Sharif Digital Repository

For the purposes of lowering environmental emission cost and increasing economic profit, energy efficient combined heat and power (CHP) units can be integrated with conventional separate heat and power production units to meet heat and power demands. The goal of this study is to develop and examine a novel heuristic and deterministic optimization algorithm for solving the profit-based unit commitment (PBUC) problem for a generation company with integrated CHP-thermal-heat only system for (i) satisfying demands for heat and power, (ii) selling spinning reserve for power, (iii) reducing environmental CO2 emission cost, and (iv) accounting for valve-point effects for steam turbines. For... 

In this paper, we propose a new scenario in order to increase the total throughput of a WLAN. In this scenario, some secondary users (SUs) are considered in a primary WLAN such that SUs cooperate with primary users (PUs) in transmitting the primary packets. Each SU sends its packets as well as the primary packets collided at the access point, but overheard successfully at the SU, by random access the primary WLAN. We show that SUs cooperation is able to compensate their adverse effect in the WLAN, so total throughput in the WLAN increases without a significant degrading effect for the stability region of PUs. To this end, we use an analytical model based on open queueing networks. By solving... 

One of the beneficial impacts of Distributed generation (DG) units on electrical network is power loss reduction in the distribution feeder on which DG is located. In this paper the effect of DG on power losses of a distribution feeder with a combination of uniformly distributed and lumped loads is investigated, and a mathematical model of power loss reduction as a function of DG and the feeder parameters is extracted. Then, based on the derived formula, optimum conditions of utilizing and locating the DG units are obtained. © 2006 IEEE  

When an integer order linear time invariant system possesses unrepeated pure imaginary poles it can generate oscillatory response which is represented by invariant closed contours in the phase plane. In linear time invariant fractional order systems with the same property, due to their special characteristics, this behavior will be more complicated and the contours would not be invariant. In this paper we will investigate the behavior of fractional order systems under such conditions  

This study is an extension of our previous work that was conducted on the aerodynamic characteristics of an ultra light weight airplane, which could be a human-powered airplane or an unmanned-aerial vehicle. One of the major aerodynamic tasks which should be done in this type of airplane is to reduce drag coefficient. The mainly effectual strategy for drag reduction is to contemplate on the components that make up the largest percentage of the overall drag and take into account that small improvements on large quantities can become significant aerodynamic improvements. Our experience showed that the use of light material in constructing human-powered airplanes and unmanned-air-vehicles has... 

A superhydrophobic nanocomposite coating was fabricated using a simple procedure. The nanocomposite is composed of an acrylic copolymer and modified silica nanoparticles. The acrylic copolymer was prepared by free radical copolymerization of methyl methacrylate and dodeycl methacrylate monomers. Silica nanoparticles were synthesized and modified with an alkyl silane reagent, hexadecyltrimethoxysilane. A mixture of acrylic copolymer and modified silica nanoparticles, dispersed in dichloromethane, was then sprayed on glass and filter paper surface. Chemical composition and structure of the coatings were investigated by FTIR, FESEM, AFM, 1H-NMR and GPC. The wettability of the prepared coating... 

Adaptive application detection in today's high-bandwidth networks is resource consuming and inaccurate due to the high volume, velocity, and variety characteristics of the networks traffic. To generate a robust classifier for identifying applications over encrypted traffic, we proposed DSCA as a DPI-based Stream Classification Algorithm. DSCA utilizes applications detected by the DPI, Deep Packet Inspection technique, as ground truth data and updates the classification model accordingly. To reduce the classification algorithms overhead without accuracy reduction, a feature selection method, named CfsSubsetEval, is deployed in DSCA. The proposed approach is implemented via the MOA tool and... 

This paper deals with the identification of fractional order systems via orthogonal rational functions. These functions have widely been used in system identification of classical integer order systems. It has been shown that due to some properties such as the presence of non-exponentional aperiodic multimodes in the fractional order systems, it is much better to use fractional orthogonal rational functions in approximation of these systems. One problem which arises in this area is the estimation of fractional order of these orthogonal rational functions. In the existing methods, these parameters have been found by trial and error which requires a large amount of calculations. To reduce the... 

There has been much interest, recently, towards exploiting the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technique in radar. It is shown that using multiple antennas at transmit and receive sides can improve the performance of the system. However, in order to analyze the system's performance, its ambiguity function, i.e. the ambiguity function of a MIMO radar, is needed to be defined. In this paper, beginning from the information theoretic definitions, we derive such function, specifically for a MIMO radar with widely separated antennas  

It has been shown that using multiple antennas in a radar system improves the performance considerably, since multiple target echoes are received from different aspect angles of the target. In this way, the target detection is improved. However, when using multiple antennas, some problems, such as designing the transmit signals, synchronization, etc. emerge that should be solved. One of such problems is the receiver placement. Receiver placement deals with choosing a proper position for the receive antenna in order to optimize the whole system's performance. In this paper, a receiver placement procedure based on improving the radar ambiguity function is proposed for the case of a multisite... 

