Este trabalho propõe uma nova abordagem para o desenvolvimento de sistemas embarcados, através da combinação da abstração e propriedades de verificação de modelos da linguagem declarativa Alloy com a ampla aceitação de Java na indústria. A abordagem surge no contexto de que a automação de software no domínio embarcado tornou-se extremamente necessária, uma vez que atualmente a maior parte do tempo de desenvolvimento é gasta no projeto de software de produtos tão restritos em termos de recursos. As ferramentas de automação de software embarcado devem atender a demanda por produtividade e manutenibilidade, mas respeitar restrições naturais deste tipo de sistema, tais como espaço de memória, potência e desempenho. As ferramentas de automação de projeto lidam com produtividade e manutenibilidade ao permitir especificações de alto nível, tarefa difícil de atender no domínio embarcado devido ao comportamento misto de muitas aplicações embarcadas. Abordagens que promovem meios para verificação formal também são atrativas, embora geralmente sejam difíceis de usar, e por este motivo não são de grande auxílio na tarefa de reduzir o tempo de chegada ao mercado do produto. Através do uso de Alloy, baseada em lógica de primeira-ordem, é possível obter especificações em altonível e verificação formal de modelos com uma única linguagem. Este trabalho apresenta a poderosa abstração proporcionada pela linguagem Alloy em aplicações embarcadas, assim como regras para obter automaticamente código Java a partir de modelos Alloy. A geração de código Java a partir de modelos Alloy, combinada a uma ferramenta de estimativa, provê exploração de espaço de projeto, atendendo assim as fortes restrições do projeto de software embarcado, o que normalmente não é contemplado pela engenharia de software tradicional. / This work proposes a new approach for embedded software development, by combining the abstraction and model verification properties of the Alloy declarative language with the broad acceptance in industry of Java. The approach comes into play since software automation in the embedded domain has become a major need, as currently most of the development time is spent designing software for such hardconstrained resources products. Design automation tools for embedded systems must meet the demand for productivity and maintainability, but constraints such as memory, power and performance must still be considered. Design automation tools deal with productivity and maintainability by allowing high-level specifications, which is hard to accomplish on the embedded domain due to the mixed behavior nature of many embedded applications. Approaches that provide means for formal verification are also attractive, but their usage is usually not straightforward, and for this reason they are not that helpful in dealing with time-tomarket constraints. By using Alloy, based in first-order logic, it is possible to obtain high-level specifications and formal model verification with a single language. This work shows the powerful abstraction provided by the Alloy language for embedded applications, as well as rules for obtaining automatically Java code from Alloy models. The Java source code generation from Alloy models, combined with an estimation tool, provides design space exploration to match tight embedded software design constraints, what is usually not taken into account by standard software engineering techniques.

Ultrasonic sensors are well known for various applications such as NDT, ultrasound imaging, and proximity sensing. Conventional ultrasound transducers are bulky, work at notoriously high voltages, and consume significant power. Microfabrication techniques are leading to a paradigm shift in the field of ultrasonics by enabling development of low power - small footprint ultrasound transducers. This work focuses on the development of piezoelectric type flexural mode micromachined ultrasound transducer also known as PMUTs. We start by establishing a system level analytical model of a PMUT and use it to offer insights into scaling of the performance of the transducer with respect to various design parameters. In this analysis we give special attention to residual stresses thus establishing a contrast between membrane type and plate type PMUTs. After going through various steps of material development and microfabrication, we obtain arrays of PMUTs with different designs. PZT thin films deposited by sol-gel method are used as the piezoelectric layer in the multilayer stack. Further, we present a thorough characterization of fabricated PMUTs which includes measurement of the piezoelectric properties of the embedded PZT thin film, electrical impedance of the electromechanical transducer, its vibrational charac-teristics and acoustic radiation from a single PMUT cell. We also develop a pre-amplifier circuit for a PMUT receiver and present its working as a simple proximity sensor. After establishing the repeatability and predictability of our PMUT sensors we delve into application development beyond ultrasound imaging. Experiments and analysis of PMUTs submerged in water show strong structural-acoustic coupling between the PMUT membrane and the surrounding fluid. We hypothesize the applicability of this feature to sense changes in the acoustic environment of a PMUT. To this end, we integrate an array of PMUTs with a micro-fluidic chip and study the changes in the vibrational behaviour of the PMUT in response to change in the air-water ratio in a closed cell around a PMUT membrane. We also present our preliminary results on presence of micro-bubbles in the closed cell around the PMUT.

