Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, the problem of obtaining the optimal trajectory of a Dual-Arm Cam-Lock (DACL) robot is addressed. The DACL robot is a reconfigurable manipulator consisting of two cooperative arms, which may act separately. These may also be cam-locked in each other in some links and thus lose some degrees of freedom while gaining higher structural stiffness. This will also decrease their workspace volume. It is aimed to obtain the optimal configuration of the robot and the optimal joint trajectories to minimize the consumed energy for following a specific task space path. The Pontryagin's Minimum Principle is utilized with a shooting method to resolve kinematic redundancy. Numerical examples... 

Nitrates of lithium, cobalt and nickel are utilized to synthesize LiNi 0.8Co0.2O2 cathode material through sol-gel technique. Various synthesis parameters such as calcination time and temperature as well as chelating agent are studied to determine the optimized condition for material processing. Using TG/DTA techniques, the optimized calcination temperatures are selected. Different characterization techniques such as ICP, XRD and TEM are employed to characterize the chemical composition, crystal structure, size and morphology of the powders. Micron and nano-sized powders are produced using citric/oxalic and TEA as chelating agent, respectively. Selected powders are used as cathode material... 

The aim of present research is the performance simulation of axial flow turbine on different operating conditions by using of one dimentional modeling method. In this method by receiving the flow inlet conditions and turbine geometry, velocity triangles at blade inlet and outlet are obtained and performance characteristics of the turbine are calculated. As respects the importance of modeling for performance prediction and optimization in initial desing level, in following work, that is based on one dimentional modeling method, after the presentation of solution algorithm by trial and error method and introduction of different loss models for modeling, the obtained results of modeling were... 

In this paper, the problem of obtaining the optimal trajectory of a Dual-Arm Cam-Lock (DACL) robot is addressed. The DACL robot is a reconfigurable manipulator consisting of two cooperative arms, which may act separately. These may also be cam-locked in each other in some links and thus lose some degrees of freedom while gaining higher structural stiffness. This will also decrease their workspace volume. It is aimed to obtain the optimal configuration of the robot and the optimal joint trajectories to minimize the consumed energy for following a specific task space path. The Pontryagin's Minimum Principle is utilized with a shooting method to resolve kinematic redundancy. Numerical examples... 

The flow field in axial turbines is complex and threedimensional. Therefore, experimental flow field is essential to determine the performance characteristics. However, such testing is always expensive and complex. Simulation of gas turbines is a simple way to reduce testing costs and complexity. The main objective of this paper is to make a detailed systematic analysis of two-stage, axial flow turbine by using of different loss models and a new suggested algorithm based on one-dimensional simulation. In one-dimensional modeling, the loss models have to be used to determine the entropy increase across each section of axial turbines stage at both the design and off-design conditions. The... 

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) play a significant role in hydraulic modeling and flood risk management. This study initially investigated the effect of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) DEM resolutions, ranging from 1 m to 30 m, on flood characteristics, including the inundation area, mean flow depth, and mean flow velocity. Then, the errors of flood characteristics for global DEMs, comprising ALOS (30 m), ASTER (30 m), SRTM (30 m), and TDX (12 m) were quantified using UAV DEM measurements. For these purposes, the HEC-RAS 2D model in steady-state conditions was used to simulate the flood with return periods of 5- to 200 years along 20 km reach of Atrak River located in northeastern Iran.... 

The main objective of this paper is to make a detailed systematic analysis of two-stage, axial flow turbine by using of different losses models and a new suggested algorithm based on one-dimensional simulation. The suggested method is found to be effective, fast and stable, in obtaining performance characteristics of multi-stage axial flow turbines. In one-dimensional modeling, mass flow rate, pressure ratio and efficiency are unknown, with define turbine geometry, inlet total pressure and temperature the turbine performance characteristics can be modeled. This modeling is based on common thermodynamics and aerodynamics principles in a mean stream line analysis under steady state condition.... 

In the present study, the tri-layer nanofibers were synthesized via triaxial electrospinning process to control the sustained delivery of Doxorubicin (DOX), Paclitaxel (PTX) and 5- fluorouracil (5-FU) anticancer drugs from nanofibers. The 5-FU molecules were incorporated into the core solution (chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol (CS/PVA)) to fabricate the CS/PVA/5-FU inner layer of nanofibers. The intermediate layer was prepared from poly(lactic acid)/chitosan (PLA/CS) nanofibers. The DOX and PTX molecules were initially loaded into the g-C3N4 nanosheets and following were incorporated into the PLA/CS solution to fabricate the outer layer of nanofibers. The synthesized nanosheets and nanofibers were... 

