Journal of Advanced Materials in Engineering (Esteghlal)

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In recent years, many different plans have been considered to use the nuclear energy gained from inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as attempts to obtain high energy efficiencies. In conventional ICF methods, a small amount (about mg) of the deuterium–tritium compound is confined in a small spherical chamber of a few millimeters in radius and compressed by laser or heavy ion beams with powers in the order of W. The consequent plasma froming at the center of the chamber is an essential issue for fusion. The hydrodynamical instabilities during the fuel compression process arising in the conventional ICF technique leads to a decline in energy efficiency. The new plans for reducing instabilities involve compression of the fuel chamber in two stages using laser or ion beams. In the first stage, fuel is preheated by laser or ion and in the second phase, relativistic electrons are constructed by -W laser phases in the fuel. This heating method has come to be known as a fast “ignition method”. More recently, cylindrical rather than spherical fuel chambers with magnetic control in the plasma domain have been also considered. In this work, fast ignition method in cylindrical fuel chambers will be investigated and transportation of the relativistic electrons will be calculated using MCNP code and the Fokker–Planck program. Furthermore, the transfer rate of relativistic electron energy to the fuel will be calculated. Our calculations show that the fast ignition method and cylindrical chambers guarantee a higher energy efficiency than the one-step ignition and that it can be considered an appropriate substitute for the current ICF techniques.

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Investigation of vertical vibrations of a railway turnout is important in designing track components under moving loads of trains. In this paper, the turnout is simulated by a linear finite element model with modal damping. A section of the turnout has a length of 36 sleeper spans surrounding the crossing. Rails and sleepers are modeled with uniform Rayleigh- Timoshenko beam elements. The rails are connected via railpads (linear springs) to the sleepers, which rest on an elastic foundation. The rolling stocks are discrete systems of masses, springs, and dampers. By passing the trains at a constant speed, only vertical dynamics (including roll and pitch motions) is studied. The wheel-rail contact is modeled using a non-linear Hertzian spring. The train-track interaction problem is solved numerically by using an extended state space vector approach in conjunction with modal superposition for the turnout. The results show that the rail discontinuity at the frog leads to an increase in the wheel-rail contact force. Both smooth and irregular transitions of the wheels from the wing rail to the crossing nose have been examined for varying speeds of the vehicle. Under perfect conditions, the wheels will change quite smoothly from rolling on the wing rail to rolling on the nose. The impact at the crossing will then be small, giving a maximum wheel-rail contact force which is only 30--50 per cent larger than the static contact force. For uneven transitions, the severity of the impact loading at the crossing depends strongly on the train speed. The increase in the contact force, as compared with the static force, is in the order of 100 per cent at 70 km/h and 200 per cent at 150 km/h.

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A rectangular rod is placed in a flow field flowing parallel to a flat plate. Effect of chord-thickness ratio of rectangular rod on developing vortex shedding downstream to the rod is studied. Then, for each one of the aspect ratios, the distance of the rod from the neighboring flat plate is reduced until the rod sticks to the flat plate. In each case, the effect of the flat plate boundary layer on Strouhal number and the contrary effect of the boundary layer on vortex shedding from the rectangular rod are studied. Results show that as the rectangular rod enters into the flat plate boundary layer, vortex generation from the closest side of the rod reduces, thereby reducing the Strouhal number as well. Finally, when the rectangular rod sticks to the flat plate, a stationary wake forms downstream the rod and sticks to the flat plate. Meanwhile, the boundary layer over the flat plate is disturbed effectively and heat transfer coefficient from the flat plate is enhanced by an average of 50% and up to 200% in some places, locally.

