A parametric study on the axial behaviour of elastomeric isolators in multi-span bridges subjected to horizontal seismic excitations     

E. Tubaldi  S. A. Mitoulis  H. Ahmadi  A. Muhr 《Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering》2016,14(4):1285-1310

This paper investigates the potential tensile loads and buckling effects on rubber-steel laminated bearings on bridges. These isolation bearings are typically used to support the deck on the piers and the abutments and reduce the effects of seismic loads and thermal effects on bridges. When positive means of fixing of the bearings to the deck and substructures are provided using bolts, the isolators are exposed to the possibility of tensile loads that may not meet the code limits. The uplift potential is increased when the bearings are placed eccentrically with respect to the pier axis such as in multi-span simply supported bridge decks. This particular isolator configuration may also result in excessive compressive loads, leading to bearing buckling or in the attainment of other unfavourable limit states for the bearings. In this paper, an extended computer-aided study is conducted on typical isolated bridge systems with multi-span simply-supported deck spans, showing that elastomeric bearings might undergo tensile stresses or exhibit buckling effects under certain design situations. It is shown that these unfavourable conditions can be avoided with the rational design of the bearing properties and in particular of the shape factor, which is the geometrical parameter controlling the axial bearing stiffness and capacity for a given shear stiffness. Alternatively, the unfavourable conditions could be reduced by reducing the flexural stiffness of the continuity slab.  相似文献   

Comparison of the performance of power law and probability distributions in the frequency analysis of flood in Dez Basin,Iran     

Farshad Ahmadi  Feridon Radmaneh  Gholam Ali Parham  Rasoul Mirabbasi 《Natural Hazards》2017,87(3):1313-1331

Determination of the return period of design flood depends on the nature of the project and the consequences of the flood and is based on economic criteria, human casualties, and hydrological factors. Underestimation of flood might result in casualties and economic damages, while the overestimation leads to capital waste. Therefore, in this research, the flood frequency analysis of Dez Basin, Iran was conducted within the period of 1956–2012 using power law approach together with ordinary distributions, including normal, log normal, Pearson type III, exponential, gamma, generalized extreme value, Nakagami, Rayleigh, logistic, generalized logistic, generalized Pareto, and Weibull distributions. The power law comes from the fractal nature of earth science phenomena such as precipitation and runoff. Accordingly, in this research the partial duration flood series of five hydrometric stations in Dez Basin were extracted using power law with the intervals of 7, 14, 30, and 60 days and then compared with the annual maxima. The results indicated that the annual maxima were not suitable for frequency analysis of the flood in Dez Basin, and the 30-day partial duration series obtained from the power law has a better correspondence with the flow and properties of the Dez Basin. The independence and stationarity of the 30-day partial duration series were examined by Wald–Wolfowitz test, confirming the independence of the considered series. Next, the power distribution and the typical statistical distributions were fitted onto the data of the flood in Dez Basin, with the performance of each distribution being investigated using normalized root-mean-square error and Nash–Sutcliffe criteria. The results revealed that in the SDZ and TPB stations, power distribution had a better performance than other considered distributions. Moreover, in the SDS, TPS, and TZ stations the power distribution stood in the second rank in terms of the best distribution. As the performance of power distribution in the estimation of the flood in Dez Basin has been very satisfactory and calculation of its parameters and its application is easier than ordinary probability distributions, thus it can be suggested as the superior distribution for flood frequency analysis in Dez Basin.  相似文献   

On the seismic behavior of cylindrical base-isolated liquid storage tanks excited by long-period ground motions     

M.R. Shekari  N. KhajiM.T. Ahmadi 《Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering》2010

