Sharif Digital Repository

Today, the correct management of construction projects in IRAN's water industry has become a severe concern for its managers. Construction projects of the water industry constitute a considerable part of the country's construction industry. Several significant Issues such as operation management, water industry projects, correct management of resources, crisis management in the water industry, increased productivity and useful life of structures, increasing productivity, and preventing water loss are among the determinative challenges in construction projects in Iran. One of the new methods for the correct management of the life cycle of projects in this area is the use of Building... 

Schools are known as the educational infrastructure of countries. Most people in the community spend more than 12 years of their education in schools. The organization for development, renovation, and equipping of in Iran, as the custodian of school construction in the country, has moved towards using new technologies due to the problems encountered in schools' construction. Among these tools, BIM is selected to help project management and control. For BIM implementation on the macro scale, readiness assessment plays a significant role. In this dissertation, an attempt has been made to provide a model for evaluating the needs, use BIM, and evaluate the organization by having a strategic... 

The relatively large number of structural elements and the variety of design code requirements complicate the design process of tall buildings. This process is exacerbated when the target is to obtain the seismic code-compliant optimal design with the minimum weight which results in a large-scale and challenging optimization problem. On the other hand, past earthquakes and hurricanes demonstrated that while satisfying the requirements of the conventional design codes guarantees the life safety of the occupants, significant economic losses may still be incurred. This highlights the importance of considering life cycle costs in the design process of the structures. But the issue is that the... 

Most of the seismic regulations in the Iranian design codes are adopted from the U.S. codes, while the severe earthquake rates with regards to the gross area and total population of Iran is 8.4 and 5.5 times the rates for U.S. respectively. In fact, Iranian rates are between the ones for U.S. and Japan which have up to 200% difference in prescribed strength level in their seismic codes. Poor construction quality regarding defected control in Iran adds to the problem. Therefore, the prescribed strength level of U.S. building codes and thus their target reliability index seems insufficient for use in Iran. Also, previous research has shown that the load and resistance factors in Iranian... 

Preventive maintenance strategies have been considered by highway agencies in order to increase pavement service life and to reduce the costs associated with pavement maintenance. Due to the increasing concern regarding promoting sustainable pavements, consideration of the environmental, economic and performance factors in devising preventive maintenance strategies is of great importance.This study contributes to developing a multicriteria decision-making tool for sustainability evaluation of pavement preventive maintenance strategies. The developed tool, PaveSAT, considers the greenhouse gas emission, net present value, and pavement performance to rank preventive maintenance schemes using... 

Technological catchup has been one of the topics of interest for researchers and policymakers, especially in developing countries, and has been studied from various dimensions. The catchup in the renewable energy industries is important due to the possibility of benefiting from its economic dimensions along with responding to the growing energy demand in these countries, as well as accessing the sustainable sources of energy supply. In the literature, various dimensions have been studied to investigate the factors affecting the technological catchup, one of the most important of them is the technology life cycle. In answer to the question of what stages of the technological area life cycle... 

New technology-based firms (NTBFs) are the driving force behind creating innovation and technology in countries and can play a crucial role in job creation and economic growth. These companies also facilitate technology transfer and strengthen the absorptive capacity of national innovation systems. Therefore, given the externalities of these companies, as well as their significant role in promoting innovation, governments around the world implement policies to support these firms. In Iran, the Vice President for Science and Technology has implemented policies to support NTBFs since 2013. Recently, a few studies have been carried out to evaluate these policies. However, the number of these... 

The growing amounts of generation of electronic wastes (e-waste) and their increasing environmental impacts require a special optimal waste management strategy. Many different methods have been developed to managing e-waste. To make the best choices according to the conditions of each system, having an adequate knowledge of all methods and comparing them is the most important point. This research aims to design a system for managing e-waste by selecting mobile phones as an example of electronic waste and find the optimal condition of the system to increase economic benefits and reduce environmental impact. Recycling and landfill are selected as the main methods in this project. Four lines... 

In recent years, due to the economical concerns in the structural design, many researches are devoted to introduce new frameworks for optimization of the construction cost as well as maintenance and rehabilitation costs in the life time. The bridges are the most crucial components of the transportation networks and their appropriate performances assures the flow in the transportation network. Hence, the reliability and response of such infrastructures especially in the emergency conditions and the state of servicibality after the hazards like earthquake play a key role in the social life. So far the design procedure of such infrastructures are only limited to the serviceability conditions as... 

Recent studies show that the code-compliant structures have faced a lot of damages in earthquakes, and their performance could improve. The structure should have the least initial cost in this approach, which observes all of the code's limits regardless of the structure's life cycle cost. In recent years, value-based design has been considered as an alternative for code-based design procedures. In this method, some other parameters are considered as well as the initial cost of the structure, including risk, resiliency, reliability, and sustainability. In this paper, the structures' total cost is studied by Fema P-58, while it is equipped with viscous dampers. The structures are 4, 8, and 12... 

