Sharif Digital Repository

Since the term was coined in the Brundtland report in 1987, the issue of sustainable development has been challenged in terms of quantification. Different policy options may lend themselves more or less to the underlying principles of sustainability, but no analytical tools are available for a more in-depth assessment of the degree of sustainability. Overall, there are two major schools of thought employing the sustainability concept in managerial decisions: those of measuring and those of monitoring. Measurement of relative sustainability is the key issue in bridging the gap between theory and practice of sustainability of water resources systems. The objective of this study is to develop a... 

Meanwhile with increasing demand for energy sources in the world, hydropower plants can be considered as clean energy sources for sustainable development. Hydropower plant environmental impact is almost none. They are easy to construct and operate with much lower cost in comparison with other types of power plants. Currently in Iran, Conventional methods for determining hydropower plant potent location are very complicated and do not always eventuated to the best result. This study focuses on run of river projects and proposes a new methodology to spot hydropower plan best location according to specific engineering criteria, using ArcGIS and an algorithm developed in MATLAB. An economic... 

Understanding the behavior and estimating the magnitude of floods with specific recurrence intervals are important tasks for various applications such as flood protection strategies. Fractal analysis has proven useful in characterization of flood frequency behavior. We employ a systematic fractal approach which enables dividing streamflow data into different behavior regimes and, in particular, identifying flood regimes. Since seasonality is a key factor in flood-formation scenarios, we incorporate this concept in our analysis through generating two separate streamflow data sets for summer and winter, and next performing associated fractal analysis on each. To illustrate our approach and see... 

The travel time of subsurface flow in complex hillslopes (hillslopes with different plan shape and profile curvature) is an important parameter in predicting the subsurface flow in catchments. This time depends on the hillslopes geometry (plan shape and profile curvature), soil properties and climate conditions. The saturation capacity of hillslopes affect the travel time of subsurface flow. The saturation capacity, and subsurface travel time of compound hillslopes depend on parameters such as soil depth, porosity, soil hydraulic conductivity, plan shape (convergent, parallel or divergent), hillslope length, profile curvature (concave, straight or convex) and recharge rate to the groundwater... 

Influence of joints behavior on arch dams operation during the earthquakes is investigated. The case study is the Karun-1 double curvature arch dam with the height of 200 meters. The arch dam-foundation-reservoir systems are modeled with and without joints and estimate the effects of contraction and lift joints on stresses and displacements response histories for assessing the earthquake performance. According to nolinear dynamical analysis results, inclusion of the contraction and lift joints considerably influenced the dam response  

In most of countries, underground waters are the most important sources to provide drinking water. So it is necessary to make scheme and to do high protection of to achieve maximum beneficiary. Necessity of this management is going to be felt by developing these sources and human's interference. However, in the past overtopping phenomenon was the first reason of dam's destruction, but nowadays by increasing of spate design's period, the significant problem that researchers are interfere with, is seepage problem. The purpose of solving the underground problems is to procure height of water as a function of coordinate and time. In observation of practical industries, we can use the... 

A new shear strengthening method involving post-tensioning of the critical shear region of reinforced concrete beams is investigated. Thirty-one experiments were carried out using 24 specimens. Theoretical load-deflection relations are obtained from moment-curvature analysis using fiber cross sections and taking into consideration the effects of different concrete confinements along the beam length. A theoretical shear strength model that includes three shear resisting components in the critical shear region of the strengthened beams is provided. Experimental results from beams with and without shear strengthening are compared with calculated load-deflection relations and predicted shear... 

Efficient environmental management calls for the consideration of multiple pollutants, for which two main types of transferable discharge permit (TDP) program have been described: separate permits that manage each pollutant individually in separate markets, with each permit based on the quantity of the pollutant or its environmental effects, and weighted-sum permits that aggregate several pollutants as a single commodity to be traded in a single market. In this paper, we perform a mathematical analysis of TDP programs for multiple pollutants that jointly affect the environment (i.e., interactive pollutants) and demonstrate the practicality of this approach for cost-efficient maintenance of... 

Originally, the application of nano zero valent iron/nickel (nZVI/Ni) particles for nitrate removal in porous media was studied. nZVI/Ni was prepared and employed in batch and continuous modes. Based on batch experiments, the reaction kinetics was consistent with the adsorption model by the order of 1-1.5. The variation of the kinetics order depends on pH and nickel content. So that highest reactivity was observed for nZVI with 10% of Ni at pH ≤ 3. Nitrate remediation in a continuous system was mostly influenced by seepage velocity, quantity and freshness of nZVI/Ni and particle size of porous media. In a batch mode, the maximum nitrate removal was 99% while in a continuous mode it did not... 

Groundwater withdrawal is one of the most important causes of land subsidence all over the world that has caused extremely expensive damages to buildings, walls, roads, railroads, pipelines and casings of the water wells. Rafsanjan Plain has had the most subsidence in Iran. One of the necessary steps to perform a proper analysis for land subsidence is to obtain accurate measurements of actual land subsidence at certain intervals. In this paper, first the latest situation of land subsidence in Rafsanjan plain is described. Secondly the geological, hydrogeological conditions as well as groundwater utilization are explained. Finally the results of two successive measurements carried out... 

Waste management issue in mining industry has become increasingly important. In this regard, construction of tailings dams plays a major role. Most of the tailings dams require some kinds of remedial actions during their operational lifetime, among which heightening is the most common. In the first stage of the remedial provisions for Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex tailings dam in Iran, it has been decided to use hydrocyclone method to provide suitable construction material due to the high cost associated with using borrow materials for heightening of the dam. To undertake this project a series of laboratory experiments was performed to determine the copper 'original tailings' and 'cycloned... 

In this paper, a finite volume scheme is used to discretize flow in porous media. A numerical method for treating advection-dominated contaminant transport for flow of groundwater is described. This system combines the advantages of numerical discretization and the finite volume method (like local mass conservation). The equations are dicretized using a finite volume approach. The resulting nonlinear differential system is integrated in time using a solver. The conservation of energy (convection-diffusion) equation is solved using a special method for reducing the oscillation induced by the standard finite volume method. Consequently, a mathematical model for multi-component flow transport...