• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.335-343
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• 2010

Steel corrosion in reinforced concrete (RC) structures is a critical problem to structural safety and many researches are being actively conducted on developing methods to maintain the required performance of the RC structures during their intended service lives. In this study, concrete mixture proportioning technique through genetic algorithm (GA) for RC structures under carbonation, which is considered to be serious in underground site and big cities, is investigated. For this, mixture proportions and diffusion coefficients of $CO_2$ from the previous researches were analyzed and fitness function for $CO_2$ diffusion coefficient was derived through regression analysis. This function based on the 12 experimental results consisted of 5 variables including water-cement ratio (W/C), cement content, sand percentage, coarse aggregate content per unit volume of concrete in unit, and relative humidity. Through genetic algorithm (GA) technique, simulated mixture proportions were proposed for 3 cases of verification and they showed reasonable results with less than relative error of 10%. Finally, assuming intended service life, different exposure conditions, design parameters, intended $CO_2$ diffusion coefficients, and cement contents were determined and related mixture proportions were simulated. This proposed technique is capable of suggesting reasonable mix proportions and can be modified based on experimental data which consider various mixing components like mineral admixtures.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.9-16
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• 2010

Roughness is the most important factor to maintain the road performance, and affects greatly on the design life in Jointed Plain Concrete pavements. Also, the factors the evaluate pavement‘s commonality is the three method such as functionality, safety and structural performance. In evaluating function of road, representative factors is the roughness, which has been used to determine maintenance time as key standard. As research for roughness is absence in pavement design. Applied roughness-model had a low-reliability in Korea. Therefore, it is needed to develop reliable model in road roughness. In this research, uniform specific is applied to distribute them after selecting the concrete pavements. Concrete pavement is divided by sections of 238. Total length of this sections has 281km and account for 16% of total road length in korean concrete pavements for selected sections. Considering the korean roughness-model, the evaluation of roughness is performed for the freezing index, average annual rainfall, condition for the base, the amount of traffic as well as spalling(%), cracking(%), age(year) at the selected section at the selected section. Also, additional sections is selected to evaluate various age which affects on the roughness. As a result of the analysis, it showed that spalling(%), cracking(%), age(year), and the condition of the base affected road roughness. When the correlation with the road roughness was analyzed, the reliable model for road roughness was proposed, and the ratio that can explain road roughness was R2-68.8% and P value-0 which is statistically meaningful.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.205-211
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• 2015

Most of the sulfur is obtained from desulfurization of natural gas and crude oil. In Korea, more than 120 tons of sulfur are produced by refinery, and about 50 % of the produced sulfur is used as a raw material for the production of fertilizer and sulfuric acid. Modified sulfur is manufactured from excessive sulfur that could be used to improve concrete properties, and this study evaluated concrete strength and durability that contains modified sulfur. Flexural and compressive strengths of concrete with sulfur modified polymer were comparable to those of OPC concrete with mixing water at similar temperatures, while the strengths increased a little as mixing water temperature increased. It was also confirmed that the resistance to freeze-thaw damage was more dependent on entrained air characteristics obtained by a proper use of air entraining agent than on the use of sulfur modified polymer. When concrete was immersed in 5 % sulfuric acid, the rate of reduction in compressive strength of OPC concrete was less than 1/4 of the strength reduction of concrete with sulfur modified polymer. Also, the resistance of concrete with sulfur modified polymer to scaling due to the use of de-icing salt was evaluated as Class 1, while that of OPC concrete was evaluated as Class 4, as aggregates were exposed. Accordingly, it is believed that sulfur modified polymer could be effectively used for bridge deck concrete since sulfur modified polymer improves the durability of concrete.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.4542-4551
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• 2013

Recently, much attention has focused on the study of eco-friendly concrete using recycled by-products for protecting marine ecosystem and durability of concrete exposed to marine condition. This study evaluated the durabilities of 4 different type of concrete mixtures(Control, Marine, Porous, New slag) with the seawater resistance by marine environment exposure experiment and freeze-thaw resistance, resistance to chloride ion penetration considering severe deterioration environment. In this study, we conducted seawater resistance using compressive strength according to the age(7/28/56 days) of specimen and curing conditions(standard(fresh water), tidal, immersion, artificial seawater). The results show that compressive strength of concrete exposed to marine environment exposure condition was lower than those of the standard curing condition. Also, compressive strength of New slag using eco-friendly materials for protecting marine ecosystem was lower than those of other concretes, there is need to improve the performance of New slag. The results for freeze-thaw resistance showed that all mixtures have excellent, but the Porous and New slag were lower than others. Also, the more improved resistance to chloride ion penetration than those of the Marine was measured in the New slag regardless of curing condition.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.1A
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• pp.53-59
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• 2010

Recently, NDTs (Non-Destructive Techniques) using infrared camera are widely studied for detection of damage and void in RC (reinforced concrete) structures and they are also considered as an effective techniques for maintenance of infrastructures. The temperature on concrete surface depends on material and thermal properties such as specific heat, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusion coefficient. Different porosity on cement mortar due to different mixture proportions can show different heat behavior in cooling stage. The porosity can affect physical and durability properties like strength and chloride diffusion coefficient as well. In this paper, active thermography which uses flash for heat induction is utilized and thermal characteristics on surface are evaluated. Samples of cement mortar with W/C (water to cement ratio) of 0.55 and 0.65 are prepared and physical properties like porosity, compressive strength, and chloride diffusion coefficient are evaluated. Then infrared thermography technique is carried out in a constant room condition (temperature $20{\sim}22^{\circ}C$ and relative humidity 55-60%). The mortar samples with higher porosity shows higher residual temperature at the cooling stage and also shows reduced critical time which shows constant temperature due to back wall effect. Furthermore, simple equation for critical time of back wall effect is suggested with porosity and experimental constants. These characteristics indicate the applicability of infrared thermography as an NDT for quality assessment of cement based composite like concrete. Physical properties and thermal behavior in cement mortar with different porosity are analyzed in discussed in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.388-395
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• 2016

This paper explores the photocatalytic sensitivity of cement mortar incorporated with recycled $TiO_2$ from waste water sludge. Basically, $TiO_2$ cluster sank down slowly to the bottom of cement mortar specimen before setting and hardening process. This leads the mismatch of $TiO_2$ concentration on the top and the bottom faces of a specimen. This poorly dispersed $TiO_2$-cement mortar naturally exhibits poor NOx removal efficiency especially on the top of cementitious structure. In architectural engineering application such as building or housing structures, one can simply filp over from the bottom so that more $TiO_2$ concentrated surface can be placed outward into the air. However, in highway pavement case, this could not be applicable due to in-situ installation of concrete pavement. Hence, the dispersion of $TiO_2$ cluster inside the cementitous material is getting important issue onto road construction application. To elaborate this issue, according to our results, silica fume, high-ranged water reducer, viscosity agent, blast furnace slag were not enhanced much of dispersion characteristics of $TiO_2$ cluster. The combination of foaming agent and accelerator of hardening with viscosity agent and small grain size of fine aggregate may help the dispersion of $TiO_2$ inside cementitious materials. Even though the enhanced dispersion were applied to the specimen, NOx removal efficiency doest not change much for the top surface of the specimen. This concurrently affected by the presence of tiny air voids and the dispersion of $TiO_2$ in that these voids could easily adsorbed NOx gas with the aid of large surface area.