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... 

Accurate and realistic forecasts of traffic pattern in the networks can affect many decisions of urban transportation planning. In recent years, traffic assignment (TA) using stochastic models have received more attention by researchers of this field. Stochastic approach of route choice modeling using random utility theory has specifically developed to relax restrictive assumptions of traditional deterministic model and to address randomness nature of travelerʼs behavior. Together with development of discrete choice theory, more advanced models have been utilized to better represent route choice behavior. Although there have been considerable researches in the context of stochastic traffic... 

Combined cycle power plants consist of three main sections, namely gas turbine, Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) and steam turbine. Occurring failure in HRSG causes the steam turbine trip, so the reliability assessment of HRSG has a great importance for forecasting the probability of occurring failure and also reducing failure causes. In this project, the reliability of HRSG considering effects of aging phenomenon, maintenance and, environmental and operational conditions on reliability is modeled. Afterward a method to estimate the model parameters is introduced. Using present method, failure data of six HRSGs of a plant each with a capacity of 50 MW is analyzed and the model parameters... 

The main goal of this thesis is the design and development of a rehabilitation device for helping patients “to improve blood circulation” & retain and recover their abilities if possible that were lost during the stroke or a accident like that (my research in karaj/iran shows that it is possible by just movement of the specific body part). The focus is on hand in this thesis because Injuries to the hand are common and can be very debilitating since our hands are our primary means for interacting with our world. For rehabilitation in case of human hand there are several practices that should be done for patients either in home or in a rehabilitation center, time and money that is supposed to... 

In the past few decades, shaking tables are widely used to evaluate system response of structures under seismic excitations. These devices are used without any fundamental research performed on a shaking table system as an entity model. In most of these studies for simplicity, it is assumed that there exist no considerable vibration and displacement around the shaking tables, and no attention is paid to the peripheral substances such as soil settled under the foundation.
In this thesis, result of ambient vibration test on shaking table system (solid deck, concrete foundation and soil layer) has been presented. Precise sensors known as low frequency and high accuracy accelerometers have... 

Out of several ground improvement techniques available, stone columns have been widely used. This technique has been successfully applied to increase the bearing capacity and to reduce the settlement for foundation of structures like liquid storage tanks, earthen embankments, raft foundations, etc., where a relatively large settlement is permissible. This technique has, generally, been proven successful in increasing the stiffness of weak soils, upgrading their safe bearing capacity, and reducing their total and differential settlements, as well as speeding up their consolidation process. The beneficial effects of stone column installation in weak deposits is manifested in the form of... 

Laminar forced convection flow through a channel partially filled with a porous material was numerically studied in this thesis. The Navier-Stokes and Brinkman-Forchheimer equations were used to model the fluid flow in the free and porous regions, respectively. Coupling of the pressure and velocity fields was resolved using the SIMPLEC algorithm. The local thermal equilibrium was adopted in the energy equation. The effects of the thermal conductivity ratio, Darcy number, porosity, Reynolds number and height of the porous insert on velocity and temperature field were investigated. The results show that the flow behavior and its associated heat transfer are susceptible to the variation of the... 

In the present study, a new version of haptic devices is presented in which user’s hand is in contact with the device just while collision with virtual surface. In this system, the position of user’s finger can be traced by using a camera and the haptic device follows user’s finger at the distance of about two centimeters. While the haptic device approaches to the virtual surface, gradually reduces its speed and stops about two centimeters distant of virtual plane. Then user’s hand collides with the haptic device which is static. Greater fidelity, transparency, more stability and also no need to large actuators are of the advantages of this system. In this project, first we present a new...