The aim of this study is to develop the value-based design approach using the endurance time method as a comprehensive and efficient framework in optimal seismic design of structures. Optimal resource allocation is an interesting and important subject in the seismic design of structures from the theoretical and practical viewpoint. Finding optimal solutions requires the use of a trial and error process that is accompanied by repetitive structural performance evaluation. The seismic design process will be efficient when it provides a comprehensive and reliable estimation of the earthquake effects and be cost-efficient in terms of computational demand. In this regard, the value-based design... 

The present study aims to reduce the carbon footprint of greenhouse products to provide a decision tool for sustainable development of greenhouses. In order to provide this decision tool, the impact of four scenarios or energy-efficient technology for greenhouse heating, including: combine heat and power system(CHP), new greenhouse covering material, industrial symbiosis, and solar collector on the carbon footprint of greenhouse products has been studied because one of the main factors in the release of carbon footprints of greenhouse products is the use of fossil fuels for greenhouse heating. Energy modeling has been used to estimate the amount of heating, cooling, and artificial lighting... 

Pavements are essential part of transportation infrastructures that are expensive to build and maintain and could significantly affect the environment. In recent decades, global warming has become a major concern. Therefore, in pavement design in addition to the economic and environmental considerations, conformity with sustainable development have received attention. In the past decades in Iran, because of the low production and high price of cement, and availability of inexpensive bitumen, flexible pavements were the predominant type. However, the increased price of bitumen in the past two decades has changed the balance of the highway construction projects, and bitumen procurement has... 

Vertical addition of existing buildings provides more living space without the need for more land use. Also adding a story on an existing building is one of the common needs in metropolitans. However, the structure may bear high risk due to vertical addition. This study aims to model conventional concrete structures built in Tehran and then assess and compare the seismic performance of base structure and extended structure. Seismic performance of a system is defined as their efficiency in providing enough safety and reducing the Life-Cycle Cost. For this purpose, seven archetypes as base structures and eight extended structures corresponding to base structures, that had residential... 

Controlling, managing, and mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which are produced by human activities, are one of the main concerns of researchers today. Market-based methods are one the successful methods to enhance controlling, managing, and mitigating carbon dioxide emissions, among which the carbon tax has received more attention. Increasing clean technologies in the electricity network to the reduce the emissions of the electricity industry may reduce the carbon tax rate. In this regard, the life cycle analysis makes it possible to consider the emissions of the life cycle. The present model is applied for two representative days of Iran's electricity... 

Preserving and promoting the health of citizens in a society is one of the most important problems addressed in any country. The power sector discharges a huge volume of carbon dioxide which intensifies the climate change and consequent human health problems.The goal of this study is to evaluate the ultimate effect of climate change caused by power plant emissions on the human health using life cycle analysis approach for different provinces in Iran. An integrated model has been developed to evaluate the impact of climate change due to power plant emissions on the human health. This model includes the equations regarding the variations in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere,... 

Structural optimization has always been one of the concerns of engineers. Usually, engineers decide to optimize the structure with its weight. Nowadays we know that the best solution in weight optimization is not good for the structural damage and performance of the structure due to risk analysis.In this study, using the genetic algorithm to reduce construction cost, Loss and damaged cost and total cost of the structure by calculating structural damage based on FEMA-P58 guidelines according to two types of connections (rigid or hinge) and their elements (beams and columns) in two types of structures 4 and 8 story has been investigated.At each stage of increment in algorithms, first, the... 

Seismic base isolation is the most effective method of protecting and strengthening structures against seismic damage caused by large to small earthquakes and aftershocks. Providing damping and energy absorption of the seismic isolation at the structure's base level can significantly reduce the cost of repairing and strengthening the structure in addition to reducing seismic damage. However, besides these advantages, due to their high cost, seismic isolations in major infrastructure projects, hospitals, and crisis management centers should have economic and social justification. In this regard, a value-based seismic design approach can justify this important issue. In recent years of... 

Industrial centrifuge fans operate in various industries, specifically heavy industries such as pelletizing plants, steel mills, and cement plants. These fans transfer process gas in the production cycle. In some cases, due to their off-design working conditions, asymmetrical wear and failure happen on one side of the impeller's blades more than the other side. The most important reason is the heterogeneity of the entrance fluid's properties. One of the many critical parameters in this issue is the asymmetric distribution of particles between the two entrances of the fan. This research investigates the asymmetric erosion problem of a specific centrifugal fan with a double-suction side... 

process design and decision-making about it are challenging activities that involve optimizing conflicting goals such as cost, technical feasibility, and environmental impacts. These conflicting goals can be analyzed by considering the complete life cycle of a process or product in the initial design and decision-making. Life cycle analysis follows the environmental effects throughout the life cycle of a product, including extraction, transportation, production, consumption, and disposal. Life cycle assessment includes four fundamental stages: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, life cycle impact assessment, and interpretation of results. The aim of this project is to investigate...