Search results for " Structural"
showing 10 items of 1751 documents
A field methodology to study effects of UV radiation on fish larvae.
2003
There is a considerable lack of in situ specific information about the effects of UV-B radiation on limnic animals studied in the field. We exposed larval pike (Esox lucius L.) in two types of cuvettes (glass and quartz) placed at different depths (5 or 15 cm) to natural solar UV or to artificially enhanced UV-B (lamps on 3 h per day), simulating the scenarios for coming decades. Dose realism and comparability with earlier laboratory experiments was the main purpose, and therefore UV-B irradiances to the surface as well as underwater irradiances were directly measured. Result showed that UV-B dose rates in natural waters are low even though DOC concentration was low (4.8 mg/l) in our study …
Swimming pool water--fractionation and genotoxicological characterization of organic constituents.
2005
Swimming pool water treatment in general includes flocculation, sand filtration, and subsequent disinfection with chlorine. The continuous chlorination and input of organic material by bathers in combination with recirculation of the pool water leads to an accumulation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in the water. Several DBPs have been identified as human carcinogens and are thought to cause allergic asthma. Therefore, the elimination of DBPs is one major aim of pool water treatment. Using membrane filtration as an alternative treatment technology, DBPs can be removed more efficiently than with conventional treatment. In this study membrane filtration and genotoxicity testing were appli…
1-D numerical simulation of sediment transport in alluvial channel beds
2011
Quantitative estimate of sediment transport processes is important especially in river-control engineering and for water management projects. In this paper the sediment routing of a 1-D model is presented and applied to some study cases. The procedure simulates the variations of bed roughness conditions due to natural sorting and to generation and migration of bed forms. The suspended-load and the bed-load are treated separatel
Disposal of green roofs: A contribution to identifying an “Allowed by legislation” end–of–life scenario and facilitating their environmental analysis
2022
The rapid and widespread deployment of green roofs requires the need to address their disposal and to assess the environmental impact of this phase of their life cycle to understand whether their current large-scale application may pose a problem. A review of the literature on green roofs environmental performance (particularly Life Cycle Assessment studies) has highlighted the lack of a standardized, commonly adopted, procedure for determining the treatments, recovery and/or disposal, to be assigned to waste from the removal of green roofs. In this regard, it should be mentioned that there is a lack of ad hoc legislation on the disposal of this technology (to the best of the authors’ knowl…
Two-Player Noncooperative Games over a Freight Transportation Network''
2004
A game between two players acting on the same road transportation network is considered in this paper. The first player aims at minimizing the transportation costs, whereas the second player aims at maximizing her profit (or, in general, her utility) that is proportional to the flow passing through the arcs under her control. We introduce bilevel linear programming formulations for this problem. We derive conditions of existence and properties of the equilibrium points and propose an algorithm finding a local optimal solution. Finally, we present an application of the model to a real system involving trucks travelling through Europe from a Middle Eastern country.
Questionnaires and simulations to assess daylighting in Italian university classrooms for IEQ and energy issues
2021
Abstract Results from the DAYKE-Italy project are presented. An investigation on daylighting in eight classrooms in five Italian universities was carried out through a combined approach: an ad-hoc survey administered to students to investigate how they perceive daylight in classroom, and numerical simulations (DIVA + ALFA) to calculate a set of objective metrics (daylight, circadian, and energy-related). A sample of 542 questionnaires was collected through two sessions and the subjective judgments were correlated to objective metrics. Results from descriptive and statistical analyses showed: (i) the correlation was significant for all daylight metrics: among them, average daylight factor an…
Effect of uncertain damping coefficient on the response of a SDOF system
2022
In this paper, a full probabilistic description of the response of a randomized SDOF system in both the time and the frequency domain is done. Considering that the damping of the structure does not simply relate to any single physical phenomenon, the sensitivity of the response to the randomness of the damping parameter is investigated. The stochastic analysis is conducted via the Probability Transformation Method therefore the first probability density function of the response is evaluated. The effect of the uncertain damping coefficient on the response of the SDOF system has been investigated through several numerical examples. From the response probability density function as well as fro…
Probabilistic solution of a homogeneous linear second-order differential equation with randomized complex coefficients
2022
In this paper, an exact expression for the first probability density function of the solution stochastic process to a randomized homogeneous linear second-order complex differential equation is determined. To complete the probabilistic analysis, the first probability density functions of the real and complex contributions of the solution stochastic process are also calculated. To compute the densities, the random variable transformation method is applied under general hypothesis, all coefficients and initial conditions are absolutely continuous complex random variables. The capability of the theoretical results established is demonstrated by several numerical examples. Finally, we show the …
Estimation of Daily Solar Radiation from Measured Air Temperature Extremes in the Mid-Mediterranean Area
2012
AbstractDaily solar radiation Rs at ground level is a necessary input variable required for the evaluation of evapotranspiration and crop growth, development, and yield-simulation models. Nevertheless, it is measured in few weather stations and at many locations it is not observed; also, available Rs temporal series are generally no longer than a few years. A valid surrogate of Rs measurement is the diurnal air-temperature range (ΔT); indeed, ΔT is inversely proportional to cloudiness and therefore could be a good indicator of atmospheric transmittance. As opposed to Rs, daily maximum and minimum air temperatures are measured at many locations and their observations in developed countries b…
Stochastic response determination of nonlinear oscillators with fractional derivatives elements via the Wiener path integral
2014
A novel approximate analytical technique for determining the non-stationary response probability density function (PDF) of randomly excited linear and nonlinear oscillators endowed with fractional derivatives elements is developed. Specifically, the concept of the Wiener path integral in conjunction with a variational formulation is utilized to derive an approximate closed form solution for the system response non-stationary PDF. Notably, the determination of the non-stationary response PDF is accomplished without the need to advance the solution in short time steps as it is required by the existing alternative numerical path integral solution schemes which rely on a discrete version of the…