Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

This thesis investigates the dynamic response of a viscoelastic plate resting on a viscoelastic Winkler foundation subjected to the excitation of a moving mass. Through application of the Laplace transform, the governing equation of the problem is derived for a general viscoelastic material. Thereafter, an analytical-numerical method is proposed in order to determine the dynamic response of the viscoelastic plate. The method is based on transforming the governing partial differential equation into a new solvable system of linear ordinary differential equations. To that extent, the proposed solution proves to be applicable to plates made of any viscoelastic material and with various boundary... 

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... 

In most places in the world as it is in our country, structural vibration caused by earthquakes are among the most destructive menaces for the building. For this reason one of the main goals for civil engineers is constructing structures that can perform properly in an earthquake-exposed situation. For moving toward this goal it is necessary to estimate structural responses considering probable earthquake excitation and use these data for design of new structures or retrofitting of existing ones. In this research, the capability of a new method named Endurance Time analysis in seismic assessment of concrete moment frame is investigated in nonlinear range. ET is a new dynamic time history... 

So far, several studies have been conducted on the endurance time method. In general, these studies can be categorized into two categories. The first group of studies are based on the theoretical foundations of this methodology and the second group of researches that use the method of endurance time in different engineering issues of earthquake and engineering, and also compare the results of this method with other conventional methods of seismic analysis.The purpose of this study, which is more in the first category of research, is to optimize the acceleration functions using various Transform, such as Fourier and Wavelet, as well as the use of various optimization algorithms. In optimizing... 

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... 

Preventing critical damages to structures and hence saving the lives and money is an inevitable work which a designer has to do. During the earthquake, huge amount of energy applies to the structure and finding a way to reduce transfer of this energy to main structure is crucial. For this purpose, Structural Control systems may be used. Metallic Dampers are one of those systems which absorb the earthquake input energy by having nonlinear deformations. In this Thesis, one type of this dampers which is innovated by Estekanchi, have been studied .Indeed, this damper is a connection between bracing and main frame. In this damper a U shape part acts as a sacrificing portion and absorbs energy by... 

Elevated concrete tanks have a wide range of applications in storing drinking water, firefighting, sewage, oil, toxic chemicals, and similar fluids. Therefore, due to their usage, these tanks are usually placed in the category of very important structures and vital arteries. Consequently, their design against seismic loads and their proper performance during earthquakes are of great importance. The endeavor time Analysis is a seismic analysis method in which the structure is subjected to an increasing dynamic excitation whose intensity gradually increases over time. The structure's response over time is examined, and based on the corresponding response to various levels of excitation... 

Influences of dynmic interaction between substation equipment on responses and fragility are studied. Proposing a framework for seismic risk analysis of substation equipment using reliability and endurance time methods is another aim of this project. Risk, in this contex, means the probability of exceeding monetary loss. Three dimensional models of four vulnerable types of equipment including surge arrester, current transformer, circuit breaker and disconnect switch are developed and verified. Six different systems of equipment connected through rigid bus bars comprising of two, three and four equipment are considered. Fragility curves are developed for equipment in both unconnected and... 

Financial losses and casualties due to the collapse of the masonry facade and the infill walls of the building in recent earthquakes were motivators of this research to study seismic performance assessment of masonry facade. One of the main reasons for the collapse of buildings facade is their inadequate connection to the infill walls and structure frame. The mentioned item caused when earthquakes such as Kermanshah earthquake occurred, although a large number of buildings remained undamaged in terms of their structural, facades of these buildings collapsed. The details of the masonry facade, such as the metal wires mentioned in the codes, are not usually applied in Iran, and the connection... 