Les nouveaux besoins en communications sans fil pussent le développement de systèmes de transmission RF en termes the reconfigurabilité, multistandard et à basse consommation. Ces travaux de thèse font l’objet de la proposition d’une nouvelle architecture de réception capable d’adresser ces aspects dans le contexte des réseaux WPAN. La technique de sous échantillonnage (BPS-Bandpass Sampling) est appliquée et permet d’exploiter et certain nombre d’avantages liées au traitement du signal à Temps Discret (DT-Discrete Time signal processing), notamment le filtrage et la décimation. Si comparées à la Radio Logicielle, ces techniques permettent de relâcher les contraintes liées aux ADCs en maintenant des caractéristiques multistandard et de reconfigurabilité. Un simulateur dans le domaine fréquentiel large bande a été développé sous MATLAB pour répondre à des limitations au niveau système comme par exemple le repliement spectral et le produit gain bande. En addition avec une nouvelle méthode de conception système, cet outil permet de séparer les différentes contraintes des blocs pour la définition d’un plan de fréquence et the filtrage optimaux. La séparation des différentes contributions dans la dégradation du SNDR (notamment le bruit thermique, bruit de phase, non linéarité et le repliement), permet de relâcher de spécifications critiques liées à la consommation de puissance. L’architecture à sous échantillonnage proposée dans la thèse est résultat d’une comparaison quantitative des différentes architectures à sous échantillonnage, tout en appliquant la méthode et l’outil de conception système développés. Des aspects comme l’optimisation du filtrage entre les techniques à temps continu et temps discret et le plan de fréquence associé, permettent de trouve l’architecture qui représente le meilleur compromis entre la consommation électrique et l’agilité, dans le contexte voulu. Le bloc de filtrage à temps discret est identifié comme étant critique, et une étude sur les limitations d’implémentation circuit est menée. Des effets come les capacités parasites, l’imparité entre les capacités, le bruit du commutateur, la non linéarité, le gain finit de Ampli OP, sont évalués à travers d’une simulation comportementale en VHDL-AMS. On observe la robustesse des circuits orientés temps discret par rapport les contraintes des nouvelles technologies intégrés. Finalement, le système est spécifié en termes de bruit de phase, qui peuvent représenter jusqu’à 30% de la consommation en puissance. Dans ce but, une nouvelle méthode numérique est proposée pour être capable d’évaluer le rapport signal sur distorsion due au jitter SDjR dans le processus de sous échantillonnage. En plus, une conclusion non intuitive est survenue de cette étude, où on que réduire la fréquence d’échantillonnage n’augmente pas les contraintes en termes de jitter pour le système. L’architecture proposée issue de cette étude est sujet d’un développement circuit pour la validation du concept. / New needs on wireless communications pushes the development in terms reconfigurable, multistandards and low power radio systems. The objective of this work is to propose and design new receiver architecture capable of addressing these aspects in the context of the WPAN networks. The technique of Bandpass Sampling (BPS) is applied and permits to exploit a certain number of advantages linked to the discrete time (DT) signal processing, notably filtering and decimation. Compared to the Software-defined Radio (SDR), these techniques permit to relax the ADC constraints while keeping the multi standard and reconfigurable features. A wide band system level simulation tool is developed using MATLAB platform to overcome system level limitations such spectral aliasing and gain bandwidth product. In addition to a new system design method, the tool helps separating the blocks constraints and defining the optimum frequency plan and filtering. Separating the different contributions on the SNDR degradation (noise, phase noise, non linearity, and aliasing), critical specifications for power consumption can be relaxed. The proposed BPS architecture on the thesis is a result of a quantitative comparison of different BPS architectures, applying the system design method and tool. Aspects such filtering optimization between continuous and discrete time filtering and the associated frequency plan permitted to find the architecture which represents the best trade-off between power consumption and agility on the aimed context. The DT filtering block is therefore identified as critical block, which a study on the circuit implementation limitations is carried out. Effects such parasitic capacitances and capacitance mismatch, switch noise, non linear distortion, finite gain OTA, are evaluated through VHDL-AMS modelling. It is observed the robustness of discrete time oriented circuits. Finally, phase noise specifications are given considering that frequency synthesis circuits may represent up to 30% of the power consumption. For that goal, a new numerical method is proposed, capable of evaluating the signal to jitter distortion ratio SDjR on the BPS process. Moreover, a non intuitive conclusion is given, where reducing the sampling frequency does not increase the constraints in terms of jitter. The proposed architecture issue from this study is in stage of circuit level design in the project team of LETI for final proof of concept.

