Sharif Digital Repository

The AASHTO Standard Specification defines diaphragms as a transverse member between girders in order to maintain sectional geometry. Some of the reasons in favor of using a diaphragm are that it prevents the girders from twisting during the process of construction and helps in distributing vertical live loads between girders and transfers lateral loads (wind or earthquake) to supports. It also provides restraint for the lateral-torsional buckling of the girders. While diaphragms at the ends of bridges are called end diaphragms, the diaphragms away from the bridge ends are called intermediate diaphragms. These members are usually made of steel or cast-in-place concrete. Based on their... 

Post-tensioning is the most versatile form of prestressing, a technique which enables engineers to make the most effective use of the material properties of concrete, and so to design structural elements which are strong, slender, and efficient. Design of post-tensioned concrete structures is not difficult and, if done properly can contribute significantly to the economy and the aesthetic qualities of a structure. Post-tensioned building floors and bridge girders have found widespread use in office buildings, parking structures and bridges. They are also frequently employed in warehouses and public buildings. Now a days bridges and other type of structures, in many countries are designed... 

In recent years, the application of base isolation as a seismic design strategy for reducing the effects of earthquake ground motion has become an advantageous method and much effort has been devoted to base isolation research and there has been a growing acceptance of this approach. In this research, the effect of using base isolators in reducing the dynamic forces of piers and abutments of bridges is studied. More specifically double-span bridges are the target of this research. After modeling a regular bridge in a typical analysis program, it is excited by different earthquake accelerograms and then the effect of using base isolators in dissipating the earthquake energy is investigated  

The conventional methods in concrete are usually divided to destructive and nondestructive tests. Among these, nondestructive tests are more preferable because they don’t damage the structure or at least the damage doesn’t significantly affect its performance. According to precision of estimation of concrete conditions, nondestructive tests have different levels. These tests on concrete bridge decks range from chain drag to more developed test like Ground Penetration Radar in concrete The optimum ease of use, cost and the precision of results of Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) test compared with other nondestructive methods have made it a most widely used method. The precision of results of... 

With improvement of design and analysis techniques, use of irregular bridges has been expanded. These improve the aesthetics of urban spaces as well as providing shorter highways in impassables. Horizontally curved bridges are among the type of structures, which needs to be designed based on three-dimensional analysis. In this thesis, three-dimensional nonlinear analysis was performed by Endurance Time Method (ET) on horizontally curved bridges. Nonlinear models have been analyzed under ET acceleration functions. Comparing ET results in DBE level with earthquake responses, the difference between these two methods were determined. ET estimated earthquake responses with good accuracy;... 

Constantly rising fuel prices and environmental consciousness have caused alternative transport solutions to be considered.Recently, batteries and electric vehicle industries have developed to become a reasonable alternative for gasoline powered cars. Plug-In hybrid electric vehicles could be connected to the electrical grid to be recharged. To ease the charging process, one solution could use an on-board charger to charge the electric vehicle. This charger should be able to be connected to a conventional outlet for convenience reasons and moreover, it should be a grid friendly charger in order not to pollute the electrical network. After studying the introduced structures for electric... 

Nowadays, because high global demand for energy has led to the extensive use of fossil fuels with numerous unintended consequences such as air pollution and greenhouse effect, research and development around optimization of energy infrastructure has become much more important. Consequently, many scientific approaches have been applied to replace fossil fuels with renewable natural energy resources. One of the renewable energy types that fewer papers have been published about it, is the enormous energy of Marine currents. The origin of this energy is mostly tidal effect, or ocean currents that are available in most of oceans and seas around the planet earth. The most important criteria for... 

In this research the appilication of a new method named Endurance Time (ET) analysis in seismic analysis of multi span bridges in linear and nonlinear ranges is investigated. Endurance Time is a time history based method of seismic analysis. In this method structure is subjected to an intensifying predefined acceleration function and different damage indices of the structure are evaluated through analysis time. The Endurance Time criterion and the Endurance Time acceleration functions have been generated in previous researchs of ET group. Using 7 earthquake records which are selected from hundred ones of PEER database based on FEMA p695 recommendations, several scaling methods are used to... 

With development of power electronic science and with the existence of different power electronic converters in this field, the need for improving their operation and the fault detection methods of these converters, the need for simulation and test of them is strong felt. However, experimental constrain such as damage risks, reliability, costs, and so on obviate the need for making the converter and the need for testing it and its controller. Accordingly, we do the testing on a special platform for Real-Time simulation.Control/protection platform needs to be tested and its functionality should be verified prior to installation and commissioning.Testing in theReal-Time simulator environment... 

