This study examines the fragility curves of a bridge by two different analytical approaches; one utilizes the time-history analysis and the other uses the capacity spectrum method. The latter approach is one of the simplified nonlinear static procedures recently developed for buildings. In this respect, a sample of 10 nominally identical but statistically different bridges and 80 ground-motion ...

In this paper, Intelligent water drop algorithm (IWD) is used to analyze single overhead line connected to grid-grounded arrester. In this approach, at first Norton’s equivalent circuit of the overhead line over lossy soil is computed by method of moments (MoM) and then for the problem under consideration, a nonlinear equivalent circuit in the frequency domain is proposed. Finally applying inte...

This study numerically predicts the failure scenario of a cracked concrete gravity dam through a push-over nonlinear analysis. The mixed-mode Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) was employed using the extended finite element method (XFEM). The dam base was considered to be fully fixed without any foundation effects. The hydrostatic pressure on the dam's upstream face was increased incremen...

Mineral dust aerosols cool Earth directly by scattering incoming solar radiation and indirectly by affecting clouds and biogeochemical cycles. Recent Earth history has featured quasi-100,000-y, glacial-interglacial climate cycles with lower/higher temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations during glacials/interglacials. Global average, glacial maxima dust levels were more than 3 times highe...

A method to compute the “exact” or consistent sensitivities to material and loading parameters of the numerical nonlinear finite element response was developed by other researchers and the second author. This general method is referred to in the literature as the Direct Differentiation Method (DDM). This paper focuses on the behavior of stand-alone sensitivity results. It presents the results o...