Ce manuscrit présente une méthode de conception au niveau système reposant sur la programmation fonctionnelle typée et visant à atténuer certains des problèmes complexifiant le développement des systèmes numériques modernes, tels que leurs tailles importantes ou la grande variété des blocs les constituant. Nous proposons un ensemble de mécanismes permettant de mélanger au sein d'un même design plusieurs formalismes de description distincts («modèles de calcul») se situant potentiellement à des niveaux d'abstraction différents. De plus, nous offrons au concepteur la possibilité d'expliciter directement les paramètres explorables de chaque sous-partie du design, puis d'en déterminer des valeurs acceptables via une étape d'exploration partiellement ou totalement automatisée réalisée à l'échelle du système. Les gains qu'apportent ces stratégies nouvelles sont illustrés sur plusieurs exemples. / This work presents a novel system-level design method based on typed functional programming and aiming at mitigating some of the issues making the development of modern digital systems complex, such as their increasing sizes and the variety of their subcomponents. We propose a range of mechanisms allowing to mix within a single design several description formalisms (``models of computation''), possibly at different abstraction levels. Moreover, the designer is provided with means to directly express the explorable parameters of each part of their design, and to find acceptable values for them through a partially or totally automatic system-wide architectural exploration step. The advantages brought by those new strategies are illustrated on several examples.

[EN] In today's information society, there is a growing need to access data communication services ubiquitously, with mobility and increasingly higher data rates. This society's demand has motivated the development of the fourth generation of mobile communications (4G) and its evolution towards the fifth generation (5G). This development has required a revolution on the radio interface of the mobile communications systems, and, consequently, has significantly modified their capabilities and their radio resource management. This is the case of the technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and its 4G version called LTE-Advanced. This Doctoral Thesis addresses the modelling, the radio resource management analysis, and the performance evaluation of the downlink of LTE and LTE-Advanced where, among the different features of LTE-Advanced, the focus is on the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission. The Thesis provides a detailed description of the main characteristics of LTE and LTE-Advanced. The high complexity of these systems, has prompted the use of computer simulations as the primary research methodology. The Thesis makes a detailed description of the simulation methodology and the system modelling required, including some contributions of the author in this field. Among them, it is of significant relevance the link-level simulation results used in the European project WINNER + for the LTE evaluation. With regard to the analysis of the radio resource management in LTE, the fundamentals of link adaptation and scheduling are explained in the first place. In relation to the scheduling, the Thesis includes a thorough study of the proportional fairness concept and the suboptimal implementation typically used in LTE to maximize this metric. This study has resulted in a series of ideas embodied in a modification of the typical implementation, which has proved to be capable of increasing the proportional fairness of the resource allocations. Moreover, the link adaptation analysis has revealed the "flash-light" effect problem, which is characterized by a high interference variability due to rapid changes in the scheduling decisions. The Thesis demonstrates that a particular implementation that stabilizes the scheduling decisions can improve the system performance. The radio resource management analysis of this Thesis is completed with the study of CoMP. Specifically, the CoMP scheme studied in this Thesis is a solution with coordinated scheduling and beamforming (CS/CB), that takes into account realistic and robust assumptions concerning the knowledge that the coordinated points have about