• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-215
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• 2016

Rehabilitation of historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is a priority in many parts of the world, since those buildings are a living part of history and a testament of human achievement of the era of their construction. Many of these buildings are still operational; comprising brittle materials with no reinforcements, with spatially distributed mass and stiffness, they are not encompassed by current seismic assessment procedures that have been developed for other structural types. To facilitate the difficult task of selecting a proper rehabilitation strategy - often restricted by international treaties for non-invasiveness and reversibility of the intervention - and given the practical requirements for the buildings' intended reuse, this paper presents a practical procedure for assessment of seismic demands of URM buildings - mainly historical constructions that lack a well-defined diaphragm action. A key ingredient of the method is approximation of the spatial shape of lateral translation, ${\Phi}$, that the building assumes when subjected to a uniform field of lateral acceleration. Using ${\Phi}$ as a 3-D shape function, the dynamic response of the system is evaluated, using the concepts of SDOF approximation of continuous systems. This enables determination of the envelope of the developed deformations and the tendency for deformation and damage localization throughout the examined building for a given design earthquake scenario. Deformation demands are specified in terms of relative drift ratios referring to the in-plane and the out-of-plane seismic response of the building's structural elements. Drift ratio demands are compared with drift capacities associated with predefined performance limits. The accuracy of the introduced procedure is evaluated through (a) comparison of the response profiles with those obtained from detailed time-history dynamic analysis using a suite of ten strong ground motion records, five of which with near-field characteristics, and (b) evaluation of the performance assessment results with observations reported in reconnaissance reports of the field performance of two neoclassical torsionally-sensitive historical buildings, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, which survived a major earthquake in the past.

• Bulletin of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.49-63
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• 1989

Wave drift forces which are small in magnitudes compared to the first order wave exciting forces can cause very large motion of a vessel in waves. In this paper a theoretical and experimental analysis is made of the mean and slowly varying wave dirft forces on the semi-submersible platform. Theoretical calculations are performed by using near field method with three dimensional diffraction theory and model tests are carried out in regular and irregular waves with a 1/60 semi model. Test results are compared with theoretical calculations and the mooring spring effects in the test are discussed.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.825-831
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• 2007

An elbow orthosis with a pneumatic rubber actuator has been developed to assist and enhance upper limb movements and has been examined for the effectiveness. The effectiveness of the elbow orthosis was examined by comparing muscular activities during alternate dumbbell curl exercises with and without the orthosis. The subjects participated in the experiment were younger adults in their twenties. The subjects were instructed to perform dumbbell curl motion in a sitting position with and without orthosis in turn and a dynamometer was used to measure elbow joint torque outputs in an isovelocity mode. The measurements were done with four various dumbbell loads: 0 kg, 1 kg, 3 kg, and 5 kg. The orthosis was pneumatically actuated and controlled in a passive mode. The most comfortable air pressure to the pneumatic actuator was determined to be 0.294MPa. Electromyography(EMG) was also measured during curl exercises. The muscles of interest were biceps brachii(BB), triceps brachii(TB), brachioradialis(Bo), and flexor carpi ulnaris(FCU) in the upper limbs. The experimental results showed that the muscular activities themselves significantly reduced with elbow orthosis on in performing similar activities without orthosis. As a result of this experiment, the effectiveness of the developed upper limb orthosis was confirmed and the level of assistance was quantified.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.101-110
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• 2004

The robots that will be needed in the near future are human-friendly robots that are able to coexist with humans and support humans effectively. To realize this, humans and robots need to be in close proximity to each other as much as possible. Moreover, it is necessary for their interactions to occur naturally. It is desirable for a robot to carry out human following, as one of the human-affinitive movements. The human-following robot requires several techniques: the recognition of the moving objects, the feature extraction and visual tracking, and the trajectory generation for following a human stably. In this research, a predictable intelligent space is used in order to achieve these goals. An intelligent space is a 3-D environment in which many sensors and intelligent devices are distributed. Mobile robots exist in this space as physical agents providing humans with services. A mobile robot is controlled to follow a walking human using distributed intelligent sensors as stably and precisely as possible. The moving objects is assumed to be a point-object and projected onto an image plane to form a geometrical constraint equation that provides position data of the object based on the kinematics of the intelligent space. Uncertainties in the position estimation caused by the point-object assumption are compensated using the Kalman filter. To generate the shortest time trajectory to follow the walking human, the linear and angular velocities are estimated and utilized. The computer simulation and experimental results of estimating and following of the walking human with the mobile robot are presented.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.856-865
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• 2015

In a high-speed press, numerous moving links are interconnected and each link executes a constrained motion at high speed. As a consequence, high-level dynamic unbalance force and unbalance moment are transmitted to the main frame of the press, which results in unwanted vibration and significantly degrades manufacturing accuracy. Dynamic unbalance force and unbalance moment inevitably transmits high-level vibrational force to the foundation on which the press is installed. Minimizing the vibrational force transmitted to the foundation is critical for the protection of both the operators and the surrounding structures. The whole task should be carried out in two steps. The first step is to reduce dynamic unbalance based upon kinematic and dynamic analyses. The second step is to design and build an optimal vibration isolation system minimizing the vibrational force transmitted to the foundation. Firstly, the dynamic design method is presented to reduce dynamic unbalance force and moment. For this a 3D CAD software was utilized and a computer program was written to compute dynamic unbalance force and moment. Secondly, the design method for vibration isolation system is presented. The method for designing coil springs and viscous dampers are explained in detail.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 2017

Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of variations in arm swing during gait on movement of the trunk and pelvis. During the gait task, the angle of the trunk and pelvic rotation were analyzed according to arm swing conditions. Methods: Seventeen healthy males participated in this study. All subjects were analyzed for gait on a treadmill three times each under three different types of arm swing conditions - natural arm swing, restricted arm swing using a phone, restricted swing in both arms. 3-D motion analysis systems were used to collect and analyze the kinematic data of trunk and pelvic movements, and repeated one-way ANOVA was used to compare the trunk and pelvic kinematic data and symmetry index. The level of significance was ${\alpha}=0.05$. Results: The results showed kinematic differences in trunk and pelvic during gait based on the arm swing conditions. Specifically, there were significant differences in trunk rotation, left and right trunk rotation and symmetry index of trunk rotation during gait among the three arm swing conditions. ROM was used to calculate a symmetry index (SI) based on the average left and right trunk rotation in which a value closer to zero indicated better balance. The SI obtained for arm swing restricted with the phone was closer to -1 than the other conditions. Conclusion: Restricted arm swing due to use of a phone had the possibility to induce instability of postural control while walking, which could be seen to suggest a risk of falling during gait.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.13
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• pp.223-236
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• 2008

The video game industry is obsessed by the perception of "Next Generation Game". Appearance of the next generation game console has required the video game industry to renovate new technologies for their entire production. This tendency increases a huge mount of production cost. Game companies have to hire more designers to create a solid concept, artists to generate more detailed content, and programmers to optimize for more complex hardware. All those high cost efforts provide great locking games, but the potential of next generation game consoles does not end there. They also bring possibilities of the new types of gameplay. Next generation game contains a much larger pool of memories for every video game elements. The entire video game used to use roughly 800 animation files, but next generation game is pushing scripted event well over 4000 animation flies. That allows a lot of very unique custom animation for pretty much every action in the game. It gives game players much more vivid and realistic appreciation of the virtual world. Players are not being able to see any recycling of the same animation over and over when they are playing next generation game. The main purpose of this thesis is that defines the concept of next generation game and analyzes new animation-pipeline to be used in the shooter games.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.4
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• pp.409-421
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• 2018

In the present paper, functionally graded (FG) materials are presented to investigate the bending analysis of simply supported plates. It is assumed that the material properties of the plate vary through their length according to the power-law form. The displacement field of the present model is selected based on quasi-3D hyperbolic shear deformation theory. By splitting the deflection into bending, shear and stretching parts, the number of unknowns and equations of motion of the present formulation is reduced and hence makes them simple to use. Governing equations are derived from the principle of virtual displacements. Numerical results for deflections and stresses of powerly graded plates under simply supported boundary conditions are presented. The accuracy of the present formulation is demonstrated by comparing the computed results with those available in the literature. As conclusion, this theory is as accurate as other shear deformation theories and so it becomes more attractive due to smaller number of unknowns. Some numerical results are provided to examine the effects of the material gradation, shear deformation on the static behavior of FG plates with variation of material stiffness through their length.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.513-528
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• 2018

A typical viable technique to decrease the seismic response of liquid storage tanks is to isolate them at the base. Base-isolation systems are an efficient and feasible solution to reduce the vulnerability of structures in high seismic risk zones. Nevertheless, when liquid storage tanks are under long-period shaking, the base-isolation systems could have different impacts. These kinds of earthquakes can damage the tanks readily. Hence, the seismic behaviour and vibration of cylindrical liquid storage tanks, subjected to earthquakes, is of paramount importance, and it is investigated in this paper. The Finite Element Method is used to evaluate seismic response in addition to the reduction of excessive liquid sloshing in the tank when subjected to the long-period ground motion. The non-linear stress-strain behaviour pertaining to polymers and rubbers is implemented while non-linear contact elements are employed to describe the 3-D surface-to-surface contact. Therefore, Nonlinear Procedures are used to investigate the fluid-structure interactions (FSI) between liquid and the tank wall while there is incompressible liquid. Part I, examines the effect of the flexibility of the isolation system and the tank aspect ratio (height to radius) on the tank wall radial displacements of the tank wall and the liquid sloshing heights. Maximum stress and base shear force for various aspect ratios and different base-isolators, which are subjected to three seismic conditions, will be discussed in Part II. It is shown that the composite-base isolator is much more effective than other isolators due to its high flexibility and strength combined. Moreover, the base isolators may decrease the maximum level pertaining to radial displacement.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.343-349
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• 2012

Objective : Pedicle-based dynamic stabilization systems, in which semi-rigid rods or cords are used to restrict or control spinal segmental motion, aim to reduce or eliminate the drawbacks associated with rigid fusion. In this study, we analyzed the two-year clinical outcomes of patients treated with the NFlex (Synthes Spine, Inc.), a pedicle-based dynamic stabilization system. Methods : Five sites participated in a retrospective study of 72 consecutive patients who underwent NFlex stabilization. Of these 72 patients, 65 were available for 2-year follow-up. Patients were included based on the presence of degenerative disc disease (29 patients), degenerative spondylolisthesis (16 patients), lumbar stenosis (9 patients), adjacent segment degeneration (6 patients), and degenerative lumbar scoliosis (5 patients). The clinical outcome measures at each assessment were Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) to measure back pain, and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) to measure functional status. Radiographic assessments included evidence of instrumentation failure or screw loosening. Results : Sixty-five patients (26 men and 39 women) with a mean age of 54.5 years were included. Mean follow-up was 25.6 months. The mean VAS score improved from 8.1 preoperatively to 3.8 postoperatively, representing a 53% improvement, and the ODI score from 44.5 to 21.8, representing a 51% improvement. Improvements in pain and disability scores were statistically significant. Three implant-related complications were observed. Conclusion : Posterior pedicle-based dynamic stabilization using the NFlex system seems effective in improving pain and functional scores, with sustained clinical improvement after two years. With appropriate patient selection, it may be considered an effective alternative to rigid fusion.