Sharif Digital Repository

Today, tailored welded blank sheets have found various applications in automotive, aeronautic and many other industrial fields. One of the most efficient methods for production of tailored welded blank sheets is application of the friction stir welding process. In the present article, the effect of friction stir welding parameters on the microstructure and mechanical properties of heterogeneous tailored welded blank sheets made from aluminium alloys of types 5083-H12 and 6061-T6 with the similar thickness of 1.5 mm is studied. The considered parameters are rotational speed of the tool, linear speed of the tool, pin diameter and shoulder diameter. In order to come by a tailored welded blank... 

Lake Urmia (LU) once was the second largest hypersaline lake in the world, covering up to 6000 km2, but has undergone catastrophic desiccation in recent years resulting in loss of 90% of its area and extensive coverage by playas and marshlands that represent a source of salt and dust. This study examines daily Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) between 2001 and 2015 over northwestern Iran, which encompasses LU. Intriguingly, salt emissions from the LU surface associated with ongoing desiccation do not drive the study region's AOD profile, whereas pollution transported from other regions and emissions around LU are more important.... 

High morbidity and mortality caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has made coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) the leading challenge for health experts all over the world. Currently, there is no specific treatment for COVID-19; however, thanks to worldwide intense attempts, novel vaccines such as mRNA-1273 (Moderna TX, Inc.) and BNT162b2 (Biontech/Pfizer) were developed very fast and FDA approved them for emergency use. Nanomedicine-based drug delivery can be an advanced therapeutic strategy to deal with clinical complications of COVID-19. Given the fact that SARS-CoV-2 typically affects the respiratory tract, application of inhalable nanoparticles (NPs)... 

In this paper we introduce some general necessary conditions for the existence of graph homomorphisms, which hold in both directed and undirected cases. Our method is a combination of Diaconis and Saloff–Coste comparison technique for Markov chains and a generalization of Haemers interlacing theorem. As some applications, we obtain a necessary condition for the spanning subgraph problem, which also provides a generalization of a theorem of Mohar (1992) as a necessary condition for Hamiltonicity. In particular, in the case that the range is a Cayley graph or an edge-transitive graph, we obtain theorems with a corollary about the existence of homomorphisms to cycles. This, specially, provides... 

In this paper we introduce a chromatic parameter, called the fixing chromatic number, which is related to unique colourability of graphs, in the sense that it measures how one can embed the given graph G in G∪Kt by adding edges between G and Kt to make the whole graph uniquely t-colourable. We study some basic properties of this parameter as well as its relationships to some other well-known chromatic numbers as the acyclic chromatic number. We compute the fixing chromatic number of some graph products by applying a modified version of the exponential graph construction  

In this paper, we apply some new algebraic no-homomorphism theorems in conjunction with some new chromatic parameters to estimate the circular chromatic number of graphs. To show the applicability of the general results, as a couple of examples, we generalize a well known inequality for the fractional chromatic number of graphs and we also show that the circular chromatic number of the graph obtained from the Petersen graph by excluding one vertex is equal to 3. Also, we focus on the Johnson–Holroyd–Stahl conjecture about the circular chromatic number of Kneser graphs and we propose an approach to this conjecture. In this regard, we introduce a new related conjecture on Kneser graphs and we... 

We introduce two necessary conditions for the existence of graph homomorphisms based on the concepts of density and power graph. As corollaries, we obtain a lower bound for the fractional chromatic number, and we set forward elementary proofs of the facts that the circular chromatic number of the Petersen graph is equal to three and the fact that the Coxeter graph is a core  

A respiratory system combines a blower-hose-patient setup with a single lung system featuring nonlinear lung compliance. This paper explores the optimal design of resilient fuzzy control for such systems by integrating a fuzzy algorithm with a sliding mode control approach. The robust fuzzy controller, as proposed, effectively handles the system's dynamics and remains stable amidst nonlinear changes. It ensures airway flow and maintains peak pressure below critical levels despite uncertainties like hose leakage and varying respiratory effort. The findings show superior performance in reaction time, overshoot, and tracking errors compared to traditional methods. The control mechanism's... 

In this paper1 we consider higher isoperimetric numbers of a (finite directed) graph. In this regard we focus on the nth mean isoperimetric constant of a directed graph as the minimum of the mean outgoing normalized flows from a given set of n disjoint subsets of the vertex set of the graph. We show that the second mean isoperimetric constant in this general setting, coincides with (the mean version of) the classical Cheeger constant of the graph, while for the rest of the spectrum we show that there is a fundamental difference between the nth isoperimetric constant and the number obtained by taking the minimum over all n-partitions. In this direction, we show that our definition is the... 

In this paper, optimization and control of a tubular reactor for thermal bulk post-polymerization of styrene have been investigated. By using the reactor mathematical model, static and dynamic simulations are carried out. Based on an objective function including polymer conversion and polydispersity, reactor optimal temperature profile has been obtained. In the absence of model mismatch, desired product characteristic can also be obtained by applying the corresponding reactor wall or jacket temperature profile. To achieve this temperature trajectory, reactor jacket is divided into three zones and jacket inlet temperatures are used as manipulated variables. Effectiveness of the proposed... 

