Sharif Digital Repository

In the present study, three influential parameters including concentration, temperature and specific surface area of graphene nanosheets were investigated, which are the effective parameters on the viscosity and thermal conductivity of aqueous graphene nanosheets (GNP) nanofluids. A mathematical model developed by respond surface methodology (RSM) based on a central composite design (CCD). Also, the significance of the models was tested using the analysis of variance (ANOVA). The optimum results of aqueous GNP nanofluid showed that the concentration has a direct effect on the relative viscosity and thermal conductivity. Furthermore, predicted responses proposed by the Design Expert software... 

Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the process of biodiesel production from Iranian bitter almond oil. Design of experiments was performed by application of a 5-level-3-factor central composite design in order to study the effect of different factors on the product yield, biodiesel yield and biodiesel purity. These factors were reaction temperature (30-70°C), catalyst concentration (0.3-1.7% w/w) and methanol to oil molar ratio (4.4-13.6 mol/mol). A quadratic model was suggested for the prediction of the biodiesel yield. Analysis of variance revealed that the factors were significant on the production process of biodiesel. For each factor, the optimum value was... 

Preparation, characterization and evaluation of new generation of micro-filters based on polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofiberous membrane (ENM) were thoroughly investigated. First, quantitative relationships between average diameter, bead area density of nano-fibers and certain electrospinning parameters, i.e., concentration, voltage, spinning distance, and feed rate, were established by empirical modeling based on a central composite design. The analysis revealed that concentration, voltage and distance are the significant parameters. Also, adequacy checking indicated the appropriateness of fit for the models. Afterwards, bead-free ENMs with diameter of 100-500 nm were prepared and... 

Fixtures play a key role in locating workpieces to manufacture high quality products within many processes of the product lifecycle. Inaccuracies in workpiece location lead to errors in position and orientation of machined features on the workpiece, and strongly affect the assemblability and the final quality of the product. The accurate positioning of workpiece on a fixture is influenced by rigid body displacements and rotations of the workpiece. In this paper, a systematic approach is introduced to investigate the located workpiece position errors. A new mathematical formulation of fixture locators modeling is proposed to establish the relationship between the workpiece position error and... 

The key element of a spoken dialogue system is a spoken language understanding (SLU) unit. Hidden Vector State (HVS) is one of the most popular statistical approaches employed to implement the SLU unit. This paper presents a two-step approach for Persian language understanding. First, a goal detector is used to identify the main goal of the input utterance. Second, after restricting the search space for semantic tagging, an extended hidden vector state (EHVS) parser is used to extract the remaining semantics in each subspace. This will mainly improve the performance of semantic tagger, while reducing the model complexity and training time. Moreover, the need for large amount of data will be... 

Least squares estimation is a widely-used technique for range-based source localization, which obtains the most probable position of mobile station. These methods cannot provide desirable accuracy in the case with a non line of sight (NLOS) path between mobile station and base stations. To circumvent this drawback, many algorithms have been proposed to identify and mitigate this error; however, they have a large run-time overhead. On the other hand, new positioning systems utilize a large set of base stations, and a practical algorithm should be fast enough to deal with them. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm based on subspace method to identify and eliminate the NLOS error.... 

In this study a review of the developed methods to estimate groundwater withdrawal (GWW) from aquifers by pumping wells is provided. Then, a method adopted by Iran's Basic Studies Bureau of Water Resources Management Company for estimation of GWW through 536 aquifers across Iran is presented and modified. This so-called “representative pumping wells network” (RPWN) approach is a combination of statistical and rate-and-time methods which has been implemented for all aquifers in Iran since 2007. The RPWN approach is based on the overlaying of 10 important features in a GIS environment and classified in a number of zones in which their withdrawals are statistically different. The representative... 

In order to estimate both maximum displacement and maximum inertia force of bilinear hysteretic system subjected to earthquake motions, an equivalent linearization approach with new effective parameters is presented. Effective mass and effective damping ratio as pair of effective parameters instead of the effective period and effective damping ratio in existing equivalent linear systems are introduced. Two error measures for displacement and inertia force are defined. Error distributions over a two-dimensional parameter space of effective parameters are analysed, and the parameters are determined through a statistical approach with a dual optimization criterion for displacement and inertia... 

Oil reservoirs are very complex with geological heterogeneities that appear on all scales. Proper modeling of the spatial distribution of these heterogeneities is crucial, affecting all aspects of flow and, consequently, the reservoir performance. Reservoir connectivity and conductivity evaluation is of great importance for decision-making on various possible development scenarios including infill drilling projects. This can be addressed by using the percolation theory approach. This statistical approach considers a hypothesis that the reservoir can be split into either permeable (good sands) or impermeable flow units (poor sands) and assumes that the continuity of permeability contrasts...