Sharif Digital Repository

Affordable motion sensors that are recently developed for video gaming have formed a budding line of research in the field of physical rehabilitation. These sensors have been used in many task-based applications to analyze the patients' status based on their completion of assigned tasks. However, as the accuracy of such sensors is lower than that of the clinical ones, their measured data has had very limited use in quantitative motion analysis to this date. The aim of this article is to determine Kinect's ability and accuracy in calculating higher-order kinematic parameters, such as velocity and acceleration, in hand movements. Four methods, i.e. moving average, Butterworth filter, B-spline,... 

Tolerances naturally generate an uncertain environment for design and manufacturing. In this paper, a novel fuzzy based tolerance representation approach for modeling the variations of geometric features due to dimensional tolerances is presented. The two concepts of fuzzy theory and small degrees of freedom are combined to introduce the fuzzy-small degrees of freedom model (F-SDOF). This model is suitable for tolerance analysis of mechanical assemblies with linear and angular tolerances. Based on the fuzzy concept, a new index (called the assemblability index) is introduced which signifies the fitting quality of parts in the assembly. Graphical and numerical representations of tolerance... 

Unmanned helicopters have gained great importance during recent years due to their special abilities such as hover flight, vertical take-off and landing, maneuverability and superior agility. The advances in electronic devices technologies lead to more powerful and lighter processors to be used in avionic systems which have attracted more attention to these UAVs. The first steps of utilizing an unmanned helicopter are dynamic modeling, control system design and performing model-in-the-loop (MIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests which are presented in this paper. In this research, MIL and HIL tests of an unmanned helicopter are done using novel Linux-based flight control system built on... 

Games and their use in rehabilitation have formed a new and rapidly growing area of research. A critical hardware component of rehabilitation programs is the input device that measures the patients' movements. After Microsoft released Kinect, extensive research has been initiated on its applications as an input device for rehabilitation. However, since most of the works in this area rely on a qualitative determination of the joints' movements rather than an accurate quantitative one, detailed analysis of patients' movements is hindered. The aim of this article is to determine the accuracy of the Kinect's joint tracking. To fulfill this task, a model of upper body was fabricated. The... 

This paper presents a nonlinear model to illustrate the effect of contact stress in the vibration behavior of mechanical components, especially rotating systems. The problem is considered in the case of the vertical vibration of a sphere on a plate. The Hertzian contact theory is used to obtain the relationship between contact force and the deflection of the mass center of the sphere. Modeling the system by a mass and a nonlinear spring, the vibration equation of the mass center of the sphere is derived. The method of LindstedtPoincar is implemented to solve the equation of motion, and obtain vibration characteristics under a compressive preload. The dependency of frequency on several... 

Most of the biped robots are controlled using pre-computed trajectory methods or methods based on multi-body dynamics models. The pre-computed trajectory-based methods are simple; however, a system becomes highly vulnerable to the external disturbances. In contrast, dynamic methods make a system act faster, yet extensive knowledge is required about the kinematics and dynamics of the system. This fact gave rise to the main purpose of this study, i.e., developing a controller for a biped robot to take advantage of the simplicity and computational efficiency of trajectory-based methods and the robustness of the dynamic-based approach. To do so, this paper presents a two-layer hierarchical... 

One way to reduce vehicles' fuel consumption (FC) is to optimize different parts of its powertrain. Among different modern powertrains, continuously variable transmission (CVT) is one of the common types which changes speed ratio between engine and wheels, continuously. Therefore, the CVT allows the engine to operate at its fuel-optimal speed. Due to the limited power transmission capacity and speed ratio range of the CVT, researchers attempted to combine the CVT with a planetary gear train and a fixed ratio mechanism. This mechanism is called infinitely variable transmission (IVT). In this study, a multi-speed gearbox (MSG) is used in the IVT and its impact on the powertrain performance and... 

A detailed 3D anatomical model of the patellofemoral joint was developed to study the tracking, force, contact and stability characteristics of the joint. The quadriceps was considered to include six components represented by 15 force vectors. The patellar tendon was modeled using four bundles of viscoelastic tensile elements. Each of the lateral and medial retinaculum was modeled by a three-bundle nonlinear spring. The femur and patella were considered as rigid bodies with their articular cartilage layers represented by an isotropic viscoelastic material. The geometrical and tracking data needed for model simulation, as well as validation of its results, were obtained from an in vivo... 

The objective of this research is geometrical and kinematical optimization of full-toroidal continuously variable transmission (CVT) in order to achieve high power transmission efficiency and low mass. At first, a dynamic analysis is performed for the system. A computer model is developed to simulate elastohydrodynamic (EHL) contact between disks and roller and consequently, calculate CVT efficiency. The validity of EHL model is investigated by comparing output of this model and experimental data. Geometrical parameters are obtained by means of Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, while the optimization objective is to maximize CVT efficiency and minimize its mass. The algorithm is run for... 

The aim of this study is to investigate the free vibration of a rotating joined cylindrical-conical shell in the presence of the centrifugal and Coriolis forces as well as the initial hoop tension resulting from rotation of the shell. Based on the equations of general rotating shells of revolution, the equations of motion of rotating cylindrical and rotating conical shells are derived, and then these governing equations were solved by employing the power series method. For validation and comparison purposes, the results of the special cases of the studied problem were compared with the results reported in the literatures. Another comparison study was also conducted by the results of finite... 

