Sharif Digital Repository

High strength Al-AlN composites were synthesized via high-energy milling and sintering technique. Al-X wt.% AlN (X = 0, 2.5, 5 and 10) composite powders were milled in a planetary ball mill for 25 h. Morphology, particle size distribution, crystallite size, micro-strain, and microhardness of milled powders were studied. Ball-milled powders were degassed at 400 °C for 30 min. After uniaxial cold compaction, composite compacts were sintered at 650 °C for 20, 30 and 60 min under N2 atmosphere. Effects of reinforcement content, degassing treatment and sintering time on the sinterability of powders were investigated. The results revealed that the sinterability was degraded by increasing the... 

Cu/SiC nanocomposite powders with homogeneously distributed nanosize SiC particles were produced by high energy mechanical milling (MM). Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and micro-hardness and density measurements were performed to understand the effects of microstructure and hardness on compaction behavior during MM. The effects of SiC nanoparticle content and mechanical milling time on apparent density (AD) and tap density (TD) of the nanocomposite powders were systematically investigated. The Hausner ratio (HR), defined as TD to AD, were estimated to evaluate friction between the particles. Increasing MM duration and SiC content resulted... 

The present work studied bioactive coatings on the surface of ceramic biomaterials. Zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) composites containing 15 mol.-%. Partially stabilised zirconia was prepared after 1 h sintering at 1550°C. Apatite layers were then coated onto the surfaces of composites by the biomimetic method using 1·5-2 multiply concentrations of simulated body fluid (SBF). Before treatment in SBFs, a sodium silicate layer was employed as nucleating agent to induce the formation of a calcium phosphate layer. The effect of immersion time on the morphology of the precipitate was monitored with a scanning electron microscope. X dot maps revealed that there is a relationship between... 

Zirconia Toughened Alumina (ZTA) Nanocomposites were prepared using Nano sized Zirconia (ZrO2) powders doped with 3% mol of yttria (Y 2O3) nanopowders. Diffusion of α-alumina (Al 2O3) nanoparticles as well as yttria into the Zirconia lattice network drives monoclinic - tetragonal martensitic transformation. Zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) composites containing different amount of partially stabilized Zirconia (PSZ) 5, 10, 15 and 20% mol, were prepared via wet mixing and axial pressing. After sintering at different temperatures,1450, 1550 and 1650 °C, phase change in the samples were monitored. X-ray diffraction patterns showed that at constant composition, tetragonal zirconia was increased... 

In this paper we propose two new attacks on UMTS network. Both attacks exploit the UMTS-GSM interworking and are possible in the GSM access area of UMTS network. The first attack allows the attacker to eavesdrop on the entire traffic of the victim UMTS subscriber in the GERAN coverage of the UMTS network. The second attack is an impersonation attack i.e. the attacker impersonates a genuine UMTS subscriber to a UMTS network and fools the network to provide services at the expense of the victim subscriber in its GERAN coverage. © 2009 IEEE  

The compressibility behavior of Al-AlN nanostructured composite powder with different amount of reinforcement content was studied. The composite powder was synthesized by blending and high-energy milling process for 25 h. Williamson-Hall method was applied to determine the crystallite size after milling process. To investigate the role of reinforcement particles in consolidation of composite powders, monolithic aluminum powder was examined. Samples were made at different pressures and relationships were established between the compaction pressure and the density of the compacts. The modified Heckel equation was used to assume the pressure effect on yield strength and then was compared with... 

In the present study, bioceramic composites based hydroxyapatite (HAp) reinforced with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was synthesized via sol-gel technique. The dried gels were individually heated at a rate of 5°C/min up to 600°C for 2 h in a muffle furnace in order to obtain HAp-MWCNTs mixed powder. Composites were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM/SAED/EDX and Raman spectroscopy techniques. Results showed the synthesis of HAp particles in the MWCNTs sol which was prepared in advance, leads to an excellent dispersion of MWCNTs in HAp matrix. Apparent average size of crystallites increased by increasing the percentage of MWCNTs. The average crystallite size of samples (at 600°C), estimated by... 

In this work, treatment of oily wastewaters with commercial polyacrylonitrile (PAN) ultrafiltration (UF) membranes was investigated. In order to do these experiments, the outlet wastewater of the API (American Petroleum Institute) unit of Tehran refinery, is used as the feed. The purpose of this paper was to predict the permeation flux and fouling resistance, by applying artificial neural networks (ANNs), and then to optimize the operating conditions in separation of oil from industrial oily wastewaters, including trans-membrane pressure (TMP), cross-flow velocity (CFV), feed temperature and pH, so that a maximum permeation flux accompanied by a minimum fouling resistance, was acquired by... 

