The effect of foundation flexibility and structural strength on response reduction factor of RC frame structures

Current force‐based design procedure adopted by most seismic design codes allows the seismic design of building structures to be based on static or dynamic analyses of elastic models of the structure using elastic design spectra. The codes anticipate that structures will undergo inelastic deformations under strong seismic events; therefore, such inelastic behaviour is usually incorporated into the design by dividing the elastic spectra by a factor, R, which reduces the spectrum from its original elastic demand level to a design level. The most important factors determining response reduction factors are the structural ductility and overstrength capacity. For a structure supporting on flexible foundation, as Soil Structure Interaction (SSI) extends the elastic period and increases damping of the structure‐foundation elastic system, the structural ductility could also be affected by frequency‐dependent foundation‐soil compliances. For inelastic systems supporting on flexible foundations, the inelastic spectra ordinates are greater than for elastic systems when presented in terms of flexible‐base structure's period. This implies that the reduction factors, which are currently not affected by the SSI effect, could be altered; therefore, the objective of this research is to evaluate the significance of foundation flexibility on force reduction factors of RC frame structures. In this research, by developing some generic RC frame models supporting on flexible foundations, effects of stiffness and strength of the structure on force reduction factors are evaluated for different relative stiffnesses between the structure and the supporting soil. Using a set of artificial earthquake records, repeated linear and nonlinear analyses were performed by gradually increasing the intensity of acceleration time histories to a level, where first yielding of steel in linear analysis and a level in which collapse of the structure in nonlinear analysis are observed. The difference between inelastic and elastic resistance in terms of displacement ductility factors has been quantified. The results indicated that the foundation flexibility could significantly change the response reduction factors of the system and neglecting this phenomenon may lead to erroneous conclusions in the prediction of seismic performance of flexibly supported RC frame structures. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of bank slope on the flow patterns in river intakes

In this work, we studied the dimensions of stream tube in the vertical as well as inclined bank conditions. Data were collected from both a physical model and a 3-D numerical model（SSIIM 2）. Equations for predicting stream tube dimensions were presented and compared with existing formulae. In comparison with vertical bank, it is found that inclining bank causes the bottom stream tube width to be greater than at the surface. The strength of secondary current formed at the entrance of branch channel is reduced. These changes in flow pattern can reduce the amount of sediment delivery into the intake.     

Bioimpedance sensor to detect water content in milk based on van Der Pauw method

Milk fraud poses serious problems for the dairy industry and consumers'' health. The main aim of this study was to reveal the effect of water added to milk by measuring its electrical impedance spectrum. The required sensor was designed based on the van der Pauw method to measure the electrical conductivity of milk at the frequency band of 10 Hz to 5 MHz. The bioimpedance spectrum of the milk of five different cows showed that the electrical impedance spectrum has a high potential for detecting water added to the milk (P < 0.01). The area under the Nyquist curve was introduced as a suitable index to detect water‐added milk. In addition, the characteristic frequency of the bioimpedance spectrum was used as an important index to differentiate water‐added milk from waterless milk. An electrical model was introduced to interpret the amount of water added to the milk using the characteristic frequency. Results showed that it is possible to detect raw milk from boiled milk by measuring its electrical impedance.     

LeakSpot: detection and diagnosis of memory leaks in JavaScript applications

The migration of application logic to the client side of modern web applications and the use of JavaScript as the main language for client‐side development have made memory leaks in JavaScript an issue for web applications. Client‐side web applications communicate with the server asynchronously, remaining on the same web page during their lifetime. Thus, even minor memory leaks can eventually lead to excessive memory usage, negatively affecting user‐perceived response time and possibly causing page crashes. To detect memory leaks and guide developers in fixing the leaks quickly and easily, this paper introduces LeakSpot, a tool that creates a run‐time heap model by modifying the application code in a browser‐agnostic way to record object allocations, accesses, and references created to objects. LeakSpot reports those allocation sites causing the leaks instead of all the leaky allocation sites. It also identifies the locations in the code where leaked objects are accumulated, for example, the locations where a reference from a data structure is created but forgotten to be removed by the developer. To facilitate debugging and fixing the leaks, for every leaked object, LeakSpot reports all the locations in the code that create a reference to the object. To confirm usefulness and efficacy of LeakSpot experimentally, we have used LeakSpot to find and fix four memory leaks in a JavaScript benchmark suite and in open‐source web applications. LeakSpot is also shown to be effective in pointing out the potential causes of three leaks in large and popular web applications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study of YBa<Subscript>2</Subscript>Cu<Subscript>3</Subscript>O<Subscript>7−<Emphasis Type="Italic">δ</Emphasis></Subscript> Superconductor/Graphene Oxide Composite

The aim of this research was to fabricate YBa₂Cu₃O_7?δ (YBCO) superconductor composite with graphene oxide nanosheets and to study the effect of the graphene oxide nanosheets on YBCO superconductor properties. For this purpose, the samples of pure superconductor and superconductor composite with 0.001, 0.01, and 0.1 wt.% graphene oxide were synthesized. First, graphite oxide was made by Hummer’s chemical method; after that, graphene oxide nanosheets were produced by bath-keeper ultrasonic. Then, different amounts of graphene oxide were added to the process of superconductor fabrication, which was made by solid-state reaction method. The samples were characterized and studied by Meissner effect test, XRD analysis, FESEM imaging, EDX measurement, and ac magnetic susceptibility. The critical current density (J_c) of samples was measured by four probes method. The results showed that by increasing the weight ratio of graphene oxide, J_c and T_c decrease.     

Multivariate detection and attribution of land-cover changes in the Central Pilbara,Western Australia

The Multivariate Alteration Detection (MAD) method was applied to locate areas where land-cover changes occurred between 2003 and 2009 in the Central Pilbara, Western Australia. It was demonstrated that each of the six MAD variates contained information of land-cover changes at various spatial scales. This allowed attribution of the identified changes to particular stressors such as climate variability, fire events, and mining activity in the area. The results were analysed and interpreted using time series of multispectral normalized difference vegetation index, normalized difference wetness index, and normalized burn ratio grids derived from Landsat data observed over the study period. In addition, various ground truth data such as fire maps, historical climate data, and the available information about mine operations and water management, which could lead to alteration of natural water regime, were utilized.     

Electrospun nanofibers with application in nanocomposites

The use of fine fiber has become an important design tool for filter media. Nanofibers-based filter media have some advantages such as lower energy consumption, longer filter life, high filtration capacity, easier maintenance, low weight rather than other filter media. The nanofibers-based filter media made up of fibers of diameter ranging from 100 to 1,000 nm can be conveniently produce by electrospinning technique. Common filter media have been prepared with a layer of fine fiber on typically forming the upstream or intake side of the media structure. The fine fiber increases the efficiency of filtration by trapping small particles, which increases the overall particulate filtration efficiency of the structure. Improved fine fiber structures have been developed in this study in which a controlled amount of fine fiber is placed on both sides of the media to result in an improvement in filter efficiency and a substantial improvement in lifetime. In the first part of this study, the production of electrospun nanofibers is investigated. In the second part, a different case studyis presented to show how they can be laminated for application as filter media. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to obtain a quantitative relationship between selected electrospinning parameters and average fiber diameter and its distribution.