Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, we suggest a general model for the fixed-valued impulse noise and propose a two-stage method for high density noise suppression while preserving the image details. In the first stage, we apply an iterative impulse detector, exploiting the image entropy, to identify the corrupted pixels and then employ an Adaptive Iterative Mean filter to restore them. The filter is adaptive in terms of the number of iterations, which is different for each noisy pixel, according to the Euclidean distance from the nearest uncorrupted pixel. Experimental results show that the proposed filter is fast and outperforms the best existing techniques in both objective and subjective performance measures... 

This paper proposes a frequency control strategy for an islanded inverter-based microgrid which based on the priority of supply, has got two distinct types of loads, namely sensitive and deferrable. The proposed strategy consists of primary and secondary levels of generation control supported by a loadshedding scheme. The primary control regulates the output power of the distributed generator (DG) units to be proportional to their ratings while secondary control has got the duty of frequency restoration after each load change. Functionality of these two levels is demonstrated to be independent of each other. Both controls are in distributed forms which have no need of communication... 

Online power system stability assessment during restoration has not been strongly addressed yet. The introduction of wide area measurement systems (WAMS), however, made it possible to monitor the stability online. This study technically presents a detailed analysis of stability during restoration using WAMS. The power system build-up strategy is used as the restoration approach, based on which the early and the last stages of restoration are to divide the power system into islands and interconnect them, respectively. In fact, the practical use of WAMS at the early stages of restoration provides precise determination of generators loading steps. Moreover, unification of phase angle references... 

We propose a roll-forward error recovery technique based on multiple scan chains for TMR systems, called Scan chained TMR (ScTMR). ScTMR reuses the scan chain flip-flops employed for testability purposes to restore the correct state of a TMR system in the presence of transient or permanent errors. In the proposed ScTMR technique, we present a voter circuitry to locate the faulty module and a controller circuitry to restore the system to the fault-free state. As a case study, we have implemented the proposed ScTMR technique on an embedded processor, suited for safety-critical applications. Exhaustive fault injection experiments reveal that the proposed architecture has the error detection and... 

This paper presents the results of a vulnerability assessment of the damaged Al-Askari shrine located in Samarra, Iraq by finite element analysis. Reliable material characteristics are derived using limited experimental data on this historical building in order to be utilized in the numerical models. It is concluded that the cracked piers are not vulnerable under the weight of the newly added dome. However, the cracks in the piers widen under design seismic loads, which results in unbalanced settlements in the piers and torsional cracks in the dome. The vulnerability of the minarets is more severe, necessitating heavy reinforcement at their bases and adequate anchorage to the masonry... 

Gonbad-e Qabus, with a height of 52.8 m that makes it the tallest pure-brick tower in the world, located in the northern part of Iran, represents one of the most magnificent structures of the early Islamic centuries. This structure is still standing among the chaos of urban life and construction, catching the eyes of beholders even from far distances. This paper summarizes the historical and architectural background of this monumental structure and the important restorations carried out mainly in the past century. Various types of existing and potential structural and architectural damages are classified and elaborated in detail, and for each problem, a series of proposed solutions are... 

Extreme weather events can devastate parts of power grids. Thus, the appropriate post-disaster reaction is a crucial duty for power utilities. To address this important concern, a new two-stage framework is proposed in this paper. Stage I optimally coordinates disaster mutual assistance between affected and supporting utilities. To this end, distance between the damaged and supporting utilities, extent of damage, and repair resources are taken into consideration as decision criteria. Then, a novel formulation in the form of mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is developed for mutual aid management problem. The results of stage I are used as inputs to stage II. A new multi-horizon... 

A procedure based on the linear amplitude sweep (LAS) test has been developed to determine the optimum rejuvenator content for restoring the properties of aged asphalt binders. The LAS test was employed to assess the damage tolerance, fatigue resistance, and fracture behavior of rejuvenated aged binders. In case of fracture analysis, a crack-based indicator to govern the stable crack propagation was defined to characterize fracture resistance of asphalt binders. While rejuvenators improved all of these properties, higher contents were required to restore the cracking behavior of the original binder. The linear relationship between the integrated damage-fatigue-fracture indicator and... 

Event-related potential (ERP) extraction from ongoing electroencephalograph (EEG) and its enhancement is one of the long-established problems in EEG signal processing. Most of the previous studies have focused mainly on the ERP enhancement without considering the multi-dimentional structure of the signal. In order to take advantage of this property, we propose a tensor-based solution with trial-by-trial concatenated ERP data. Then we develop an algorithm based on low-rank Tucker decomposition to detect single trial ERP component with maximized signal to noise ratio (SNR). In other words, by using tensor algebra we consider both self-similarity in intratrials and global correlation in spatial... 

