• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.273-282
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• 2023

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been widely used to evaluate the seismic risk of nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, studies on seismic PSA for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants, have been scarce. This is because the major disasters to which these process plants are vulnerable include explosions, fires, and release (or dispersion) of toxic chemicals. However, seismic PSA is essential for the plants located in regions with significant earthquake risks. Seismic PSA entails probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), event tree analysis (ETA), fault tree analysis (FTA), and fragility analysis for the structures and essential equipment items. Among those analyses, ETA can depict the accident sequence for core damage, which is the worst disaster and top event concerning NPPs. However, there is no general top event with regard to process plants. Therefore, PSA cannot be directly applied to process plants. Moreover, there is a paucity of studies on developing fragility curves for various equipment. This paper introduces PSA for gas plants based on FTA, which is then transformed into Bayesian network, that is, a probabilistic graph model that can aid risk-informed decision-making. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a gas plant, and several decision-making cases are demonstrated.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.77-84
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• 2021

A sampling-based approach was devised as a nuclear seismic probabilistic risk assessment (SPRA) method to account for the partially correlated relationships between components. However, since this method is based on sampling, there is a limitation that a large number of samples must be extracted to estimate the results accurately. Thus, in this study, we suggest an effective approach to improve the existing sampling method. The main features of this approach are as follows. In place of the existing Monte Carlo sampling (MCS) approach, the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method that enables effective sampling in multiple dimensions is introduced to the SPRA method. In addition, the degree of segmentation of the seismic intensity is determined with respect to the final seismic risk result. By applying the suggested approach to an actual nuclear power plant as an example, the accuracy of the results were observed to be almost similar to those of the existing method, but the efficiency was increased by a factor of two in terms of the total number of samples extracted. In addition, it was confirmed that the LHS-based method improves the accuracy of the solution in a small sampling region.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.129-139
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• 2000

The liquefaction of reclaimed land generally caused the harbor facilities to hazards. In Korea, the major harbor quay walls are gravity type and the gravity quay wall is not a good earthquake resistant structure. Recently, various earthquake resistant quay walls have been suggested, but the study on the efficiency of reinforced quay wall was not much performed. In this study, numerical analysis is carried out for performance evaluation of easily adoptable earthquake resistant quay walls. The results of numerical analysis are compared with shaking table test that is performed at the same cross-section.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.53-56
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• 2008

Reinforced concrete rahmen structures has been required ductility as well as strength of beam-column joint in seismically hazard area. Some investigations have been presented for retrofitting and/or strengthening structural elements in structure. Strain-hardening cementitious composite(SHCC) has been expected excellent reinforcement performance in beam-column joint area. The properties of reinforcing fiber, as tensile strength, aspect ratio and elastic moudulus, have great effect on the fracture behavior of SHCC. The purpose of this experimental study is to evaluate structural performance of exterior reinforced concrete beam-column joint strengthened with SHCC under cyclic loading.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.33-41
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• 2013

Due to a high level of system ductility, steel moment resisting frames have been widely used for lateral force resisting structural systems in high seismic zones. Earthquake field investigations after Northridge earthquake in 1994 and Kobe earthquake in 1995 have reported that many steel moment resisting frames designed before 1990's had suffered significant damages and structural collapse. In this research, seismic performance assessment of steel moment resisting frames designed in accordance with the previous seismic provisions before 1990's was performed. Buckling-restrained braces and shear walls are considered for seismic retrofit of the reference buildings. Increasing stiffness and strength of the buildings using buckling-restrained braces and shear walls are considered as options to rehabilitate the damaged buildings. Probabilistic seismic performance assessment using fragility analysis results is used for the criteria for determining an appropriate seismic retrofit strategy. The fragility contour method can be used to provide an intial guideline to structural engineers when various structural retrofit options for the damaged buildings are available.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.271-280
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• 2018

