Sharif Digital Repository

Providing a comprehensive overview of the safety status of similar large-scale rail spatial units (such as existing Rail Regions (RRs) in a country) is a first but very important step in identifying policies that can accelerate progress in improving rail safety. The aim of the current study is to present a new approach to assess RR's safety performance with an emphasis on the Resources and Equipment (R&E) of each RR. To reach the study goal, first, a conceptual framework is developed to make a relationship among exposure, safety, and R&E of RRs. In the next step, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model with Fuzzy-Delphi method is used to evaluate the safety performance of different RRs. In... 

This paper addresses a bi-level mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for the competitive facility location problem in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), in which a firm (i.e., leader) aims at entering a market by locating new distribution and collection facilities, where a competitor (i.e., follower) already exists. The goal is to find the location and attractiveness of each facility going to be established by the leader who seeks to maximize its profit while also taking the follower's response into account. The attractiveness of each facility is a function of integer variables related to the facility's characteristics. Customer behavior is considered to be probabilistic based... 

Origin–destination matrix (ODM) is a key element in transportation studies. The emergence of new ITS technologies like Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) sensors makes the ODM observation problem more interesting in recent decades. However, sensors are subject to failure in reality which highlights the sensor failure phenomenon as a significant issue in real-case problems. This study intends to include the sensor failure phenomenon in AVI Sensor Location Model (SLM) for reliable observation of ODM and route flows. While reliability and cost are usually two conflicting objectives, we try to answer the following question “Is it possible to improve reliability without increasing the cost... 

Origin–destination matrix (ODM) is a key element in transportation studies. The emergence of new ITS technologies like Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) sensors makes the ODM observation problem more interesting in recent decades. However, sensors are subject to failure in reality which highlights the sensor failure phenomenon as a significant issue in real-case problems. This study intends to include the sensor failure phenomenon in AVI Sensor Location Model (SLM) for reliable observation of ODM and route flows. While reliability and cost are usually two conflicting objectives, we try to answer the following question “Is it possible to improve reliability without increasing the cost... 

The effect of vehicles’ compatibility on the odds of death or injury of drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes was investigated. This was done through indexing Crashworthiness (CW) and Crashaggressivity (CA) of major vehicle types. For this purpose, a dataset consisting the information about 551,138 drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes in Iran was used and a two-step analysis framework was employed. In this regard, the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method was applied in the first step to identify the most significant factors contributing to drivers’ Injury Status (IS). Next, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) with a Binomial distribution and a Logit link function were... 

The effect of vehicles’ compatibility on the odds of death or injury of drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes was investigated. This was done through indexing Crashworthiness (CW) and Crashaggressivity (CA) of major vehicle types. For this purpose, a dataset consisting the information about 551,138 drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes in Iran was used and a two-step analysis framework was employed. In this regard, the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method was applied in the first step to identify the most significant factors contributing to drivers’ Injury Status (IS). Next, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) with a Binomial distribution and a Logit link function were... 

The effect of vehicles’ compatibility on the odds of death or injury of drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes was investigated. This was done through indexing Crashworthiness (CW) and Crashaggressivity (CA) of major vehicle types. For this purpose, a dataset consisting the information about 551,138 drivers involved in two-vehicle crashes in Iran was used and a two-step analysis framework was employed. In this regard, the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method was applied in the first step to identify the most significant factors contributing to drivers’ Injury Status (IS). Next, Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) with a Binomial distribution and a Logit link function were... 

Four 5-, 10-, 20- and 30-story moment frames, representing low-, mid-, and two high-rise structures, were subjected to a great number of idealized directivity pulses. The amplitudes and periods of pulses vary from 0.02 g to 1.0 g and 0.5 to 12 sec, respectively. Over 1400 nonlinear dynamic analyses of low- to high-rise moment frames were performed which were feasible through using modified fish-bone model. The distribution of interstory drift along the height was studied and two applied contours were proposed: (i) the maximum interstory drift contour, and (ii) the critical story contour. These contours were demonstrated versus the ratio of natural period of the structure to the pulse period... 

In this article singular points of a parallel manipulator are obtained based on a novel geometrical method. Here we introduce the constrained plain method (CPM) and some of its application in parallel mechanism. Given the definition of constraint plane (CP) and infinite constraint plane (ICP) the dependency conditions of constraints is achieved with the use of a new theorem based on the Ceva geometrical theorem. The direction of angular velocity of a body is achieved by having three ICPs with the use of another theorem. Finally, with the use of the above two novel theorems singularities of the 3UPF_PU mechanism are obtained. It should be emphasized that this method is completely geometrical,... 

An analytical model is proposed to study the effect of particle size on melting enthalpy and entropy of metallic nanoparticles (NPs). The Mott's and Regel's equations for melting entropy in the combination of core average coordination number (CAC) and surface average coordination number (SAC) of freestanding NPs are considered. Clusters of icosahedral (IC), body centered cubic (BCC), and body centered tetragonal (BCT) structure without any vacancies and defects are modeled. Using the variable coordination number made this model to be in good agreement with experimental and molecular dynamic (MD) results of different crystal structures. The model predicts melting entropy and enthalpy of... 