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is being deployed at our daily life. Although RFID systems provide useful services to users, they can also threat the privacy and security of the end-users. In order to provide privacy and security for RFID users, different RFID authentication protocols have been proposed. In this study, we investigate the privacy of two recently proposed RFID authentication protocols. It is shown that these protocols have some privacy problems that cannot provide user privacy. Then, in order to enhance the privacy of these protocols, two improvements of analyzed protocols are proposed that provide RFID users privacy  

Epoxy resins have been used as structural materials since the late 1940s. Despite their desirable properties such as high strength, excellent creep resistance, and good adhesion, they suffer from low fracture energy. Rubber modification as a major toughening approach to overcome the inherent brittleness of epoxy polymers was introduced during the early 1970s. Since then, a large number of investigations have been conducted to elucidate different aspects of rubber-toughened epoxies. The present work is a critical review of the field focusing on the important parameters affecting rubber-toughening. The studies reviewed are classified in five categories including roles of matrix ductility,... 

Titanium (Ti) has been widely used for manufacturing of bone implants because of its mechanical properties, biological compatibility, and favorable corrosion resistance in biological environments. However, Ti implants are prone to infection (peri-implantitis) by bacteria which in extreme cases necessitate painful and costly revision surgeries. An emerging, viable solution for this problem is to use copper (Cu) as an antibacterial agent in the alloying system of Ti. The addition of copper provides excellent antibacterial activities, but the underpinning mechanisms are still obscure. This review sheds light on such mechanisms and reviews how incorporation of Cu can render Ti–Cu implants with... 

The Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) is a Monte Carlo based method to assimilate the measurement data sequentially in time. Although, EnKF has some advantages over the other Kalman based methods to deal with non-linear and/or high dimensional reservoir models, it also suffers from deficiency in estimation of non-Gaussian parameters. In this work, we propose a re-parameterization method to handle non-Gaussian parameters via Ensemble Kalman Filter framework. For this purpose, concept of cumulative distribution function transformation has been used. In addition, the statistics of prior information have been aggregated in the state vector in order to capture the prior uncertainties of non-Gaussian... 

An ensemble-based, sequential assimilation procedure is developed and successfully applied to estimate absolute and relative permeabilities jointly under multi-phase (oil, gas and water) flow condition in the porous media. Two-phase oil-water and gas-oil relative permeabilities are represented by power-law models, and Stone's Model II is used to calculate three-phase oil relative permeability. Prior absolute permeability field is also generated with isotropic Gaussian covariance. The proposed method is validated by a twin numerical setup with three different case studies, in which a synthetic 2D reservoir under multi-phase flow condition is considered. In the first case, there is... 

In this investigation, core-shell rubber particles and organically modified clay were added to an epoxy resin and the changes in mechanical behavior were studied. As expected, the yield strength of the organoclay-filled epoxies increased modestly with increasing clay content and the yield strength of the rubber-modified compounds decreased with rubber content. Interestingly, the compressive yield strength of epoxy resins containing both rubber particles and organoclay (a.k.a. hybrid nanocomposites) was found to be independent on organoclay content (up to 5 phr). The fracture toughness of organoclay-filled epoxies increased modestly with clay content and, as expected, the increases in... 

The aim of this paper is to investigate adhesion property between nano-layered filler and the polymer matrix using a combination of experimental and micromechanical models as well as the changes in yield strength and stiffness of a layered silicate-filled epoxy nanocomposite. The results indicate that addition of intercalated layered silicate particles increased Young's modulus and yield strength of the epoxy resin, although the increases in stiffness and yield strength are modest, 30% and 4%, respectively. In addition, experimental results were compared with predictive stiffening and strengthening models. The rule of mixtures provides an upper bound for the modulus in these materials, while... 

Ensemble-based assimilation methods are the most promising tools for dynamic characterization of reservoir models. However, because of inherent assumption of Gaussianity, these methods are not directly applicable to channelized reservoirs wherein the distribution of petrophysical properties is multimodal. Transformation of facies field to level set functions have been proposed to alleviate the problem of multimodality. Level set representation ensures that the estimated fields are facies realizations as well as no modification of the assimilation method is required. Moreover, due to the complexity of the history matching problem in the channelized reservoirs, most researchers conventionally...