Sharif Digital Repository

Flow through the pores of granular materials has many instances in practice. Therefore, it is interesting to realize how some parameters, such as the shape of the particles affect the passing flow. Following the recent mathematical theory proposed by the authors, this paper deals with the issue of how tortuosity and permeability are influenced by the particle shape. Comparison of the results with the experimental data reveals the competency of the theory in predicting the impact of particle geometry  

The original article contained a mistake in Equation 1. The corrected Equation 1 is shown below: MX+Cx+Kx=f.The original article has been updated © Springer Nature B.V. 2022  

For the present article, a pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is fabricated and tested experimentally by bending a copper tube. The effects of working fluid, heat input, charging ratio, inclination angle, magnets location, and ferrofluid (magnetic nanofluid) volumetric concentration have been investigated on the thermal performance of this PHP. Experimental results show that using ferrofluid as a working fluid improves the thermal performance of the PHP significantly. Moreover, applying a magnetic field on a ferrofluidic PHP reduces its thermal resistance. By changing the inclination angle of the PHP from vertical mode to angles close to the horizontal mode, the present PHP has a constant and... 

In this article, the control of an electrohydrodynamic 3D printer is studied. The proposed controller has a hybrid piecewise linear feedback form which is designed based on a hybrid model of the printer. The hybrid model is obtained via a gray box identification process whose structure is proposed utilizing the results of the finite element simulation of the printer within the COMSOL Multiphysics software. The asymptotic stability of the hybrid control combined with a hybrid observer is proven using the Lyapunov theory. In addition, the obtained control is applied to the finite element model of the printer to check its performance which shows the success of the controlled system in tracking... 

In this paper, a new analytical method is presented that can be used to determine the behavior of particular steel beam-to-column extended end plate connection in linear and nonlinear regions. A common means of forming a rigid joint between a universal beam and column is to weld an end plate to the beam end and then to bolt it to the column. A physically based analytical method that can predict the behavior of bolted and extended end plate eave connections, using the connection dimensions as input, is presented. This article demonstrates an analytical procedure for the establishment of elastic and plastic parts of the M-χ curve of this form of connection. An analytical method is proposed for... 

A dielectrophoresis (DEP)-assisted inertial microfluidics method is introduced in this study for the isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from diluted blood samples. The method is based on the negative DEP, provided with the laterally allocated microelectrodes as well as the proper selection of the applied electric field frequency and voltage to suppress the limited purity arising from the overlapped sizes of CTCs and white blood cells. The dynamics of polystyrene microparticles (with the sizes of 5 and 15 μm) were first investigated numerically and experimentally within the DEP-assisted inertial microfluidic device. While the dynamics of the larger microparticles were governed by the... 

Nanostructured TiO2-Al2O3 films and powders were prepared by a straightforward aqueous particulate sol-gel route. Titanium (IV) isopropoxide and aluminum chloride were used as precursors, and hydroxypropyl cellulose was used as a polymeric fugitive agent in order to increase the porosity. The effect of Al:Ti molar ratio was studied on the crystallization behavior of the products. X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed that the powders crystallized at 800°C, containing anatase-TiO2, rutile-TiO2 and cubic-Al2O3 phases. Furthermore, it was found that Al2O3 retarded the anatase to rutile transformation. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) image showed that one of the smallest crystallite sizes was... 

Analyzing the features of the chromosomes can be very useful for diagnosis of many genetic disorders or prediction of the possible abnormalities that may occur in the future generations. For this purpose, karyotype is often used which to make it, there is necessary to identify each one of the 24 chromosomes from the microscopic images. Definition and extraction of the morphological and band pattern based features for each chromosome is the first step to identify them. An important class of the morphological features is the location of the chromosome's centromere. Thus, centromere localization is an initial step in designing an automatic karyotyping system. In this paper, a novel algorithm... 

In this study, a general 3D distributed modeling of Trolling-Mode AFM (TR-AFM) as a nanorobot is presented to analyze the 2D manipulation process of a spherical cell. To this aim, the analysis is categorized into 3 sections. In the first section, 6 deformations of TR-AFM are taken into account, and the standard model of the system is obtained. Moreover, the system is simulated in ANSYS Workbench. The results of modal and transient analyses of the system from both analytical and software methods reveal high agreement, which confirms the accuracy of the presented analytical model. In the second section, by utilizing the 3D derived model, displacement of a spherical yeast single cell (W303)... 

The anatase phase of titania was stabilised with physically modifying particulate sol-gel process. Two major parameters, peptisation temperature and drying temperature, were identified which were responsible for retarding the anatase to rutile phase transformation, crystal growth and packing of primary particles. The critical nucleus size of transformation was controlled by natural (at 25 °C) and artificial (at 50 and 70 °C) peptisation techniques. Moreover, sintering of primary particles was controlled by cool (at 0 and 5 °C) and normal (at 25 °C) drying techniques. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis confirmed that a full conversion of titanium isopropoxide is obtained... 

