Sharif Digital Repository

Various natural and modified polysaccharides (i.e. arabic gum, tragacanth gum, xanthan gum, sodium alginate, chitosan, sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxyethyl cellulose, methyl cellulose) were modified using ceric-initiated graft polymerization of acrylonitrile under inert atmosphere. Grafting was confirmed using spectral (FT-IR) proofs. The grafting parameters were determined by conventional methods. Thermal characteristics of the homopolymer-free copolymers were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) under nitrogen atmosphere. The major thermal transitions as well as the activation energy of the major decomposition stages were... 

Application of residential demand response (DR) programs are currently realized up to a limited extent due to customers' difficulty in manually responding to the time-differentiated prices. As a solution, this paper proposes an automatic home load management (HLM) framework to achieve the household minimum payment as well as meet the operational constraints to provide customer's comfort. The projected HLM method controls on/off statuses of responsive appliances and the charging/discharging periods of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and battery storage at home. This paper also studies the impacts of different time-varying tariffs, i.e., time of use (TOU), real time pricing (RTP), and... 

Smartening of contemporaneous power delivery systems in conjunction with the increased penetration of renewable energies (REs), change the way to energize consumers who are willing to maximize their utility from energy consumption. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty in the electricity markets of such systems. Moreover, the unprecedented ascending penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) mainly harvesting REs is a direct consequence of environmentally friendly concerns. This type of energy resources brings about more uncertainties into power system operation resulting in, necessitates probabilistic analysis of the system performance. In the smarter power markets,... 

In this paper, a new approach for controlling the sway angle of the load in trolley cranes is presented which is based on the flexibility of the cable and variation of its length by the time. The crane dynamics has been described by hybrid PDE and ODE equations which uses the PDE as the equations of motion for the flexible cable and ODE for those of the trolley and the load. The purpose of the controller is to transport the load to the desired position and to eliminate its sway angle at the destination. The control law is based on the Lyapunov's second method. The efficiency of the proposed controller is demonstrated via various simulations  

In this paper, at first the stability condition which gives an upper stochastic bound for a class of Stochastic Hybrid Systems (SHS) with deterministic jumps is derived. Here, additive noise signals are considered that do not vanish at equilibrium points. The presented theorem gives an upper bound for the second stochastic moment or variance of the system trajectories. Then, the linear case of SHS is investigated to show the application of the theorem. For the linear case of such stochastic hybrid systems, the stability criterion is obtained in terms of Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) and an upper bound on state covariance is obtained for them. Then utilizing the stability theorem, an output... 

Differential Evolution (DE) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) are population based search algorithms that come under the category of evolutionary optimization techniques. In the present study, these evolutionary methods have been utilized to conduct the optimum design of a fuzzy controller for mobile robot trajectory tracking. Comparison between their performances has also been conducted. In this paper, we will present a fuzzy controller to the problem of mobile robot path tracking for a CEDRA rescue robot. After designing the fuzzy tracking controller, the membership functions will be optimized by evolutionary algorithms in order to obtain more acceptable results  

In this work a new method for analyzing nanostructured materials has been proposed to accelerate the simulations for solid crystalline materials. The proposed Structural Approximation Method (SAM) is based on Molecular Dynamics (MD) and the accuracy of the results can also be improved in a systematic manner by sacrificing the simulation speed. In this method a virtual material is used instead of the real one, which has less number of atoms and therefore fewer degrees of freedom, compared to the real material. The number of differential equations that must be integrated in order to specify the state of the system will decrease significantly, and the simulation speed increases. To generalize... 

Chatter suppression is of great importance for achieving high precision and surface quality in machining processes. A single degree of freedom model of orthogonal turning process is used to set up the nonlinear delay differential equation of motion. Tool wear effect is considered as the contact force between the workpiece and tool flank surfaces. Uncertainties in parameters of dynamic model and machining conditions are included in the model. An adaptive control strategy is applied for chatter suppression in cutting process. The force provided by a piezoactuator is the control input of the system. Results of stability analysis and adaptive control for two distinct cases of sharp and worn... 

This work aims to discuss the results of wide ranges of laboratory investigations to evaluate the performance of a newly-formulated surfactant for heavy oil reservoirs in order to improve the microscopic sweep efficiency after water flooding processes. In the first part, the specific behavior of the formulated surfactant including its salinity tolerance, interfacial tension, and optimum performance window was determined. Then, the application of surfactant solutions in real sandstone reservoir rocks was assessed for both oil-wet and water-wet cases. Besides, the effect of changing the capillary and viscous forces and interfacial tension on the residual phase saturations were characterized.... 

This paper presents an unilateralization technique for distributed amplifiers (DAs) based on the transformer coupling between the gate and drain lines. Theoretical analysis of the DA indicates that the voltage waves in the gate and drain lines can be described by a system of linear partial differential equations. The transformer coupling between the lines allows for cancellation of the reverse transmission coefficient of the system. There is an optimal value for the coupling coefficient between the lines that unilateralizes the DA. This optimal coupling coefficient is derived in terms of the gate-drain capacitance and capacitances of the gate and drain lines. Using the proposed technique,... 

