Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents an improved firefly algorithm (FA) for fast optimization of truss structures with discrete variables. The enhanced accelerated firefly algorithm (AFA) is a simple, but very effective modification of FA. In order to investigate the performance and robustness of the proposed algorithm, some benchmark (structural optimization) problems are solved and the results are compared with FA and other algorithms. The results show that in some test cases, AFA not only finds lighter structures compared to other algorithms, but also converges faster. In the rest test cases, the optimal solutions are found with very less computational effort. The study also shows that the proposed AFA... 

In this paper, the significance of soil–structure interaction (SSI) in optimal placement of viscous dampers in steel frames is studied. Optimal placement of dampers is determined with the purpose of achieving performance objectives at three hazard levels using genetic algorithm optimization. Endurance time method is used for seismic nonlinear response analysis of the fixed-base and SSI included frames. The soil beneath the structures is considered as a homogeneous elastic half-space, and the soil–structure systems are modeled by the substructure method. Results indicate that at low excitation intensities, consideration of SSI results in maximum drift ratio reduction at all stories of the... 

The value-based seismic design framework is a new design method that efficiently balances the construction resources and the seismic consequences, through reliable evaluation of the building performance at an affordable computational cost. This paper employs the value-based design approach to optimize the cross-section proportions of the steel wide-flange members. An optimization problem is proposed within the framework of value-based design. Construction cost and seismic consequences are selected as the value components. Moreover, the minimum code requirements are formulated as the design constraints. FEMA-P58 framework is exploited for the prediction of the seismic consequences including... 

This study investigates the various effects of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on the seismic behavior of steel frames with Steel Plate Shear Wall (SPSW) lateral resisting systems. Nine steel frames with various aspect ratios are studied under multiple seismic hazard levels. The SPSWs are modeled based on the strip model concept, and the Soil-Structure Systems are simulated using the substructure method. The soil beneath the structure is considered as a homogeneous elastic half-space. The Endurance Time method is exploited for nonlinear dynamic analysis of the fixed-base structures and soil-structure systems. Results indicate that use of fixed-base models leads to the significant... 

Past earthquakes revealed that while fulfilling the requirements of the conventional design codes guarantees the life safety of the occupants, considerable economic losses may still be incurred. This highlights the importance of considering life cycle losses in the design procedure of structures. In this research, the significance of the life cycle seismic risk costs in the optimal design of steel framed tube tall buildings is investigated. Typical 20- and 40-story buildings are optimally designed based on three approaches: the code-based, the cost-based, and the fixed weight approach. The first approach only minimizes the initial cost of the building while in the second and third approaches... 

The relatively large number of structural elements and the variety of design code requirements complicate the design process of tall buildings. This process is exacerbated when the target is to obtain the seismic code-compliant optimal design with minimum weight. The present paper aims at providing a practical methodology for the optimal design of steel tall building structures considering the constraints imposed by typical building codes. The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated through the determination of the optimal seismic design for 20-, 40-, and 60-story buildings with a framed tube as well as a tube-in-tube system. Such a design gives rise to a basis for the fair... 

Using multiple antennas at the transmit and receive sides of a passive radar brings both the benefits of MIMO radar and passive radar. However one of the obstacles arisen in such configuration is the receive antennas placement in proper positions so that the radar performance is improved. Here we just consider the case of positioning one receiver among multiple illuminators of opportunity. Indeed it is a start for the solution of optimizing the geometry of the multiple receivers in a passive radar  

SbCl3 supported on montmorillonite K-10 is an efficient catalyst for the ring opening of epoxides with aromatic amines under solvent-free conditions and microwave irradiation to give the corresponding b-amino alcohols in high yields with high regioselectivity  

In this paper, we consider an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system with wireless power transfer (WPT) where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based radar serves a group of energy-limited communication users in addition to its sensing functionality. In this architecture, the radar senses the environment in phase 1 (namely sensing phase) and mean-while, the communications users (nodes) harvest and store the energy from the radar transmit signal. The stored energy is then used for information transmission from the nodes to UAV in phase 2, i.e., uplink phase. Performance of the radar system depends on the transmit signal as well as the receive filter; the energy of the transmit... 