Seismic retrofitting of existing buildings and design of earth-quake resistant buildings are important issues associated with earthquake-prone zones. Use of metallic-yielding dampers as an energy dissipation system is an acceptable method for controlling damages in structures and improving their seismic performance. In this study, the optimal distribution of dampers for reducing the seismic response of steel frames with multi-degrees freedom is presented utilizing the uniform distribution of deformations. This has been done in a way that, the final configuration of dampers in the frames lead to minimum weight while satisfying the performance criteria. It is shown that such a structure has an... 

The present study is set out to systematically investigate the combined impact of operational, geometrical, and model uncertainties on the hemodynamics and performance characteristics in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) benchmark centrifugal blood pump. Non-intrusive Polynomial Chaos Expansion (NIPCE) has been utilized to propagate the uncertainty of 12 random input variables in the flow field and the performance characteristics of the blood pump at three working conditions. The global sensitivity of the Quantities of Interest (QoI) to the uncertain input parameters was measured through the Sobol’ indices. The Multiple Reference Frames (MRF) approach and the SST k−ω turbulence... 

In this correspondence, we focus on the performance analysis of the widely-used minimum description length (MDL) source enumeration technique in array processing. Unfortunately, available theoretical analysis exhibit deviation from the simulation results. We present an accurate and insightful performance analysis for the probability of missed detection.We also show that the statistical performance of the MDL is approximately the same under both deterministic and stochastic signal models. Simulation results show the superiority of the proposed analysis over available results  

Lack of robust techniques for optimization of hybrid separation systems is obvious in the literature. A novel hybrid approach for modeling and optimization of a hybrid process consisting of fixed-bed adsorption column (FBAC) and dead-end filtration (DEF) for the removal of methylene blue from water was presented. Artificial neural network (ANN), response surface methodology (RSM) and genetic algorithm (GA) were used for this purpose. ANN was employed to successfully approximate the breakthrough curves. Central composite design was used to investigate the impact of the operating variables, i.e. feed flowrate, initial concentration, adsorption bed length, and filter type on the removal rate as... 

Many heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shales which act as barriers or baffles to flow. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding about how the shale geometrical characteristics affect the reservoir performance, especially during polymer flooding of heavy oils. In this study, a series of polymer injection processes have been performed on five-spot glass micromodels with different shale geometrical characteristics that are initially saturated with the heavy oil. The available geological characteristics from one of the Iranian oilfields were considered for the construction of the flow patterns by using a controlled-laser technology. Oil recoveries as a function of pore... 

In this work, a four-turn pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is fabricated and tested experimentally. The novelty of the present PHP is the capability to obtain various thermal performances at a specific heat input by changing the magnetic field. The effects of working fluid (water and ferrofluid), charging ratio (40% and 70%), heat input (35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and 85 W), orientation (horizontal and vertical heat mode), ferrofluid volumetric concentration (2.5% and 7%), and magnetic field on the thermal performance of PHPs are investigated. The results showed that applying the magnetic field on the water-based ferrofluid reduced the thermal resistance of PHP in all orientations. In the presence of a... 

This paper presents a novel approach for small signal stability assessment of a multi-machine system using only synchronized Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) data. The proposed method does not need any information about the generators, network configuration or line impedances. By installing one PMU on each generator bus and using classical model for generator, all of the network and generators parameters needed for small signal stability analysis are estimated using the ambient data registered in the PMUs. Least square error estimation is used to obtain a reduced admittance matrix for the network in real-time. The estimated model is then used to evaluate the multi machine system dynamics in... 

A comprehensive understanding of the role of reservoir heterogeneities induced by flow barriers and connate water on sweep efficiency of different EOR scenarios is rarely attended in the available literature. In this work, different miscible/immiscible EOR processes were conducted on various one-quarter five-spot glass micromodels incorporating small-scale flow barriers. Microscopic and macroscopic observations revealed the reduction of sweep efficiency, premature breakthrough of displacing fluids, the severity of fingering at displacement front which leaves a large amount of oil behind the flow barriers untouched, and significant increasing trend of oil recovery after breakthrough in the... 

The dynamics of a pressure regulator valve have been studied using the through Bondgraph simulation technique. This valve consists of several elements that can transmit, transform, store, and consume hydraulic energy. The governing equations of the system have been derived from the dynamic model. In solving system equations numerically, various pressure-flow characteristics across the regulator ports and orifices have been taken into consideration. This simulation study identifies some critical parameters that have significant effects on the transient response of the system. The results have been obtained using the MATLAB-SIMULINK environment. The main advantage of the proposed methodology... 

The light scattering, harvesting and adsorption effects in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are studied by preparation of coated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with TiO2 and Zr-doped TiO2 nanoparticles in the forms of mono- and double-layer cells. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that the phase composition of Zr-doped TiO2 electrode is a mixture of anatase and rutile phases with major rutile content, whereas it is the same mixture with major anatase content for coated CNTs with TiO2. Furthermore, the average crystallite size of Zr-doped TiO2 electrode is slightly decreased with Zr introduction. Field emission scanning electron...