Grinding is widely used for manufacturing of components that require fine surface finish and good dimensional accuracy. In this study a thermo-mechanical finite element analysis is conducted to find out how grinding parameters can affect temperature and residual stress distribution in the workpiece. Results of parametric study presented in this work indicate, by carefully selecting the grinding parameters, minimum thermal and mechanical damage can be achieved. Higher workpiece velocities produce higher surface residual stress. By increasing depths of cut, depth of tensile residual stresses increases. Convection heat coefficient does not have any considerable effect on surface residual stress... 

Adaptive Noise Cancellation (ANC) is a well-known technique for background noise reduction in automobile and vehicular environments. The noise fields in automobile and other vehicle interior obey the diffuse noise field model closely. On the other hand, the ANC does not provide sufficient noise reduction in the diffuse noise fields. In this paper, a new multistage post-filter is designed for ANC as a solution to diffuse noise conditions. The designed post-filter is a single channel Linear Prediction (LP) based speech enhancement system. The LP is performed by an adaptive lattice filter and attempts to extract speech components by using intermediate ANC signals. The post-filter has no... 

Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) is a unique type of concrete that can flow and fill spaces without the need for vibrating compaction, resulting in a dense and uniform material. This article focuses on estimating the compressive strength of SCC utilizing Artificial Neural Networks. Specifically, the study employs multilayer perceptrons with back-propagation learning algorithms, which are commonly used in various problem-solving scenarios. The study covers essential components such as structure, algorithm, data preprocessing, over-fitting prevention, and sensitivity analysis in MLPs. The input variables considered in the research include water, fine aggregate, super-plasticizer, fly ash, coarse... 

Seismic retrofits can significantly reduce the vulnerability of masonry buildings. Multiple seismic retrofit alternatives are often available for a given building. Estimating the cost of each candidate action is essential to selecting and implementing the appropriate seismic retrofit initiatives. This research harnesses the capabilities of various regression models for cost estimation. A dataset from 167 retrofit projects for masonry school buildings was used to develop models. Three main retrofit actions were taken into consideration: shotcrete, steel belt and fiber-reinforced polymer. Various regression methods, including multiple linear regression, ridge regression, lasso regression, and... 

Shot peening is widely used to improve the fretting fatigue strength of critical surfaces. Fretting fatigue occurs in contacting parts that are subjected to fluctuating loads and sliding movements at the same time. This paper presents a sequential finite element simulation to investigate the shot peening effects on normal stress, shear stress, bulk stress and slip amplitude, which are considered to be the controlling parameters of fretting damage. The results demonstrated that among the modifications related to shot peening, compressive residual stress has a dominant effect on the fretting parameters  

One-dimensional (1D) MgO structures were successfully synthesized via carbothermic reduction of mechanically activated mixture of MgO and graphite. Mechanical activation of source materials before carbothermic reduction can substantially enhance the formation of MgO products at a temperature (1000 °C) relatively lower than that required in previous approaches (≥1200 °C). However, the morphology of MgO formed is dependent on the degree of mechanical activation and the condition of the subsequent carbothermic reduction. Two distinctive morphologies were found for MgO products synthesized using our method: single crystalline nanorods with rectangular cross-sections whose diameters range from 50... 

Attitude and vibration control of a general form of flexible satellites is addressed in this paper. Partial differential dynamic equations are derived considering new details such as multi sectioned solar panels and elastic connections between main hub and solar panels. Boundary control approach is adopted to eliminate simplification errors of discrete models, using just one actuator in the hub. Asymptotic stability of attitude dynamics is proved for a group of boundary controllers and necessary conditions for asymptotic stability of vibrations are discussed. Being independent of modeling accuracy and using easily measurable feedbacks are among advantages of the proposed class of... 

Characterization and calcination behavior of a low-grade manganese ore, as a part of Mn ferroalloys production, was studied by XRF, ex-situ XRD, in-situ XRD, and SEM-EDS techniques. Calcination experiments were carried out at and up to 900 °C (1173 K) in air and argon atmospheres. The samples were in particles and powder forms. The results indicated that both quartz and calcite phases in the ore exhibit a bimodal spatial distribution; as relatively large regions and finely distributed in the Mn- and Fe-containing phases. By Rietveld analysis of the in-situ XRD data, the reactions occurring upon heating during the calcination process were deduced. Thermal decomposition and reactive diffusion... 

Estimating the position of a mobile set is of great importance in new mobile services. However, in most cases, the accuracy should be less than 100 meters. This accuracy is hard to reach especially in urban areas. The main problem is that there are a lot of obstacles like buildings between the BTS and the mobile set. Thus the time measured between BTS and the mobile set is somehow greater than the time it takes the wave to travel directly between two points. This paper introduces an optimized solution for TDOA as one of the most efficient ways for finding the location of a mobile phone. Considering the standards and limitations of both GSM and UMTS, the Authors present a solution for...