Engineering Commons^™

Performance-Based Economical Seismic Design Of Multistory Reinforced Concrete Frame Buildings And Reliability Assessment, Chunyu Zhang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As the next generation of seismic design methodology, performance-based seismic design (PBSD) method requires a structure satisfy multiple preselected performance levels under different hazard levels. Optimal PBSD methods provide different strategies to design the numerous variables, including strength, stiffness and ductility of each structural component. The overall goal of this study is to develop a new optimal PBSD method for multi-story RC moment frames. This method is capable of overcoming the deficiencies of existing optimal PBSD methods and can be implemented by the U.S. design practice. The proposed method minimizes construction cost and takes the limit of member plastic rotation …

Aversion And Warning Factors For Assessing Existing Reinforced Concrete Structures, Marcie Van Weerdhuizen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a world of aging infrastructure, sustainability initiatives require additional investment in the assessment of existing reinforced concrete structures. Reliability-based assessment should minimize costs by reducing conservatism, while ensuring levels of safety equivalent to those for new designs. Current Canadian and US provisions assign target reliability levels for structural assessment based on criteria including occupancy type, expected failure behaviour, and the effect of element failure on the overall structural integrity. These criteria are defined using discrete and qualitative parameter values. It is shown that the true structural conditions can be better represented by verifying the applicability and completeness of these …

Hydraulic Performance And Vulnerability On Sanitary Sewer Overflow In Southern Pinellas County, Fl, Uchechi O. Akabogu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rain-induced sanitary sewer overflow due to high infiltration is a significant challenge for many utilities, including Pinellas County utilities. The main aim of this study is to develop a hydraulic model to analyze the performance of the existing sanitary sewer system, especially during intense rainfall events.

To calculate the flow inputs for the model, a times series analysis was performed to separate the inflow and infiltration from the actual sewer flow. Using the Stevens-Schutzbach method, daily Base Infiltration (BI) was calculated and was subtracted from the total observed flow to give the Dry Weather Flow (DWF). Adjusting the DWF by …