Sharif Digital Repository

Construction industry is one of the most important fractions of economy in developing countries. This industry consumes enormous amounts of raw materials and produces considerable waste. The optimization of construction material usage not only saves costs but also can significantly contribute towards Sustainable Development. This article addresses Construction Waste Management as an approach to improve construction productivity, with a focus on its application in developing countries. The status of construction waste production and management in Tehran metropolitan, Iran-as a developing country-is investigated and compared with the status of developed countries. Subsequently, barriers to... 

Domed roofs have been used in Iran and many other countries to cover large buildings such as mosques, shrines, churches, schools. They have been also employed in other buildings like bazaars or market places in Iran due to their favorable thermal performance. The aim of this research is to study about domed roofs thermal performance in order to determine how they can be helpful in reducing the maximum air temperature of inside buildings during the warm seasons considering all parameters like air flow around them, solar radiation, radiation heat transfer with the sky and the ground as well as some openings on the building. The results of the study show that the thermal performance of the... 

Solar radiation received and absorbed by four domed roofs was estimated and compared with that of a flat roof. The domed roofs all had the same base areas, and equal to that of the flat roof. One of the roofs considered was the dome of the St. Peter's Church in Rome. Compared with the other roofs considered, this dome had a higher aspect ratio. It was found that all domed roofs received more solar radiation than the flat roof. Considering glazed tiles to cover a selected dome in Iran and the dome of the St. Peter's Church, it was found that the solar radiation absorbed by these roofs is reduced appreciably. In the case of the dome of St. Peter's Church, the amount of radiation absorbed was... 

In the present study, in the first part for a spherical vessel with known dimensions and working pressure, two methods of hoop and equivalent stress optimization across the wall thickness are employed to determine the best autofrettage pressure. In the next part for a predefined working pressure the minimum wall thickness of the vessel is calculated using two other design criteria i.e. (A) optimizing the hoop stress, and (B) assuming a suitable percent for the penetration of yielding within the wall thickness. Finally, the optimum thickness and the necessary strengthening pressure are extracted and different plots are introduced for different types of structural materials under different... 

Nowadays, the construction industry has turned to the consumption of large amounts of natural resources in line with global population growth, which has led to the shortage of resources, and consequently increases in the construction debris; therefore, the present article has studied the positive and negative points of the architectural development process. The results have indicated that being compared to the former architecture; the development of architecture has reduced energy consumption by 78%. Hence, the scarcity of virgin resources and consequently the increase of environmental effects such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) have been measured based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).... 

The complex dielectric constants of building materials are present in the reflection, transmission and diffraction coefficients of the ray tracing formulation. Any deviation of the dielectric constants included in ray tracing simulation from the actual material properties may be a source of inaccuracy of the simulation results. This paper explores the sensitivity of ray tracing results to the inaccuracy of the dielectric constants of building materials. To do this, the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constants are considered as random variables to account for the present uncertainty. The propagation of uncertainty in the ray tracing simulation is then obtained by means of the... 

Steel shear panels in combination with bracing are a novel form of steel shear walls that eliminate large distributed loads to impose on primary beams along with columns. This paper presents the results of a comparative experimental program on two types of steel shear panels with and without stiffeners. For this purpose, the proposed quasi-static cyclic loading history of Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) 461 was applied on two full-scale specimens. Structural steel was selected as the material of the panels, which were welded to the surrounding boundary elements. In addition, using finite element models, performed tests were simulated and scaling effects were investigated. This... 

A novel SPD process for manufacturing of high strength tubes and cylinders by accumulative spin-bonding (ASB) is proposed. It is demonstrated that due to incremental deformation in this process, high strain rate without considerable temperature rise is achieved. This is accompanied with a high value of Zener-Hollomon parameter as a characteristic of this SPD process. ASB was applied to a commercially pure aluminum up to four cycles and its effects on the microstructure and mechanical properties were examined by optical microscopy, TEM, EBSD, microhardness and tension tests. The results show that ultra-fine grains are developed during the process by formation of subgrains at early stages... 

This paper presents the results of a vulnerability assessment of the damaged Al-Askari shrine located in Samarra, Iraq by finite element analysis. Reliable material characteristics are derived using limited experimental data on this historical building in order to be utilized in the numerical models. It is concluded that the cracked piers are not vulnerable under the weight of the newly added dome. However, the cracks in the piers widen under design seismic loads, which results in unbalanced settlements in the piers and torsional cracks in the dome. The vulnerability of the minarets is more severe, necessitating heavy reinforcement at their bases and adequate anchorage to the masonry... 

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the application of pre-stressed high strength metal strips in retrofit of RC columns. Six 2/3 scale were deliberately designated with insufficient transverse reinforcement details and tested under constant axial and cyclic lateral load reversals. The level of axial load and the pattern of strengthening were parameters of this study. It was observed that the technique has been capable to enhance the lateral behavior of columns significantly, in terms of ductility. Very ductile behavior was obtained. The height-wise variations of lateral strain on confining strips are studied. The analysis of the fiber-based model of tested columns... 