One of the important obstacles in MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) radars is the issue of designing proper transmit signals. Indeed, the capability of signal design is a significant advantage in MIMO radars, through which, the system can achieve much better performance. Many different aspects of this performance improvement have been considered yet, and the transmit signals have been designed to attain such goal, e.g., getting higher SNR or better detector's performance at the receiver. However, an important tool for evaluating the radar's performance is its ambiguity function. In this paper, we consider the problem of transmit signal design, in order to optimize the ambiguity function... 

Two gains play key roles in recently developed MIMO wireless communication systems: "spatial diversity" gain and "spatial multiplexing" gain. The diversity gain refers to the capability to decrease the error rate of the MIMO channel, while the multiplexing gain implicitly refers to the amount of increase in the capacity of the MIMO channel. It has been shown that there is a fundamental tradeoff between these two types of gains, meaning interplay between increasing reliability (via an increase in the diversity gain) and increasing data rate (via an increase in the multiplexing gain). On the other hand, recently, MIMO radars have attracted much attention for their superior ability to enhance... 

It is a well known fact that using multiple antennas at transmit and receive sides improves the detection performance. However, in such multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration, proper positioning of transmitters and receivers is a big challenge that can have significant influence on the performance of the overall system. In addition, determining the power of each transmitter under a total power constraint is a problem that should be solved in order to enhance the performance and coverage of such a system. In this paper, we design the Neyman-Pearson detector under the Rayleigh scatter model and use it to introduce a criterion for the antenna placement at both transmit and receive... 

There has been much interest, recently, towards exploiting the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technique in radar. It is shown that using multiple antennas at transmit and receive sides can improve the performance of the system. However, in order to analyze the system's performance, its ambiguity function, i.e. the ambiguity function of a MIMO radar, is needed to be defined. In this paper, beginning from the information theoretic definitions, we derive such function, specifically for a MIMO radar with widely separated antennas  

By combining the two ideas of MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) and PCL (Passive Coherent Location) in radar, one can achieve the advantages of both recently developed techniques simultaneously. While using multiple antennas at the receive side provides a spatial diversity of the object to be detected, using multiple illuminators of opportunity, most importantly, makes the radar covert to the interceptors. One obstacle in such MIMO configuration is choosing the positions of the receive antennas. In this paper, after analyzing the Neyman-Pearson detector for the DVB-T based PCL, we introduce the probability of missed detection as a criterion to place the receive antenna. Here, we only... 

One of the most important obstacles in passive radar applications is removing the direct signal from the target channel. Otherwise, week echoes from the targets in the target channel would be ignored due to the limited dynamic range of the system. One of the most effective techniques in this field is using adaptive filters. In this paper various adaptive filters are introduced and their performances are shown and compared  

It has been shown that using multiple antennas in a radar system improves the performance considerably, since multiple target echoes are received from different aspect angles of the target. In this way, the target detection is improved. However, when using multiple antennas, some problems, such as designing the transmit signals, synchronization, etc. emerge that should be solved. One of such problems is the receiver placement. Receiver placement deals with choosing a proper position for the receive antenna in order to optimize the whole system's performance. In this paper, a receiver placement procedure based on improving the radar ambiguity function is proposed for the case of a multisite... 

By employing the MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) technology in radar, some new problems emerged, that, in order to benefit the MIMO gains in radar, it was necessary to solve them suitably. One of such obstacles is determining the positions of receive antennas in a MIMO radar system with widely separated antennas (WS MIMO radar), since it is shown that the antennas' positions affect the whole system's performance considerably. In this study, a proper receivers' positioning procedure is proposed. To do this end, four criteria are developed based on the proposed MIMO detector and the MIMO ambiguity function. The simulations verify that the proposed positioning procedure improves the... 

Phenols and alcohols are silylated with hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) under microwave irradiation in solvent-free condition in good to excellent yields