Sharif Digital Repository

Automated intensity estimation of spontaneous Facial Action Units (AUs) defined by Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a relatively new and challenging problem. This paper presents a joint supervised dictionary learning (SDL) and regression model for solving this problem. The model is casted as an optimization function consisting of two terms. The first term in the optimization concerns representing the facial images in a sparse domain using dictionary learning whereas the second term concerns estimating AU intensities using a linear regression model in the sparse domain. The regression model is designed in a way that considers disagreement between raters by a constant biasing factor in... 

Automated measurement of the intensity of spontaneous facial Action Units (AU) defined by the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) in video sequences is a challenging problem. This paper proposes a person-adaptive methodology for the intensity estimation of spontaneous AUs. We formulate this problem as a source separation problem where we consider the observed AUs as the source signals to be separated from each other and other information given by a sequence of facial images. We first compute an initial estimation of the sources, called observations, using sparse linear regression functions. We then develop and apply a Bayesian source separation method that recruits the prior information of... 

The performance of several regression methods is investigated to estimate the distribution of engineering demand parameters conditioned on intensity measures (EDP|IM) for small record sets. In particular, the performance of the multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS), a simultaneous mean-variance regression (MVR) done by a penalized weighted least-square loss function, and a mean-covariance/variance regression based on expectation maximization method (EM) are assessed. The efficiency of the introduced methods is compared with FEMA-P58 methodology. Performance assessment of EM and MVR methods shows that the overall increase in efficiency is about 25–45% for maximum inter-story drift ratios,... 

The performance of several regression methods is investigated to estimate the distribution of engineering demand parameters conditioned on intensity measures (EDP|IM) for small record sets. In particular, the performance of the multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS), a simultaneous mean-variance regression (MVR) done by a penalized weighted least-square loss function, and a mean-covariance/variance regression based on expectation maximization method (EM) are assessed. The efficiency of the introduced methods is compared with FEMA-P58 methodology. Performance assessment of EM and MVR methods shows that the overall increase in efficiency is about 25–45% for maximum inter-story drift ratios,... 

In this paper, a technique for the study of nonlinear performance of structures in different levels of earthquakes is developed. In this method, the Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) curves are not achieved from nonlinear dynamic analysis of multi-degree-of-freedom (MDF) structure. However, the procedure of constructing these curves is based on modelling of the entire structure with several single-degrees-of-freedom (SDF) structures and evaluating them through the modal pushover analysis method. An innovative idea for approximating pushover curves that is based on error distribution is introduced in this investigation. Furthermore, the total input energy applied towards the SDF oscillator,... 

This study proposes a new approach to incorporate motion duration in incremental dynamic assessments. In the proposed methodology, at each intensity level, a simulation-based approach which is verified with actual data is employed to determine the median duration and the median acceleration spectra of ground motions expected to occur at the site. Afterward, at each intensity level, artificial or spectrally matched motions are produced based on the median acceleration spectra and the median duration, indicating that different intensity levels are directly covered by the generated artificial or adjusted motions rather than just scaling up and down a set of recorded ground motions. In the... 

In this paper, application of the Endurance Time (ET) method in the performance-based design of steel moment frames is explained from a conceptual viewpoint. ET is a new dynamic pushover procedure that predicts the seismic performance of structures by subjecting them to a gradually intensifying dynamic action and monitoring their performance at various excitation levels. Structural responses at different excitation levels are obtained in a single time-history analysis, thus significantly reducing the computational demand. Results from three analyses are averaged to reduce the random scattering of the results at each time step. A target performance curve is presented based on the required... 

Automatic measurement of spontaneous facial action units (AUs) defined by the facial action coding system (FACS) is a challenging problem. The recent FACS user manual defines 33 AUs to describe different facial activities and expressions. In spontaneous facial expressions, a subset of AUs are often occurred or activated at a time. Given this fact that AUs occurred sparsely over time, we propose a novel method to detect the absence and presence of AUs and estimate their intensity levels via sparse representation (SR). We use the robust principal component analysis to decompose expression from facial identity and then estimate the intensity of multiple AUs jointly using a regression model... 

In seismic resistant design of moment frames, the structure behavior under earthquakes has to be examined considering various damage criteria. Damage indices can be estimated by Endurance Time (ET) method with minimum computational effort. The quality of this estimation can be improved in different ways. In this paper, the graphs of a certain damage index versus natural period of the structure, called damage spectra, are produced applying intensifying ET records and scaled Ground Motions (GM). Then, the excitation duration of ET acceleration functions (target time) is modified in order to reach acceptable consistency between ET and GM damage spectra. Moreover, various damage indices of a... 

This paper proposes a methodology for generating surrogate single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) models that can be utilized to estimate the probability distribution of the roof drift ratio of multistory buildings at various ground motion intensity measures. The use of an SDOF model as a surrogate for multistory buildings can significantly alleviate the high computational cost for probabilistic seismic demand assessment considering both model uncertainty and record-to-record variability. The surrogate SDOF model generated herein explicitly accounts for model uncertainties and can be used as an alternative to the nonlinear dynamic analysis of detailed building structures. Applications for such...