Epoxy resins have been used as structural materials since the late 1940s. Despite their desirable properties such as high strength, excellent creep resistance, and good adhesion, they suffer from low fracture energy. Rubber modification as a major toughening approach to overcome the inherent brittleness of epoxy polymers was introduced during the early 1970s. Since then, a large number of investigations have been conducted to elucidate different aspects of rubber-toughened epoxies. The present work is a critical review of the field focusing on the important parameters affecting rubber-toughening. The studies reviewed are classified in five categories including roles of matrix ductility,... 

The effects of the most important parameters of hot pressing, including temperature, time and pressure on densification, microstructure and infrared transparency of MgF2 ceramics are discussed. The results show that the absorption or scattering of incident radiation is strongly dependent on the amount of porosity. By increasing the temperature or the pressure, transparency at infrared wavelengths has been increased due to the rise in density. For the longer hot pressing times, a continuous increase in density and infrared transparency has been seen as well. Cold pressing before hot press has minor effects on the density and infrared transparency of MgF2. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights... 

A titanium dioxide nanotube (TNT) and CuO-doped TNT (TNT-CuO) were synthesized using a hydrothermal method and incorporated into carrageenan-based films. The SEM results confirmed the formation of uniform nanocomposite films. The addition of nanoparticles imparted UV-blocking properties to the carrageenan film and increased the mechanical strength, surface hydrophobicity, and water vapor barrier properties. The modified TiO2 (TNT and TNT-CuO)-incorporated carrageenan films showed significantly higher antibacterial activity than the TiO2-added film under visible light. Bananas packaged with the neat carrageenan and TiO2-added films were degraded considerably after 12 days of storage at 20 °C.... 

Aged asphalt binder in reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) or recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) blends only partially with the virgin binder. To better understand this state of blending, the asphalt mixtures in this study were designed, mixed, and compacted using different RAP and RAS contents. The asphalt binders were extracted and recovered from RAP and RAS and then blended with different proportions of a virgin binder. The master curves for the asphalt mixtures and asphalt binder blends were then constructed from the measured data. A locally calibrated Hirsch model was developed to estimate master curves for the asphalt mixtures from the corresponding binder-blend data. Pairwise comparison of... 

Purpose – This paper aims to clarify the corrosion behavior of two famous structural steels in sour environment. These steels have a vast application in oil and gas industries. The study aims to find the effect of different concentrations of sour solution on the origin of crack in these steels. Design/methodology/approach – After preparation of specimens, different sour solutions were made using the synthetic brine (according to National Association of Corrosion Engineers [NACE], Technical Committee Report 1D182) and various amounts of Na2S.9H2O and CH3COOH. The polarization test was done by Potansiostat apparatus model Zahner-IM6 at two temperatures, 25°C... 

The proliferation of communication system used in and around man-made structures has resulted in growing need to determine the scattering properties of various commonly used building materials at radio frequencies typically used in business and residential environments. This paper describes the calculation of scattered wave by reinforced concrete walls. For these walls is modeled with a grid of straight wire. We used the Method of Moments (MOM) to find the wire currents. The complex images (CI) method is also used to rapidly evaluate spatial-domain Green's functions for the wall. The angular dependence of scattered fields is shown  

By considering the Bauschinger effect and the yield criterion of Tresca, an exact elasto-plastic analytical solution for a thick-walled cylindrical vessel made of elastic linear-hardening material is derived. Having the working pressure and geometric dimensions of the vessel, the distribution of the hoop and equivalent stresses are optimized in the way that the distribution of stresses becomes smooth in the vessel wall. Based on two optimizing methods of the hoop and equivalent stresses, the best autofrettage pressure is determined. It is shown that this pressure is more than the working pressure and depends on the three following variables: Bauschinger effect, working pressure and geometric... 

A traveling mass due to its mass inertia has significant effects on the dynamic response of the structures. According to recent developments in structural materials and constructional technologies, the structures are likely to be affected by sudden changes of masses and substructure elements, in which the inertia effect of a moving mass is not negligible. The transverse inertia effects have been a topic of interest in bridge dynamics, design of railway tracks, guide way systems and other engineering applications such as modern high-speed precision machinery process. In this study an analytical-numerical method is presented which can be used to determine the dynamic response of beams carrying... 

This paper investigates, experimentally and analytically, the capacity of channel shear connectors embedded in normal and polypropylene (PP) concrete. Limited testing is used to assess the accuracy of a proposed nonlinear finite element model for typical push-out test specimens. Using this model, an extensive parametric study is performed to arrive at a prediction for shear capacity of channel connectors in PP concrete. An equation, for inclusion in design codes, is suggested for the shear capacity of these connectors when used in PP concrete. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved  

The purpose of this research was twofold; first, it focused on developing quantitative wastage models for rebar, concrete, brick, and cement, as major traditional bulk building materials, used in Tehran residential buildings. The primary results indicated that multiple linear regression was an apt tool to model the effects of the studied variables on materials wastage. In every developed wastage model, subtractive or accumulative effect of each studied variable was recognized by its coefficient value and sign. The developed models resulted in adjusted R2 values of 0.907, 0.875, 0.920, and 0.790, respectively, for rebar, cement, brick, and concrete waste. Cement, with average wastage of 8.57%...