Amin Ghafooripour

An efficient cost analysis of monorail in the middle east using statistics of existing monorail and metro models

This paper discusses an efficient-cost analysis for the monorail system in developing countries focusing on Middle East cases. Most of the cities in the Middle East are using the metro system and have experience with it. A monorail system is quite new for these countries so the efficiency of the monorail as an important question is always figured out. A function to find payback duration for monorail is generated, using available data for countries which have both systems in the world. Then a correlation between metro and monorail ticket prices is studied to apply it for the countries in the Middle East. The theory has been verified for UAE, USA and China as existing models for both metro and monorail. Then it has been applied for interpreting and predicting the monorail system costs in Egypt and Iran as case studies in the Middle East. The results show that for those countries with a subsidies policy for public transportation, a monorail will not be an economic system for the public transportation, private sectors will not show their interests for long term investment in it and it might be used for the tourism and amusement purposes.

The Seismic Reliability of Offshore Structures Based on Nonlinear Time History Analyses

Regarding the past earthquakes damages to offshore structures, as vital structures in the oil and gas industries, it is important that their seismic design is performed by very high reliability. Accepting the Nonlinear Time History Analyses (NLTHA) as the most reliable seismic analysis method, in this paper an offshore platform of jacket type with the height of 304 feet, having a deck of 96 feet by 94 feet, and weighing 290 million pounds has been studied. At first, some Push‐Over Analyses (POA) have been preformed to recognize the more critical members of the jacket, based on the range of their plastic deformations. Then NLTHA have been performed by using the 3‐components accelerograms of 100 earthquakes, covering a wide range of frequency content, and normalized to three Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) levels of 0.3 g, 0.65 g, and 1.0 g. By using the results of NLTHA the damage and rupture probabilities of critical member have been studied to assess the reliability of the jacket structure. Regarding that...

The effectiveness of sustainable floating structures in the Gulf Region (Middle East)

The use of marine environment for human life due to its positive effects on life style has created new ideas for offshore construction. In this new generation of offshore projects, the use of offshore pile-deck structures, sea reclamation by offshore soil embankment for creating the artificial Islands and floating structures (pontoon) in the Gulf region have been analyzed. The “World and Palm Jumeirah” projects in Dubai (UAE) and a project in the Kingdom of Bahrain are samples for marine reclamation. The “Mitra” project in “Kish” Island (Iran) is an example of a pile and deck system for offshore housing. The idea for a floating marina in Dubai is an example of a floating building (pontoon) in this region. This paper has studied these three different experiences for offshore construction using the weighted parameters ranking analysis method. Weight factors applied to the effective parameters based on clients/owners’ and engineer’s preferences. Results show that; although the reclamation solution is much more economic it cannot save the environment properly. A sustainable design of floating concept in the Gulf region for future extensions should gather all requirements economically and environmentally together.