Sharif Digital Repository

Purpose: This paper aims to study the thermal and thermo-hydraulic performances of ferro-nanofluid flow in a three-dimensional trapezoidal microchannel heat sink (TMCHS) under uniform heat flux and magnetic fields. Design/methodology/approach: To investigate the effect of direction of Lorentz force the magnetic field has been applied: transversely in the x direction (Case I);transversely in the y direction (Case II); and parallel in the z direction (Case III). The three-dimensional governing equations with the associated boundary conditions for ferro-nanofluid flow and heat transfer have been solved by using an element-based finite volume method. The coupled algorithm has been used to solve... 

Active edge sites of MoS2 nanosheets exhibit promising futures for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), comparable with remarkable performances of highly cost platinum. However, 3D structures of MoS2 suffer from a lack of high mobility and unexposed active sites which lower the electrocatalytic activity. In this study, we show that there is a balance between increasing the active sites on the one hand and managing the charge transfer to facilitate the reaction on the other hand, and achieving this balance increases the efficiency of the electrocatalyst tremendously. For this purpose, we directly attached exfoliated MoS2 nanosheets onto carbon cloth (CC) substrate as a 3D network of conductive... 

This letter presents a unified framework for the design of prescribed-time controllers under time-varying input and state constraints for normal-form unknown nonlinear systems with uncertain input gain. The proposed approach is based on a time-domain mapping method by which any infinite-time system can be corresponded to a prescribed-time system and vice versa. It is shown that the design of a constrained nonasymptotic prescribed-time controller can be reduced to the asymptotic control design for an associated constrained infinite-time system. Faà di Bruno’s formula and Bell polynomials are used for a constructive representation of the associated infinite-time system. The presented results... 

The seismic risk framework of building structures has been presented to reduce earthquake-induced adverse consequences. In this context, probabilistic analysis of engineering demand parameters (EDPs) is always associated with many uncertainties and high computational demand for use in practical applications. This study has been presented to efficiently estimate the distribution of EDPs in probabilistic seismic risk assessment of irregular steel moment-resisting frames (SMRFs). For this purpose, the incorporation of the consistent fish-bone (CFB) model and the endurance time (ET) analysis method has been used. The proposed method (i.e., CFB-ET) has a substantial impact on reducing the... 

In recent years, the need to reduce environmental impacts and increase flexibility in the energy sector has led to increased penetration of renewable energy sources and the shift from concentrated to decentralized generation. A fuel cell is an instrument that produces electricity by chemical reaction. Fuel cells are a promising technology for ultimate energy conversion and energy generation. We see that this system is integrated, where we find that the wind and photovoltaic energy system is complementary between them, because not all days are sunny, windy, or night, so we see that this system has higher reliability to provide continuous generation. At low load hours, PV and electrolysis... 

The seismic risk framework of building structures has been presented to reduce earthquake-induced adverse consequences. In this context, probabilistic analysis of engineering demand parameters (EDPs) is always associated with many uncertainties and high computational demand for use in practical applications. This study has been presented to efficiently estimate the distribution of EDPs in probabilistic seismic risk assessment of irregular steel moment-resisting frames (SMRFs). For this purpose, the incorporation of the consistent fish-bone (CFB) model and the endurance time (ET) analysis method has been used. The proposed method (i.e., CFB-ET) has a substantial impact on reducing the... 

In recent years, the need to reduce environmental impacts and increase flexibility in the energy sector has led to increased penetration of renewable energy sources and the shift from concentrated to decentralized generation. A fuel cell is an instrument that produces electricity by chemical reaction. Fuel cells are a promising technology for ultimate energy conversion and energy generation. We see that this system is integrated, where we find that the wind and photovoltaic energy system is complementary between them, because not all days are sunny, windy, or night, so we see that this system has higher reliability to provide continuous generation. At low load hours, PV and electrolysis... 

Solar Chimney (SC) can play a significant role in energy consumption reduction of ventilation applications. The primary purpose of this study is to ameliorate the performance of an inclined rooftop SC integrated with the Phase Change Material (PCM) and Photovoltaic (PV) module, called the SC-PCM-PV system. To this aim, the effects of using finned absorbers and composite PCMs on the performance of the SC-PCM-PV system are investigated for the first time. A 3D-CFD model is developed via the finite volume method to examine the impact of various design parameters, including fin number, fin thickness, PCM type, and PCM mass on natural ventilation duration, ventilation capacity, and power output.... 

A novel MED-based desalination system for low-grade heat sources with a temperature between 65 °C and 90 °C has been proposed. Low-grade heat-driven desalination systems are of the most important methods for increasing energy efficiency and assisting the environment along with alleviating the water scarcity problem. The new proposed system is known as cascade multi-effect distillation (CMED). It is designed based on multi-step heat extraction from the heat source fluid (HSF). Multi-step heat absorption helps to form two arrays of MED effects and to utilize two boosters to achieve better performance. The advantage of this system is less complexity (for example, lower vapor injection), and... 