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) are a promising solution for reducing the impacts of passenger vehicles on the environment. However, their driving range is restricted due to the limitations of battery technologies. This range can be extended by adoption of multiple-speed transmissions. Most of the comparisons in the related studies are based on non-optimal designs or limited to modal driving cycles. Furthermore, the impact of Power-Split. Continuously Variable Transmission (PS-CVT) layout with type III power How on the power consumption of BEVs has never been examined. In this paper, single-, two-, and three-speed transmissions along with PS-C'VTs with type I and III power flows are... 

Widespread use of adaptive mounts depends on their cost, simplicity, and reliability. In this paper, a new adaptive hydraulic mount is introduced that its upper chamber compliance is changed using shape memory alloy (SMA) wires. Sensitivity analysis is used to show the effectiveness of changing the compliance on the dynamic stiffness of the mount. The finite element technique is applied to the main rubber of the hydraulic mount in which the SMA wires are embedded to calculate the maximum change in the compliance. It is shown that SMA wires can effectively modify the compliance of the upper chamber. It is also shown that a simple on-off control is sufficient for the adaptive mount. Copyright... 

In this paper, the sensitivity analysis is applied to the development of high performance adaptive hydraulic mounts. The analysis allows us to select the most effective design parameters for tuning an adaptive mount to different road and engine conditions. It is shown that in the low frequency road excitation, the upper chamber compliance and inertia of the fluid column in the inertia track are the most influential properties in changing the dynamic stiffness of the hydraulic mount. These properties for the high frequency engine excitations are the upper compliance and the inertia of the fluid column of the decoupler. For tuning the adaptive mount to different road and engine excitation, a... 

In this paper an experimental/numerical technique is developed for engine mount optimization. The method is general and can be applied to optimize active and passive vibration isolators or absorbers in any mechanical systems or civil structures. Engine mount optimization techniques mostly rely on an accurate mathematical model of the whole vehicle, which in most cases is not available or is too difficult to develop. As a result, the current approach for selecting engine mounts for a vehicle is based upon trial and error which is very time-consuming and expensive. The proposed technique counts upon experimental data for optimization and does not require any mathematical model of the vehicle... 

In this paper, we introduce a new high-performance adaptive hydraulic engine mount. The mount is tuned to road and engine conditions by changing the length of the inertia track and effective decoupler area in low-frequency road and high-frequency engine excitations. A single actuator is used to tune the mount in both low-frequency and high-frequency regimes. Sensitivity analysis is used to show that changing the length of the inertia track and decoupler area is the most effective way to tune an adaptive mount. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed design can significantly improve the performance of a passive hydraulic mount  

This paper investigates the free vibrations of a shell made of n cone segments joined together. The governing equations of the conical shell were obtained by applying the Sanders shell theory and the Hamilton principle. Then, these governing equations are solved by using the power series method and considering a displacement field which is harmonic function about the time and the circumferential coordinate. Using the boundary conditions of the two ends of the shell and the continuity conditions at the interface section of shell segments, and solving the eigenvalue problem, the natural frequencies and the mode shapes are obtained. Very good agreements exist between the analytical results of... 

This paper presents a novel model to simulate the flow-current characteristic curve of an electro-hydraulic servo valve in steady state condition. This characteristic curve has three major zones: dead zone, linear zone and saturation zone. By using the presented approach, we can simulate the behavior of all types of valves including under lapped, critical center (zero lapped) and over lapped valves. A hydraulic tester has been designed and constructed for validation of the results. It can test the performance of flow-current and some other properties of the valve. Comparison of experimental and simulated curves describes that the model has an acceptable accuracy in determining the four... 

In this paper, a method has been presented to study the free vibration of a rotating shell consisting of p coupled conical shells. This method considers the Coriolis and centrifugal forces as well as the initial hoop tension resulting from rotation of the shell. Matrix transform and power series methods were employed to solve the equations. The advantage of using the matrix transform approach is that the dimension of the coefficient matrix, which is finally constructed to obtain the natural frequencies of a shell made of p cones, remains 8×8. The obtained results were validated with the help of existing special cases of the studied problem reported in the literature, and by means of FEM... 

In recent years, unmanned aerial systems have attracted great attention due to the electronic systems technology advancements. Among these vehicles, unmanned helicopters are more important because of their special abilities and superior performance. The complex nonlinear dynamic system (caused by main rotor flapping dynamics coupled with the rigid body rotational motion) and considerable effects of ambient disturbance make their utilization hard in actual missions. Attitude dynamics have the main role in helicopter stabilization, so implementing proper control system for attitude is an important issue for unmanned helicopter hovering and trajectory tracking performance. Besides this,... 

Unmanned helicopters have gained great importance during recent years due to their special abilities such as hover flight, vertical take-off and landing, maneuverability and superior agility. The advances in electronic devices technologies lead to more powerful and lighter processors to be used in avionic systems which have attracted more attention to these UAVs. The first steps of utilizing an unmanned helicopter are dynamic modeling, control system design and performing model-in-the-loop (MIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests which are presented in this paper. In this research, MIL and HIL tests of an unmanned helicopter are done using novel Linux-based flight control system built on...