Sharif Digital Repository

The performance of friction dampers to mitigate the wave-induced vibrations in jacket-type offshore platforms has been investigated in this study. Due to the random nature of ocean waves, a full stochastic analysis method has been used to evaluate the response of the structures equipped with these devices. A stochastic linearization technique has also been used to take the nonlinear behavior of these hysteretic dampers into account. At last, the developed mathematical formulation has been applied to evaluate the response of realistic models, and to find out the optimal values for the adjustable parameters of the friction dampers to dissipate the wave induced vibrations of the platforms. ©... 

Performances of tuned mass dampers and friction dampers to mitigate the wave induced vibrations in jacket type offshore platforms have been compared in this study. Due to the random nature of ocean waves, a full stochastic analysis method has been used to evaluate the response of the structures equipped with these devices. A stochastic linearization technique has been used to take the nonlinear behavior of friction dampers into account. The developed mathematical formulation has been applied to evaluate the response of realistic models, and to find out the optimal values for the adjustable parameters of friction dampers. The results have been verified in comparison with time domain nonlinear... 

In the restructured power markets, price of electricity has been the key of all activities in the power market. Accurately and efficiently forecasting electricity price becomes more and more important. Therefore in this paper, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model is designed for short term price forecasting of electricity in the environment of restructured power market. The proposed ANN model is a four-layered perceptron neural network, which consists of, input layer, two hidden layers and output layer. Instead of conventional back propagation (BP) method, Levenberg- Marquardt BP (LMBP) method has been used for the ANN training to increase the speed of convergence. Matlab is used for... 

Structural control using energy dissipater devices is emerging as a heavily researched strategy in earthquake engineering. Among several control systems, semiactive control is usually possible and efficient. In this research, a semiactive energy dissipating bracing system based on a viscous damper is proposed. In the conventional bracing systems, it is assumed that the braces can buckle under compression. Therefore, a semiactive on-off brace strategy is implemented to improve the conventional brace performance. Further, an energy absorbing mechanism is implemented. In the proposed system, the buckling of the member is prevented by implementing a one-way valve device. The permanent story... 

By using the normalised least mean squared (NLMS) algorithm, a semi-active multi-variable adaptive controller is designed for a seismically excited structure. There is no need for a large power supply. A number of valves and battery size low-power supplies will suffice. The valves control the amount of flow of a fluid through bypass on-off orifice channels in installed energy dissipating mechanisms. Each mechanism is composed of a piston attached to a A-shaped chevron wind-bracing on each floor and to a cylinder attached to the upper floor. Adaptive controller parameters are estimated by the LMS optimiser, in order to search for optimal non-classical damping coefficients of the dissipating... 

Grain geometry is an important factor affecting the stability envelop of solid rocket motors. This paper presents a series of subscale tactical motor firings, clearly showing the effect of combustion chamber internal geometry on stability. Three types of grain cartridges were used in these motors: a circular perforation (CP) and two variations of a seven-pointed star. Combination of these three basic grains produced motors that have completely different internal geometries. A polyurethane-based 81% solids composite propellant was used in all tests. This marginally stable propellant has a nominal burning rate of 7.1 mm/s for the metalized formulation that contains 7% aluminum powder and 5.7... 

In this paper, a semi-active multivariable adaptive controller is designed for a framed structure under a seismic disturbance using a filtered-x NLMS optimizer. Actuator and large power supply are not required, since just some valves and a battery-size power supply are sufficient for controlling the amount of hydraulic fluid flow through the by-pass on off-orifice channel in an energy dissipating system, which consists of a piston attached to Λ-shaped wind bracing of the building and a cylinder attached to the upper floor. It is assumed that only a rough finite element model of the structure is available. In addition, in order to search for optimal non-classical viscous damper coefficients,... 

With increasing the presence of co-and tri-generating units, energy hub operators are encouraged to optimally schedule the available energy resources in an economic way. This scheduling needs to be run in an online manner due to the uncertainties in energy prices and demands. In this paper, the real-time scheduling problem of energy hubs is formulated in a dynamic pricing market. The energy hubs interaction is modeled as an exact potential game to optimize each energy hub’s payments to the electricity and gas utilities, as well as the customers’ satisfaction from energy consumption. The potential game approach enables us to study the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium (NE) and... 

A large number of offshore platforms of various types have been installed in deep or shallow waters throughout the world. These structures are mainly made of tubular members which are interconnected by using tubular joints. In tubular frames, joints may exhibit considerable flexibility in both elastic and plastic range of response. The resulting flexibility may have marked effects on the overall behavior of offshore platforms.This paper investigates the effects of joint flexibility on local and global behavior of tubular framed structures in linear range of response. A new joint flexibility element is developed on the basis of flexibility matrix and implemented in a finite-element program to... 

The development of damage detection techniques for offshore jacket structures is vital for preventing catastrophic events. This paper applies a frequency response based method for the purpose of structural health monitoring. In this approach, the concept of a minimum rank perturbation theory is used. The feasibility of using a finite number of sensors and its effect on damage detection capabilities is investigated. In addition, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated in the case of multiple damages. The aforementioned points are illustrated using the numerical study of a two dimensional jacket platform