the channel state. The Thesis proposes this solution for its simplicity and its ability to improve high data rates coverage and capacity even with incomplete channel knowledge. Concerning LTE and LTE-Advanced evaluation, it is performed in two different types of scenarios. On the one hand, the scenarios defined in the process of evaluation of IMT-Advanced. In this framework, it is evaluated the importance of different multi-antenna techniques, including CoMP, considering full-buffer traffic models. The most important conclusions in these scenarios are the significant performance improvement achieved with spatial multiplexing of users and the fact that CoMP mechanisms provide a reduced benefit. The second group of scenarios are those defined by the European project METIS for the evaluation of 5G technologies. Specifically, an indoor office scenario and an outdoor sports stadium have been selected. In these scenarios, a realistic traffic model is used, and it has been demonstrated the utility of CoMP to satisfy the first 5G requirement definitions with feasible frequency bandwidths. In these scenarios with less homogeneous deployments, or with a limited number of transmitters originating the major part of interference, is where this Thesis has found CoMP to be more useful and where the Thesis promotes its use. / [ES] En la actual sociedad, hay una creciente necesidad de acceso a servicios de comunicación de datos de forma ubicua, móvil y a velocidades cada vez más altas. Esta demanda ha motivado el desarrollo de la cuarta generación de comunicaciones móviles (4G) y su evolución hacia la quinta generación (5G). Este desarrollo ha requerido una revolución en la interfaz radio de los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles modificando en gran medida sus capacidades y la forma en la que se gestionan sus recursos. Este es el caso de la tecnología conocida como Long Term Evolution (LTE) y su versión 4G llamada LTE-Advanced. En concreto, esta Tesis Doctoral aborda el modelado, análisis de la gestión de recursos radio y evaluación de prestaciones del enlace descendente de LTE y LTE-Advanced, donde, de entre las características de LTE-Advanced, se ha puesto el foco de atención en la transmisión multipunto coordinada (CoMP). La Tesis proporciona una descripción detallada de las principales características de LTE y LTE-Advanced. La gran complejidad del sistema descrito ha motivado que la metodología de estudio haya sido la simulación mediante ordenador. La Tesis realiza una descripción detallada de dicha metodología y del modelado del sistema empleado, incluyendo algunas aportaciones del autor en este campo. De entre éstas, destaca la provisión de resultados de simulación de nivel de enlace que se usaron en el proyecto europeo WINNER+ para la evaluación de LTE. En cuanto al análisis de la gestión de recursos radio en LTE, en primer lugar, se explican los fundamentos de la adaptación al enlace y el scheduling. En relación con el scheduling, se realiza un estudio del concepto de proportional fairness y de la implementación subóptima típicamente usada en LTE para maximizar esta métrica. Este estudio ha dado como resultado una modificación de la implementación típica que ha demostrado ser capaz de aumentar la proportional fairness en la asignación de recursos con un bajo incremento de complejidad. Además, el análisis de la adaptación al enlace ha revelado el problema del efecto de "luz de flash" consistente en la alta variabilidad de la interferencia debida a rápidos cambios en las decisiones del scheduler. La Tesis demuestra que se pueden mejorar las prestaciones del sistema estabilizando dichas decisiones mediante una implementación concreta. El bloque de análisis de la gestión de recursos se completa con el estudio de CoMP. Específicamente, se estudia una solución con coordinación de scheduling y conformación de haz (CS/CB) que tiene en cuenta suposiciones reales y robustas en cuanto al conocimiento que los puntos coordinados tienen de los canales radio. La Tesis propone esta solución por su sencillez y capacidad de mejorar la eficiencia de los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles, tanto en cobertura de velocidades altas de transmisión como en capacidad, aun teniendo un conocimiento incompleto del canal. En cuanto a la evaluación