Sharif Digital Repository

The lateral movement of a liquefiable soil layer on gentle slopes is the most visible and devastating type of liquefaction-induced ground failure. Recent earthquakes have shown that this phenomenon causes severe damages to coastal structures, pier of the bridges and life-lines by exerting large lateral forces on the structures. In this paper coupled dynamic field equations of extended Biot's theory with u-p formulation are used for simulating the phenomenon and the soil behavior is modeled by a critical state two-surface plasticity model for sands. Furthermore, in this study variation of permeability coefficient during liquefaction is taken into account. The permeability coefficient is... 

A fully coupled numerical analysis using Biot's theory with u-p formulation considering variable permeability during liquefaction is used in this study to simulate liquefaction induced lateral spreading phenomenon. A centrifuge test performed on liquefiable soil at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is simulated using the developed model. The numerical results are in good agreement with experimental observations. A number of numerical simulations under different geometric, site-specific, and ground acceleration parameters have been carried out in the course of this study. Based on the statistical analysis conducted on the results of 31 different models, a new relation is proposed for... 

Generally, in most areas, groundwater level is deep and heat sources (e.g., energy piles)are embedded in unsaturated soil media. Therefore, in order to accurately analyze the soil response close to heat sources, both heat and moisture transport in unsaturated soil domain should be considered. Thermal loading changes the moisture content in the porous media. In this study, the energy conservation and mass fluid continuity equations derived from hydrothermal analysis of a partially saturated soil medium are considered in cylindrical coordinate system. To make the analytical solution possible, partial differential equations (PDEs)are turned into ordinary differential equations (ODEs), through... 

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) have been installed all around the world to harvest shallow geothermal energy for heating and cooling building envelopes. However, the high initial cost of these systems (e.g., drilling and installation costs) limits the popularity and total usage of GSHPs around the world. To reduce the initial cost of these systems, geothermal heat exchangers are combined with structural components of the building, such as deep foundations, or energy walls. Energy piles or thermo-active foundations that serve dual purposes have been widely utilized in the last two decades in many developed countries. However, in most of the developing countries like Iran, there are several... 

Thermal loadings in saturated (two-phase) clays induce excess pore water pressure due to the difference in the thermal expansion coefficient of the pore volume and the pore water. The gradual dissipation of the excess pore water pressure causes thermal volume reduction which is known as thermal consolidation. However, thermal consolidation in a three-phase soil system such as unsaturated soil is more sophisticated. In this paper, an analytical model for thermal consolidation around a heat source embedded in unsaturated clay or in calyey soils containing two immiscible fluids is developed based on the effective stress concept. Governing equations, including energy, mass, and momentum balance... 

The soil permeability coefficient plays a key role in the process of numerical simulation of the liquefaction phenomenon. Liquefaction causes a considerable increase in soil permeability, due to the creation of easier paths for water flow. The work presented in this paper tries to investigate the effects of permeability coefficient on the results of numerical modeling of the liquefaction phenomenon. To do this, a fully coupled (u-P) formulation is employed to analyze soil displacements and pore water pressures. Two different versions of a well-calibrated critical state bounding surface plasticity model, which possesses the capability to utilize a single set of material parameters for a wide... 

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) was used to improve the hydrogen sensing properties of Pd and Pt-decorated TiO2 nanoparticles by facile production routes. The TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by sol–gel method and coupled on GO sheets via a photoreduction process. The Pd or Pt nanoparticles were decorated on the TiO2/RGO hybrid structures by chemical reduction. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated that GO reduction is done by the TiO2 nanoparticles and Ti–C bonds are formed between the TiO2 and the RGO sheets as well. Gas sensing was studied with different concentrations of hydrogen ranging from 100 to 10,000 ppm at various temperatures. High sensitivity (92%) and fast response time... 

Energy piles have been used around the world to harvest geothermal energy to heat and cool residential and commercial buildings. In order to design energy geo-structures, thermo-mechanical response of the geothermal pile must be carefully understood. In this paper, a small scale physical model is designed and a series of heating thermal cycles with various vertical mechanical loads are performed. The instrumented pile is installed inside a dry sand bed. Changes in pile head displacement, shaft strains and pile and sand temperatures are monitored using an LVDT, strain gauges and thermocouples, respectively. Prolonged heating cycles, which would continue until boundary temperature changes,... 

Purpose - A numerical method is developed to capture the interaction of solid object with two-phase flow with high density ratios. The current computational tool would be the first step of accurate modeling of wave energy converters in which the immense energy of the ocean can be extracted at low cost. Design/methodology/approach - The full two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are discretized on a regular structured grid, and the two-step projection method along with multi-processing (OpenMP) is used to efficiently solve the flow equations. The level set and the immersed boundary methods are used to capture the free surface of a fluid and a solid object, respectively. The full...