Three dimensional analyses have been carried out for predicting the behavior of the jointed rock slope of the abutments of the bridge which is proposed to be constructed across the river Karun4 in Iran using 3DEC. The rock sloping at 500 to 600 are composed of highly jointed rock mass and the joint spacing and orientation are varying at different locations. Since 3DEC is a three-dimensional numerical code, utilizes a Lagrangian calculation scheme to model large movements and deformations of a blocky system, allows for modeling of large movements and rotations, including complete detachment of rigid or deformable discrete blocks has been utilized for the analysis. The analysis has been... 

Poor maintenance of concrete bridges in the past years in Iran, caused serious damages, so most of them need rehabilitation. The majority of repaired members are exposed to repeated damage because compatibility of repair material to substrate concrete not considered as well as weather and loading conditions. This study attempts to improve the repair achievement and durability of concrete bridges. This investigation contains two phases: preliminary study and experimental phase. Preliminary study attends to detect different types of damages of concrete bridges and their causes along with their propagation. The next part of this study discusses about various types of repair materials. In... 

Purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of different seismic isolation techniques and effect of their location on seismic behavior of assymetric bridges and on mitigating their seismic demand. According to different types of isolators and their possible locations, a research is necessary to help to choose the optimum choice among different possible choices for isolators and their location. In this strudy, Lead-Rubber Beraing (LRB), Friction Pendulum Systme (FPS) and High Damping Rubber (HDR) isolators have been investigated and 3D bridge models are 3-span concrete box girder with 50 meters long each span and each interior piers, 7 or 14 meters long. Isolators also can be... 

Fault-tolerant ability is more subjected in Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter due to its high-power medium-voltage applications and large number of semiconductors switches used in its structure. In this thesis, the goal is performance improvement of Cascaded H-bridge Multilevel Inverter under faulty conditions. Since to achieve the post-fault ability two steps; fault detection and post-fault control are required, both steps are considered in the improving process. In this dissertation, first operation of Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter in normal and faulty condition is surveyed. Then, the conventional fault detection methods are mentioned and post-fault control methods are... 

Bridge is one of the most important structure that are used in urban transportation system. In recent decade, international standards and codes have introduced “Performance Based Design” for structure design criteria. Large and complex dynamic and time history analyzes are obstacles against this method; especially in finding optimum design that requires repeated analyzes. In this research, application of Endurance Time (ET) method in seismic design of urban concrete bridges has been evaluated and value based design of them has been presented. In ET method, seismic performance of structures under artificial intensifying accelerograms is investigated. Performance of structure in... 

costs of construction of a structure include: initial construction cost, maintanance cost, seismic risk cost and etc., that in this investigation,the seismic risk of multi-span conc. & steel bridges has been compared. the seismic damage is converted to equivalent finincial value by the concept of life-cycle cost, and then is compared with initial construction cost of structure.in this method, assessment of seismic damage based on structure response, in different earthquake intensity and by damage state concept is done. ET method has been used for predicting response of models.in this investigation two conc. & steel models, with similar geometrical specification and different design results,... 

A large number of bridges in Iran are deteriorating under long and heavy traffic loadings, while getting closer to the end of their design life time. Therefore, many of them have been exhibiting various problems such as excessive vibration or large deflection under the normal service loadings. So, mitigating traffic-induced bridge vibration and damages is necessary to extend their efficient period of serviceability. On the other hand, application of active and passive control devices in structural retrofitting have absorbed the attention of many engineers and researchers. In this work, the performance of an active control system made of piezoelectric actuators is investigated in reducing the... 

Bridges are among the crucial elements of transportation networks, and play an important role in facilitating emergency relief efforts following earthquakes. For this reason, it is emparative to monitor their damages to ensure about their performace in earthquakes. The structure of a bridge is divided into two parts, namely the superstructure and substructure. Due to the relatively high rigidity and strength of superstructures, most of structural damage is usually concentrated in substructures, which may ultimately affect the overall stability of the bridge. Therefore, assessing the level of damage in the substructure is of utmost concern. This research attempts to evaluate the damage in the... 

In recent years, steel tub girder superstructures have been exceedingly used in long span superstructures due to their significant torsional and flexural stiffnesses. In such superstructures, end diaphragms made of plates are one of the most important members in transferring seismic forces to the substructure. Despite the importance of end diaphragms, limited number of studies have been conducted on their behaviour and as a result, their design procedure is not clear. In this dissertation, different configurations of end diaphragms in elastic steel tub girder superstructures were evaluated using finite element models and the required equations for stiffness and strength were derived.... 

In this thesis, a new wind turbine scheme based on Electrically-Excited Synchronous Generator (EESG) and diode-bridge rectifier is proposed and developed. This new scheme is mainly based on the idea of generator excitation current employment as a means of wind turbine control. That is why the new scheme is called Excitation Controlled Synchronous Generator (ECSG) wind turbine. The most important aspects of the proposed ECSG wind turbine scheme are cost-effectiveness, simplicity and higher reliability, as well as higher efficiency. Considerable cost reduction for the converter unit of ECSG wind turbine is so important since costly converter has been one of the main challenges of the...