Sharif Digital Repository

The electrokinetic phenomena at high zeta potentials may show several unique features which are not normally observed. One of these features is the ionic size (steric) effect associated with the solutions of high ionic concentration. In the present work, attention is given to the influences of finite ionic size on the cross stream diffusion process in an electrokinetically actuated Y-shaped micromixer. The method consists of a finite difference based numerical approach for non-uniform grid which is applied to the dimensionless form of the governing equations, including the modified Poisson-Boltzmann equation. The results reveal that, neglecting the ionic size at high zeta potentials gives... 

Some of electrokinetic-based biomicrofluidic devices work at zeta potentials that are sufficiently high for ionic size (steric) effects to show up. In the present effort, consideration is given to the steric effects on the hydrodynamics of electroosmotic flow in a rectangular microchannel. The distinction between this research and the previous ones is that we account for non-linear rheology of the fluids encountered in biomicrofluidic systems by means of the power-law viscosity model. The method of analysis consists of a finite-difference-based numerical procedure for a non-uniform distribution of grid points, which is applied to the dimensionless form of the governing equations including... 

Both nonlinear rheology and finite EDL thickness effects on the mixing process in an electroosmotically actuated Y-sensor are being investigated in this paper, utilizing a depthwise averaging method based on the Taylor dispersion theory. The fluid rheological behavior is assumed to obey the power-law viscosity model. Analytical solutions are obtained assuming a large channel width to depth ratio for which a 1-D profile can efficiently describe the velocity distribution. Full numerical simulations are also performed to determine the applicability range of the analytical model, revealing that it is able to provide accurate results for channel aspect ratios of ten and higher and quite... 

The biped walking robot demonstrates a stable limit cycle on shallow slopes. In previous researches, this passive gait was shown to be sensitive to ground slope and initial conditions. In this paper, we discuss the feedback stabilization of a biped robot by the "energy shaping" technique. Two designs are proposed to reduce the sensitivity of the biped walking robot to slope and initial conditions. In the first design, a moving mass actuator is located on each link of the robot. The actuators are used to shape the potential energy of the biped robot so that it tracks the potential energy of a known passive gait of a similar biped robot on a different slope. Although the method is applied to a... 

The effect of temper rolling and subsequent annealing on texture development and magnetic properties of semi-processed non grain oriented electrical steel has been investigated. The result shows that 5 % temper rolling and final annealing at 850 8C resulted in strong a-fiber component. The etch-pit technique shows that strain induced boundary migration is responsible for new texture component augmentation. Vibrating sample magnetometery reveals that maximum and minimum magnetic permeability are related to rolling and transverse directions, respectively. Average magnetic permeability is improved to some extent as a result of temper rolling and subsequent annealing. © Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH &... 

Sanctions imposed by a country against another country are considered as a foreign policy tool. Many studies have investigated different aspects of sanctions including the efficacy of sanctions to alter the target country’s behaviour. However, the effects of a potential fight-back strategy adopted by a target country have been discussed rarely. In this paper, the outcomes of a possible fight-back strategy are simulated using game theoretical analysis. To find the matching state of game theory and sanction regimes, we have conducted a critical and systematic review of 12 sanctions, from 1950 to 2012. The results show that the capability of a target country to implement fight-back strategies... 

Recently, the tradeoff between low energy consumption and high fault-tolerance has attracted a lot of attention as a key issue in the design of real-time systems. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) is commonly employed as one of the most effective low energy techniques for real-time systems. It has been observed that the use of feedback-based methods can improve the effectiveness of DVS-enabled systems. In this paper, we have investigated reducing the energy consumption of fault-tolerant hard real-time systems using the feedback control theory. Our proposed method makes the system capable of selecting the proper frequency and voltage settings in order to reduce the energy consumption, while... 

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... 

Valveless micropumps are widely used due to simple structure, durability and low maintenance. Understanding the fluid-membrane interaction and performance criteria is still a challenging problem for the scientists. In this work, a new model for side mounted valve micropumps is developed to obtain dynamic response of micropump with respect to piezoelectric actuation. The parameters of this model are obtained in terms of actuation frequency and geometrical dimensions of the micropump. Balancing elastic, inertial and damping forces result in the governing equation of the micropump system model. Analytical studies for the bottom mounted valve micropump indicate pump flux is independent of the... 

Valveless piezoelectric micropumps are in wide practical use due to their ability to conduct particles with absence of interior moving mechanical parts. In this paper, an extended numerical study on fluid flow through micropump chamber and diffuser valves is conducted to find out the optimum working conditions of micropump. In order to obtain maximum generality of the reported results, an analytical study along with a dimensional analysis is presented primarily, to investigate the main dimensionless groups of parameters affecting the micropump net flux. Consequently, the parameters appeared in the main dimensionless groups have been changed in order to understand how the pump rectification... 