de LTE y LTE-Advanced, ésta se realiza en dos tipos de escenarios. Por un lado, los escenarios definidos en el proceso de evaluación de IMT-Advanced. En este marco, se evalúa la importancia de diferentes técnicas de transmisión multiantena, incluyendo CoMP, y considerando tráfico de tipo full-buffer. Se ha obtenido una gran mejora de prestaciones por la multiplexación espacial de usuarios y mejoras discretas por el uso de CoMP. El segundo grupo de escenarios son los definidos por el proyecto europeo METIS para evaluación de tecnologías 5G, concretamente se han elegido un escenario de interiores con una oficina, y uno de exteriores con un estadio deportivo. En estos escenarios se utiliza un tráfico realista y se ha demostrado la utilidad de CoMP para mejorar las prestaciones del sistema. En estos escenarios con despliegues menos uniformes, o con un número limitado de transmisores provocando la mayor parte de la interferencia, es donde esta Tesis ha encontrado la mayor u / [CAT] En l'actual societat de la informació, hi ha una creixent necessitat d'accés a serveis de comunicació de dades de forma ubiqua, mòbil i a velocitats cada vegada més altes. Aquesta demanda de la societat, ha motivat el desenrotllament de la quarta generació de comunicacions mòbils (4G) i la seua evolució cap a la quinta generació (5G). Aquest desenrotllament ha requerit una revolució en la interfície ràdio dels sistemes de comunicacions mòbils i ha modificat en gran manera les seues capacitats i la forma en què es gestionen els seus recursos. Aquest és el cas de la tecnologia coneguda com a Long Term Evolution (LTE) i la seua versió 4G anomenada LTE-Advanced. En concret, aquesta Tesi Doctoral aborda el modelatge, anàlisi de la gestió de recursos ràdio i avaluació de prestacions de l'enllaç descendent de LTE i LTE-Advanced, on, d'entre les característiques de LTE-Advanced, s'ha posat el centre d'atenció en la transmissió multipunt coordinada (CoMP). La Tesi proporciona una descripció detallada de les principals característiques de LTE i LTE-Advanced. La gran complexitat del sistema descrit ha motivat que la metodologia d'estudi s'haja basat en simulació per mitjà d'ordinador. La Tesi realitza una descripció detallada de la metodologia de simulació i del modelatge del sistema empleat, incloent-hi algunes aportacions de l'autor en aquest camp. D'entre aquestes, destaca la provisió de resultats de simulació de nivell d'enllaç que es van usar en el projecte europeu WINNER+ per a l'avaluació de LTE. Pel que fa a l'anàlisi de la gestió de recursos ràdio en LTE, en primer lloc, s'expliquen els fonaments de l'adaptació a l'enllaç i el scheduling. En relació amb el scheduling, es realitza un estudi del concepte de proportional fairness i de la implementació subòptima típicament usada en LTE per a maximitzar aquesta mètrica. L'estudi ha donat com a resultat una modificació de la implementació típica que ha demostrat ser capaç d'augmentar la proportional fairness en l'assignació de recursos amb un baix increment de complexitat. A més, l'anàlisi de l'adaptació a l'enllaç ha desvetllat el problema de l'efecte de "llum de flaix" consistent en la alta variabilitat de la interferència deguda a una ràpida variació de les assignacions de recursos. La Tesi demostra que es poden millorar les prestacions del sistema estabilitzant les decisions del scheduler mitjançant una implementació concreta. En el bloc d'anàlisi de la gestió de recursos d'aquesta Tesi es completa amb l'estudi de CoMP. Específicament, s'estudia una solució amb coordinació de scheduling i conformació de feix (CS/CB), que té en compte suposicions reals i robustes quant al coneixement que els punts coordinats tenen dels canals ràdio dels usuaris servits. La Tesi proposa aquesta solució per la seua senzillesa i capacitat de millorar l'eficiència dels sistemes de comunicacions mòbils, tant en cobertura de velocitats altes de transmissió com en capacitat, encara tenint un coneixement incomplet del canal. Quant a l'avaluació de LTE i LTE-Advanced, aquesta es realitza en dos tipus d'escenaris diferents. D'una banda, els escenaris definits dins del procés d'avaluació de tecnologies IMT-Advanced. Dins d'aquest marc, s'avalua la importància de diferents tècniques de transmissió multi-antena, incloent-hi CoMP, i considerant tràfic de tipus full-buffer. S'ha obtingut una gran millora de prestacions amb la multiplexació espacial d'usuaris i una discreta millora amb CoMP. El segon grup d'escenaris són els definits pel projecte europeu METIS per a l'avaluació de tecnologies 5G, concretament s'han triat un escenari d'interiors amb una oficina, i un d'exteriors amb un estadi esportiu, on s'ha utilitzat un tràfic realista. En aquests escenaris amb desplegaments menys uniformes, o amb un nombre limitat de transmissors provocant la major part de la interferència, és on aquesta Tesi ha trobat la utilitat més gran de / Martín-Sacristán Gandía, D. (2016). 