Sharif Digital Repository

Reinforced concrete bridge columns located in regions of high seismicity are designed with large ductility capacity for adequate protection against collapse. This type of design tends to result in large permanent displacements. To maximize post-event operability and to minimize repair costs, new design strategies to reduce these residual displacements are necessary. Even though seismic codes ensure life safety for bridges, large residual displacement after severe earthquake may make the bridge useless. For example, after 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake (Japan), more than 100 reinforced concrete bridge columns experienced a tilt angle of more than 1 degree (1.75% drift). These columns had to... 

Iran plateau is situated over the Alpide-Himalaya earthquake belt. Tectonic studies indicate that this plateau has a very high density of active and recent faults; as a result, Iran is at risk of damaging earthquakes. Experience of past severe earthquakes shows previous designed structures do not have enough strength instead of real earthquake forces, therefore vulnerability study of existing structures and give a technical and economical retrofitting plan of them is required. Conventional methods of seismic rehabilitation for example using concrete shear walls or steel braces are not suitable for some buildings. Nowadays, passive control systems have been successfully used for reducing the... 

Researches carried out on the damages imparted to the building structures under severe earthquakes have shown the importance of asymmetry effects of the buildings on the level of these damages. In these cases, the structures enter into the nonlinear state of their behavior and the structural elements, as well as nonstructural ones undergo large deformations. Additional damping systems have been proposed in many studies to avoid enforcing such large forces on the structures. One example of these systems is viscous fluid damper. The effectiveness of this type of dampers in reduction of the forces has been shown in many previous works. In this research we look for a damping eccentricity which... 

Performance of reinforced concrete frames is highly dependent on detailing of the joint connections between its members, such as beams and columns. To have a good structural behavior, joints must show ductile behavior and designed based on the philosophy of strong column-weak beam. In the case of sever lacking ductility, strength or even rigidity of the connections, or having a weak column-strong beam, in the existing structures, there is a need for seismic upgrading of the connection. There are several ways for seismic upgrading of this type of connections.In this research, using steel plates for seismic upgrading of Concrete Beam-Column connections subjected to axial and cyclic loads has... 

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are metallic materials that have unique properties, including shape memory effects, superelastic effects, and high damping characteristics. Recovery of large deformation and capability of energy dissipation during mechanical loading-unloading cycles are special properties of superelastic effect of shape memory alloys. Due to these distinctive macroscopic behaviors, not present in most traditional materials, SMAs are the basis for innovative applications like devices for protecting buildings from structural vibrations. This paper presents a numerical investigation aimed at evaluating the improvements achievable through devices for passive seismic protection of... 

Previously, numerous studies were carried out on the shear walls and important information are available in various fields, including wall design with various sections, wall design in areas with high seismicity risk, issues related to the reinforcement of boundary element and etc. In the design codes of reinforced concrete structures in the field of seismic design, some criteria for reinforcement of boundary element in the walls were conducted, but these codes do not answer to designers to arrange the wall with or without eccentricity with respect to column or the effect of separation of wall from the column. Due to the fact that we have a powerful software such as ETABS, design of shear... 

In practice, structures made of concrete are full of cracks. The strength of concrete is mainly determined by the tensile strength, which is about 10% of the compressive strength. As long as cracking in concrete is unavoidable, we have to try to minimize their detrimental effects. This objective can be achieved by resisting (or limiting) propagation of existing cracks. Because of this, reinforcement (mostly steel) is used to increase the carrying capacity of the material and to control the development of cracks. Concrete structures that fail, already shows a large number of large and small cracks before their maximum carrying capacity is reached. The failure of concrete can be characterized... 

The structure performances during past earthquakes indicate the importance of predicting behaviors of irregular structures under earthquakes. If the irregularity exceeds an expected limit, a seismic analysis should be carried out by a dynamic analysis method. The Endurance Time (ET) is a time-history method, base on dynamic analysis for seismic analyzing and designing the structures, in which structures are subjected to intensifying accelerogram functions and their Endurance Time is measured. One of the most applicable methods for RCF analysis is the Concentrated Hinge Model which is used in this research too. The needed parameters for modeling plasticity in concentrated hinge are achieved... 

The current global economy challenges and the importance of maintaining a sustainable development strategy has increasingly bolded the importance of construction productivity measures. This research describes the results of a running research that is to find the most critical factors affecting the productivity of high rise concrete building projects in developing countries. To achieve that, we have conducted Delphi method in two phases. In the first phase we had a brainstorming program with construction experts from owner organizations, construction contractors and designing engineers to identify factors that have influenced productivity in recent concrete building construction projects.50... 

Studies have shown that by reducing the stiffness of structures the seismic load imposed on them is reduced. In this research the effect of two different precast connections on the seismic response of precast concrete structures with shear walls during earthquakes was studied. The connections were vertical connections and were used to connect the two halves of the shear walls together. The results were compared with that of a wet connection. In this research 46 different structures were analyzed. The buildings were 9, 6 and 3 stories. In order to obtain the best seismic behavior different combinations of steel were considered among the connections. The seismic behavior of the structures were... 