By employing the MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) technology in radar, some new problems emerged, that, in order to benefit the MIMO gains in radar, it was necessary to solve them suitably. One of such obstacles is determining the positions of receive antennas in a MIMO radar system with widely separated antennas (WS MIMO radar), since it is shown that the antennas' positions affect the whole system's performance considerably. In this study, a proper receivers' positioning procedure is proposed. To do this end, four criteria are developed based on the proposed MIMO detector and the MIMO ambiguity function. The simulations verify that the proposed positioning procedure improves the... 

Hybrid nanofluids have several advantages compared with the conventional types due to their modified properties. Their enhanced thermophysical and rheological properties make them more appropriate for solar energy systems. In this review paper, an overview of solar energy systems is represented, and afterwards, applications of hybrid nanofluids in various solar technologies, especially solar thermal, are reviewed. Comparison between the nanofluidic systems, and the conventional ones is performed in order to gain a deeper insight into the advantages of using nanofluids. According to the results of the reviewed studies, the most important reason for performance enhancement of nanofluidic solar... 

This paper investigates the dynamical behaviour of the fractional delayed damped Mathieu equation. This system includes three different phenomena (fractional order, time delay, parametric resonance). The method of harmonic balance is employed to achieve approximate expressions for the transition curves in the parameter plane. The n = 0 and n = 1 transition curves (both lower and higher order approximations) are obtained. The dependencies of these curves on the system parameters and fractional orders are determined. Previous results for the transition curves reported for the damped Mathieu equation, delayed second-order oscillator, and fractional Mathieu equation are confirmed as special... 

A noncovalent functionalization of the edges of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) with β-cyclodextrin-graft-hyperbranched polyglycerol (β-CD-g-HPG) was successfully performed via a host-guest interaction. The results showed that β-CD-g-HPG disperses the graphene sheets better than pure β-CD or HPG. The resulted supramolecular structure is stable in neutral water medium more than one week. However, in acidic medium the host-guest interaction is collapsed and graphene nanosheets precipitate. © 2017, Copyright © Taylor & Francis  

A rotating closed loop pulsating heat pipe (RCLPHP) was experimentally investigated as a passive heat sink for rotary equipment cooling. The effects of heat input, rotational speed, filling ratio, and working fluid on the thermal resistance of RCLPHP were studied. Pure water and ethanol were used as working fluids with filling ratios of 30%, 50%, and 70% by volume, and the RCLPHP was tested at four rotational speeds: 200, 400, 600, and 800 rpm. The results showed that the best filling ratio for both water and ethanol is 50% and proved that the RCLPHP is able to work efficiently in a wide range of rotational speed. Moreover, it was observed that at the optimum filling ratio for ethanol and... 

In the present study, a novel theoretical model is developed, based on the energy method, to predict the equivalent mechanical properties of a new morphing structure with zero Poisson's ratio, which is composed of continuous fiber reinforced composite struts. Due to the employing glass fiber in fabricating the proposed cruciform honeycomb, higher strength than the structures made of pure isotropic materials is obtained. The use of cells with a zero Poisson's ratio also increases the flexural strength of the structure. In the continuation of the paper, by examining the geometric effects on the equivalent properties, a parametric study is performed. Then, using the appropriate failure... 

In this paper, We develop concurrent learning adaptive controller, which uses recorded and current data concurrently for adaptation, to model reference adaptive control (MRAC) of uncertain switched nonlinear systems. In standard MRAC architecture for switched systems, the adaptive update laws are derived based on the gradient descent scheme, but here we developed two novel parameter estimation schemes by using modification terms in adaptation laws in which recorded data are used simultaneously with current data and a triggering time is considered in which a sufficient condition on the linear independence of the recorded data is obtained to guarantee the exponential convergence of tracking... 

The formation of water drops as a Newtonian fluid and formation of a shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluid, Carboxyl Methyl Cellulose (CMC) from a capillary into different bulk fluids are experimentally investigated. A high speed camera is used to visualize the images of the drops and an image-processing code employed to determine the drop properties from each image. It was found that the properties of the water drops when they are drooped into the liquids bulk fluids such as toluene and n-hexane are almost the same while they differed substantially when they were drooped into the air bulk fluid. It is shown that during the formation of water drop in all three kinds of bulk fluids, the drop... 

It is shown that the detection performance can be significantly improved using the recent technology of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems. This is a result of the spatial diversity in such systems due to the viewing of the target from different angles. On the other hand, the moving target indication (MTI) processing has long been known and applied in the traditional pulse radars to detect weak moving targets in the presence of strong clutter signals. The authors propose a procedure based on the compressive sensing idea, in order to apply the MTI processing in a MIMO radar with widely separated antennas. Although a clutter is included in the signal model and a different... 

Generalisation of one-dimensional dictionary learning (1DDL) algorithms to Multidimensional (MD) mode and its utilisation in MD data applications, increases the speed and reduces the computational complexity. An example of such an application is 3D inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image reconstruction and noise reduction. In this study, in addition to MD mode generalisation, the formulation structure of the multidimensional dictionary learning (MDDL) problem is discussed followed by two novel algorithms to solve it. The first one is based on the K-singular value decomposition algorithm for 1DDL, which uses alternating minimisation and singular value decomposition. The second algorithm...