Sharif Digital Repository

Nowadays one of the important issues in earthquake engineering is seismic vulnerability assessment of structures and selecting the best retrofit method for them. On the other hand due to probabilistic nature of earthquake occurrence and uncertainties exist in determination of structure capacity, probabilistic approaches in seismic assessment and retrofit of structure, are highly interested by many researchers. Therefore in this research four probabilistic based methods in seismic retrofit and assessment of structures are proposed and to illustrate the application of these methods, which are summarized below, some RC frames are investigated:
1- Seismic assessment of structures using new... 

Accurate modeling of clutter and detection of low observable targets within clutter are the major problems in radar signal processing applications. Recently, fractal geometry is applied to the analysis of high range resolution radar sea clutters. The intrinsic difference in the fractal dimension between sea clutter and the echoes from targets is extracted and used to detect targets. The box-counting method is widely used to estimate fractal dimension but it has some drawbacks never or rarely considered in literature. We explain the drawbacks and propose a new fractal dimension based detector to increase detection performance in comparison with traditional detectors. Both statistically... 

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a microwave imaging radar that achieves high resolution while taking advantage of pulse compression technology and the Doppler effect. In typical radar systems, in order to obtain a good azimuth resolution, one should use an antenna with big aperture. However this is not possible in many cases. SAR has overcome this problem by moving the antenna and so making a synthetic aperture. In inverse SAR (ISAR) the radar antenna is static and synthetic aperture is created by the movement of target. Typical SAR imaging aims at the static targets and when the target is moving, it does not operate well. When detecting moving targets by SAR, both radar and target are... 

While Cloud providers face problems during providing services to their clients, such as lack of resources or increasing idle resources in low workload; they can share their resources with other providers by participating in Cloud Federations, and take advantage of Cloud Computing benefits like high scalability and resource extension. Moreover collaborating Cloud Federations expands Geographical area of providers. The Resource Allocation Problem has been considered in many researches, but in fields like Cloud environment and Federated Clouds it comes with complications. This thesis analyzes an optimized mechanism based on game theoretic approach for Resource Allocation Problem in Federated... 

This thesis presents turbulent partially premixed combustion modeling behind a bluff-body by using the Flamelet Generated Manifold. The objective of the present work is to develop a 4D FGM program to simulate partially premixed combustion at a reasonable computational cost. Pre-tabulated data of this manifold is obtained by using a correlated joint PDF. An in-house code is developed to build a pre-tabulated library in conjunction with a correlated PDF. Also, an exclusive OpenFOAM solver is created by employing the PIMPLE algorithm. This solver provides the link of the computational domain with the pre-tabulated chemistry. This program is used to simulate Cambridge-Sandia stratified burner... 

This study aims to propose a new correlation between in-situ horizontal stress and cone tip resistance in soils. Knowing the field in-situ stress state condition has an important role in stability assessment and stress-deformation analysis in a common geotechnical system. Although vertical stress could be measured easily, horizontal stress is still known as challenging work. Due to the difficulty in sampling undisturbed sand specimens, in-situ tests have been proposed in the previous literature to investigate the different characteristics of this soil. Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is one of the most used and accepted soil methods for soil investigation, identifying different soil parameters... 

Shallow geothermal energy is a renewable and sustainable form of energy that has the potential to help alleviate the growing climate and energy crisis. The most common system used to extract shallow geothermal energy is the ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. The concept of using underground structures in exploiting shallow geothermal energy for space heating and cooling has received increasing attention. This study focuses on the use of geothermal tunnels as a means of extracting shallow geothermal energy.This research examines the effects of different heat transfer mechanisms, and highlights the effects of this phenomenon by focusing on the effects of natural convection around the... 

In the current situation, kidney transplantation is the most appropriate and least costly treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Related or altruistic living donors, as well as deceased donors, are considered as a supply source for donated kidneys. Researches have shown deceased donor kidney may not work as well as a living donor kidney because the deceased donor kidney is outside the donor's body for a longer time. If the donor has an incompatibility with the patient (in terms of the blood group, HLA, etc.), a kidney exchange between the pairs can be used to resolve the issue and make the transplantation possible. Pairs with blood group compatibility have also... 

Considering the environmental pollution caused by the consumption of fossil fuels, replacing clean and renewable energies instead of fossil fuels has become one of the most critical issues across the world. The use of energy geostructures, especially energy piles, to exchange the heat between the superstructures and the ground is one of the approaches for taking advantage of clean energy. In order to maintain the safety and the serviceability of structures built on energy piles, it is necessary to study the effects of heat exchange between energy piles and the ground on the mechanical behavior of energy piles, as well as the effects of various parameters on the interaction between energy... 

There are different approaches in modifications of General Relativity as the theory of gravity. The modified theories of gravity are important cases in this context, which mostly start by modifying the Einstein-Hilbert action, while keeping the general covariance. Within the modified theories of gravity, we consider two cases. The first is the f(R) theories of gravity, and the second is curvature squared theories of gravity with an action like S = ∫d4x pg( 116GR + (R)2 + R2 +(R)2). Curvature squared theories of gravity have interesting feautures, most important of which is renormalizability, in contrast with General Relativity. But this advantage, as noted by K.S. Stelle in 1977 comes at... 

