Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, we propose efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) policies for various practical scenarios in wirelessly powered communication networks (WPCNs). First, we consider WPT from an energy access point (E-AP) to multiple energy receivers (E-Rs). We formulate the problem of maximizing the total average received power of the E-Rs subject to power constraints of the E-AP, which is a non-convex stochastic optimization problem. Using eigenvalue decomposition techniques, we derive a closed-form expression for the optimal policy, which requires the distribution of the channel state information (CSI) in the network. We then propose a near-optimal policy that does not require this knowledge... 

The recent global concerns over environmental degradation spark interest in sustainable financial mechanisms, with momentum behind environmentally-friendly financing initiatives growing as a potential solution to ecological sustainability. This study analyzes asymmetric green finance-ecological footprint nexus in ten leading European nations with substantial investments in green finance. Previous investigations explored this relationship using panel data analysis, although few economies could not show such a relation separately. In contrast, this investigation employs the “Quantile-on-Quantile” technique, which dissects the interaction of time series data within every nation. The findings... 

In this work we report fabrication of a nanocrystal (NC)-based hybrid organicinorganic LED with structure of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/PVK/CdS-NCs/(Al or Mg:Ag). The hydrophilic CdS NCs were synthesized using a novel aqueous thermochemical method at 80 °C and sizes (around 2 nm) were controlled by thioglycolic acid (TGA) as the capping agent. The favorite feature of these NCs is their relatively high emission intensity and broad, near-white emission. The hydrophilic CdS NCs were successfully spin coated using Triton X-100 as the wetting agent. The fabricated LEDs demonstrated a turn on voltage about 7 V for Al metallic contact. The electroluminescence was a broad spectrum at 540 and 170 nm width, which... 

The Under Frequency Load Shedding (UFLS) is the last automated action to restore power system frequency stability when a severe contingency causes a significant drop in the frequency of interconnection or islanded areas. In this paper, a novel probabilistic algorithm that considers the wind turbine frequency response is proposed to design and optimize the UFLS scheme. The uncertainties of power systems such as wind speed, hourly load, inertia time constant, and generation losses are taken into account. The Monte-Carlo Simulation (MCS) method is used to model the power system uncertainties. Additionally, a novel method is developed to calculate the power system frequency response and... 

The simultaneous oxidation performance of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) by nanoscale calcium peroxide particles (nCaO2) activated with ferric ions (Fe(III)) and the mechanism of the enhancement of BTEX degradation by L-cysteine (L-cys) were investigated. The batch experimental results showed that the nCaO2/Fe(III)/L-cys process was effective in the destruction of BTEX in both ultrapure water and actual groundwater. A proper amount of L-cys could enhance BTEX degradation due to the promotion of Fe(II)/Fe(III) redox cycles by the participation of L-cys, but an excessive presence of L-cys would cause inhibition. Adding 1.0 mM L-cys to the nCaO2/Fe(III) system, the... 

Considering the quasi-brittle mechanical properties of concrete, wedge-splitting tests are employed and improved in this paper to study the fracture behaviour of concrete. A novel wedge-splitting device is designed by fixing ten springs on the force transmission component. The adaptive spring force can be imposed on top of a concrete specimen to retard the brittle fracture process. With the proposed wedge-splitting test design for notched cuboid specimens, the complete load–strain/CMOD curves of concrete can be generated directly. The fracture toughness and the fracture energy can be calculated easily without numerical fitting using the double-K fracture model. The descending branch of the... 

This paper aims to develop a deteriorated bridge maintenance strategy that ensures the safe operation of steel structures and minimizes the total risk. Five common failure modes are considered for the deteriorated bridge: flexure, shear, deflection, fatigue failure for girder, and chloride attack for the concrete deck. Time-dependent and system reliability analyses are carried out to find the probability of failure under these failure modes. Risk-cost optimization is then used to determine the maintenance strategy. This method was applied to a working example. It was found that the developed maintenance strategy can predict when, where, and what to maintain for a bridge to ensure its safe... 

This study tries to establish a powerful machine learning (ML) model for predicting the compressive strength of cement-based mortars by using dynamic elasticity data. The ML model was developed on the basis of Bayesian theorem, leading to a decrease in the overfitting problem compared with other conventional neural networks. Moreover, for the first time, the empirical equations were embedded in the ML model, enhancing the correlation between dynamic elasticity and compressive strength in the cement-based mortars. The results showed that the ML model efficiently predicted the compressive strength with determination coefficient (R2) of 95.2% and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.0488 for... 

This paper analyzes the oligopolistic equilibria of multiple price-maker agents in performance-based regulation (PBR) markets. In these markets, there are price-maker agents representing some frequency regulation (FR) providers and a number of independent price-taker FR providers. A model of equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints (EPECs) is employed in this paper to study the equilibria of a PBR market in the presence of price-maker agents and price-taker FR providers. Due to the incorporation of the FR providers' dynamics, the proposed model is reformulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem over innovative mathematical techniques. An optimal equilibrium point is... 

