SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Events for March 01, 2013
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Oral Defense Dissertation
Fri, Mar 01, 2013 @ 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hossein Ataei, CE Ph.D. Candidate
Talk Title: Effect of the Air Blast on Glazing Systems Safety:
Abstract: Glass fragments are a prime source of injury to occupants of buildings subjected to explosive events. During an air blast, window glass breaks into flying shards (or fragments) that account for civilian injuries ranging from minor cuts to severe wounds and in many cases to death.
Through balancing the safety and security of the window panels with physical appearance and cost-effectiveness, a successful blast-resistant glazing design considers the principles of a reasonable degree of protection against explosive threats based on the proposed level of security and previous lessons learned. Therefore, it is necessary to have a better understanding of the mechanics of glass panel responses to different glazing systems parameters and the blast load characteristics.
In this research, the responses of annealed glass and fully tempered glass panels subjected to air blast loadings are studied by application of the explicit finite element analysis in conjunction with fracture micromechanics principles. The window panel failure patterns and the glass crack propagation paths are investigated and analyzed using advanced finite element modeling techniques.
The results of this study indicate that the response of the window panels to blast loading cases is dependent upon the glazing material properties, window panel sizes, window framing fixity and the blast load intensities.
These findings will eventually be helpful in development of a more comprehensive flying glass injury model that uses the appropriate structural, architectural and building perimeter choices to better assess the threats that face the building occupants' safety and the civilian communities' security against the flying glass debris.
Advisor: Professor James C. Anderson
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 Conference Room
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
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Astani CEE Ph.D. Seminar
Fri, Mar 01, 2013 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hadi Meidani,, Ph.D., USC-Astani Civil Engineering
Talk Title: Toward Smart Cities: Uncertainty Management for Complex Systems of Systems
Abstract: Today, cities are under extreme stress due to their growing population and ageing infrastructure. To alleviate this stress, a more efficient and sustainable management of urban systems is needed. To this end, the myriad of Big Data from sensors and mobile devices together with efficient computational tools can help improve our descriptive and predictive capacities and subsequently materialize the idea of Smart Cities. A true Smart City requires coordinating social systems, transportation networks, and water and electricity distribution systems. In this presentation, I will focus on the systems-of-systems approach for the management of Smart Cities, and describe our research contributions to the uncertainty management of these systems of systems. First, I will discuss the representation of the uncertainties in the study of systems of systems. These uncertainties can incur from inaccurate input-output models, erroneous mathematical approximations, and data incompleteness. As an example, I will describe our probabilistic model for Markov transition matrices and its application in multiscale energy demand modeling. Second, I will share our algorithmic development for efficient propagation of these uncertainties through numerical models to obtain random performance metrics. In closing, I will elaborate on how our efforts can enhance decisions related to the robust optimal management of Smart Cities
as complex systems of systems.
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Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 102
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Evangeline Reyes