3GPP Long Term Evolution: Performance Analysis and Evolution towards 4G with Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/63261 / TESIS

The diploma thesis deals with the issue of adult education in Mexico with an emphasis on the fight against illiteracy. The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive picture of the forms of adult education in Mexico and to analyze its specific aspects and contexts. First, it focuses on the forms of adult education in the Latin American region, and then in Mexico itself. The historical context of adult education in Mexico and the current literacy efforts of the Mexican government and selected international actors are presented. Considerable attention is paid to the issue of illiteracy, its characteristics and the ways in which Mexican society copes with it. The merits of UNESCO and OECD in the fight against illiteracy are also highlighted. Then the Mexican education system, the most famous educational program for adult education and the legislative anchoring of adult education, are introduced. The role of the government's "Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos", which covers adult education services in the country, is not omitted either. Other topics and problems related to adult education are also discussed, such as educational backwardness, functional illiteracy, lifelong learning, etc. Finally, all knowledge about adult education in the country is summarized, put into context...

L’objectif des travaux menés dans le cadre de cette thèse est le déploiement d’un dispositif médical embarqué et portable assurant l’acquisition et la transmission du signal biomédical électrocardiogramme. Il doit intégrer des techniques de traitement avancées et un étage de communication radio. A la quête de nouvelles idées non encore explorées par la communauté scientifique, nous proposons dans notre travail d’appliquer une acquisition compressée intelligente par exploitation du caractère parcimonieux du signal électrocardiogramme à l’aide d’un convertisseur analogique-numérique à échantillonnage non-uniforme. / The objective of this thesis is the deployment of an embedded and portable medical device for acquisition and transmission of the biomedical electrocardiogram signal. The device incorporates advanced processing techniques and a radio communication module. In search of new ideas not yet explored by the scientific community, we propose in our work to apply an intelligent compressed acquisition by exploiting the sparsity character of the electrocardiogram using a non-uniform sampling analog-to-digital converter.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird eine Prozedur zur Ordnungsreduktion von Finite Elemente Modellen mikromechanischer Struktur mit elektrostatischem Wirkprinzip entwickelt und analysiert. Hintergrund der Ordnungsreduktion ist eine Koordinatentransformation von lokalen Finite Elemente Koordinaten in globale Koordinaten. Die globalen Koordinaten des reduzierten Modells werden durch einige wenige Formfunktionen beschrieben. Damit wird das Makromodell nicht mehr durch lokale Knotenverschiebungen beschrieben, sondern durch globale Formfunktionen, welche die gesamte Deformation der Struktur beeinflussen. Es wird gezeigt, dass Eigenvektoren der linearisierten mechanischen Struktur einfache und effiziente Formfunktionen darstellen. Weiterhin kann diese Methode für bestimmte Nichtlinearitäten und für verschiedene in Mikrosystemen auftretende Lasten angewendet werden. Das Ergebnis sind Makromodelle, die über Klemmen in Systemsimulatoren eingebunden werden können, die Genauigkeiten einer Finite Elemente Analyse erreichen und für Systemsimulationen typische Laufzeitverhalten besitzen.