This paper presents a framework for developing aftershock fragility curves for reinforced concrete bridges initially damaged by mainshocks. The presented aftershock fragility is a damage-dependent fragility function, which is conditioned on an initial damage state resulting from mainshocks. The presented framework can capture the cumulative damage of as-built bridges due to mainshock-aftershock sequences as well as the reduced vulnerability of bridges repaired with CFRP pier jackets. To achieve this goal, the numerical model of column jackets is firstly presented and then validated using existing experimental data available in literature. A four-span concrete box-girder bridge is selected as a case study to examine the application of the presented framework. The aftershock fragility curves are derived using response data from back-to-back nonlinear dynamic analyses under mainshock-aftershock sequences. The aftershock fragility curves for as-built bridge columns are firstly compared with different levels of initial damage state, and then the post-repair effect of FRP pier jacket is examined through the comparison of aftershock fragility curves for as-built and repaired piers.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2010.10a
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• pp.25-28
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• 2010

최근 건축물의 초고층화에 따른 커튼월 시공에 따라 유리의 비중이 증가하고 있으나 커튼월 구조는 바람, 지진, 화재에 있어서 취약할 것이라 판단되어 국내외 건축용 유리 및 커튼월의 안전기준에 대한 조사를 실시하였다. 그 결과, 국내의 유리 기준은 단열 및 내풍압 성능에만 집중되어있으며 화재 및 지진, 안전 성능에 대한 기준이 미비한 실정이다. 따라서 국내에 적합한 유리 안전성 평가 프로세스를 구축하기 위한 기초 데이터를 마련하기 위해 유리 내화 실험을 시행하였다. 실험 결과, 일반유리, 복층유리, 강화유리, 접합유리 순의 파열 시간을 가지는 것을 알 수 있었으나 시험체 4개가 화재 초기에 파열되는 것으로 나타나 상층부로의 수직 화재 확대 위험성이 높을 것으로 판단된다.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 2019

Diagonally reinforced concrete coupling beams (DRCBs) have been widely adopted in reinforced concrete (RC) bearing wall systems. DRCBs are known to act as a fuse element dissipating most of seismic energies imparted to the bearing wall systems during earthquakes. Despite such importance of DRCBs, the damage estimation of such components and the corresponding consequences within the knowledge of performance based seismic design framework is not well understood. In this paper, drift-based fragility functions are developed for in-plane loaded DRCBs. Fragility functions are developed to predict the damage and to decide the repair method required for DRCBs subjected to earthquake loading. Thirty-seven experimental results are collected from seventeen published literatures for this effort. Drift-based fragility functions are developed for four damage states of DRCBs subjected to cyclic and monotonic loading associated with minor cracking, severe cracking, onset of strength loss, and significant strength loss. Damage states are defined in a consistent manner. Cumulative distribution functions are fit to the empirical data and evaluated using standard statistical methods.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.83-102
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• 2022

After the earthquake in South Korea (Gyeongju and Pohang), interest in securing the seismic performance of piloti buildings was increasing. In this paper, a study was conducted to propose a seismic retrofit method for piloti building of LH. The proposed seismic retrofit method considers the priority of seismic retrofit and the type of core. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed seismic retrofit method, computational analysis was performed according to the type of core. As a result, it was confirmed that the seismic performance was improved when the proposed seismic retrofit method was used.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_1
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• pp.217-229
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• 2020

Recently, weather changes in Korea have intensified due to global warming, and the five major natural disasters that occur mostly include heavy rains, typhoons, storms, heavy snow, and earthquakes. Busan is vulnerable to snow disaster, given that the amount of natural disaster damage in Busan accounts for more than 50% of the total amount in the entire metropolitan cities in Korea, and that the Busan area includes many hilly mountains. In this study, we attempted to identify vulnerable areas for snowfall disasters in Busan areas using the geographic information system (GIS) with the data for both geographical and anthropogenic characteristics. We produced the maps of vulnerable areas for evaluating factors that include altitude, slope, land cover, road networks, and demographics, and overlapped those maps to rank the vulnerability to snowfall disasters as the 5th levels finally. To weight each evaluating factor, we used an entropy method. The riskiest areas are characterized by being located in mountainous areas with roads, including Sansung-ro in Geumjeong-gu, Mandeok tunnel in Buk-gu, Hwangnyeongsan-ro in Suyeong-gu, and others, where road restrictions were actually enforced due to snowfall events in the past. This method is simple and easy to be updated, and thus we think this methodology can be adapted to identify vulnerable areas for other environmental disasters.