Sharif Digital Repository

Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is an assessment tool for studying the performance of systems in many fields of engineering. In earthquake engineering LCCA demands the calculation of the cost components that are related to the performance of the structure in multiple earthquake hazard levels. In this work structural performance required for LCC estimation is achieved by performing ET analysis, while Incremental static and dynamic analyses are two procedures that can be traditionally used for estimating the seismic capacity of structural systems. In this method the structure is subjected to an increasing accelerogram which its time represents ascending earthquake intensities corresponding to... 

Nowadays seismic designs of building structures are based on a life-safety criterion that made the structures do not collapse to compromise safety of human life in the structure, but they can be designed to experience some damage. However, this design method has permitted large economic losses due to the damage to the structural and non-structural components at rather moderate levels of seismic intensities. This led to a new concept about design approach called performance-based design that satisfies the life-safety objective at the same time, reduces the economic loss to an acceptable level. In this study, the use of energy dissipating damping devices to improve the performance of a... 

Clean and Renewable energies are one of the most important part of global policy. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions mostly from fossil fuels, many countries have introduced biofuels to avoid depletion of fossil fuels and decrease the pollution. In Iran, large dependency on crude oil and natural gas resources cause barriers for utilization of biofuels. The country has plenty of biomass resources that may guide national decision makers toward biofuels.In this study, biomass supply chain to produce biofuel is studied to reach sustainability. The model enables us to depict the optimal path to reach the economic, environmental, and social sustainability through the whole supply chain.... 

Today, building sectors account for 34% of total energy consumption in Iran. Increasing demand of the comfort level along with population growth necessitates much more attention about energy requirements in the country. Such phenomenon has already raised concerns about the heavy environmental impacts. The present research studies minimization of global warming potential effect for an educational building by developing life cycle optimization model. The Department of Engineering of Sharif University of Technology is selected as the case study and optimal solutions has been achieved for this building. Results state that implementing cogeneration and renewable energies can reduce20 -25% of the... 

The main objective of the present work is to achieve green design of a methanol plant by using life cycle process design (LCPD) and multi-objective optimization. As a starting point, simulation of Lurgi’s combined reforming process as a conventional reference methanol case (RMC) was performed in order to obtain its operational and kinetic parameters as well as its environmental impacts. The environmental concerns were calculated using one of the modern environmental impact assessment methods, i.e. life cycle assessment (LCA). To perform life cycle assessment of RMC, methanol production plant as well as its auxiliary units should be considered. The auxiliary units in the RMC include cryogenic... 

The aim of this research is value based optimum design of structures to minimize the costs imposing on them during lifetime. For this purpose, an optimization procedure is used to get optimum solutions. Therefore, in this optimization problem, total costs are objective functions and required limits of codes are as the constraints. The costs include initial costs of constructing and life cycle costs. The weight of structural components and seismic consequences during the lifetime of structure are used as a criterion to assess initial costs and life cycle costs, respectively. In this research, seismic losses are determined based on the probabilistic seismic assessment framework, which depends... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and exergy analysis and multi-objective optimization for gas sweetening plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potentials of three environmental features (global warming, acid rain, smog formation) of the operational plant are quantified and normalized using life cycle assessment (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts.Acid rain index is determined as the most important environmental impactindex in this unit. By choosing proper decision variables based on sensitivity analysis, LCA and EA results, optimization is performed to... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and dynamic behavior analysis with multi-objective optimization for the unit 400 of BandarEmam aromatic plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potential of seven environmental features of the operational plant are qualified and normalized using life cycle assessement (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts. By choosing the number of trays and feed stage in three distillation columns as decision variables, optimization is performed to determine the best structural variables values based on the total annual cost and Environmental... 

The design and optimization of processes was focused in the past on economic issues such as profitability and return on investment, and less attention has been paid to environmental issues. In recent years, by introducing environmental criterion as pillars of sustainable development, environmental optimization of processes has becoming an inseparable element of the process engineering. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the compatibility of environmental indicators with economic objective. The purpose of this study is to investigate environmental indicators and economic objective function in optimizing the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) of an oil refinery. The CDU is one of the most... 