A tensile-compression ring is derived from the spoke wheel principle. The wheel is one of the greatest inventions in mankind. The use of the wheel has developed through time. Engineers found out that the use of the spoke wheel as a roof structure provides many benefits. With the spoke wheel principle a lightweight, cost-efficient roof structure can be made. In recent years the spoke wheel principle has also been applied for oval shaped roofs in order to increase the application of the principle. An example is the use of the roof structure for football stadia. The problem is that the spoke wheel principle will only work at full extend when its shape is completely circular. The question rises... 

The aim of this research is inroducing appropriate intensity measure to improve the ability of endurance time dynamic analysis to estimate the seismic response of structures and structure response distribution function. In endurance time method, the structure subjected to intensifying artificial accelerograms and we’ll find structure responses at different return periods just by one-time seismic analysis. Also, according to the high computional time of other dynamic analysis’s, the endurance time method is used which decreases the computional time simultaneously the dynamic predicted responses are accurate enough. In this way, we have a concept known as goal time which is duration of... 

This study aims to assess and compare the seismic performance of moment frame and dual reinforced concrete systems at different ductilities and seismicity levels. Seismic performance of the systems is defined as their efficiency in providing safety and reducing the life-cycle as well as the total cost of the buildings. For this purpose, 30 archetypes were designed in accordance with common Iranian codes, and their response at different seismic intensities was obtained by Endurance Time method. Afterward, the consequences of earthquakes were estimated according to FEMA-P58 guidelines, and the total cost of the buildings was determined. All of these archetypes had residential occupancy but... 

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,... 

The purpose of this study is to provide a simply applicable method for accurately determining the distribution of seismic responses of structures based on the Endurance-Time Analysis. This distribution is one of the pillars of the probabilistic Performance-based design of structures. In general, the Incremental Dynamic Analysis provides the most accurate results in this regard. However, the enormous computational cost of this kind of analysis makes it practicality questionable. In an Endurance-Time Analysis, the structure is analyzed under a limited number of special acceleration excitations functions. These excitations functions are specifically designed to apply an incremental seismic... 

Endurance Time (ET) method is a dynamic analysis in which structures are subjected to intensifying acceleration time histories. These excitations are also called Endurance Time Excitation Functions (ETEF). The reliability and accuracy of the ET method heavily depends on the accuracy of ETEFs. ETEFs are generated so that ETEFs dynamic characteristics must be consistent with dynamic characteristics of real ground motions. Since the number of ETEFs equations are considerably more than variables noninear optimization is used to generate ETEFs. In order to improve the accuracy of ETEFs two approaches can be used. First, modifying the objective function equations by considering more dynamic... 

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... 

One of the main challenges in the design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is minimizing the energy consumption while simultaneously maximizing the performance of sensors. In this thesis, we have considered WSNs based on beacon enabled IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee Standards with low rate applications like temperature, humidity and light sensing, which mainly have been used in a smart home environment, and proposed a cross-layer design to overcome this challenge. The design involves an optimizer module that captures the application layer and MAC sub layer behaviors. Based on these behaviors, the optimizer dynamically changes the rate of node’s traffic at the application layer and the priority of... 

We present a home energy management system that is able to manage home energy demand and resources to achieve minimum household payment in electricity dynamic pricing.Communication is used to collect needed data from the home energy system members and users in order toimprove demand and resources management. Some of the needed data comes from appliances and solar panels by wireless sensor network and some other is received from home users by a user interface.
Two algorithms are proposed that the first algorithm goal is to minimizing household payment and the second algorithm goals are flexible implementiation and decreasing household payment. To decrease household payment, these... 

In this thesis, the effect of cognition in wireless networks is studied. In a wireless communica-tion network, cognition is the ability of a device to sense the transmissions of neighboring nodes and adapt its own transmission to the sensed environment. Cognitive radios are very attractive be-cause of the increasing need for more efficient use of frequency spectrum. The goal of this thesis is the analysis of cognitive radio networks from an information theoretic perspective and to this end statistical models of the wireless medium with a limited and tractable number of devices are uti-lized. We consider three different models in three parts of the thesis. First, we consider a new...