In this study, degradation of trichloroethylene (TCE), a chlorinated hydrocarbon, using starch supported Fe/Ni nanoparticles was investigated. The scanning electron microscope images showed applying water soluble starch as a stabilizer for the Fe/Ni nanoparticles tended to reduce agglomeration and discrete particle. Also the mean particle diameter reduced from about 70 nm (unsupported Fe/Ni nanoparticle) to about 30 nm. Effects of three key independent operating parameters including initial TCE concentration (10.0-300.0 mg L-1), initial pH (4.00-10.00) and Fe0 dosage (0.10-2.00) g L-1 on TCE dechlorination efficiency in 1 hour were analysed by employing response surface methodology (RSM).... 

In this work, we present a new method of noise removal which is applied on images corrupted by impulse noise. This new algorithm has a good trade-off between quantitative and qualitative properties of the recovered image and the computation time. In this new method, the corrupted pixels are replaced by using a median filter or, they are estimated by their neighbors' values. Our proposed method shows better results especially in very high density noisy images than Standard Median Filter (SMF), Adaptive Median Filter (AMF) and some other well-known filters for removing impulse noise. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm in measures of PSNR and SSIM, specifically... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present an improved methodology for design of custom-made hip prostheses, through integration of advanced image processing, computer aided design (CAD) and additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Design/methodology/approach - The proposed methodology for design of custom-made hip prostheses is based on an independent design criterion for each of the intra-medullary and extra-medullary portions of the prosthesis. The intra-medullar part of the prosthesis is designed using a more accurate and detailed description of the 3D geometry of the femoral intra-medullary cavity, including the septum calcar ridge, so that an improved fill and fit performance... 

This paper presents an efficient scheme for blind watermark attacking using the concept of matching of the long-range data. The main idea of the proposed attack is to add plenty of noise to the watermarked image and then try to restore an unwatermarked copy of the noisy image. The aim is to destroy the watermark information without accessing the parameters used during the watermark embedding process. So, it allows our approach to be completely free from any pre-assumption on the watermarking algorithm or any other parameters that is used during the watermark embedding procedure. Experimental results show the proposed algorithm's superiority over several other traditional watermarking... 

One of the most important phenomena related to electrically actuated micro and nano electromechanical systems (MEMSNEMS) is dynamic pull-in instability which occurs when the electrical attraction and beam inertia forces are more than elastic restoring force of the beam. According to failure of classical mechanics constitutive equations in prediction of dynamic behavior of small size systems, nonlocal theory is implemented here to analyze the dynamic pull-in behavior. Equation of motion of an electrostatically actuated micro to nano scale doubly clamped beam is rewritten using differential form of nonlocal theory constitutive equation. To analyze the nonlocal effect equation of motion is... 

A fully implicit iterative integration procedure is presented for local and geographically distributed hybrid simulation of the seismic response of complex structural systems with distributed nonlinear behavior. The purpose of this procedure is to seamlessly incorporate experimental elements in simulations using existing fully implicit integration algorithms designed for pure numerical simulations. The difficulties of implementing implicit integrators in a hybrid simulation are addressed at the element level by introducing a safe iteration strategy and using an efficient procedure for online estimation of the experimental tangent stiffness matrix. In order to avoid physical application of... 

This study is aimed to realize evolution of microstructure and mechanical properties of aluminum 6061 alloy tube subjected to Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) and subsequent annealing. For this purpose, the tube is initially processed by different passes of an SPD process called Tube Channel Pressing (TCP) and then subjected to a subsequent annealing at 473. °K for 2. h. Afterwards, tension test is used for the evaluation of mechanical properties while Electron Back-Scattered Diffraction (EBSD) equipped Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) are utilized for the microstructural characterizations. Results show that the Continuous Static Recrystallization... 

This paper proposes a new distributed cooperative secondary control for both frequency and voltage restoration of an islanded microgrid with droop-controlled, inverter-based distributed generations (DGs). Existing distributed methods commonly design secondary control based on the minimum real part of the nonzero Laplacian matrix eigenvalues related to the microgrid communication graph, which, however, is global information. In contrast to the existing distributed methods, in this paper we design a fully distributed adaptive control based on the dynamic model of DG units and on information from neighboring units. Therefore, the proposed control scheme increases the system reliability,... 

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive imaging modality that provides cross-sectional images from microstructures of tissues. This optical imaging system works based on Michelson interferometry principle and has intermediate resolution and penetration depth which makes it appropriate for imaging thin tissues such as skin and eye. OCT images suffer from three main artifacts that make images difficult to be analyzed. The first one is small grainy structures called speckle which degrade image quality and decreases axial and lateral resolution. The second one is light intensity attenuation which is a function of depth. It happens because of absorbing and scattering nature of tissue...