In this study a simulation-optimization model is developed for deriving operation rule-curves in drought ‎periods. To each reservoir, two rule-curves with adjustable monthly levels are introduced dividing the ‎reservoir capacity into three zones between the normal water level and minimum operation level. To each ‎zone of a reservoir and for each month of the year a hedging coefficient is introd...

In this article optimal design of shear walls is performed under seismic loading. For practical aims, a database of special shear walls is created. Special shear walls are used for seismic design optimization employing the charged system search algorithm as an optimizer. Constraints consist of design and performance limitations. Nonlinear behavior of the shear wall is taken into account and per...

In this study the thermal conductivity and the volumetric heat capacity of non-Newtonian fluids are investigated. These fluids find many applications in chemical, medical and food industries. They mostly have viscoelastic behavior and generally differ from Newtonian fluids. Two non-Newtonian fluids, solutions of xanthan and carboxy methyl cellulose in water with various concentrations have bee...

this paper describes experimental and numerical investigations on two specimens of frames composed of steel reinforced concrete beam and angle-steel concrete column under horizontal low cyclic loading. based on the test results, the relationship curves of the horizontal load-displacement and the failure modes are acquired. meanwhile the hysteretic behaviors, skeleton curves, stiffness degradati...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my adviser Michael Zieve for teaching me to fish. I would like to thank Jeffrey Lagarias for helpful feedback in writing this thesis. I would like to thank my family (Peter, Susan, and Holly), my beautiful girlfriend Becky, and the community of Michigan graduate students for keeping me sane.

[1] The strong jet, with a speed between 500 and 600 m/s, is inferred in the equatorial region of Saturn by combining the nadir and limb observations of Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) aboard the Cassini spacecraft. A similar jet was discovered on Jupiter (F. M. Flasar et al., 2004a). These discoveries raise the possibility that intense jets are common in the equatorial stratospheres of ...

In this paper a class of quartic trigonometric Bézier curve, called QT Bézier curve, with two shape parameters is presented. These curves not only inherit most properties of the usual quartic Bézier curves in the polynomial space, but also enjoy some other advantageous properties for shape modelling. The shape of the curve can be adjusted by altering the values of shape parameters while the con...

We show that one can find two nonisomorphic curves over a field K that become isomorphic to one another over two finite extensions of K whose degrees over K are coprime to one another. More specifically, let K0 be an arbitrary prime field and let r > 1 and s > 1 be integers that are coprime to one another. We show that one can find a finite extension K of K0, a degree-r extension L of K, a degr...

This talk gives an introduction into the subject of Seiberg-Witten curves and their relation to integrable systems. We discuss some motivations and origins of this relation and consider explicit construction of various families of Seiberg-Witten curves in terms of corresponding integrable models.

Manjul Bhargava and I have recently proved a result on the average order of the 2-Selmer groups of the Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves of a fixed genus n ≥ 1 over Q, with a rational Weierstrass point [2, Thm 1]. A surprising fact which emerges is that the average order of this finite group is equal to 3, independent of the genus n. This gives us a uniform upper bound of 3 2 on the average ran...