In this study, the existence of a sinusoidal splitter on the formation and distribution of hydrogen and air co-jets are investigated in a dual-combustion ramjet engine. The main scope of this research is to analyze the comprehensive flow structure and flame features directly downstream of the sinusoidal splitter. In this work, shockwave/shear-layer interactions behind the sinusoidal splitter are thoroughly studied through a computational fluid dynamic approach. Two different splitter profiles are compared with a simple splitter to demonstrate the main effects of multi shock wave interactions on fuel distribution and penetrations. To simulate co-air jet, Reynolds Average Navier-Stocks... 

In this study, the enhanced trichloroethylene (TCE) degradation performance was investigated by polyvinyl alcohol coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) as an oxidant in Fe(II)-based catalytic systems. The nanoscale iron sulfide (nFeS), having an average particle size of 115.4 nm, was synthesized in the laboratory and characterized by SEM, TEM, HR-TEM along with EDS elemental mapping, XRD, FTIR, ICP-OES, and XPS techniques. In only ferrous iron catalyzed system (PVA@nCP/Fe(II)), TCE degradation was recorded at 58.9% in 6 h. In comparison, this value was increased to 97.5% or 99.7% with the addition of citric acid (CA) or nFeS in PVA@nCP/Fe(II) system, respectively. A comparative... 

In this study, the enhanced trichloroethylene (TCE) degradation performance was investigated by polyvinyl alcohol coated calcium peroxide nanoparticles (PVA@nCP) as an oxidant in Fe(II)-based catalytic systems. The nanoscale iron sulfide (nFeS), having an average particle size of 115.4 nm, was synthesized in the laboratory and characterized by SEM, TEM, HR-TEM along with EDS elemental mapping, XRD, FTIR, ICP-OES, and XPS techniques. In only ferrous iron catalyzed system (PVA@nCP/Fe(II)), TCE degradation was recorded at 58.9% in 6 h. In comparison, this value was increased to 97.5% or 99.7% with the addition of citric acid (CA) or nFeS in PVA@nCP/Fe(II) system, respectively. A comparative... 

Laser-assisted friction stir processing was used to modify the microstructure of an as-cast gamma prime strengthened nickel base superalloy. The grain structure of top region of the stir zone, where full dissolution of gamma prime precipitates occurred during heating, is controlled by discontinuous dynamic recrystallization mechanism and the pinning effect of refined carbides and cooling gamma prime precipitates. In the bottom of the stir zone, the partial dissolved gamma prime precipitates play important role in grain structure development by their pinning effect in retarding grain growth during cooling as well as by a continuous recrystallization mechanism  

Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) addresses the problem of associating subsequences of individuals' genomes to the observable characteristics called phenotypes. In a genome of length G, it is observed that each characteristic is only related to a specific subsequence of it with length L, called the causal subsequence. The objective is to recover the causal subsequence, using a dataset of N individuals' genomes and their observed characteristics. Recently, the problem has been investigated from an information theoretic point of view in [1]. It has been shown that there is a threshold effect for reliable learning of the causal subsequence at Gh ( N L/G ) by characterizing the capacity of... 

The effect of bisulfite (HSO3–) in nCaO2/Fe(III)/HSO3– system on improving HO• generation and trichloroethene (TCE) removal was innovatively reported. The enhancement mechanism of HSO3– for TCE removal in nCaO2/Fe(III)/HSO3– system was caused not only by the complexing and reducing effects on promoting the conversion of Fe(III) to Fe(II), but also due to the reaction with O2 in water to produce SO4–• for accelerating TCE degradation. A double effect of nCaO2 as an oxidant source to generate HO• and as a O2 source to promote SO4–• generation was revealed. A pseudo-second-order kinetic model of TCE removal was determined and 94.6% TCE degradation was achieved within 60 min at the... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

We consider the problem of learning control policies in discrete-time stochastic systems which guarantee that the system stabilizes within some specified stabilization region with probability 1. Our approach is based on the novel notion of stabilizing ranking supermartingales (sRSMs) that we introduce in this work. Our sRSMs overcome the limitation of methods proposed in previous works whose applicability is restricted to systems in which the stabilizing region cannot be left once entered under any control policy. We present a learning procedure that learns a control policy together with an sRSM that formally certifies probability 1 stability, both learned as neural networks. We show that... 

The global commitment towards reducing carbon emissions drives the implementation of sustainable carbon-fibre-reinforced-thermoplastic composites (CFRTPs). However, the machining of CFRTPs presents challenges due to the material's ductile–brittle composition and sensitivity to machining-induced high temperatures. For the first time, we conducted temperature-controlled orthogonal cutting of CFRTP (using CF/PEKK as a demonstrator) to unveil its temperature-dependent cutting physics. Three representative cutting temperatures, 23 ℃ (ambient temperature),100 ℃ (Tg) and four typical fibre cutting orientations (0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°) have been... 

The mechanism of surfactants in surfactant-in situ chemical oxidation (S-ISCO) coupled process for trichloroethene (TCE) degradation was firstly reported. The performance of TCE solubilization and inhibition of TCE degradation in three nonionic surfactants (TW-80, Brij-35, TX-100) in PS/Fe(II)/citric acid (CA) system was compared and TW-80 was evaluated to be the optimal surfactant in S-ISCO coupled process due to the best TCE solubilizing ability and minimal inhibition for TCE degradation (only 31.8% TCE inhibition in the presence of 1 g L−1 TW-80 surfactant). The inhibition mechanism in TCE degradation was also demonstrated by comparing the strength of ROSs and PS utilization. In the...