A common effective method to reduce the seismic response of liquid storage tanks is to isolate them at base using base-isolation systems. It has been observed that in many earthquakes, the foregoing systems significantly affect on the whole system response reduction. However, in exceptional cases of excitation by long-period shaking, the base-isolation systems could have adverse effects. Such earthquakes could cause tank damage due to excessive liquid sloshing. Therefore, the numerical seismic response of liquid storage tanks isolated by bilinear hysteretic bearing elements is investigated under long-period ground motions in this research. For this purpose, finite shell elements for the tank structure and boundary elements for the liquid region are employed. Subsequently, fluid–structure equations of motion are coupled with governing equation of base-isolation system, to represent the whole system behavior. The governing equations of motion of the whole system are solved by an iterative and step-by-step algorithm to evaluate the response of the whole system to the horizontal component of three ground motions. The variations of seismic shear forces, liquid sloshing heights, and tank wall radial displacements are plotted under various system parameters such as the tank geometry aspect ratio (height to radius), and the flexibility of the isolation system, to critically examine the effects of various system parameters on the effectiveness of the base-isolation systems against long-period ground motions. From these analyses, it may be concluded that with the installation of this type of base-isolation system in liquid tanks, the dynamic response of tanks during seismic ground motions can be considerably reduced. Moreover, in the special case of long-period ground motions, the seismic response of base-isolated tanks may be controlled by the isolation system only at particular conditions of slender and broad tanks. For the case of medium tanks, remarkable attentions would be required to be devoted to the design of base-isolation systems expected to experience long-period ground motions.  相似文献   

Ductile steel plate external end diaphragms for steel tub girder straight highway bridges     

Maleki  Shervin  Dolati  Abouzar 《地震工程与工程振动(英文版)》2020,19(3):759-777

The end diaphragm of bridges are normally designed to resist lateral seismic forces imposed on the superstructure in earthquake prone regions. Using ductile diaphragms with high deformation capacity could reduce the seismic demands on the substructure and prevent costly damage under strong ground motions. The end diaphragms of steel tub girder bridges with high lateral stiffness and dominant shear behavior have a potential to be used as ductile fuse elements. In this study, a steel plate shear diaphragm(SPSD) is introduced as an external end diaphragm of tub girder steel bridges to reduce the seismic demands imposed on the substructure. Quasi static nonlinear analyses were conducted to evaluate responses of sixteen SPSDs with different boundary conditions, aspect ratios and diaphragm plate thicknesses. Moreover, nonlinear time history analyses were performed using three different ground motions corresponding to DBE and MCE level spectrums. Cyclic and time history analyses proved the proper behavior of SPSD and its efficiency to reduce seismic demands by more than 25%.  相似文献   

ANN-Based Prediction of Laboratory-Scale Performance of CO2-Foam Flooding for Improving Oil Recovery     

Moosavi  Seyedeh Raha  Wood  David A.  Ahmadi  Mohammad Ali  Choubineh  Abouzar 《Natural Resources Research》2019,28(4):1619-1637

Natural Resources Research - Improving oil recovery by CO2 injection continues to gain momentum in mature oil fields due to its favorable industrial and environmental benefits. One remediation for...  相似文献   

Particle creation in the framework of $$ gravity     

R. Rashidi  F. Ahmadi  M. R. Setare 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2018,363(9):196

In this paper, we study the problem of massless particle creation in a flat, homogeneous and isotropic universe in the framework of \(f(G)\) gravity. The Bogolyubov coefficients are calculated for the accelerating power-law solutions of the model in a matter dominated universe, from which the total number of created particle per unit volume of space can be obtained. It is proved that the total particle density always has a finite value. Therefore, the Bogolyubov transformations are well-defined and the Hilbert spaces spanned by the vacuum states at different times are unitarily equivalent. We find that the particles with small values of the mode \(k\) are produced in the past and particles with large values of \(k\) are produced only in the future. The negative pressure resulting from the gravitational particle creation is also determined. It is then argued that this pressure even in the presence of energy density and thermal pressure may affect significantly the cosmic expansion.  相似文献   

A new approach to plane failure of rock slope stability based on water flow velocity in discontinuities for the Latian dam reservoir landslide   总被引：2，自引：2，他引：0  

