University of Sannio

About: University of Sannio is a education organization based out in Benevento, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Gravitational wave & LIGO. The organization has 1278 authors who have published 6125 publications receiving 167577 citations. The organization is also known as: Università degli Studi del Sannio & Universita degli Studi del Sannio.

Numerical modelling and fragility assessment of typical freestanding building contents

Abstract: The paper assesses the adequacy of existing numerical models in predicting the seismic response of freestanding nonstructural components that exhibit rocking-dominated behavior. Based on a previous experimental test program on hospital building contents carried out by the authors, the study focuses on two different modelling techniques: (a) finite element method (FEM) and (b) rigid block model. The ability to predict the response of two hospital cabinets tested in the laboratory is verified by comparing the numerical response with the experimental one. The applicability and limitations of each modelling technique are also discussed. The outcomes of the present study show that both the adopted modeling techniques can provide a reliable prediction of the occurrence of rocking mechanism in hospital cabinets. Rigid block model can also predict the occurrence of the overturning, whereas FEM model can provide a prediction of the acceleration distribution at different locations of the cabinets, e.g. at different shelf levels. The efficiency of different intensity measures in predicting the damage states in rigid block is estimated. Comprehensive incremental dynamic analyses on different rigid blocks highlight that dimensionless intensity measure $$PGA/(g\, tg\alpha )$$ is the most efficient intensity measure to predict rocking and overturning in small rigid blocks, whereas $$p\, PGV/\left( {g \,tg\alpha } \right)$$ is the most effective for large rigid blocks. Such intensity measures also allow generalizing the results to different rigid blocks, through the definition of a fragility approach.

On a Waveguide with Frequently Alternating Boundary Conditions: Homogenized Neumann Condition

Abstract: We consider a waveguide modeled by the Laplacian in a straight planar strip. The Dirichlet boundary condition is taken on the upper boundary, while on the lower boundary we impose periodically alternating Dirichlet and Neumann condition assuming the period of alternation to be small. We study the case when the homogenization gives the Neumann condition instead of the alternating ones. We establish the uniform resolvent convergence and the estimates for the rate of convergence. It is shown that the rate of the convergence can be improved by employing a special boundary corrector. Other results are the uniform resolvent convergence for the operator on the cell of periodicity obtained by the Floquet–Bloch decomposition, the two terms asymptotics for the band functions, and the complete asymptotic expansion for the bottom of the spectrum with an exponentially small error term.

Continuous Delivery Practices in a Large Financial Organization

Abstract: Continuous Delivery is an agile software development practice in which developers frequently integrate changes into the main development line and produce releases of their software. An automated Continuous Integration infrastructure builds and tests these changes. Claimed advantages of CD include early discovery of (integration) errors, reduced cycle time, and better adoption of coding standards and guidelines. This paper reports on a study in which we surveyed 152 developers of a large financial organization (ING Nederland), and investigated how they adopt a Continuous Integration and delivery pipeline during their development activities. In our study, we focus on topics related to managing technical debt, as well as test automation practices. The survey results shed light on the adoption of some agile methods in practice, and sometimes confirm, while in other cases, confute common wisdom and results obtained in other studies. For example, we found that refactoring tends to be performed together with other development activities, technical debt is almost always "self-admitted", developers timely document source code, and assure the quality of their product through extensive automated testing, with a third of respondents dedicating more than 50% of their time to do testing activities.

A distributed architecture for online power systems security analysis

Abstract: Phenomena that can compromise power systems operation need to be carefully analyzed in order to evaluate their impact on the security and reliability levels of the electrical networks. The real-time assessment of the system's security and reliability levels, especially under unforeseen contingencies, is known as online power system security analysis. For complex networks this process requires large computational efforts whereas computation times should be less than a few minutes for the information to be useful. To address this problem a distributed architecture based on the Web is proposed. The architecture integrates a network of remotely controlled units distributed in the most critical sections of the electrical network for fields data acquisition and safety check violations, a distributed solution engine for the online analysis of the system security, and a Web-based interface for graphical synoptic and reporting development. The results obtained from an intensive experimentation demonstrate the validity of the architecture and stimulate the enhancement of the solution engine through the use of a computational grid able to dynamically acquire the needed resources.

Search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass binary black holes

Abstract: We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of non-spinning intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) in the total mass range 100--450 solar masses and with the component mass ratios between 1:1 and 4:1. The search was conducted on data collected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors between November of 2005 and October of 2007. No plausible signals were observed by the search which constrains the astrophysical rates of the IMBH mergers as a function of the component masses. In the most efficiently detected bin centered on 88+88 solar masses, for non-spinning sources, the rate density upper limit is 0.13 per Mpc^3 per Myr at the 90% confidence level.