UMTS is the European standard of the third generation of mobile communications and its air interface is called WCDMA. In this paper a simple WCDMA system in downlink and FDD mode is simulated and results are presented. The simulation that is an execution, apart from physical layer functions as layer 1, includes data modulation, spreading multipath channel, AWGN noise, data demodulation, despreading and Rake receiver. It is obvious that transmission methods of data correspond to WCDMA standards. In other words, frames and slots structure, data symbols setting and required parameters follow the defined standards. © 2002 St. Petersburg State Poly Univ  

Primal-dual interior-point methods (IPMs) have shown their power in solving large classes of optimization problems. However, there is still a discrepancy between the practical behavior of these algorithms and their theoretical worst-case complexity results with respect to the update strategies of the duality gap parameter in the algorithm. Recently, this discrepancy was significantly reduced by Peng, J., Roos, C. and Terlaky, T., 2002, Self-Regularity: A New Paradigm for Primal-Dual Interior-Point Algorithms (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) who introduced a new family of self-regular (SR)-proximity functions based IPMs. In this paper, based on a class of SR proximities, we propose... 

Salahi et al. [M. Salahi, J. Peng, T. Terlaky, On Mehrtora type predictor-corrector algorithms, Technical Report 2005/4, Advanced Optimization Lab, Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~oplab/publication, SIAM Journal on Optimization, submitted for publication] give a numerical example showing that Mehrotra's original predictor-corrector algorithm, which is the basis of interior point methods software packages, may be very inefficient in practice. This motivated Salahi et al. to come up with a safeguarded algorithm that enjoys a polynomial iteration complexity and is efficient in practice. Here we discuss a variation of Mehrotra's second order... 

This study investigated the fabrication and characterization of two new zinc-titanium-based alloys. The Zn-xTi alloys (x = 4 and 10 wt%) were mechanically alloyed by powder metallurgy for 10 h. The spark plasma sintering (SPS) method shaped the resulting powder. The fabricated samples were evaluated in terms of morphology and structure by XRD, SEM, and microhardness tests. The obtained parts’ corrosion resistance and biological behavior were also examined by potentiodynamic polarization analysis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and MTT tests. The results showed that alloying increased the hardness compared to pure zinc samples. The corrosion test results indicated higher... 

Primal-Dual Interior-Point Methods (IPMs) have shown their power in solving large classes of optimization problems. In this paper a self-regular proximity based Infeasible Interior Point Method (IIPM) is proposed for linear optimization problems. First we mention some interesting properties of a specific self-regular proximity function, studied recently by Peng and Terlaky, and use it to define infeasible neighborhoods. These simple but interesting properties of the proximity function indicate that, when the current iterate is in a large neighborhood of the central path, large-update IIPMs emerge as the only natural choice. Then, we apply these results to design a specific self-regularity... 

In this study, the microstructural and mechanical features of monolithic pure Cu and Cu matrix nanocomposites reinforced with three different fractions (2, 4, and 6 vol%) of SiC nanoparticles (n-SiC) fabricated via a combination of high energy mechanical milling and hot pressing techniques were investigated. The fabricated composites exhibited homogeneous distribution of the n-SiC with few porosities. It was found that the grain refinement, the planar features within the grains, and the lattice strains increase with increase in the n-SiC content. The yield and compressive strengths of the nanocomposites were significantly improved with increases in the n-SiC content up to 4 vol%; then they... 

Primal-dual interior-point methods (IPMs) have shown their ability in solving large classes of optimization problems efficiently. Feasible IPMs require a strictly feasible starting point to generate the iterates that converge to an optimal solution. The self-dual embedding model provides an elegant solution to this problem with the cost of slightly increasing the size of the problem. On the other hand, infeasible interior point methods (IIPMs) can be initiated by any positive vector, and thus are popular in IPMs based software packages. In this paper we propose an adaptive large-update IIPM based on a specific self-regular proximity function, with barrier degree 1 + log n, that operates in a... 

Copper based hybrid composites containing nano-sized silicon carbide and carbon nanotubes reinforcements with minimal porosity were fabricated via mechanical milling followed by hot pressing technique. Microstructures of the powders and consolidated materials were studied using scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning transmission electron microscope. Microstructural characterization of the materials revealed that the addition of nanosized silicon carbide reinforcement lowered the grain growth rate and enhanced the homogenization during mechanical milling. Microhardness measurements and compression test showed considerable improvements in mechanical... 

Nanostructured Cu and Cu-2 vol% SiC nanocomposite were produced by high energy mechanical milling and hot pressing technique. Microstructure development during fabrication process was investigated by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, scanning transmission electron microscope, and electron backscatter diffraction techniques. The results showed that the microstructure of copper and copper-based nanocomposite composed of a mixture of equiaxed nanograins with bimodal and non-random misorientation distribution. The presence of SiC nanoparticles refined the grain structure of the copper matrix while the fraction of low angle grain boundaries was increased. Evaluation of mechanical...