Multiverse scenario has been recently addressed by physicists and they have found it useful in many areas of physics. In this dissertation, I have treated some issues about multiverse such as the kinds of multiverses, the arguments for or against multiverse, areas in which multiverse is introduced, etc. This dissertation has six chapters and an appendix. In the chapter one, some classifications of multiverse is introduced, and also some definitions of the concept of a world is presented. Then, my classification and definition of a multiverse and a world is introduced. In the chapter two, the concept of possible worlds in philosophy and its relationship with multiverse hypothesis is examined.... 

Near Horizon Extremal Geometries (NHEG), are geometries which may appear in the near horizon region of the extremal black holes. These geometries have SL(2;R)U(1)n isometry, and constitute a family of solutions to the theory under consideration. In the first part of this report,their thermodynamic properties are reviewed, and their three universal laws are derived. In addition, at the end of the first part, the role of these laws in black hole thermodynamics is presented. In the second part of this thesis, we review building their classical phase space in the Einstein-Hilbert theory. The elements in the NHEG phase space manifold are built by appropriately chosen coordinate transformations of... 

Determination of ultimate bearing capacity of shallow foundations has been discussed since long time ago in many books and papers. Although this is not generally a new problem, there are still some problems which may be interesting to be investigated in detail using suitable computer programs and by application of appropriate soil models. Comprehensive surveys on bearing capacity coefficients of different foundations have been done by utilizing FLAC software. The failure of soil is governed by the Elasto-Plastic Mohr-coulomb criterion. New graphs and equations have been developed for determining the coefficients. The equations achieved in this study by numerical methods, have been compared... 

Hough transform is frequently used in radar applications. The structure of using this transformation in radars is so that it has been used only in Range radars which transmit short pulses and their primary goal is to make better estimation of the range of the targets. In this work, we introduce the ways in which we can use the Hough transform in Doppler radars which transmit long pulses and their primary goal is to make better estimation of target doppler. We must use Hough transform in time-doppler domain for this class of radars including continuous-wave radars. To prepare this time-doppler domain image some time-frequency transform must be applied to the radar received signal and a part... 

Nowadays, pile usage in construction of deep foundations has increased significantly, instead of shallow foundation in areas that shallow foundations doesn’t provide enough bearing capacity and measuring the velocity and acceleration due to pile driving is very important. Because, all responses of building and individuals located near the pile driving site influenced by these three parameters: pile vertical displacement, peak particle acceleration (PPA) and peak particle velocity (PPV). One can estimates these important parameters by numerical analysis of pile driving process in different distances and depths to determining the effect of pile driving. Compared values obtained from numerical... 

There are several factors affecting the behavior and response of a pile under lateral loads. These factors can be divided into two main categories: geometrical factors (e.g. dimensions of the pile, soil, and mesh scheme) and material properties (e.g. shear modulus, bulk modulus, soil elasticity, soil density, and shear strength). Studying the effects and importance of these factors in the final response of the pile (i.e. ultimate forces and displacements) can help design engineers in optimization of their designs. Given the importance of the subject and the possibility of using numerical methods and computer technology to evaluate the behavior of piles, this research attempts to use finite... 

In this research, a new approach for TWS (Track While Scan) systems is introduced. Conventional TWS systems usually use target’s position (in Cartesian or polar coordinate systems), its velocity, and sometimes its acceleration (in main directions of coordinate system which is being used) as the elements of target’s state vector but the suggested algorithms use target’s velocity, course of motion and their rates of change as main tracking quantities and target’s position will be calculated after updating its velocity and course of motion. Hough transform is used as a powerful tool in detecting patterns which are identified with finite parameters (like lines, circles, ellipses, etc) to... 

In order to reduce damage caused by power outages on rare events that lead to long-term disconnection of microgrid from utility grid, isolated mode performance of microgrids including wind and hudro turbines with energy storage systems is considered in this study. Using wind energy as a renewable resource is considered as an appropriate choice for power production in microgrids. However, the uncertainty in wind turbines power generation is something challenging. The existence of water resources near the wind farms causes a special opportunity for operation of these resources along with wind turbines. This thesis aimed at balancing energy supply and demand in island mode of microgrid,... 

The usage of the Hough transform, which has been proposed to detect straight lines in digital images, is studied as a target detector in search radars and its performance is compared with the conventional detectors. Then, a new method based on the Hough transform is introduced for detecting targets in a 3-D r-φ-t data space. The effectiveness of the new 3-D Hough detector is demonstrated through deriving the detection statistics analytically and comparing the results with those of several comprehensive simulations. The proposed detector is also evaluated with real radar data and its efficiency is confirmed. Then, the Average and Generalized Likelihood Ratio detectors are derived as the... 

It has been realized that the raft (mat) foundations are capable of bearing very large loads when they are assisted with a pile group. The contribution of both raft and piles to carry the surcharge loads is taken into account, considering the stiffness and strength of involved elements in the system, i.e. piles, raft and surrounding soil. Piles are usually required to ensure the stability of the foundation and to act as settlement reducers especially for high rise buildings. The present study focuses on both kinematic and inertial effects of piled foundations and piled raft foundations under earthquake loading. The Finite Element Method (FEM) via ABAQUS will be used as an appropriate tool to...