The traditional construction practice used in masonry buildings throughout the world is limited to walls with rectangular cross sections that, when reinforced with steel bars, typically accommodate only single-leg horizontal ties and a single layer of vertical reinforcement. This arrangement provides no confinement at the wall toes, and it may lead to instability in critical wall zones and significant structural damage during seismic events. Conversely, the development of a new building system, constructed with reinforced masonry (RM) walls with boundary elements, allows closed ties to be used as confinement reinforcement, thus minimizing such instability and its negative consequences. Relative to traditional walls, walls with boundary elements have enhanced performance because they enable the compression reinforcement to remain effective up to much larger displacement demands, resulting in a damage tolerant system and eventually, more resilient buildings under extreme events. Research on the system-level (complete building) performance of RM walls with boundary elements is, at the time of publication of this dissertation, nonexistent in open literature. What little research has been published on this innovative building system has focused only on investigating the component-level performance of RM walls with boundary elements under lateral loads. To address this knowledge gap, the dissertation presents a comprehensive research program that covered: component-level performance simulation; system-level (complete building) experimental testing; seismic risk assessment tools; and simplified analytical models to facilitate adoption of the developed new building system. In addition, and in order to effectively mobilize the knowledge generated through the research program to stakeholders, the work has been directly related to building codes in Canada and the USA (NBCC and ASCE-7) as well as other standards including FEMA P695 (FEMA 2009) (Chapter 2), TMS 402 and CSA S304 (Chapter 3), FEMA P58 (FEMA 2012) (Chapter 4), and ASCE-41 (Chapter 5). Chapter 1 of the dissertation highlights its objectives, focus, scope and general organization. The simulation in Chapter 2 is focused on evaluating the component-level overstrength, period-based ductility, and seismic collapse margin ratios under the maximum considered earthquakes. Whereas previous studies have shown that traditional RM walls might not meet the collapse risk criteria established by FEMA P695, the analysis presented in this chapter clearly shows that RM shear walls with boundary elements not only meet the collapse risk criteria, but also exceed it with a significant margin. Following the component-level simulation presented in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 focused on presenting the results of a complete two-story asymmetrical RM shear wall building with boundary elements, experimentally tested under simulated seismic loading. This effort was aimed at demonstrating the discrepancies between the way engineers design buildings (as individual components) and the way these buildings actually behave as an integrated system, comprised of these components. In addition, to evaluate the enhanced resilience of the new building system, the tested building was designed to have the same lateral resistance as previously tested building with traditional RM shear walls, thus facilitating direct comparison. The experimental results yielded two valuable findings: 1) it clearly demonstrated the overall performance enhancements of the new building system in addition to its reduced reinforcement cost; and 2) it highlighted the drawbacks of the building acting as a system compared to a simple summation of its individual components. In this respect, although the slab diaphragm-wall coupling enhanced the building lateral capacity, this enhancement also meant that other unpredictable and undesirable failure modes could become the weaker links, and therefore dominate the performance of the building system. Presentation of these findings has attracted much attention of codes and standards committees (CSA S304 and TMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5) in Canada and the USA, as it resulted in a paradigm shift on how the next-generation of building codes (NBCC and ASCE-7) should be developed to address system-levels performance aspects. Chapter 4 introduced an innovative system-level risk assessment methodology by integrating the simulation and experimental test results of Chapters 2 and 3. In this respect, the experimentally validated simulations were used to generate new system-level fragility curves that provide a realistic assessment of the overall building risk under different levels of seismic hazard. Although, within the scope of this dissertation, the methodology has been applied only on buildings constructed with RM walls with boundary elements, the developed new methodology is expected to be adopted by stakeholders of other new and existing building systems and to be further implemented in standards based on the current FEMA P58 risk quantification approaches. Finally, and in order to translate the dissertation findings into tools that can be readily used by stakeholders to design more resilient buildings in the face of extreme events, simplified backbone and hysteretic models were developed in Chapter 5 to simulate the nonlinear response of RM shear wall buildings with different configurations. These models can be adapted to perform the nonlinear static and dynamic procedures that are specified in the ASCE-41 standards for both existing and new building systems. The research in this chapter is expected to have a major positive impact, not only in terms of providing more realistic model parameters for exiting building systems, but also through the introduction of analytical models for new more resilient building systems to be directly implemented in future editions of the ASCE-41. This dissertation presents a cohesive body of work that is expected to influence a real change in terms of how we think about, design, and construct buildings as complex systems comprised of individual components. The dissertation’s overarching hypothesis is that previous disasters have not only exposed the vulnerability of traditional building systems, but have also demonstrated the failure of the current component-by-component design approaches to produce resilient building systems and safer communities under extreme events. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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