We show that the hydrophobicity of sequences is the leading term in Miyazawa-Jernigan interactions. Being the source of additive (solvation) terms in pair-contact interactions, they were used to reduce the energy parameters while resulting in a clear vector manipulation of energy. The reduced (additive) potential performs considerably successful in predicting the statistical properties of arbitrary structures. The evaluated designabilities of the structures by both models are highly correlated. Suggesting geometrically nondegenerate vectors (structures) as proteinlike structures, the additive model is a powerful tool for protein design. Moreover, a crossing point in the log-linear diagram of... 

A core mapping method for reconfigurable network-on-chip (NoC) architectures is presented in this paper. In most of the existing methods, mapping is carried out based on the traffic characteristics of a single application. However, several different applications are implemented and integrated in the modern complex system-on-chips which should be considered by mapping methods. In the proposed method, the reconfiguration (which is achieved by embedding programmable switches between routers of a mesh-based NoC) allows us to dynamically change the network topology in order to adapt it with the running application and optimize the power and performance metrics. The presented network architecture... 

In recent years, electromyogram signal (EMG) feature selection, based on wavelet transform, has received considerable attention. This study introduces a new multiwavelet function for surface EMG (sEMG) signal intended for tasks that involve hand movement recognition. To create the new wavelet function, several types of well known mother wavelet were exploited and through their integration the proposed mother wavelet was generated. The proposed wavelet function closely reproduced the characteristics of the EMG signal, while increasing the recognition accuracy of hand movements. We used eight unique classes of hand motions and considered the ability of various mother wavelets and the proposed... 

One of the challenges a transformer designer is faced with is to correctly model the different types of transformer windings for transient study. For a precise insulation design, determination of transformer transient responses is unavoidable. The basis of these studies is calculation of transient responses due to application of standard switching and lightning impulse wave to the transformer winding. In a previous work, a computer program was developed for determination of the layer and disk type windings transient model parameters based on design data. This program has all of the necessary capabilities for a detailed transient study. As a continuation of that work, in this paper a method... 

This paper investigates the effects of transistor sizing of the sleep transistor on the power consumption and speed. A method is proposed to handle the power-delay trade off and a new transistor arrangement is proposed. Simulations show how much is the appropriate size of sleep transistor respect to the gate size  

Silk fibroin (SF) has been broadly applied in wound dressing fabrication because of its proper features for wound healing. In this work, we developed a carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)/gelatin blend film with different concentrations of glycerol, and modified the optimized film with an SF layer through electrospinning process. Tensile strength and cell viability evaluation of blend films demonstrated that the glycerol content of 3% could be suitable as the substrate layer for the two-layer wound dressing. The morphology of the blend film and electrospun nanofibers was obtained from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). It concluded that... 

A Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) is a renewable energy-based HVAC system that extracts or supplies heat from/to the ground via a Ground Heat Exchanger (GHE). One of the most commonly used types of GHE in GSHP systems is the energy pile. In this realm, the GSHP system with a triple helix energy pile has become the focus of attention. To this aim, a comprehensive three-dimensional transient Computational Fluid Dynamics model of the energy pile with triple helix GHE and the surrounding soil is developed. The effect of several parameters, including helix pitch, helix diameter and pipe diameter, on the thermal performance of the system, is investigated. Simulated cases are chosen using the design... 

The development of inexpensive, equipment-free, portable, and user/environmentally-friendly analytical devices that can be efficiently utilized for on-site detection of PA is still a great challenge. To address these unmet demands, we have developed a smartphone-based disposable sensing bioplatform through immobilization of chlorophyll in a cotton thread for fluorescent monitoring of picric acid (PA). The fluorescence quenching of chlorophyll upon increasing the PA concentration based on the inner filter effect was considered as the sensing strategy in the developed sensor. The fabricated thread-based microfluidic sensing bioplatform was further coupled with a compact, low cost, portable,... 

It has always been a human challenge to inspire natural configurations and phenomena and benefit from their merits in improving the performances of man-made proposed aero/hydro vehicles. For example, the manta rays are known for their great swimming performances. To design and fabricate an underwater robot based on the manta ray geometry and its kinematic characteristics, it is important to initially study its hydrodynamic behavior and possibly arrive at some key design parameters, which can remarkably help to figure out an optimum geometry with high swimming performances. The main objective of this study is to focus on the merits of gliding motion inspired by the manta ray fish considering... 

Wearable human activity recognition systems (HAR) using inertial measurement units (IMU) play a key role in the development of smart rehabilitation systems. Training of a HAR system with patient data is costly, time-consuming, and difficult for the patients. This study proposes a new scheme for the optimal design of HARs with minimal involvement of the patients. It uses healthy subject data for optimal design for a set of activities used in the rehabilitation of PD1 patients. It maintains its performance for individual PD subjects using a single session data collection and an adaptation procedure. In the optimal design, several classifiers (i.e. NM, k-NN, MLP with RBF as a hidden layer, and... 

We study the problem of experiment design to learn causal structures from interventional data. We consider an active learning setting in which the experimenter decides to intervene on one of the variables in the system in each step and uses the results of the intervention to recover further causal relationships among the variables. The goal is to fully identify the causal structures with minimum number of interventions. We present the first deep reinforcement learning based solution for the problem of experiment design. In the proposed method, we embed input graphs to vectors using a graph neural network and feed them to another neural network which outputs a variable for performing...