Partial stabilization-based guidance

A novel nonlinear missile guidance law against maneuvering targets is designed based on the principles of partial stability. It is demonstrated that in a real approach which is adopted with actual situations, each state of the guidance system must have a special behavior and asymptotic stability or exponential stability of all states is not realistic. Thus, a new guidance law is developed based on the partial stability theorem in such a way that the behaviors of states in the closed-loop system are in conformity with a real guidance scenario that leads to collision. The performance of the proposed guidance law in terms of interception time and control effort is compared with the sliding mode guidance law by means of numerical simulations.     

A simultaneous planning of production and scheduling operations in flexible flow shops: case study of tile industry

The aim of this paper is to study a simultaneous lot-sizing and scheduling in multi-product, multi-period flexible flow shop environments. A new mixed integer programming (MIP) model is proposed to formulate the problem. The objective function includes the total cost of production, inventory, and external supply. In this study, in case of not meeting the demand of customers, this demand should be met by foreign suppliers in higher price. Due to the high computational complexity of the studied problem, a rolling horizon heuristic (RHH) and particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) are implemented to solve the problem. These algorithms find a feasible and near-optimal from production planning and scheduling. Additionally, Taguchi method is conducted to calibrate the parameters of the PSO algorithm and select the optimal levels of the influential factors. The computational results show that the algorithms are capable of achieving results with good quality in a reasonable time and PSO has better objective values in comparison with RHH. Also, the real case study for tile industry with real features is applied. Sensitivity analysis is used to evaluate the performance of the model.     

A new MLPG method for elastostatic problems

This paper introduces a novel meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method by presenting a new test function as a schema to solve the elasto-static problems. It is seen that the four ordinary MLPG methods can also be approached using the present test function. Both the moving least square (MLS) and the direct method have been applied to the method to estimate the shape function and to impose the essential boundary conditions. The results of three studied elasto-static cases; “two dimensional cantilever beam”, “first mode fracture of a center-cracked strip” and “edge-cracked functionally graded strip” show that by using less number of nodes, the present work gives sufficiently more accurate results. Meanwhile the method can also unify various kinds of MPLGs and one may conclude that the model is a good replacement for other common approaches.     

A modified thermodynamic insight to deliquescence of a void‐containing nanocrystal confirmed by MD simulation

Existence of voids in crystalline structures can affect their physical and chemical properties considerably. When the size of the crystal reaches to nanoscale, experimental determination of its void fraction is difficult. In this work, a molecular dynamics approach is introduced to find equilibrium void fractions of a simple cubic (CsCl) and fcc (KCl) nanocrystals by determination of their deliquescence relative humidity (DRH) for different sizes and void fractions and extrapolation of the results to the bulk limit. To confirm the simulation results, the size dependency of DRH to the nanoparticle size was studied thermodynamically by inclusion of size‐dependent density of water nanodroplet which leads to a simple homographic equation. This method proposes the equilibrium void percents of CsCl and KCl nanoparticles to be 10 and 15%, respectively, which are obtained by extrapolation of the results to the bulk limit. The success of obtained Möbius function was also confirmed by fitting it to experimental data for deliquescence of NaCl nanoparticles which implies the importance of considering density of water nanodroplet as a size dependent quantity. Also, using the mentioned thermodynamic approach, void dependency of deliquescence for the nanoparticles was found to be as a quasi‐linear trend which is compatible with the simulation results. It is noticeable that the approach used this work for determination of equilibrium void fraction is only valid if the utilized force fields are accurate. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 4066–4077, 2016     

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition in oil reservoirs – Technical aspects,experimental and hybrid neural network predictive tools

Precipitation of asphaltene is considered as an undesired process during oil production via natural depletion and gas injection as it blocks the pore space and reduces the oil flow rate. In addition, it lessens the efficiency of the gas injection into oil reservoirs. This paper presents static and dynamic experiments conducted to investigate the effects of temperature, pressure, pressure drop, dilution ratio, and mixture compositions on asphaltene precipitation and deposition. Important technical aspects of asphaltene precipitation such as equation of state, analysis tools, and predictive methods are also discussed. Different methodologies to analyze asphaltene precipitation are reviewed, as well. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) joined with imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are employed to approximate asphaltene precipitation and deposition with and without CO₂ injection. The connectionist model is built based on experimental data covering wide ranges of process and thermodynamic conditions. A good match was obtained between the real data and the model predictions. Temperature and pressure drop have the highest influence on asphaltene deposition during dynamic tests. ICA-ANN attains more reliable outputs compared with PSO-ANN, the conventional ANN, and scaling models. In addition, high pressure microscopy (HPM) technique leads to more accurate results compared with quantitative methods when studying asphaltene precipitation.     

Impact of innovation programs on development of energy system: Case of Iranian electricity-supply system

The paper presents further experiments with an extended version of a comprehensive model for assessment of energy technologies and research and development (R&D) planning to evaluate the impact of innovation programs on development of Iranian electricity-supply system. This analytical instrument is a model of energy R&D resource allocation with an explicit perspective of developing countries which has been linked to a bottom-up energy-systems model. Three emerging electricity generation technologies of solar PV, wind turbine and gas fuel cell are considered in the model and the impact of innovation programs on cost-reducing innovation for them is examined. The main results provided by the modeling approach include optimal allocation of R&D resources, induced capacity expansion policies to guarantee the effectiveness of R&D activities, competitive cost of emerging technologies, impact of innovation programs on optimal structure of electricity-supply system and benefits of innovation programs in the long-run.     

A power series for vibration of a rotating nanobeam with considering thermal effect

In this article, the equation of motion for a rotating nanocantilever has been developed based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam model, which includes the effect of temperature, small scale effect, and centrifugal force. A power series method has been employed to obtain the exact solution of the natural frequencies. The results also compared with other solutions of exact and approximate differential quadrature method. The effects of temperature, angular velocity, and small scale in the vibration characteristics of a rotating nanocantilever beam are investigated. It is shown that the effect of temperature plays a significant role in the behavior of the vibration of a rotating nanocantilever. Nondimensional frequency increases in the first mode with increasing the nonlocal parameter while it is inverse for the second and third modes of vibration.     

Computer simulation of developing abrasive jet machined profiles including particle interference

A novel and generally applicable computer simulation was developed to predict the time evolution of the eroded profiles of air abrasive jet machined surfaces, as a function of process parameters such as: abrasive nozzle size, inclination and distance to target surface, abrasive jet particle velocity, size and flux distribution. The effect of collisions between incoming and rebounding particles was included by the tracking of individual particles, performing inter-particle and particle to surface collision detection, and implementing collision kinematics. The target surface advancement was determined by representing the surface by a grid of cubic cells, each of which was assigned a damage parameter based on the number of particles impacting it. The predictions of eroded profiles of the simulation were tested against those that are experimentally measured for a typical microabrasive blasting setup, with good agreement at low particle flux, and reasonable agreement at high particle flux.     

Using state-space models for solving elastodynamic problems discretized by the MLPG method

One of the popular methods for solving ordinary differential equations is the state-space approach. In this paper, the use of the state-space method to analyze elastodynamic problems, discretized by the MLPG method, is proposed. Two methods commonly used in solving such problems, namely, the central difference method and the Newmark method, are compared with the proposed method. To examine the accuracy and the computational time of the new method, an example is studied. The results of the implementation of these methods are compared with a finite element solution. The results show that the state-space method saves substantial computational time for a given accuracy.