Optimal seismic design of reinforced concrete structures under timehistory earthquake loads using an intelligent hybrid algorithm

A reliable seismic-resistant design of structures is achieved in accordance with the seismic design codes by designing structures under seven or more pairs of earthquake records. Based on the recommendations of seismic design codes, the average time-history responses （ATHR） of structure is required. This paper focuses on the optimal seismic design of reinforced concrete （RC） structures against ten earthquake records using a hybrid of particle swarm optimization algorithm and an intelligent regression model （IRM）. In order to reduce the computational time of optimization procedure due to the computational efforts of time-history analyses, IRM is proposed to accurately predict ATHR of structures. The proposed IRM consists of the combination of the subtractive algorithm （SA）, K-means clustering approach and wavelet weighted least squares support vector machine （WWLS-SVM）. To predict ATHR of structures, first, the input-output samples of structures are classified by SA and K-means clustering approach. Then, WWLS-SVM is trained with few samples and high accuracy for each cluster. 9- and 18-storey RC frames are designed optimally to illustrate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed IRM. The numerical results demonstrate the efficiency and computational advantages of IRM for optimal design of structures subjected to time-history earthquake loads.

Application assessment of GRACE and CHIRPS data in the Google Earth Engine to investigate their relation with groundwater resource changes (Northwestern region of Iran)

In recent years,drought has become a global issue,especially in arid and semi-arid areas.It is without doubt that the identification and monitoring of the drought phenomenon can help to reduce the damages that would occur.In addition,rain is one of the factors which directly affect the water levels of underground water reservoirs.This research applied a linear gradient regression method developed on the basis of GRACE,CHIRPS,and data from monitoring wells to investigate the groundwater storage changes.These data have been analyzed on the Google Earth Engine platform.In order to conduct temporal and spatial analyses,the water levels of the aquifer were generated from the monitoring wells and zoned into five classes.Also,the amount of water storage and rain from the year 2003 to 2017 in the West Azerbaijan Province were investigated using the GRACE satellite and the CHIRPS data,respectively.The results obtained from the GRACE satellite data show that the average water level in the underground reservoirs in Iran had started to decrease since 2008 and reached its peak in 2016 with an average decrease of 16 cm in that year.The average annual decline of groundwater level in the studied time period was 5 cm.A chart developed from the CHIRPS annual rainfall data indicates that the biggest decline in rainfall occurred in 2008,and the declining trend has remained steady.Linear analyses were made on GRACE with CHIRPS results and monitoring wells data separately,from which the correlation coefficients are between 86% and 97%,showing generally high correlations.Furthermore,the results obtained from the zoning of the aquifer showed that in the period of 2004 to 2016,due to the decrease in rainfall and the excessive withdrawal of groundwater,the water levels also decreased.

Trasfugen:Traffic assignment of urban network by an approximation fuzzy genetic algorithm

This paper proposes the Trasfugen method for traffic assignment aimed at solving the user equilibrium problem.To this end,the method makes use of a genetic algorithm.A fuzzy system is proposed for controlling the mutation and crossover rates of the genetic algorithm,and the corrective strategy is exploited for handling the equilibrium problem constraints.In the model,an approximation algorithm is proposed for obtaining the paths between the origin–destination pairs in the demand matrix.Unlike the traditional deterministic algorithm that has exponential time complexity,this approximation algorithm has polynomial time complexity and is executed much faster.Afterward,the Trasfugen method is applied to the urban network of Tehran metropolitan and the efficiency is investigated.Upon comparing the results obtained from the proposed model with those obtained from the conventional traffic assignment method,namely,the Frank–Wolfe method;it is shown that the proposed algorithm,while acting worse during the initial iterations,achieves better results in the subsequent iterations.Moreover,it prevents the occurrence of local optimal points as well as early/premature convergence,thus producing better results than the Frank–Wolfe algorithm.