The main objective of this paper is to study the effects of haversinse and triangular loading waveforms on the fatigue life of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) specimens. Effects of load duration, rest period and stress level are also studied for the asphalt mixtures at 25oC. An indirect tensile test with strain control was performed to determine the fatigue life of asphalt. The fatigue tests were performed at two stress levels (170 and 250 kPa), two waveforms (haversine and triangle), three load duration (100, 200, 400 ms), and two rest period to load duration ratios (4 and 9). The obtained results showed that fatigue life of haversine waveform is less than fatigue life of triangle waveform. As the area under the loading curve is increased (stress level is increased or deformed), effect of rest period on the fatigue life decreases. On the other hand, as the tire contact area is increased, the induced tire pressure reduction decreases its destructive effects on the asphalt layer. As the load duration is decreased, fatigue life will increase. This effect is more pronounced for lower stress levels than the higher stress levels.

This paper develops an economic production quantity (EPQ) inventory model with rework process for a single stage production system with one machine. The existence of a unique machine results in limited production capacity. The aim of this research is to determine both the optimal cycle length and the optimal production quantity for each product to minimize the expected total cost (holding, production, setup, rework costs). The convexity of the inventory model is derived. Also the objective function is proved to be convex. The proposed inventory model is validated with illustrating numerical examples and the optimal period length and the total system cost are analyzed.

During the past two decades, there has been growing trend in Iranian banking industry due to change in banking regulations. Private sector has grown rapidly and there have been several new banks on the market, which has created very competitive market. Therefore, customer loyalty is the key factor for running a successful banking business and customer relationship management (CRM) appears to be important for the success in this industry. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between CRM and customer loyalty in one of the oldest Iranian banks named Bank Melli Iran. The proposed study prepares a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some regular customers of this bank. The preliminary results of this survey have indicated that consumer’s gender, age and educational background had no meaningful impact on quality of services. In other words, people with different personal characteristics expect the same quality of services from banking industry and there is a positive and meaningful relationship between quality of services and customer loyalty.

The essence of moving the organizations and companies toward the implementation of the Business Intelligence (BI) in the current competitive and complex atmosphere is not unfamiliar for any manager. By online analytic processing, the Business Intelligence analyzes the business data and creates a suitable context for making accurate and smart decisions. Neither as a product nor as a system but as the architecture and a new approach, the Business Intelligence has contained a set of analytic and applied programs. Since the managers have to identify the required infrastructures in creating the mentioned architecture before any applicable measures, the probable failures must be also considered and then solved by the managers. This study has been carried out in the Mellat Bank, meanwhile, the infrastructures for creating the BI has been identified and evaluated and subsequently, the findings has been discussed as well.

A simple and efficient procedure for the synthesis of 3, 4-dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-ones under solvent-free condition using non-toxic and mild acid mesoporous SBA-15 nanoparticles as a catalyst has been investigated. This method has the advantages of the excellent yield, short reaction time, environmentally friendly conditions and simple experimental procedure.

This paper presents an approach of linking finite element method with artificial neural network to predict J-Integral parameter in desirable airfoil condition. Finite Element (FE) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have been employed for the purpose. In other words, a prediction of finite element results has been done using ANN. Ultimately results of two methods have been compared for different cases. Wing fracture is a well-known problem of the planes which depends on various parameters. The J-integral is a vital parameter in evaluations of structure fracture phenomena. On the other hand residual stresses play an influential role in fracture formation. In the current work, effect of residual stresses and crack depth on J-Integral has been investigated in a standard NACA0012-34 airfoil. As will be seen, residual stresses and crack depth influence J-Integral values. It also will be shown that predictions of ANN method are in a good agreement with those obtained by finite element method.

This paper presents an empirical study to investigate different factors for commercializing ideas in food industry. The study uses structural equation modeling, by designing a questionnaire in Likert scale, and distributes it among 218 randomly selected experts in food industry in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.864, which is well above the acceptable level. The study uses structural equation modeling as well as some descriptive tests to examine the hypotheses of the survey. The results confirm that management of ideas, the feasibility of the ideas, market research and advocacy strategies influence the most on commercializing ideas in food industry.

The novel ?-phosphorus labile ylide of 1-(p-tolyl)-2-(tri-p-tolylphosphoranylidene)ethanone (PTTPPY) is prepared by the reaction of 2-bromo-1-(p-tolyl)ethanone with tri-p-tolylphosphine in chloroform as solvent. The complexes of the type [HgX2(p-tolyl)3PCHCOC6H4CH3)] (X = Cl, Br and I) are prepared by the reaction of title ylide with mercury(II) halides in good yields, using methanol as solvent. The final products were characterized by IR, 1H, 13C, 31P NMR spectroscopic methods and microanalysis.

This paper considers an inventory control policy for a two-echelon inventory control system with one supplier-one buyer. We consider the case of deteriorating items which lead to shortage in supply chain. Therefore, it is necessary to decrease the deterioration rate by adding some specification to the packaging of these items that is known as active packaging. Although this packaging can reduce the deteriorating rate of products, but may be increases the cost of both supplier and buyer. Because of the complexity of the mathematical model, a genetic algorithm has been developed to determine the best policy of this inventory control system.

In recent years, clients often employ multiple contractors to implement different activities of the projects. Each contractor manages and implements a subset of activities according to the deter-mined schedule and payments. In this situation, time/cost trade-off problem becomes a distributed decision making problem in which the client, as leader, and the contractors, as followers, pursue their own objectives. We establish a multi-objective, bi-level distributed programming model based on fuzzy mathematical programming for this time/cost trade-off problem. The model is then developed for three common behaviors of client i.e. profit seeking, minimization of project time, as well as combination of profit seeking and minimization of project time behaviors. As the solution approaches, we propose transformation method based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condi-tions projects to transform bi-level programming problem to a single level one. Numerical results reveal that the client’s behaviors have measurable impact on time and cost of activities performed by contractors. Moreover, we found that when the client does not have complete information about the contractors’ financial situations, the client should make trade-off between his confidence level and his profit.