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In most cases, fiber reinforced self-compacting concrete (FRSCC) contains only one type of fiber. The use of two or more types of fibers in a suitable combination may potentially not only improve the overal properties of self-compacting concrete, but may also result in performance synergie. The combining of fibers, often called hybridization, is investigated in this paper for a cimentetious matrix. Control, single, two fibers hybrid composites were cast using different fiber type steel and polypropylene with different sizes. Flexural toughness tests were performed and results were extensively analysed to identify synergy, if any, associated with various fiber combinations. Based on various analysis schemes, the paper identifies fiber combinations that demonstrate maximum synergy in terms of flexural toughness.

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In a large scale cyclic storage system ,as the number of rule parameters and/or number of operating period increase, general purpose gradient-based NLP solvers and/or genetic algorithms may loose their merits in finding optimally feasible solution to the problem. In these cases hybrid GA which decomposes the main problem into two manageable sub-problems with an iterative scheme between GA and LP solvers may be considered as a sound alternative This research develops a hybrid GA-LP algorithm to optimally design and operate a nonlinear, non-convex, and large scale lumped cyclic storage system. For optimal operation of the system a set of operating rules are derived for joint utilization of surface and groundwater storage capacities to meet a predefined demand with minimal construction and operation cost over a 20 seasonal planning period. Performance of the proposed model is compared with a non-cyclic storage system. The management model minimizes the present value of the design and operation cost of the cyclic and non-cyclic systems under specified and governing constraints, employing the developed GA-LP hybrid model. Results show that cyclic storage dominates non-cyclic storage system both in cost and operation flexibility.

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Steel-concrete hybrid systems are used in buildings, in which a steel structure has been placed on a concrete structure to make a lighter structure and have a faster construction. Dynamic analysis of hybrid structures is usually a complex procedure due to various dynamic characteristics of each part, i.e. stiffness, mass and especially damping. Dynamic response of hybrid structures has some complications. One of the reasons is the different stiffness of the two parts of structure and another reason is non-uniform distribution of materials and their different features such as damping in main modes of vibration. The available software is not able to calculate damping matrices and analyze these structures because the damping matrix of these irregular structures is non-classical. Also an equivalent damping should be devoted to the whole structure and using the available software. In the hybrid structures, one or more transitional stories are used for better transition of lateral and gravity forces. In this study, an equation has been proposed to determining the equivalent uniform damping ratio for hybrid steel-concrete buildings with transitional storey(s). In the proposed method, hybrid buildings are considered to have three structural systems, reinforced concrete, transitional storey and steel. Equivalent uniform damping ratio is derived by means of a semi-empirical error minimization procedure.

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A robust periodic train-scheduling problem under perturbation is discussed in this paper. The intention is to develop a robustness index and propose a mathematical model which is robust against perturbations. Some practical assumptions, as well as the acceleration and deceleration times along with periodic scheduling in addition to a practical new robustness index are considered. The aim is to obtain timetables with minimum travelling time that are robust against minor perturbations while the unnecessary stops are minimized. Generally, the spread of delays in the railway system is called delay propagation. We show that in addition to this phenomenon, there exists a more complicated case in periodic type of scheduling that is the fact of delay propagation from one period to the next. In fact, if the delays of a period are not absorbed by the next one, the size of delays may converge to infinity. We name this as delay intensification. Furthermore, we develop a hybrid heuristic algorithm which is able to find near optimal schedules in a limited amount of time and can absorb perturbations. To validate the algorithm, a new lower bound is introduced.