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In this paper, the boundary-based estimation of pressure distribution in the cardiovascular system is investigated using two dimensional flow images. The conventional methods of non-invasive estimation of pressure distribution in the cardiovascular flow domain use the differential form of governing equations. This study evaluates the advantages of using the integral form of the equations in these calculations. The concepts provided with the Boundary Element Method (BEM) together with the boundary-based image segmentation tools are used to develop a fast calculation method. Boundary-based segmentation provides BEM with domain pixel extraction, boundary meshing, wall normal vector calculation, and accurate calculation of boundary element length. The integral form of the governing equations are reviewed in detail and the analytic value of integral constants at singular points are provided. The pressure data on boundary nodes are calculated to obtain the pressure data at every point in the domain. Therefore, the calculation of domain pressure could be considered as a post-processing procedure, which is an advantage of this approach. Both the differential and integral-based formulations are evaluated using mathematical Couette test flow image whose pressure domain is available. The resulting pressure distributions from both methods will be compared. According to the results obtained from this study, the use of BEM for estimating pressure values from a non-invasive flow image has the following advantages: reduced computational domain from two to one dimension, flexible calculation of pressure data at arbitrary points or at finer spatial resolutions, robustness against noise, less concern for its stability and compatibility, accuracy, and lower meshing attempts.

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Prediction of SCC risk of austenitic stainless steels in aqueous chloride solution and estimation of the time to failure as a result of SCC form important and complicated topics for study. Despite the many studies reported in the literature, a formulation or a reliable method for the prediction of time to failure as a result of SCC is yet to be developed. This paper is an effort to investigate the capability of artificial neural network in estimatiing the time to failure for SCC of 304 stainless steel in aqueous chloride solution and to provide a sensitivity analysis thereof. The input parameters considered are temperature, chloride ion concentration, and applied stress. The time to failure is defined as the output parameter and the key criterion to evaluate the effective parameters. The statistical performance of the neural network is expressed as the average of three learning and testing results. The SCC database is divided into two sections designated as the learning set and the testing set. The output results show that artificial neural network can predict the time to failure for about 74% of the variance of SCC experimental data. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis also exhibits the effects of input parameters on SCC of 304 stainless steel in aqueous chloride solutions.

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A review of pavement thickness designs shows that two kinds of failure criteria are used in most cases. They are: 1) The tension strain under the asphalt layer that causes cracking and 2) the vertical compression strain on the sub-grade that causes deflection. In this study, various factors affecting thickness design are first defined and more than 216 pavement conditions are introduced. Structures are analyzed using the Flex pass program and their strains and stresses are investigated severally by choosing the failure criteria one at a time.

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All algorithms for impedance calculation use an analog-to-digital converter. The high accuracy of the impedance seen by a distance relay is an important factor in the correct isolation of the faulty part of power systems. To achieve this, a novel technique based on third order interpolation is used in this paper. According to this technique, the times and the values of the obtained samples are changed to real ones. To evaluate the new technique, it is applied to six digital distance algorithms, namely, Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), Half-cycle Discrete Fourier Transform, Least Square, Mann-Morrison, Least Square with Delete Dc, and Prodar70. The technique is found to be capable of accurately computing the impedance in the algorithms mentioned. Comparisons are made among the results to show the efficiency of the new technique for decreasing errors in all algorithms.

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This paper presents a discounted cash-flow approach to an inventory model for deteriorating items with the two-parameter Weibull distribution. According to our proposed model, two shortages are considered: back-orders and lost-sales, in which the back-order rate is a varying function of the time when the shortage happens. In general, the demand rate is a linear function of the selling price. The objective of this model is to determine the optimal pricing policy and the optimal throughput time in such a way that the total net present value of profits is maximized in the given planning horizon. Finally, a numerical example is provided to solve the model presented using our proposed three-stage approach.

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This research proposes a vigorous methodology based on the fuzzy set theory to improve the facility layout process. Using natural language, the fuzzy set theory is an appropriate tool for controlling complex systems such as facility planning. The closeness rating between departments in a plant depends on qualitative and quantitative factors. Some of these factors may have a greater effect on the closeness rating. Thus, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to find the weight of these factors. In this paper, a computer program, called FDARC, is developed to generate quantitative activity relationship charts. These charts are used by FLAYOUT to develop the layouts. The procedure is compared with two other recent methods. Computational results are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the method proposed.

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While a great portion of the scheduling literature focuses on time-based criteria, the most important goal of management is maximizing the profitability of the firm. In this paper, the net preset value criterion is studied taking account of linear time-dependent cash flows in single machine and flow shop scheduling problems. First, a heuristic method is presented for the single machine scheduling problem with NPV criterion. Second, the permutation flow shop scheduling problem is studied with NPV criterion. An efficient Branch & Bound algorithm is accordingly presented using strong lower and upper bounds and dominace rules which are expanded for this problem. Finally, three heuristic methods are presented and compared to find appropriate solutions over short periods. By generating random problems of different sizes, it has been shown that the Branch & Bound method is efficient in solving small and medium sized problems, and also that the presented heuristic algorithm is efficient in tackling problems of any size.