The aim of this research is the utilization of seismic life cycle cost estimation procedures and their implementation in optimal structural design. The costs include initial costs of constructing and life cycle costs. The weight of structural components and seismic consequences during the lifetime of structure are used as a criterion to assess initial costs and life cycle costs, respectively. In this research, seismic losses are determined based on ATC13, FEMA-P58 and FEMA-NIBS frameworks. Also, according to the high computational time of required dynamic analyses, the Endurance Time method is used which decreases the computational time simultaneously the dynamic predicted responses are... 

EROI is an indicator to analyse energy productivity of a resource. EROI of Sirri operation unit is assessed in two different levels. Direct energy consumption and total associated gas are used in first and second level respectively. Two important aspects of the present research are considering environmental externalities and estimation of EROI related to outputs of multi-production systems. Also a model is introduced to identify relationship between oil price and EROI. Energy Abatement Cost is used to include environmental externalities to EROI. Thre benchmarks – price, energy and exergy content and exergy cost – are considered as a basis to for estimating EROI. Using LCA for taking into... 

By changing the approaches towards the waste management, it is possible to affect the resource depletion. This research is focused on economic and environmental impacts of waste production and treatment. In this research, the municipal solid waste management system have been evaluated by an integrated approach considering the Life cycle assessment and Emergy assessment methods. The integrated method have been used to evaluate the waste management system more fundamentally and analyze some upstream indicators which are related to natural resource scarcity. At first, some scenarios have been developed based on Life cycle assessment containing possible configurations of technologies. Then, an... 

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. The aim of this research is Comparative study of life cycle cost of steel and concrete building systems designed based on standard 2800 by Endurance Time Method. These costs include initial cost and life cycle cost Due to the aftermath of the earthquake in the life of the structure. In this research, because it requires a lot nonlinear dynamic time history analysis, Endurance Time Method used which is both good accuracy and also drastically reduces the cost of computing-off. Selected models for the study, four,... 

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... 

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance and seismic costs for pre-designed bridges according to the Iranian Bridge Code, which maps and details are available in Code 294. In order to evaluate performance, seismic costs of a structures are determined over its life cycle and these costs are compared eventually. Seismic costs are divided into two parts of the initial cost and life cycle cost of the structure. The initial costs depend on the cost of constructing the bridge, but life cycle costs are depends on seismic damage for structure and its users over the useful life of the bridge. These damages include the cost of maintenance of the bridge over its useful life and the... 

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,... 

Infrastructure systems play a critical role in the economic and social activities of a community. Effective and continuous performance of these infrastructure systems is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the communities. Infrastructure systems comprise networks of interdependent assets that are built through a long and costly process. These assets are subject to a variety of factors that reduce the performance and reliability over time. These factors also increase the vulnerability of infrastructure assets in face of future probable hazards. In order to ensure the continuous and uninterrupted performance of infrastructure assets in post-hazard situations, asset managers should plan... 

Hyperscale cloud data center (HCDC) (a.k.a., hyperscale data center) is the backbone of a wide variety of Internet services such as web-hosting, ecommerce, social networking, software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), application as a service (AaaS), and cloud computing.HCDC platforms consist of massive parallel processing, high utilization rate, and high volume storage that cost hundreds of million dollars.The increased demand for various Internet services and the subsequent dramatic growth in HCDC platforms, have caused an exponential increase in utilization of energy. With energy costs on the rise and global attention focused on carbon footprints, organizations are... 

In the present work, a comprehensive economic, environmental and exergy analysis and multi-objective optimization for world’s largest aromatic plant are provided and the interaction between decision variables in these criterions is discussed. In the first part, potentials of seven environmental features of the operational plant are quantified and normalized using life cycle assessment (LCA) for both process waste and utility environmental impacts. Exergy analysis (EA) is also used to determine the lowest eco-efficiency equipment. By choosing proper decision variables based on sensitivity analysis, LCA and EA results, optimization is performed to determine the best design variables based on... 

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...