An investigation of trends in precipitation volume for the last three decades in different regions of Fars province, Iran

Under condition of climate changes as global warming, monitoring and detecting trend of precipitation volume is essential and will be useful for agricultural sections. Considering the fact that there were not enough research related to precipitation volume, this study aimed to determine trends in precipitation volume, monthly and annually in different regions of Fars province for the last three decades (33?years period; 1978–2010). Fars province is located in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, and it plays an important role in agricultural production. Inverse distance weighting interpolation method was used to provide precipitation data for all regions. To analyze the trends of precipitation volume, Mann–Kendall test, Sen’s slope estimator, and 10-year moving average low-pass filter (within time series) were used. The negative trends were identified by the Sen’s slope estimator as well as Mann–Kendall test. However, all the trends were insignificant at the surveyed confidence level (95%). With regards to the application of 10-year moving average low-pass filter, a considerable decreasing trend was observed after around year 1994. Since one of the most important restrictions in agricultural development of the Fars province is lack of sufficient water resources, any changes onward to lack of sufficient precipitation impose impressive pressure and stress on valuable resources and subsequently agricultural production.     

Experimental and 3D Numerical Simulation of Reinforced Shear Joints

The load transfer capacity and failure mechanism of a fully grouted bolt installed across a joint in shear is investigated, both experimentally and numerically, in five types of bolt. The double-shearing testing of bolts were studied in concrete blocks of 20, 40 and 100 MPa strengths, subjected to different pretension loads of 0, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 80 KN, respectively. The parameters examined include: shear resistance, shear displacement, induced strains and stresses during the bolt-bending process, and its ultimate failure across the sheared joint planes. The conclusions drawn from the study were that the strength of the concrete, bolt profile configuration and bolt pretension load played a significant influence on the shear resistance, shear displacement and failure mechanism of the reinforced medium. Experimental and numerical simulations showed that the failure occurs as a result of the induced axial and shear stresses acting between the hinge point distances in the vicinity of the shear joint plane.     

Designing infill directional drilling in mineral exploration by using particle swarm optimization algorithm

Geostatistical optimization in designing infill boreholes is an important cost-effective approach in increasing the accuracy of the tonnage and grade of an ore deposit. In this research, a new approach is proposed to design the optimum infill directional boreholes. In the proposed approach, the Kriging estimation variance is considered as the objective function and the number and properties of the optimum boreholes are estimated to minimize the objective function. The optimization procedure is implemented by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. Range of the spatial and directional properties of new boreholes is determined by considering the primary information of the mineralization and administrative constraint of drilling. Then, the PSO algorithm is iteratively applied, and in each iteration, the variation of the estimated Kriging variance after drilling the new boreholes is determined and properties of the new boreholes are updated. The iterative procedure of the algorithm is continued until minimum Kriging variance is satisfied. The approach was applied to the Dalli Cu-Au porphyry deposit in Iran and three new infill directional boreholes were designed by considering six earlier boreholes from the preliminary exploration stage. New optimum boreholes were located where less information from the preliminary exploration stage exists and the highest variance is considered. Two new boreholes are near to vertical (78°) and the third is an inclined with 55° dip. By drilling these three new boreholes, the estimated grade model could be upgraded by 20%. For simplicity, quickness and the ability to search for the required numbers and specifications of a group of directional boreholes in a 3D environment are the most advantages aspects of the proposed approach.     

Transient seepage analysis in zoned anisotropic soils based on the scaled boundary finite‐element method

The scaled boundary finite‐element method, a semi‐analytical computational scheme primarily developed for dynamic stiffness of unbounded domains, is applied to the analysis of unsteady seepage flow problems. This method is based on the finite‐element technology and gains the advantages of the boundary element method as well. Only boundary of the domain is discretized, no fundamental solution is required and singularity problems can be modeled rigorously. Anisotropic and non‐homogeneous materials satisfying similarity are modeled with no additional efforts. In this study, firstly, formulation of the method for the transient seepage flow problems is derived followed by its solution procedures. The accuracy, simplicity and applicability of the method are demonstrated via four numerical examples of transient seepage flow – three of them are available in the literature. Homogenous, non‐homogenous, isotropic and anisotropic material properties are considered to show the versatility of the technique. Excellent agreement with the finite‐element method is observed. The method out‐performs the finite‐element method in modeling singularity points. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seismic reliability assessment and the nonergodicity in the modelling parameter uncertainties