In this paper, for the first time, chaotic behavior of a classical moving-mirror Fabry-Perot cavity is obtained by finding numerical solution of a system of delay differential equations (previously obtained by a phenomenological approach (T. Carmon, M. C. Cross, K. J. Vahala, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 (2007) 167203)). Fourier transform of the electromagnetic power for different values of pump power is calculated. By increasing the power, a period-doubling route to chaos is observed. Since the quality factor of the cavity has an important role in the chaotic behavior, variation of Lyapunov exponent and threshold power for the onset of chaos versus quality factor are investigated. A near linear... 

The purpose of this study is to investigate separation performance of poly(ether-b-amide6) (Pebax1657)/glycerol triacetate (GTA) gel membranes for CO2 removal from H2, N2 and CH4. GTA as a low molecular weight and highly CO2-phill compound was added to membrane structure at various weight fractions, 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of Pebax, to fabricate a new high solubility selective membrane with improved performance. Permeation of pure gases was studied at different temperatures from 25 to 65°C and pressures from 4 to 24bar and ideal selectivities were calculated. Results indicated enhancement in permeation for all tested gases. For example, at a pressure of 4bar and a temperature of 25°C, membrane... 

This paper aims to explore the dynamic behaviour of a nano-resonator under ac and dc excitation using strain gradient theory. To achieve this goal, the partial differential equation of nano-beam vibration is first converted to an ordinary differential equation by the Galerkin projection method and the lumped model is derived. Lumped parameters of the nano-resonator, such as linear and nonlinear springs and damper coefficients, are compared with those of classical theory and it is demonstrated that beams with smaller thickness display greater deviation from classical parameters. Stable and unstable equilibrium points based on classic and non-classical theories are also compared. The results... 

In this study, dynamic response of a micro- and nanobeams under electrostatic actuation is investigated using strain gradient theory. To solve the governing sixth-order partial differential equation, mode shapes and natural frequencies of beam using Euler–Bernoulli and strain gradient theories are derived and then compared with classical theory. Galerkin projection is utilized to convert the partial differential equation to ordinary differential equations representing the system mode shapes. Accuracy of proposed one degree of freedom model is verified by comparing the dynamic response of the electrostatically actuated micro-beam with analogue equation and differential quadrature methods.... 

Gas injection is the second largest enhanced oil recovery process being applied in many reservoirs around the world. Simulation of these processes is necessary for implementation, management, and decision making. Relative permeability is one of the most important factors in numerical reservoir simulation. In this study, several core flood experiments are done and the relative permeability in carbon dioxide (CO2) injection is compared with nitrogen (N2) injection. Oil relative permeability in CO 2 injection is found to be higher than in N2 injection, but gas relative permeability in CO2 injection is found to be lower than in N2 injection. Higher oil relative permeability in CO 2 injection... 

A series of biodegradable acrylic terminated polyurethanes (APUs) based on poly(ε-caprolactone) diol (PCL), aliphatic 1,6-hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI) and hydroxyethyl methyl acrylate (HEMA) was synthesized as potential materials for hard tissue biomedical applications. PCLs with low molecular weights of 1000 and 2000 g/mol were employed to provide different amounts of end capped urethane acrylate in APUs. To control crosslink density, a mixture of two different reactive diluents including mono-functional HEMA and bi-functional ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) with different weight ratios was incorporated into the APUs, called here PUAs. Morphological characteristics and mechanical... 

Gold nanotubes/nanowires (GNT/NW) were synthesized by using the template-assisted electrodeposition technique and mixed with castor oil-polyethylene glycol based polyurethane (PU) to fabricate porous composite scaffolds for biomedical application. 100 and 50 ppm of GNT/NW were used to synthesize composites. The composite scaffolds were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, and scanning electron microscopy. Cell attachment on polyurethane-GNT/NW composites was investigated using fat-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Addition of 50 or 100 ppm GNT/NW had significant effects on thermal, mechanical, and cell... 

Bioinspired materials can mimic the stem cell environment and modulate stem cell differentiation and proliferation. In this study, biomimetic micro/nanoenvironments were fabricated by cell-imprinted substrates based on mature human keratinocyte morphological templates. The data obtained from atomic force microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy revealed that the keratinocyte-cell-imprinted poly(dimethylsiloxane) casting procedure could imitate the surface morphology of the plasma membrane, ranging from the nanoscale to the macroscale, which may provide the required topographical cell fingerprints to induce differentiation. Gene expression levels of the genes analyzed... 

This technical note addresses the free vibration problem of an elastically restrained Euler–Bernoulli beam with rotational spring-lumped rotary inertia system at its mid-span hinge. The governing differential equations and the boundary conditions of the beam are presented. Special attention is directed toward the conditions of the intermediate spring-mass system which plays a key role in the solution. Sample frequency parameters of the beam system are solved and tabulated. Mode shapes of the beam are also plotted for some spring stiffnesses  

The existing methods in attitude control of satellites are based on using the estimate of satellite attitude, which is usually generated by using multiple vector measurements. In this paper we propose an output feedback controller that directly uses a single vector measurement and does not use an attitude estimator. The output feedback gain is computed by solving a generalized Riccati differential equation (GRDE). The existence of a solution to the GRDE depends on a uniform controllability condition