Recently online prediction of plate deformations in modern systems have been considered by many researchers, common standard methods are highly time consuming and powerful processors are needed for online computation of deformations. Artificial neural networks have capability to develop complex, nonlinear functional relationships between input and output patterns based on limited data. A good trained network could predict output data very fast with acceptable accuracy. This paper describes the application of an artificial neural network to identify deformation pattern of a four-side clamped plate under external loads. In this paper the distributed loads are approximated by a set of... 

This paper studies a brachiation robot that is a long armed locomotion similar to apes. The robot has 2 revolute joints but only one of them is actuated. In this paper, after deriving dynamic model of the robot the Controlled Lagrangian (CL) method is used for stabilization. The matching conditions satisfied for the controller are derived and the extended λ-method is used to solve PDE's involved in the method of controlled lagrangian. Satisfactory controller's gains are chosen by PSO algorithm. Finally, feasibility of the developed controller is investigated by numerical simulations  

The performance of cellular solids in biomedical applications relies strongly on a detailed understanding of the effects of pore topology on mechanical properties. This study aims at characterizing the failure mechanism of scaffolds based on nodal connectivity (number of struts that meet in joints) and geometry of the pores. Plastic models of scaffolds having the same relative density but different cubic and trigonal unit cells were designed and then fabricated via three dimensional (3-D) printing. Unit cells were repeated in different arrangements in 3-D space. An in-situ imaging technique was utilized to study the progressive deformation of the scaffold models. Different nodal... 

Rapid prototyping is a promising technique for producing tissue engineering scaffolds due to its capacity to generate predetermined forms and structures featuring distinct pore architectures. The objective of this study is to investigate the influences of different pore geometries and their orientation with respect to the compressive loading direction on mechanical responses of scaffolds. Plastic models of scaffolds with cubic and hexagonal unit cells were fabricated by three-dimensional (3-D) printing. An in situ imaging technique was utilized to study the progressive compressive deformation of the scaffold models. In both cubic and hexagonal geometries, organized buckling patterns relevant... 

In this paper, a three-dimensional numerical model is developed to analyze flow characteristics of pressure driven, electroosmotic and combined pressure driven-electroosmotic flows through micro-channels. The governing system of equations consists of the electric-field and flow-field equations. The solution procedure involves three steps. The net charge distribution on the cross section of the microchannel is computed by solving two-dimensional Poisson-Boltzmann equation using the finite element method. Then, using the computed fluid's charge distribution, the magnitude of the resulting body force due to interaction of an external electric field with the charged fluid is calculated along the... 

In certain types of biomimetic surgery systems, micro robots inspired by Paramecium are designed to swim in a capillary tube for gaining access to internal organs with minimal invasion. Gaining insight into the mechanics of Paramecium swimming in a capillary tube is vital for optimizing the design of such systems. There are two approaches to modeling the physics of micro swimming. In the envelope approach, which is widely accepted by researchers, Paramecium is approximated as a sphere, self-propelled by tangential and normal surface distortions. However, not only is this approach incapable of considering the specific geometry of Paramecium, but it also neglects short range hydrodynamic... 

A method for two dimensional position finding of stationary targets whose bearing measurements suffers from indeterminable bias and random noise has been proposed. The algorithm uses convex optimization to minimize an error function which has been calculated based on circular as well as linear loci of error. Taking into account a number of observations, certain modifications have been applied to the initial crude method so as to arrive at a faster, more accurate method. Simulation results of the method illustrate up to 30% increase in accuracy compared with the well-known least square filter  

In this paper we propose two new attacks on UMTS network. Both attacks exploit the UMTS-GSM interworking and are possible in the GSM access area of UMTS network. The first attack allows the attacker to eavesdrop on the entire traffic of the victim UMTS subscriber in the GERAN coverage of the UMTS network. The second attack is an impersonation attack i.e. the attacker impersonates a genuine UMTS subscriber to a UMTS network and fools the network to provide services at the expense of the victim subscriber in its GERAN coverage. © 2009 IEEE  

In this study, the flow of a fiber filled viscoelastic matrix through planar contractions is investigated. It was found that by adding fiber to the matrix vortex, the intensity increases. Fiber orientation along "x" and "y" axes was studied too. It was found that fiber orientation could be used for determining the flow regime through the contraction geometry. The rigidity condition of fibers, which needs the trace of the orientation tensor to be unity everywhere in the domain, is correct except near walls and the reentrant corner, which is slightly less than one. In these regions, the stress magnitude is higher, which results in more numerical errors, and which further leads to some error in...