Modelling uncertainty can significantly affect the structural seismic reliability assessment. However, the limit state excursion due to this type of uncertainty may not be described by a Poisson process as it lacks renewal properties with the occurrence of each earthquake event. Furthermore, considering uncertainties related to ground motion representation by employing recorded ground motions together with modelling uncertainties is not a trivial task. Robust fragility assessment, proposed previously by the authors, employs the structural response to recorded ground motion as data in order to update prescribed seismic fragility models. Robust fragility can be extremely efficient for considering also the structural modelling uncertainties by creating a dataset of one-to-one assignments of structural model realizations and as-recorded ground motions. This can reduce the computational effort by more than 1 order of magnitude. However, it should be kept in mind that the fragility concept itself is based on the underlying assumption of Poisson-type renewal. Using the concept of updated robust reliability, considering both the uncertainty in ground motion representation based on as-recorded ground motion and non ergodic modelling uncertainties, the error introduced through structural reliability assessment by using the robust fragility is quantified. It is shown through specific application to an existing RC frame that this error is quite small when the product of the time interval and the standard deviation of failure rate is small and is on the conservative side.     

Experimental Evaluation of A New Developed Algorithm for An Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Comparison with Simulink Results

China Ocean Engineering - Performing repeatable duties automatically was the dreams of human being for centuries. Although full autonomy has long been dreamed of by visionaries, many researches...     

Impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on streamflow in Western Iran

The Middle East region, where arid and semi‐arid regions occupy most of the land, is extremely vulnerable to any natural or anthropogenic reductions in available water resources. Much of the observed interannual‐decadal variability in Middle Eastern streamflow is physically linked to a large‐scale atmospheric circulation patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). In this work, the relationship between the NAO index and the seasonal and annual streamflows in the west of Iran was statistically examined during the last four decades. The correlations were constructed for two scenarios (with and without time lag). The associations between the annual and seasonal streamflows and the simultaneous NAO index were found to be poor and insignificant. The possibility of streamflow forecasting was also explored, and the results of lag correlations revealed that streamflow responses at the NAO signal with two and three seasons delays. The highest Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.379 was found between the spring NAO index and the autumn streamflow series at Taghsimab station, indicating that roughly 14% of the variance in the streamflow series is associated with NAO forcing. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hydro-mechanical evaluation of stabilized mine tailings

. In this study, mine tailings waste was stabilized using a combination of lime, fly ash type "C", and aluminum. Treated samples were subjected to mineral identification for evaluating the formation of ettringite and gypsum. Also, unconfined compression, hydraulic conductivity, and cyclic freeze and thaw tests were performed to evaluate the hydro-mechanical properties of the stabilized samples. Experimental results have shown that the application of lime and fly ash type "C" to high sulfate content tailings has improved its plasticity, workability, and volume stability. Moreover, upon addition of aluminum to lime and fly ash in a sulfate-rich environment, ettringite and calcium sulfo-aluminate hydrate are formed in these samples. Application of 5% lime, 10% fly ash type "C", in combination with 110 ppm aluminum, resulted in the formation of a solid monolith capable of producing more than 1,000 kPa of unconfined compressive strength, and reduced tailings permeability to 1.96᎒^–6 cm s^–1, which is less than the recommended permeability of 10^–5 cm s^–1 by most environmental protection agencies for reusability of solidified/stabilized samples. The permeability of the treated tailings samples remained below the recommended permeability, even after exposing the treated samples to 12 freeze and thaw cycles. Therefore, based on the experimental results, it is concluded that treatment of high sulfate-content tailings with lime and fly ash, combined with the availability of aluminum for reactions, is a successful method of solidifying highly reactive mine tailings.     

Observed changes in relative humidity and dew point temperature in coastal regions of Iran

The analysis of trends in hydroclimatic parameters and assessment of their statistical significance have recently received a great concern to clarify whether or not there is an obvious climate change. In the current study, parametric linear regression and nonparametric Mann?CKendall tests were applied for detecting annual and seasonal trends in the relative humidity (RH) and dew point temperature (T _dew) time series at ten coastal weather stations in Iran during 1966?C2005. The serial structure of the data was considered, and the significant serial correlations were eliminated using the trend-free pre-whitening method. The results showed that annual RH increased by 1.03 and 0.28?%/decade at the northern and southern coastal regions of the country, respectively, while annual T _dew increased by 0.29 and 0.15°C per decade at the northern and southern regions, respectively. The significant trends were frequent in the T _dew series, but they were observed only at 2 out of the 50 RH series. The results showed that the difference between the results of the parametric and nonparametric tests was small, although the parametric test detected larger significant trends in the RH and T _dew time series. Furthermore, the differences between the results of the trend tests were not related to the normality of the statistical distribution.