Sharif Digital Repository

This research investigates a rotary disk with variable cross-section and incompressible hyperelastic material with functionally graded properties in large hyperelastic deformations. For this purpose, a power relation has been used to express the changes in cross-section and properties of hyperelastic material. So that (m) represents the changes in cross-section and (n) represents the manner of changes in material properties. The constants used for hyperelastic material have been obtained from experimental data. The obtained equations have been solved for different m, n, and (angular velocity) values, and the values of radial stresses, tangential stresses, and elongation have been compared.... 

In this paper, a practical method is developed for performance-based design of RC structures subjected to seismic excitations. More efficient design is obtained by redistributing material from strong to weak parts of a structure until a state of uniform deformation or damage prevails. By applying the design algorithm on 5, 10 and 15-storey RC frames, the efficiency of the proposed method is initially demonstrated for specific synthetic and real seismic excitations. The results indicate that, for similar structural weight, designed structures experience up to 30% less global damage compared with code-based design frames. The method is then developed to consider multiple performance objectives... 

Early detection of structural damage is an important goal of any structural health monitoring system. Among numerous data analysis techniques, those which are used for online damage detection have received considerable attention recently, although the problem of online detection in continuous structures, for example beams, is quite challenging. In this paper, it is shown how the type, the size and the location of breathing cracks are identified online with the use of the records which are gathered from a continuous beam. For determining the existence of a breathing crack in a beam, its vibrating behavior is simulated. The algorithm of the least square estimation with the use of adaptive... 

Liquefaction of loose and saturated soils during earthquakes and strong ground motions has been a major cause of damage to buildings and earth embankments as well as other civil engineering structures. In order to evaluate the liquefaction potential and steady state characteristics of gravely sand of south west Tehran, a subsoil exploration program conducted dividing the region into 10 zones. In each zone of 500 m × 500 m a borehole of 20 m deep was drilled. SPT was performed at one meter intervals in each borehole and a total of 200 samples were recovered. Soils of similar grain size distribution have been considered to have similar steady state characteristics,therefore consolidated... 

Various damage indexes have been introduced in recent years incorporating different parameters for estimating structural damage. Amongst these indexes, Plastic Ductility and Drift have been the center of attention of standards and building codes, like FEMA-356, because of their straightforward physical interpretation and ease of calculation. In this paper, several steel moment frames have been considered and their responses have been evaluated under a set of scaled earthquakes. A group of various damage indexes, which included cumulative and non cumulative, cyclic fatigue based, deformation based and modal parameter based, has been considered and the damage to structures has been evaluated... 

In this paper, a new sensitivity-based model updating method is presented based on the changes of principal components (PCs) of frequency response function (FRF). Structural damage estimation, identification of damage location and severity, is conducted by an innovative sensitivity relation. The sensitivity relation is derived by incorporating PC analysis (PCA) data obtained from the incomplete measured structural responses in a mathematical formulation and is then solved by the least square method. In order to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, it is applied to a truss and a frame model. The results prove the ability of the method as a robust damage detection algorithm in... 

Ground vibration due to pile driving is a long-lasting concern associated with the foundation construction industry. It is of great importance to estimate the level of vibration prior to the beginning of pile driving, to avoid structural damage, or disturbance of building occupants. In this study, an axisymmetric finite-element model that utilises an adaptive meshing algorithm has been introduced, using the commercial code Abaqus, to simulate full penetration of the pile from the ground surface to the desired depth by applying successive hammer impacts. The model has been verified by comparing the computed particle velocities with those measured in the field. The results indicate that the... 

Damage assessment of concrete arch dams is carried out through nonlinear Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) of a typical arch dam. In this study the Morrow Point arch dam is subjected to a set of 12 three-component earthquakes each scaled to 12 increasing intensity levels. The dam-foundation interaction effects have been investigated by varying foundation's modulus of elasticity to be equal and half of dam concrete's modulus of elasticity. Damage propagation through the dam body is investigated and various IDA curves are created. The performance and various limit-states of the dam structure are examined based on the obtained results. Simple damage indices are proposed through comparison of... 

A novel mesoporous MCM-41 with remarkable wide channel diameters and thick walls was synthesized. The procedure involved the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of tetraetheylorthosilicate (TEOS) in a water/ethanol/isopropoanol solvent mixture while employing 1-hexadecylamine as a templating agent and mesitylene as an auxiliary agent. After removal of the template by either extraction or calcination at 560 °C, the resulting mesoporous materials had surface areas of 1,289 and 1,210 m2/g.The channel diameterswere found to be 46.8-51.2 Å ,while thewall thicknesses were 20.9-21.1 Å. X-ray powder diffraction proved that the synthesized mesoporous structure belongs to MCM-41 family. Notably, they displayed... 

Crack detection by Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors (PWAS) is one of the emerging methods of Non-destructive Evaluation (NDE). These sensors can assess the health state of the structure in far filed through the analyzing the high frequency Lamb wave propagation. As PWAS is the essential part of this method, simulation and modeling of these sensors and their interaction with the host structure, strongly affect the accuracy of results. In this study, unlike the previous works, in which some certain areas of the host structure were considered as a sensor and actuator, the direct simulation of electro-mechanical interaction of the PWAS and the host structure is modeled among modeling the PWAS... 

Occurrence of liquefaction in saturated sand deposits underlying foundation of structure can cause a wide range of structural damages starting from minor settlement, and ending to general failure due to loss of bearing capacity. If the bearing capacity failure is not the problem, reliable estimation of the liquefaction-induced settlement will be of prime importance in assessment of the overall performance of the structure. Currently, there are few procedures with limited application in practice for estimation of settlement of foundations on liquefied ground. Therefore, development of a general relationship is important from the practical viewpoint. In this paper, the dynamic response of... 

Seismic signal processing is one of the most reliable methods of detecting the structural damage during earthquakes. In this paper, the use of the hybrid method of blind source separation (BSS) and time-frequency analysis (TFA) is explored to detect the changes in the structural response data. The combination of the BSS and TFA is applied to the seismic signals due to the non-stationary nature of them. Firstly, the second-order blind identification technique is used to decompose the response signal of structural vibration into modal coordinate signals which will be mono-components for TFA. Then each mono-component signal is analyzed to extract instantaneous frequency of structure. Numerical... 

In this article, seismic behavior of the main dome of a well-known middle-eastern historical- monument, “Imam Reza Shrine” (Mashhad, Iran) which is located in a high seismic area in Iran is evaluated. This study focuses on the response history analysis using intensifying dynamic excitations in the framework of Endurance Time Method. Endurance Time Analysis gives acceptable results for a wide range of earthquake intensities and considerably reduces the computational demand in comparison to the conventional Time History Analysis and Incremental Dynamic Analysis. The aim of this study is to investigate the applicability and efficiency of Endurance Time Analysis for masonry monuments and to...