Sharif Digital Repository

reparedness and emergency procedure be devised in the event of,and prior to,a disaster. One of these disastersoften accompanying byhuge damages, losses and casualtiesisanearthquake. After such a disaster, several governmental and non-governmental organizations usually start relief operations. They commonly pursue their own agendas and use their own facilities and capabilities to help the people affected without pursuing a central plan. These disintegrated behaviors of involved organizations generate contradictory responses and result in either wasted resources or preventing equitable service for all affected people. Due tothe abovefact, this dissertation proposes amodel for improving... 

Deteriorated old urban neighborhoods usually have no access to appropriate municipal services, and have small-sized buildings, densely populated areas, and earthquake-prone structures. Residents in these areas do not have the will and financial ability to renovate their aged properties. A questionnaire survey of the citizens living in the deteriorated areas of the City of Tehran showed that 80% of households do not have a positive monthly financial balance and cannot afford the cost of reconstructing their properties. Serious drawbacks of previous attempts to renovate deteriorated areas, including lack of adequate government funding, and adding to the dependence of local citizens on... 

The purpose of this study is to solve the problem of allocating relief teams to reopen damaged roads and remove debris from damaged areas after the earthquake for large cities. In the deteriorated areas of large metropolises, severe earthquakes may damage links, which causes some nodes to separate from the network. In this research, by using an Ant System meta-heuristic algorithm, a joint problem of damaged link restoration and demolished zone debries removal problem for search and rescue of the trapped population in an earthquake is solved. Ant System parameters are calibrated, and sensitivity analyses are done for the number of relief teams, earthquake intensity. The results of 1000... 

The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of events such as earthquakes on businesses. Earthquakes can have a significant impact on the performance and profitability of businesses. Earthquakes can negatively affect the functionality of community infrastructure systems by damaging their components and this disruption in the functionality of the lifelines of the community can negatively affect the businesses that are dependent on their functionality. In addition, earthquakes will cause casualties and injuries, leading to a decrease in the workforce and the customers’ population. In such a situation, the activity of many businesses is disrupted and even stopped, which in turn has many... 

Earthquake is one of the deadliest natural hazards that has taken more than 400 thousand lives, only in the last decade. Iran is one of the countries that are at high risk of potential death toll resulting from such hazards, firstly because it is located in a potentially high-risk zone, the so-called earthquake belt and, secondly because of its problems in the management of disastrous situations (especially, pre-disaster management). Bam 2003 earthquake is one of the most painful experiences in this context. So, in this research, emphasizing on the practical use of optimization models, an existing model is applied on the damaged area of the Bam earthquake. The mentioned model considers the... 

Base isolation system is an efficient passive structural control approach to save the structures from the harms of earthquakes. The base isolated systems help to reduce the base shear by increasing the period of the structures, as well as dissipating the seismic input energy by its inherent damping mechanism [1]. However, the residual displacement of the base isolation systems resulted from strong ground motions would remain as a main obstacle in its regular serviceability after the main event. In that regard different isolating devices have been introduced to resolve the problem of the remaining permanent displacement. On the other hand, Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are among the newly... 

This study proposes a probabilistic framework to quantify the seismic resilience of urban natural gas distribution networks. Infrastructure resilience is defined as the ability to maintain performance after a hazard or, in case of a loss of performance, return to the minimum desired level in the optimal time. The framework presented in this research is comprised of multiple interconnected probabilistic models. These models work in harmony to characterize the impact of the earthquake on various infrastructures such as the buildings and urban gas distribution network components, as well as the probable consequences of the earthquake. The post-earthquake recovery of the gas distribution network... 

Earthquakes are one of the greatest natural hazards. Hazard mitigation requires studies in many areas including geotechnical aspects of earthquake engineering. Characteristics of seismic waves change significantly as they pass through soft soil layers near the earth's surface. This phenomenon, commonly known as site effects or site response, is a major factor influencing the extent of damage on structures. Processing of seismic data recorded during earthquakes is one of the most reliable methods to study site effects. The ground motions generated during earthquakes are nonstationary with respect to both amplitude and frequency. The state-of-the-art time-frequency distributions when applied... 

Nowadays, the design of new structures and the renovation of existing buildings against earthquakes using energy absorption systems are very common. On the other hand, the near-field earthquake are characterized by directivity related velocity pulses with large accelerations. Recent studies have shown that the performance of the passive energy dissipation mechanisms are significantly depended on the characteristics of the near field velocity pulses. The efficiency of various passive dampers in damage mitigation of different building structures have been carefully evaluated under near field and far field earthquake records. In this study, the ability of viscoelastic dampers in controlling the... 

In this research, probability distribution of structural demand is estimated using a simplified dynamic analysis which is named Endurance Time method. In this method, the structure is subjected to nonlinear dynamic time history analysis, which its acceleration increases in time. It can be extracted the median of structural demand for earthquakes with different return periods. In customary researches, this estimation is performed using Incremental Dynamic Analysis knowns as IDA. The significant computational effort of IDA is the dominant obstacle that researchers and engineers encounter with. The main advantage of Endurance Time method is the fast estimation of structural demands by reducing... 

