The Mesozoic–Cenozoic structural framework of the Bay of Kiel area, western Baltic Sea

A dense grid of multichannel high-resolution seismic sections from the Bay of Kiel in the western Baltic Sea has been interpreted in order to reveal the Mesozoic and Cenozoic geological evolution of the northern part of the North German Basin. The overall geological evolution of the study area can be separated into four distinct periods. During the Triassic and the Early Jurassic, E–W extension and the deposition of clastic sediments initiated the movement of the underlying Zechstein evaporites. The deposition ceased during the Middle Jurassic, when the entire area was uplifted as a result of the Mid North Sea Doming. The uplift resulted in a pronounced erosion of Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic strata. This event is marked by a clear angular unconformity on all the seismic sections. The region remained an area of non-deposition until the end of the Early Cretaceous, when the sedimentation resumed in the area. Throughout the Late Cretaceous the sedimentation took place under tectonic quiescence. Reactivated salt movement is observed at the Cretaceous Cenozoic transition as a result of the change from an extensional to compressional regional stress field. The vertical salt movement influenced the Cenozoic sedimentation and resulted in thin-skinned faulting.     

Ground Water Remediation Using an Extraction, Treatment, and Recharge System

Ground water remediation of volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination at a site in Michigan was initiated as a result of a consent agreement between the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and the responsible party. Under the direction of the MDNR, the responsible party conducted a remedial investigation/feasibility study using federal guidelines to define the extent of contamination at the site and to select a response action for site remediation. The selected alternative included a combination of ground water extraction, treatment, and recharge, and soil flushing. The extraction system withdraws ground water from various depths in heavily contaminated areas. The ground water is treated using an air stripper. A spray distribution system spreads effluent from the stripper over a recharge basin constructed over the most contaminated areas. Additional contaminant removal is achieved by volatilization from the spray and percolation through the gravel bed. Recharge water moves downward through the contaminated soils, thus flushing residual soil contaminants. The initial operating data demonstrated that the system can effectively remove trichloroethylene (TCE) from ground water (approximately 95 percent overall removal efficiency). The annualized capital and operation and maintenance (O & M) costs of the remedial action were estimated for several operating periods (15, 20, and 30 years).     

Evaluation of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) for Water Quality Monitoring: A Case Study for the Estimation of Salinity

Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) dataset have been used to estimate salinity in the coastal area of Hong Kong. Four adjacent Landsat TM images were used in this study, which was atmospherically corrected using the Second Simulation of the Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6S) radiative transfer code. The atmospherically corrected images were further used to develop models for salinity using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) based on in situ data of October 2009. Results show that the coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.42 between the OLS estimated and in situ measured salinity is much lower than that of the GWR model, which is two times higher (R² = 0.86). It indicates that the GWR model has more ability than the OLS regression model to predict salinity and show its spatial heterogeneity better. It was observed that the salinity was high in Deep Bay (north-western part of Hong Kong) which might be due to the industrial waste disposal, whereas the salinity was estimated to be constant (32 practical salinity units) towards the open sea.     

Effect of inertia nonlinearity on dynamic response of an asymmetric building equipped with tuned mass dampers

This study investigates the effect of nonlinear inertia on the dynamic response of an asymmetric building equipped with Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs). In the field of structural engineering, many researchers have developed models to study the behavior of nonlinear TMDs, but the effect of nonlinear inertia has not received as much attention for asymmetric buildings. To consider nonlinear inertia, the equations of motion are derived in a local rotary coordinates system. The displacements and rotations of the modeled building and TMDs are defined by five-degree-of-freedom (5-DOFs). The equations of motion are derived by using the Lagrangian method. Also in the proposed nonlinear model, the equations of motion are different from a conventional linear model. In order to compare the response of the proposed nonlinear model and a conventional linear model, numerical examples are presented and the response of the modeled buildings are derived under harmonic and earthquake excitations. It is shown that if the nonlinear inertia is considered, the response of the modeled structures changes and the conventional linear approach cannot adequately model the dynamic behavior of the asymmetric buildings which are equipped with TMDs.     

Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Flow Hydraulic in Gradual Transition Open Channels

Channel expansions are common in both natural and artificial open channels. With increasing cross-sectional dimensions in an expansion, the flow decelerates. Due to separation of flow and subsequent eddy formation, a significant head loss is occurred along the transition. This study presents the results of experimental investigations on subcritical flow along the expansive transition of rectangular to trapezoidal channels. Also, a numerical simulation was developed using the finite volume method with Reynolds Stress turbulent model. Water surface profiles and velocity distributions of flow through the transition were measured experimentally and compared with the numerical results. Also, hydraulic efficiency of the transition and coefficient of energy head loss were calculated. The results show that with increasing the upstream Froude number, hydraulic efficiency of the transition and coefficient of energy head loss are decreased and increased, respectively. The results also showed the ability of numerical simulation for simulating the flow separation zones and bed shear stress along the transition for different inlet discharges and inflow Froude numbers.     

A fast joint seismic data reconstruction by sparsity‐promoting inversion

Seismic field data are often irregularly or coarsely sampled in space due to acquisition limits. However, complete and regular data need to be acquired in most conventional seismic processing and imaging algorithms. We have developed a fast joint curvelet‐domain seismic data reconstruction method by sparsity‐promoting inversion based on compressive sensing. We have made an attempt to seek a sparse representation of incomplete seismic data by curvelet coefficients and solve sparsity‐promoting problems through an iterative thresholding process to reconstruct the missing data. In conventional iterative thresholding algorithms, the updated reconstruction result of each iteration is obtained by adding the gradient to the previous result and thresholding it. The algorithm is stable and accurate but always requires sufficient iterations. The linearised Bregman method can accelerate the convergence by replacing the previous result with that before thresholding, thus promoting the effective coefficients added to the result. The method is faster than conventional one, but it can cause artefacts near the missing traces while reconstructing small‐amplitude coefficients because some coefficients in the unthresholded results wrongly represent the residual of the data. The key process in the joint curvelet‐domain reconstruction method is that we use both the previous results of the conventional method and the linearised Bregman method to stabilise the reconstruction quality and accelerate the recovery for a while. The acceleration rate is controlled through weighting to adjust the contribution of the acceleration term and the stable term. A fierce acceleration could be performed for the recovery of comparatively small gaps, whereas a mild acceleration is more appropriate when the incomplete data has a large gap of high‐amplitude events. Finally, we carry out a fast and stable recovery using the trade‐off algorithm. Synthetic and field data tests verified that the joint curvelet‐domain reconstruction method can effectively and quickly reconstruct seismic data with missing traces.     

Evaluation of the Iranian guideline for deismic rehabilitation of existing buildings

The Iranian Guideline for Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings （GSREB）, which is currently used for vulnerability assessment of existing buildings in Iran, is evaluated in this paper. The vulnerability of sample buildings of a variety stories with special steel moment resisting frames, designed according to the Standard No.2800 requirements, is assessed by GSREB. In the vulnerability assessment, different analysis methods were used and the results, in terms of usage ratio, defined as the ratio of the strength/deformation demand to the corresponding capacity, are compared. Numerical results show that some columns of these buildings do not satisfy the life safety performance criteria in the design hazard level. Moreover, the target displacement estimated by the Displacement Coefficient Method （DCM） is larger than the maximum displacement calculated by nonlinear dynamic analysis.     

Monitoring of dust storm and estimation of aerosol concentration in the Middle East using remotely sensed images

Arabian Journal of Geosciences - Dust storms are one of the major environmental disasters in the arid regions of Middle East, occurring in very high frequency. As a result, monitoring dust storms...