Morteza AHMADI  Majid ESLAMI 《山地科学学报》2011,8(2):124-130

The stability of slopes is always of great concern in the field of rock engineering. The geometry and orientation of pre-existing discontinuities show a larger impact on the behavior of slopes that is often used to describe the measurement of the steepness, incline, gradient, or grade of a straight line. One of the structurally controlled modes of failure in jointed rock slopes is plane failure. There are numerous analytical methods for the rock slope stability including limit equilibrium, stress analysis and stereographic methods. The limiting equilibrium methods for slopes under various conditions against plane failure have been previously proposed by several investigators. However, these methods do not involve water pressure on sliding surfaces assessments due to water velocity and have not yet been validated by case study results. This paper has tried to explore the effects of forces due to water pressure on discontinuity surfaces in plane failure through applying the improved equations. It has studied the effect of water flow velocity on sliding surfaces in safety factor, as well. New equations for considering water velocity (fluid dynamics) are presented. To check the validity of the suggested equations, safety factor for a case study has been determined. Results show that velocity of water flow had significant effect on the amount of safety factor. Also, the suggested equations have higher validity rate compared to the current equations.  相似文献   

Investigation on the Characteristics of Pore Water Flow During CRS Consolidation Test     

H. Ahmadi  H. Rahimi  A. Soroush 《Geotechnical and Geological Engineering》2011,29(6):989-997

Several experimental methods have been proposed for consolidation test such as: constant loading rate, constant gradient and constant rate of strain (CRS). Unfortunately, there are no unique criteria for performing the CRS consolidation test. Also, there are considerable differences among the standards proposed for the test. In the present paper, authors have tried to find the reasons for differences among standards, by studying the basic assumptions made on the characteristics of the pore water flow during consolidation process. In the course of study, CRS consolidation tests were carried out under different strain rates on remolded samples. The results of the tests have indicated that the Darcy’s law is not valid throughout the CRS test and therefore, any consolidation equation based on Darcy’s law would not provide accurate results. The results of the current experiments also showed that with regard to the applied strain rates, there are three different flow regimes governing the process named as: pre-linear (non-Darcy flow), linear (Darcy flow) and post-linear (non-Darcy flow). Experimental results also showed that distinction between boundaries of linear and nonlinear flow is possible from the excess pore pressure developed during the tests.  相似文献   

Response of structures subjected to horizontal-vertical random earthquake excitations     

Ismail I. Orabi  Goodarz Ahmadi 《Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering》1988,7(1)

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Assessment of Alaska’s North Slope Oil Field Capacity to Sequester CO2     

Pascal Umekwe  Joanna Mongrain  Mohabbat Ahmadi  Catherine Hanks 《Natural Resources Research》2013,22(1):45-58

The capacity of 21 major fields containing more than 95% of the North Slope of Alaska’s oil were investigated for CO₂ storage by injecting CO₂ as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) agent. These fields meet the criteria for the application of miscible and immiscible CO₂-EOR methods and contain about 40 billion barrels of oil after primary and secondary recovery. Volumetric calculations from this study indicate that these fields have a static storage capacity of 3 billion metric tons of CO₂, assuming 100% oil recovery, re-pressurizing the fields to pre-fracturing pressure and applying a 50% capacity reduction to compensate for heterogeneity and for water invasion from the underlying aquifer. A ranking produced from this study, mainly controlled by field size and fracture gradient, identifies Prudhoe, Kuparuk, and West Sak as possessing the largest storage capacities under a 20% safety factor on pressures applied during storage to avoid over-pressurization, fracturing, and gas leakage. Simulation studies were conducted using CO₂ Prophet to determine the amount of oil technically recoverable and CO₂ gas storage possible during this process. Fields were categorized as miscible, partially miscible, and immiscible based on the miscibility of CO₂ with their oil. Seven sample fields were selected across these categories for simulation studies comparing pure CO₂ and water-alternating-gas injection. Results showed that the top two fields in each category for recovery and CO₂ storage were Alpine and Point McIntyre (miscible), Prudhoe and Kuparuk (partially miscible), and West Sak and Lisburne (immiscible). The study concludes that 5 billion metric tons of CO₂ can be stored while recovering 14.2 billion barrels of the remaining oil.  相似文献