• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.164-166
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• 2001

To examine the characteristics of the recombinant thin aggregative fimbriae of Salmonella, the AgfA subunit gene was amplified from Salmonella enteritidis using a PCR. The maltose binding protein (MBP)-AgfA fusion protein was overproduced in E. coli and purified. The secondary structure of AgfA was then elucidated from the difference CD spectra. An estimation of the secondary structure of AgfA using the self-consistent method revealed a mostly ${\beta}-sheet$ structure.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.2928-2947
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• 2015

Adaptive Gaussian filter (AGF) is a recently developed switching filter to remove salt and pepper noise. AGF first directly identifies pixels of gray levels 0 and 255 as noise pixels, and then only restored noise pixels using a Gaussian filter with adaptive variance based on the estimated noise density. AGF usually achieves better denoising effect in comparison with other filters. However, AGF still fails to obtain good denoising effect on images with noise-free pixels of gray levels 0 and 255, due to its severe false alarm in its noise detection stage. To alleviate this issue, a modified version of AGF is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the proposed filter first performs noise detection via an image block based noise density estimation and sequential noise density guided rectification on the noise detection result of AGF. Then, a modified Gaussian filter with adaptive variance and window size is used to restore the detected noise pixels. The proposed filter has been extensively evaluated on two representative grayscale images and the Berkeley image dataset BSDS300 with 300 images. Experimental results showed that the proposed filter achieved better denoising effect over the state-of-the-art filters, especially on images with noise-free pixels of gray levels 0 and 255.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.293-305
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• 2023

To ensure the safety of underground infrastructures, ground can sometimes be first treated by cement slurry and then stabilized using artificial ground freezing (AGF) technique before excavation. The hydration heat produced by cement slurry increases the soil temperature before freezing and results in an extension of the active freezing time (AFT), especially when the Metro Jet System (MJS) treatment is adopted due to a high cement-soil ratio. In this paper, by taking advantage of an on-going project, a case study was performed to evaluate the influence of MJS and AGF on the ground temperature variation through on-site measurement and numerical simulation. Both on-site measurement and simulation results reveal that MJS resulted in a significant increase in the soil temperature after treatment. The ground temperature gradually decreases and then stabilized after completion of MJS. The initiation of AGF resulted in a quick decrease in ground temperature. The ground temperature then slowly decreased and stabilized at later freezing. A slight difference in ground temperature exists between the on-site measurements and simulation results due to limitations of numerical simulation. For the AGF system, numerical simulation is still strongly recommended because it is proven to be cost-effective for predicting the ground temperature variation with reasonable accuracy.

• Transactions of the KSME C: Technology and Education
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.183-191
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• 2015

In this study, the finite element analysis was carried out to investigate dynamic characteristics of the AGF(Active Gurney Flap) which is under development for reducing vibration and noise of the helicopter rotor system. The Gurney flap is a kind of small flat plate, mounted normal to the lower surface of the airfoil near to the trailing edge. An electric motor, L-shaped linkages and flap parts were integrated into a rotor bade, and 3~5/rev control was given to the AGF to reduce the vibration in the fixed frame. Thus, an explicit time integration method was adopted to investigate the dynamic response of the AGF with considering both centrifugal force due to the rotor rotation and active control input, and it can be seen that the vertical displacement of the AGF was satisfied to meet the design requirement.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.433-445
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• 2021

Artificial ground freezing (AGF) is a commonly used geotechnical support technique that can be applied in any soil type and has low environmental impact. Experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to optimize AGF for application in diverse scenarios. Precise simulation of groundwater flow is crucial to improving the reliability these investigations' results. Previous experimental research has mostly considered horizontal seepage flow, which does not allow accurate calculation of the groundwater flow velocity due to spatial variation of the piezometric head. This study adopted vertical seepage flow-which can maintain a constant cross-sectional area-to eliminate the limitations of using horizontal seepage flow. The closure time is a measure of the time taken for an impermeable layer to begin to form, this being the time for a frozen soil-ice wall to start forming adjacent to the freeze pipes; this is of great importance to applied AGF. This study reports verification of the reliability of our experimental apparatus and measurement system using only water, because temperature data could be measured while freezing was observed visually. Subsequent experimental AFG tests with saturated sandy soil were also performed. From the experimental results, a method of estimating closure time is proposed using the inflection point in the thermal conductivity difference between pore water and pore ice. It is expected that this estimation method will be highly applicable in the field. A further parametric study assessed factors influencing the closure time using a two-dimensional coupled thermo-hydraulic numerical analysis model that can simulate the AGF of saturated sandy soil considering groundwater flow. It shows that the closure time is affected by factors such as hydraulic gradient, unfrozen permeability, particle thermal conductivity, and freezing temperature. Among these factors, changes in the unfrozen permeability and particle thermal conductivity have less effect on the formation of frozen soil-ice walls when the freezing temperature is sufficiently low.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.39-47
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the Korean Nutrition Society Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.260.1-260
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• 2001

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.555-565
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• 2018

Nowadays, the artificial ground freezing (AGF) method has been used in many geotechnical engineering applications such as temporary excavation support, underpinning, and groundwater cutoff. The AGF method conducts the freezing process by employing a refrigerant circulating through a set of embedded freezing pipes to form frozen walls serving as an excavation support and cutoff wall. Two refrigerants of brine with the freezing temperature of $-20{\sim}-40^{\circ}C$ and liquid nitrogen with the freezing (evaporating) temperature of $-196^{\circ}C$ are commonly being used in geotechnical applications. This paper performed a series of field experiments to evaluate the freezing rate of marine clay in application of the AGF method. The field experiments consisted of the single freezing-pipe test and the frozen-wall formation test by circulating liquid nitrogen, which is a cryogenic refrigerant, into freezing pipes constructed at a depth of 3.2 m in the ground. The temperature of discharged liquid nitrogen was maintained through the automatic valve, and the temperature change induced by AGF method was measured at the freezing pipes and in the ground with time. According to the experimental results, the single freezing-pipe test consumed about 11.9 tons of liquid nitrogen for 3.5 days to form a cylindrical frozen body with the volume of about $2.12m^3$. In addition, the frozen-wall formation test used about 18 tons of liquid nitrogen for 4.1 days to form a frozen wall with the volume of about $7.04m^3$. The radial freezing rate decreased with increasing the radius of frozen body because the frozen area at a certain depth is proportional to the square of the radius. The radial freezing rate was formulated as a simple equation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Life Science Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.47.1-47.1
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• 2007

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• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.43-55
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• 2018

AGF (Artificial Ground Freezing) method is a temporary ground improvement method which can apply to all types of soil with the purpose of high stiffness and low hydraulic conductivity. However, the groundwater flow and the heterogeneity of the ground increase the uncertainty of the ice-column formation which hinders the reliability of this method. The effects of groundwater flow and layered heterogeneity on ice-wall integrity by AGF method were analyzed using finite element analysis program for a coupled thermo-hydro phenomena in the freezing ground. Groundwater flow changes circular ice-column into elliptical shapes and increases the time required for the formation of ice walls. The previous theoretical formula overestimated the completion time of the ice wall and the critical groundwater velocity by neglecting the thermal interaction between adjacent ice-columns. Numerical results presented the corrected formula and verified the proposed equation for the dimensionless ice-wall completion time. In the layered heterogeneous ground, the thickness of the layer with higher hydraulic conductivity and its relative magnitude were found to be important factors in the ice-wall completion time and critical velocity.