Among different natural disasters, earthquake has always been known as one of the most effective ones on human lives, and this is only because we still cannot predict the exact time and place of its happening. So, giving special attention to the methods which can omit or minimize the damages of this natural event is needed for controlling the loss in the event of an earthquake. On the other hand schools are known as places which are full of people from younger ages for at least half of each day, and they are considered to be not well educated about how to react in an earthquake in comparison to older people and also considered vulnerable at the time of this natural event. According to what... 

The purpose of this research is to study methods of Seismic retrofitting of buried pipelines in soil slopes subjected to landslide due to earthquakes. For this purpose, two methods were considered. The first method is to increase the burial depth of pipes. To check the performance of this method, results of three physical model tests conducted by previous research groups in this project, were used. The second method is to construct flexible retaining walls adjacent to buried pipe in soil slope. Wall was selected of Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam. For this purpose a physical model was built on and excited using shaking table facility of Sharif University of Technology. Simulation laws... 

Recent earthquakes indicate the importance of retrofitting existing structures to achieve an acceptable level of performance. Use of bracing systems is a cost-effective method for seismic retrofitting of existing steel frames. In particular, Buckling Restrained Braces (BRBs) and Special Concentrically Bracing systems (SCB) are practical choices to be used because of their large energy dissipation capacity especially under moderate to severe earthquakes. Buckling restrained braces which yield in both tension and compression, exhibits stable and predictable hysteretic behavior. In this study several existing steel frames, which are designed based on older versions of the building codes, have... 

Shear walls are commonly used in tall concrete buildings to resist lateral loads. Due to the presence of regular door or window openings, a shear wall is often divided into smaller wall units coupled together by coupling beams. In any case, the earthquake resistance of a coupled shear wall structure is highly dependent on the nonlinear behaviour, especially the strength and ductility, of the coupling beams. Many existing building structures without provisions for resisting earthquake loads might no longer be considered to be up to the new standard due to increased-load specifications in the seismic code. A large number of RC coupling beams might require rehabilitation or retrofitting to... 

Nowadays, proper design and retrofitting of structures against natural and manmade disasters, is among the main concerns of researchers and designers in order to reduce financial and human costs. Extensive research has been carried out on the structures resistance against earthquake up to now. Although, the vast amount of research has resulted various regulations and guidelines, there is still a long way ahead to achieve the desirable results. Due to high sensitivity of the steel to temperature variations, fire exposure is more destructive for steel structures compared with the concrete ones. The performance of an intermediate three-storey steel moment frame with 4 spans was studied in this... 

Sensitive equipment, are vulnerable to strong earthquakes, and failure of these equipment may result in a heavy economic loss. Recent studies have revealed that a conventional passive seismic isolation system may induce an excessive displacement when it is subjected to a near-fault earthquake that possesses strong longperiod components.
Semi-active control devices are capable of offering the adaptability of active devices and stability and reliability of passive devices that have been considered by many researchers.
Magnetorheological (MR) damper is a reliable semi-active control device which works in a wide range of temperature besides its mechanical simplicity at a modest... 

Abstract- Due to vulnerability of metallic structures to fire, to have an advance estimate of the behaviour and performance of the structure during fire, can greatly assist the designers to make preparations and take precautionary measures to prevent excessive damage to the building. The study of the behaviour of a structure at high temperatures can be divided into two parts, that of its members, and that of its joints. The survey of the literature reveals that most of the previous work concentrated on the former, and it seems that there has not been much work on the latter. The objective of this project was to study the behaviour of structural joints at elevated temperatures, in general,... 

With the popular choice of using underground structures and tunnel in big cities and with significant damage in recent large earthquake; therefore more attention is given to the behavior of the underground structure in seismic area. The purpose of this thesis is to present the Soil-Tunnel-Structure Interaction analysis performed for different dynamic load condition. Therefore we modeled a 3D intersection part of two different tunnels in homogeneous soil by ABAQUS software. The soil and concrete structure of tunnel is modeled by three dimensional solid finite elements and the boundary of soil is modeled by three dimensional infinite elements with 8 nodes. The results demonstrate the geostatic... 

In this study, the behavior of a new innovative bracing system under cyclic loading and according to AISC code is investigated. An Ideal bracing system, in addition to having sufficient stiffness, should have a suitable ductility. Also, in order to prevent inelastic behavior of other structural members, braces, in addition to possessing high architectural adaptivity, must be able to contain the damage within itself and behave like a fuse. Three specimens with different sections, IPE100, HEA100 and 2UNP100, were designed and tested. The results of these tests represent an elastic- (approximately) perfectly plastic behavior of the brace if an appropriate section is used. Moreover, this bracing... 

Natural disasters have been with the earth, and felt critical as far back as human history. These incidents are inevitable, but their effects may be controlled. One important problem after a disastrous earthquake is the management of people’s vehicular movements in a chaotic situation. This study is an endeavor to envisage what would possibly happen after such an incident, and how could we possibly control or manage the traffic in such an occasion. We start with the analysis of the online reports of similar past incidents, and try to picture how people react to these events. We try to identify the trip purposes that have been shown to be pursued, and the respective origins and destinations....