Finding the optimized set of manufacturing parameters to produce strong solder-copper connections requires investigating the main and interaction effects of processing variables on the joint strength and microstructure. In this study, solder joint specimens were prepared at different levels of cooling rate, time above liquidus (TAL), and soldering temperature. Mode I fracture experiments were designed and performed at a strain rate of 0.5 s−1. The fracture load remained constant from the cooling rate of 0.1 to 1.4 °C/s and then decreased by almost 34% with further increase in the cooling rate to 34 °C/s. Increasing TAL from 60 to 120 s reduced the fracture load by almost 27%, while it was... 

Travel time is an uncertain variable with inherited uncertainty for many reasons, such as measurement error, perception error, and temporal aggregation variation impacts. Many researchers have considered travel time as an exact value for different limitations, including models’ restrictions and being unaware of the travel time distribution. However, previous studies have shown that standard logit and probit models can result in biased estimations with uncertain variables or variables with errors (EIV). Nevertheless, limited evidence is available on the magnitude of this bias and the impact of the uncertain variable distribution on the estimated parameters. In this paper, we use a... 

To achieve high reliability, fault-tolerance techniques are exploited, but they may increase power consumption and temperature beyond safe limits. Therefore, power-aware fault-tolerance techniques should be used to manage power and temperature issues. We tolerate both permanent and transient faults through hybrid fault-tolerance techniques. In this letter, at first, we investigate how much power and temperature are increased when a hybrid fault-tolerance technique is applied to multicore embedded systems. Then, we propose a peak-power-aware hybrid fault-tolerant technique to meet the temperature constraint. Transient-temperature-based safe power (T-TSP) is a new power budgeting technique... 

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is an extracellular natural polymer produced by many microorganisms and its properties could be tailored via specific fabrication methods and culture conditions. There is a growing interest in BC derived materials due to the main features of BC such as porous fibrous structure, high crystallinity, impressive physico-mechanical properties, and high water content. However, pristine BC lacks some features, limiting its practical use in varied applications. Thus, fabrication of BC composites has been attempted to overcome these constraints. This review article overviews most recent advance in the development of BC composites and their potential in biomedicine including... 

Fourier-based modal methods are among the most significant tools for accurate numerical analysis of grating structures. However, they mostly lead to time consuming and memory hungry eigenvalue problems, particularly when large dielectric constants or high contrasts are involved. We have found an asymptotic semi-empirical relationship for the propagation constants of a lamellar grating, obtained from Fourier-based modal methods. Hence, given any truncation order, it is possible to estimate propagation constants without having to solve the eigenvalue equation. We observed propagation constants only depend on permittivities, filling factors, and the unit cell size, while the dependence on the... 

In many fast MR imaging techniques, K-space is sampled sparsely in order to gain a fast traverse of K-space. These techniques use non-Cartesian sampling trajectories like radial, zigzag, and spiral. In the reconstruction procedure, usually interpolation methods are used to obtain missing samples on a regular grid. In this paper, we propose an iterative method for image reconstruction which uses the black marginal area of the image. The proposed iterative solution offers a great enhancement in the quality of the reconstructed image in comparison with conventional algorithms like zero filling and neural network. This method is applied on MRI data and its improved performance over other methods... 

The aim of this paper is the design and development of a novel user interface to interact with a meta system. Our focus is rather on interacting with Ambient Intelligence as a whole, which would for example enable users to influence the overall behaviors and attributes of dynamic device compositions. We call such interfaces Meta User Interfaces. The design details of a proposed user interface as well as a cognitive walkthrough evaluation are presented in this paper  

In this work, novel chitosan/bacterial cellulose (CS/BC) nanofibrous composites reinforced with graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets are introduced. As cell attachment and permeability of nanofibrous membranes highly depend on their fiber diameter, the working window for successful electrospinning to attain sound nanofibrous composites with a minimum fiber diameter was determined by using the response surface methodology. It is shown that the addition of GO nanosheets to CS/BC significantly reduces the average size of the polymeric fibers. Their mechanical properties are also influenced and can be tailored by the concentration of GO. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveals hydrogen bonding... 

A series of reduced graphene oxide/ZnxCd1-xS (RGO/ZnxCd1-xS) nanocomposites (0 < x < 1) with different ratios of Zn/Cd were synthesized via a facile hydrothermal route under optimized experimental conditions and were carefully characterized by various techniques. Because very little is known about the morphology, specific surface area, and crystal phase effects of RGO/ZnxCd1-xS crystals on their photoresponsivity, field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), BET surface area analysis and X-ray diffraction (XRD) data were studied to investigate their effects on photoactivity. Based on the results, a crystal phase transition from a cubic phase in RGO/Zn0.9Cd0.1S to a hexagonal... 

Superhydrophobic surfaces demonstrate significant characteristics which make them suitable for a wide variety of applications. In this study, we propose a facile, one-step, and cost-effective anodizing scheme using aluminum nitrate/stearic acid mixture solution to create a superhydrophobic surface on an aluminum mesh. The surface outperforms the surface anodized by the widely used oxalic acid solution in terms of superhydrophobicity and water-surface friction behavior. The proposed surface reduced the friction by 11% on average respective to the surface prepared by oxalic acid. The durability of the introduced superhydrophobic surface has also been investigated. The proposed surface retained...