The actual value of structures should not be evaluated only based on initial cost, because failure cost and economical losses due to corrosion and natural hazards can be catastrophic. When a long life Performance of a structure is expected, life cycle cost analysis is the best way to assess and compare economic value of different design choices. The main purpose of this work is investigating the effect of shear walls in limit state cost and total cost . Results demonstrate that shear walls can reduce limit state cost up to 70 percent . Furthermore the influence of increasing thickness of shear walls and effect of reducing dead loads in total life cycle cost is discussed. It is shown that... 

Seismic design codes reduce loads by using response modification factor. Because of the reserved strength in structural elements and capacity of structure to dissipate energy, structures can be designed for lower seismic loads. This factor has modified over time. In this thesis, the effect of the reduction in behavior factor on the response of two kinds of reinforced concrete systems were evaluated. Moment resisting frames and dual systems with different heights and regularity in plan, heve been design according to the behavior factor which is recommended in the 3rd edition of the Iranian codes of practice for seismic resistance design of buildings (Standard No. 2800). Drift and... 

The complexity involved in estimating seismic forces and structural behavior under seismic activity are of concern to designers and researchers. The analysis of the actual behavior of the structure and the predicted behavior, is thus important in recent years many methods of seismic analysis of structures have been developed, these methods simplify assumptions to give an appropriate estimations to achieve an appropriate estimation of the structural behavior. The compliance of the results and actual data is of great importance it is seen that some methods produce results that vary greatly with others. One of the most reliable ways to verify the results is to compare them with data from actual... 

Endurance Time Method (ET) is a dynamic analysis in which structures are subjected to intensifying accelerograms and performance of them are assessed based on their response at different excitation levels. Duration consistency of current ET accelerograms has not been directly considered. Strong motion duration can strongly influence the response of structures and foundations especially when they encounter degrading characteristics in their materials. In this study, duration related properties of ET accelerograms and ground motions are compared. These properties consist of strong motion duration, cycles number of motion and number of nonlinear cycles which a structure should sustain when it... 

A total of twenty-four reinforced concrete arches with dimensions of 110 × 30 × 10 cm were casted, fabricated and tested. There are three variables, including: height to span ratio, longitudinal reinforcement ratio and arrangement and number of FRP layers.Based on results, with increasing height to span ratio, the efficiency of FRP strengthening method decreases. It is due to the fact that FRP materials inherently behave better in tension. From another point of view, in lower arches (L group) extrados bonding technic has better effect on increasing peak load of the arches, while in higher ones (H group) intrados bonding is discerned as the best method of strengthening. This paradoxical... 

Performance of reinforced concrete frames is highly dependent on detailing of the joint connections between its members, such as beams and columns. To have a good structural behavior, joints must show ductile behavior and designed based on the philosophy of strong column-weak beam. In the case of sever lacking ductility, strength or even rigidity of the connections, or having a weak column-strong beam, in the existing structures, there is a need for seismic upgrading of the connection. There are several ways for seismic upgrading of this type of connections.In the last decade Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) widely has been used to strengthening the reinforced concrete (RC) members. Most of... 

Application of passive control systems in reducing the seismic induced forces on different structures has attracted the attention of many engineers and researchers during the last few decades. Various damping systems have been introduced in this regard, and many of them have practically been implemented in different buildings. Tuned Mass Dampers (TMD) are certain types of passive control systems that can effectively reduce the dynamic response of tall buildings under various types of dynamic forces. More specifically, extensive researches have been carried out on the application of TMDs on suppressing the seismic response of tall buildings in recent years. In this regard, the soil-structure... 

Global collapse in earthquake engineering refers to the inability of a structural system to sustain gravity loads when subjected to seismic excitation. Dynamic instability phenomena in exist buildings have a key position and for this reason strict criteria in structural seismic assessing codes presented for avoiding this phenomena. At this study, dynamic instability of five designed concrete buildings with moment frame system, mixed up 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 story building, are investigated. P-delta effects, deterioration in strength and stiffness and cyclic deterioration in structural components considered in this investigation. For modeling nonlinear behavior of elements, experimental results... 

Today, in our beloved country of Iran and other parts of the world, reinforced concrete structures are used in large industrial projects, in some cases we see their very early failure even before the time of operation. This issue in the southern coasts of the country due to special weather conditions (humidity and high temperature) and the existence of the offensive ions such as chlorine and sulfate in seawater are more important and we always face with severe corrosion of reinforcement and reduced service life of concrete structures in these areas. Despite this, little research has been done on the reliability of concrete facilities in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea in the north of the... 

The ultimate goal of this study is to evaluate the condition of concrete structures using computer vision methods and using powerful tools such as machine learning methods based on visual information. This assessment is performed by detecting damage in these structures. With the aging of structures such as dams, bridges and tall buildings, structural health monitoring is an important task in ensuring their safety and stability. Therefore, rapid assessment of the health of structures and diagnosis of damage after destructive events is of great value in terms of providing resilience of structures. Visual inspection of structures by experts is one of the basic methods of evaluating structures....