Advance Researches in Civil Engineering
Volume:2 Issue: 4, Autumn 2020

One of the ways of confronting lateral forces due to wind or earthquake is using RC shear walls. RC shear wall besides appropriate behavior against lateral forces it causes the plan to be cost-effective. Sometimes because of architectural reasons or implementing facility systems, there is a necessity to use shear wall with opener. In this article we study and investigate the effect of openers' location one the performance of shear wall through finite element method. For this, four walls without opener, wall with opener in the above, down and middle were modeled by ABAQUS software and the results are provided both in diagrams and figures. The results show that by comparing cracking contours in different walls, presence of opener increases the cracking tension in that part. But the tension under the walls is not very different and this could be due to the symmetry in different walls. Generally, it could be said that the best state for energy loss in the wall is seamless implementation and avoiding the creation of opener. Then, by movement of the opener to the wall base, energy loss and plasticity in the wall would be reduced. In other words, energy loss and plasticity in the wall with opener in the above is more than a wall with opener in the middle and wall with opener in the middle has better performance in energy loss with respect to wall with opener in the below. In a wall without opener the most tension and cracking is in the wall foot and this is due to the maximum shear and bending in this part. Also, with comparing pushover diagrams in different walls it is seen that for a special movement, the following walls have the most tolerance, respectively: wall without opener, walls with opener in the above, middle, and below.

In 2017, the first Iranian guideline for strength-based seismic design of non-structural masonry walls, Code 729, published by The Plan and Budget Organization of Iran. Code 729 uses strength-based procedure and the yield-line theory to design unreinforced and reinforced non-structural masonry walls with or without openings. In this paper, first a brief overview of Code 729 is presented and then using a comprehensive experimental database of 72 full-scale masonry walls, accuracy of the code is demonstrated. It is seen that Code 729 can estimate out-of-plane capacity of different masonry walls with good accuracy. According to the results, average, median, and median plus one standard deviation of errors of the Code 729 in estimating out-of-plane capacity of masonry walls, respectively, are 20%, 18%, and 33.2% and with a probability of 85% the error would be less than 34%. Considering the complicated two-way orthotropic behaviour of non-structural masonry walls and their highly uncertain properties, such level of error is deemed to be acceptable for practical applications. In addition to experimental results, Finite Element simulations are also carried out in this study to shed more light on out-of-plane behaviour of walls with different opening details.

One of the most critical parameters in process of analysis and design of structures is determination of the fundamental period of vibration. The fundamental period depends on the distribution of the mass and stiffness of the structure. Therefore, the building codes propose some empirical equations based on the observed period of real buildings during an earthquake as well as ambient vibration tests. These equations are usually a function of type and height of the buildings. Differences in the fundamental period of buildings determined by the code equation and analytical methods are due to elimination of the effects of non-structural elements in the analytical methods. For this reason, the presence of non-structural elements such as infill panels, which may produce a variation in these properties, should be carefully considered. Another effective parameter on the fundamental period is the influence of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI). It is obvious that soil flexibility increases the fundamental period of the structure. The current research deals with the effect of infill panels on the fundamental period of moment resisting frames considering the influence of soil-structure interaction (SSI). For this purpose, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 stores 2-D frames were investigated with different configuration of infill panel in the plan and also various percentage of infill openings. The studied frames were modelled and analyzed in Seismo Struct software. The calculated values of the fundamental period are compared with those of obtained from proposed equation in the seismic code. From the analysis of the results it has been found that the number of stores, the infill opening percentage, the stiffness of the infill panels and the soil type are crucial parameters that influence the fundamental period of steel building frames.

The NW-SE trending Zagros Orogenic Belt was initiated during the convergence of the Afro-Arabian continent and the Iranian microcontinent in the Late Cretaceous. Ongoing convergence is confirmed by intense seismicity related to compressional stresses collision-related in the Zagros Orogenic Belt by reactivation of an early extensional faulting to latter compressional segmented strike-slip and dip-slip faulting. These activities are strongly related either to the deep-seated basement fault activities (deep-seated earthquakes) underlies the sedimentary cover or gently dipping shallow-seated décollement horizon of the rheological weak rocks of the Infra-Cambrian Hormuz salt. The Compressional stress regimes in the different units plays an important role in controlling the stress conditions between the different units within the sedimentary cover and basement. A significant set of nearly N-S trending right-lateral strike-slip faults exists throughout the study area in the Fars area in the Zagros Foreland Folded Belt. Fault-slip and focal mechanism data, were analyzed using the stress inversion method to reconstruct the paleo and recent stress conditions. The results suggest that the current direction of maximum principal stress averages N19°E, with N38°E that for the past from Cretaceous to Tertiary, (although a few sites on the Kar-e-Bas fault yield a different direction). The results are consistent with the collision of the Afro-Arabian continent and the Iranian microcontinent. The difference between the current and paleo-stress directions indicates an anticlockwise rotation in the maximum principle stress direction over time. This difference resulted from changes in the continental convergence path, but was also influenced by the local structural evolution, including the lateral propagation of folds and the presence of several local décollement horizons that facilitated decoupling of the deformation between the basement and sedimentary cover. The obliquity of the maximum compressional stress into the fault trends reveal a typical stress partitioning of thrust and strike-slip motion in the Kazerun, Kar-e-Bas, Sabz-Pushan, and Sarvestan fault zones, that caused these fault zones behave as segmented strike-slip and dip-slip faults (Sarkarinejad et al., 2018).

Risk is often assumed that the word implies a negative outcome. It is commonplace that risk is uncertain. Although a feasibility study had been carried out before the construction of water supply project started but it could not be avoided that risks would still occur. The risks that arise in real are very diverse, such as the risk of rejection by the community, the design is not good, the construction that is not by the design, the uncertain quality of raw water so that water treatment is inefficient and the risk of Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Referring to the risk phenomenon that occurs in the water supply project, so this research is carried out on research on risks in drinking water projects that have been carried out before to find out about the description of more likely risks that occur. This summary literature review shows that Technical Risk risks have the greatest impact on water supply risk projects either in the internal or projects category.