in size (50-30000m2 surface area) and were situated at altitudes of between 622 and 1697 m above sea level. The average dissolved oxygen content and pH of the water was between 4.5 and 10mg O2/1, and 6.95 and 7.6 respectively. The Sarabs differed particularly in their dissolved solids content from 100μS/cm (detectable... 

Implementation of green management in sport complexes can ensure the continuous arrangement and assessment of activities from the environmental perspective and will end up in control and prevention of contaminants. Enghelab sport complex (ESC) in Iran is selected for this study due to its size and long-term activities. Due to the comprehensive plan of the aforesaid sports complex, numerous centers and departments were established in this site in order to materialize its envisioned sports, recreational and cultural objectives. The results of the questionnaires distributed amongst the members and the personnel of the complex revealed that approximately 50 % occupants were not acquainted with... 

Truck accidents are an issue of concern due to their severity. Logit modeling and Neural Network modeling are performed to investigate factors such as vehicle, roadway, environment and driver characteristics that can potentially contribute to the severity of truck accidents. The objective of this study is to present models that can predict the severity of truck accidents and to identify the important factors causing these accidents. Comparison between neural networks and logit modeling are made using vehicle crash data on two-lane rural highways in Iran. A variety of variables related to roadways, vehicles, environment and drivers, such as, driver fatigue, head-on collision and lack of... 

The Social Cost of nuisance noise from a wind turbine is defined here as the additional cost to reduce the noise level at a receptor to an exceptable, non-nuisance value, i.e. to mitigate this cost. This acceptable sound level is considered to be 35 dB. Our example is a 10-kW (nominal power) wind turbine considered to supply the electrical energy needs of a 3-storey residential building in Tehran and Manjil. The turbine generates sound at 75 dB. To reduce the sound level at the third floor of the building to 35 dB, it was necessary to increase the height of the turbine from 24 m to 48 m. The initial installed cost of the turbine thereby increased from US$45.000 to US$55,000. The cost of... 

Urban transportation is one of the main sources of air pollution in mega cities, and urban job related trips can effectively influence the state of air quality. Tehran, the capital of Iran, with a population of 7.3 million, was selected for this study. The present model is designed to investigate the effect on traffic of the business working hours of different occupations and, as a result, on the status of air pollution. Daily job, non-job and recreational trips using the present vehicle fleet is a major factor affecting air pollution in Tehran. In the context of the present study, the necessary information was utilized to define some relations between job trips and pollutant emissions. The... 

Domed roofs have been used in Iran and many other countries to cover large buildings such as mosques, shrines, churches, schools, etc. However their favorable thermal performance has allowed them to be employed in other buildings like bazaars, or market places in Iran. In this investigation, wind pressure coefficients were determined experimentally for a domed roof model in a boundary layer wind tunnel. The model was a 1/10 scale model of the dome of an old school in the city of Yazd, in the central desert region of Iran. The model included a number of windows at the collar of the dome, and a hole on its apex. A total of 48 pressure tabs were employed to measure the air pressure at various... 

In recent years there have been many efforts to develop a hydrogen energy system in Iran. For instance, the Iranian fuel cell steering committee conducted a project and determined some targets to implement hydrogen in different sectors, especially transportation. In this paper, the costs of building stations and the levelized cost of hydrogen for two types of stations, SMR and electrolysis, with various sizes and capacity factors have been investigated. Also, in the case of electrolysis, hydrogen cost sensitivity to the price of electricity has been examined. According to the cost analysis conducted here, it is understandable that hydrogen costs ($/kg) vary considerably based on station... 

Monthly and annual variations in sediment yield during a 24-year period were analysed for 10 sub-catchments in the Daryacheh-Namak drainage basin, Iran. Highest specific suspended sediment yields were recorded at Razin and the lowest at Solan, reflecting large land-use changes in the former, and the presence of relatively resistant formations in thelatter sub-catchment. Highest sediment yields were observed in the months of April, March, May and November, and the lowest in September and August. At almost all stations, the highest sediment yield occurs in the spring, reflecting higher rainfall in that season. Copyright © 2007 IAHS Press  

Remotely sensed data inherently contain noise. The development of inverse modelling methods with a low sensitivity to noise is in demand for the estimation of geophysical variables from remotely sensed data. The Active Learning Method (ALM) is well known to have a low sensitivity to noise. For the first time, ALM was utilized for the inversion of radiative transfer calculations with the aim of estimating chlorophyll a (Chl a), coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM), and suspended particulate matter (SPM) in the Caspian Sea using MERIS (MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) data. ALM training is straightforward and fast. The ALM inversion models revealed the most relevant variables and...