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Supply chain coordination has become a critical success factor for supply chain management (SCM). In the past few years, the researchers have widely emphasized that cooperation among supply chain (SC) firms is a key source of competitive advantage. This paper is focused on supply chain coordination from the perspective of inventory management. Li and Liu [1] developed a model for illustrating how to use quantity discount policy by price adjustment mechanism to achieve supply chain coordination. We extend this mechanism to three echelon supply chain and consider variable lead time which has more representation of the real world situation. For this purpose, we will develop a model with benefit objective function for the problem. We will then analyze the model with and without coordination. By solving the proposed model, proper order quantities will be obtained. Finally, the advantages of the proposed mechanism will be explored and a surplus benefit dividing method will be designed.

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Although studies on RC beams under shear have a history record of more than 100 years, many important issues in this context still remain that have evaded attention. The aim of the current study is to study a number of these less investigated aspects of the behavior of RC beams under shear. For this purpose, and based on the modified compression field theory, a computer program has been written to study the effects of transverse and longitudinal steel reinforcement and shear span, a/d, on the behavior of RC beams under shear. The results show that the shear capacity of the beam cannot be increased beyond an optimum amount of transverse steel ratio. This paper will try to provide a precise definition of this optimum transverse steel ratio. Another finding of the present study is that increasing tensile longitudinal steel ratio increases the amount of the optimum transverse steel ratio, while increasing a/d decreases the optimum transverse steel ratio.

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In this paper, a modification on the fixed grid finite element method is presented and used in the solution of 2D linear elastic problems. This method uses non-boundary-fitted meshes for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. Special techniques are required to apply boundary conditions on the intersection of domain boundaries and non-boundary-fitted elements. Hence, a new method is also presented for the computation of stiffness matrix of boundary intersecting elements and boundary conditions of higher accuracy are applied. In order to examine the applicability of the proposed method, some numerical examples are solved and the results are compared with those obtaioned from both fixed grid finite element and standard finite element methods.

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Among the adaptive-grid methods, redistribution and embedding techniques have been the focus of more attention by researchers. Simultaneous or combined adaptive techniques have also been used. This paper describes a combination of adaptive-grid embedding and redistribution methods on semi-structured grids for two-dimensional invisid flows. Since the grid is semi-structured, it is possible to use different algorithms for combining adaptive-grid embedding and redistribution methods. To evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the method, this combination is used to solve two model problems, transonic and supersonic inviscid flows in channels with circular arc bump. The results show that combination of adaptive-grid embedding and redistribution methods on semi-structured grids remarkably increases the accuracy at the cost of a slight increase in computational time in comparison with the embedding method alone.

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Stability of reinforced slopes is almost always carried out using limit equilibrium methods and controlled by the shear strengths of the slope materials and the extension force of reinforcements. According to limit equilibrium methods, the stability of slopes is assessed by dividing the whole failure wedge into several vertical elements. In order to determine the safety factor of the reinforced slopes, a new approach is proposed based on the inclined slices method. According to this approach, a 4n formulation is introduced which uses fewer unknowns and a simpler formulation to calculate the extension forces of reinforcements and safety factors of the slopes. Additionally, moment and forces equilibrium in all slices are taken into account while the tensile force of each reinforcing element is independently calculated. Comparisons revealed differences at 5 to 10 percent level between analytical results obtained from this method and those of ReSSA software.

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Stretchable woven chute is a safe device for falling humans from multi-story buildings in emergencies. During the fall, the elastomeric property of the fabric, in the weft direction, causes radial forces towards the human body inside .These radial forces lead to frictional forces between the chute and the body. The falling man can reduce the falling speed by exerting outward forces via stretching and contracting arms or legs. In this research, a model is developed to analyze the different forces involved in the fall based on the so-called thin sheet tank "fall relations". The model is capable of determining body characteristics with respect to the real model. Finally, real-world model predictions have been made in which the effects of body weight and dimensions have been considered of.

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