In the present work, physicochemical treatments were introduced for de-aggregation and stable dispersion of detonation nanodiamonds (DND) in polar solvents. The DNDs in water exhibited a particle size of 138 nm and high dispersion stability without particular treatment. However, the DNDs in ethanol were severely aggregated to several micrometers in size and showed poor dispersion stability with time. To break down aggregates of DNDs and enhance the dispersion stability of them in ethanol, mechanical force and chemical surfactant were introduced as functions of zirconia ball size, kind of surfactant and amount of surfactant added. From the analyses of average particle size and Turbiscan results, it was suggested that the size of DNDs in ethanol can be reduced by only mechanical force; however, the DNDs were re-aggregated due to high surface activity. The long-term dispersion stability can be achieved by applying mechanical force to break down the aggregates of DNDs and by preventing re-aggregation of them using proper surfactant.

Failure risk investigation of any structure in a seismic zone can be done by the seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA), which became a very attractive area of research in terms of safety measurement. This paper introduces such kind of concept to identify which magnitude in a specific seismic zone will contribute more vulnerable failure point in a structure. Here, for implement this idea a case study on a concrete gravity dam has been carried out. In order to make a correlation between the magnitude and failure risk contribution based on different damage stage, a combination of seismic hazard analysis and the probability of structural collapse is adopted. Therefore, the deaggregation of the mean annual frequency of failure risk by magnitude is used in this study to quantify four different limit stages of failure identification criteria. Consequently, from analyzing the result, in case of concrete gravity dam, this deaggregation approach shows the tensile crack in the base looks more vulnerable damage stage for the specific seismic zone.