• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.461-468
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• 2001

Impact between fruits and other materials is a major cause of product damage in harvesting and handling systems. The oriental pears are more susceptible to bruising than other fruits such as European pears and apples, and are required more careful handling. The interest in the handling of the pears for the processing systems has raised the question of the allowable drop height to which pears can be dropped without causing objectionable damage. Drop tests on pears were conducted using an impact device developed by authors to estimate the allowable drop height without bruising. The impact device was constructed to hold in a selected orientation and to release a fruit by vacuum for dropping on to a force transducer. The drop height was adjustable for zero to 60 cm to achieve the desired distance between the bottom of the fruits and the top of the impact force transducer. The transducer was secured to 150 kg$\sub$f/ concrete block. The transducer signal was sampled every 0.17 ms with a strain gage measurement board in the micro computer where it was digitaly stored for later analysis. The selected sample fruit was Niitaka cultivar of pears which is one of the most promising fruit for export in Korea. The pears were harvested during the 1998 harvest season from an orchard in Daejeon. The sample fruit was selected from two groups which were stored for 3 months and 5 months respectively by the method of current commercial practice. The pears were allowed to stabilize at environmental condition(18$^{\circ}C$, 65% rh) of the experimental room. One hundred fifty six pears were tested from the heights of 5, 7.5. 10 and 12.5 cm while measurement were made of impact peak force, contact time, time to peak force, dwell time, pear diameter and mass. The bioyield strength and modulus of elasticity were measured using UTM immediately after each drop test. The allowable drop height was estimated on the base of bioyield strength of the pears in two ways. One was assumed the peak force during impact test increasing linearly with time, and the other was based on the actual drop test results. The computer program was developed for measuring the impact characteristics of the pears and analyzing the data obtained in the study. The peak force increased while contact times decreased with increasing drop height and contact times of the sample from the hard tissue group. The allowable drop height increased with increasing bioyield strength and contact times, and also varied with Poisson\`s ratio, mass and equilibrium radius of the pears. The allowable drop height calculated by a theoretical method was in the range from 1 to 4 cm, meanwhile, the estimated drop height considering the result of the impact test was in the range from 1 to 6 cm. Since the physical properties of fruits affected significantly the allowable drop height, the physical properties of the fruits should be considered when estimating the allowable drop height.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.416-421
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• 2007

Physical damage to fruits and vegetables caused by shock degrades the value of product in the fresh market. In order to design a product/packaging system to protect the product, the G-factor to the product that causes shock damage needs to be determined. The shock fragility of organisms such as fruits with a concept correspondent to the G-factor of industrial products was calculated and we defined the allowable bio-shock fragility index as the value divided peak acceleration that was generated in safe drop height by standard acceleration of gravity. We did modeling for safe drop hight that would prevent fruits from damage by drop tests and tried to estimate the allowable bio-shock fragility index of pears and apples for optimum packaging design. The bio-shock fragility index of pears was in the range of $0.74{\sim}2.29\;G$, while apples had a slightly higher value than that of pears, of $0.51{\sim}2.98\;G$. This result shows accordance with the general fact that apples have a firmer structure and get less damage from the same impact. Based on this result, it is possible to create an optimum packaging design by providing a damage standard by impact.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.531-542
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• 2017

The structural safety of small craft, such as steel ships and FRP ships, can be estimated using the measurement test of the hull plate thickness or the longitudinal bending strength test. A polyethylene boat is made using inexpensive HDPE and can be mass produced. The structural safety of a polyethylene boat cannot be guaranteed because a polyethylene boat hull is notspecified in the KR technical rules. The inspection procedure of sailing yachts and pleasure boats and drop test method of ISO standard 12215-5 propose the structural strength required for small crafts as the drop test height. Therefore, in this study, the drop test of a polyethylene boat hull was carried out based on the inspection procedure of a sailing yacht and pleasure boat and the drop test method of ISO standard 12215-5. The drop load was acquired by the drop acceleration ofa boat hull. Structural analysis and safety of a polyethylene boat were performed by the drop load and allowable stress criteria. The calculation results of the hull plate thickness by structural design specification of ISO standard 12215-5 showed that polyethylene boat hull was more than two times thicker than a steel ship hull and the boat hull determined by the inspection procedure of sailing yacht and pleasure boat and drop test method of ISO standard 12215-5 was more than 1.2 times thicker than the boat hull determined by structural design specification of ISO standard 12215-5. Therefore, inspection procedure of sailing yachts and pleasure boats and drop test method of ISO standard 12215-5 was much more conservative than the structural design specification of ISO standard 12215-5 and could be used as the structural design method of a polyethylene boat.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.41-48
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• 2019

Soil compaction is one of the most important activities in the area of civil works, including road construction, airport construction, port construction and backfilling construction of structures. Soil compaction, particularly in road construction, can be categorized into subgrade compaction and roadbed compaction, and is significant work that when done poorly can serve as a factor causing poor construction due to a lack of compaction. Currently, there are many different types of compaction tests, and the plate bearing test and the unit weight of soil test based on the sand cone method are commonly used to measure the degree of compaction, but many other methods are under development as it is difficult to secure economic efficiency. For the purpose of this research, a portable penetration meter called the Free-Fall Penetration Test (FFPT) was developed and manufactured. In this study, a homogeneous sample was obtained from the construction site and soil was classified through a sieve analysis test in order to perform grain size analysis and a specific gravity test for an indoor test. The principle of FFPT is that the penetration needle installed at the tip of an object put into free fall using gravity is used to measure the depth of penetration into the road surface after subgrade or roadbed compaction has been completed; the degree of compaction is obtained through the unit weight of soil test according to the sand cone method and the relationship between the degree of compaction and the depth of the penetration needle is verified. The maximum allowable grain size of soil is 2.36 mm. For $A_1$ compaction, a trend line was developed using the result of the test performed from a drop height of 10 cm, and coefficient of determination of the trend line was $R^2=0.8677$, while for $D_2$ compaction, coefficient of determination of the trend line was $R^2=0.9815$ when testing at a drop height of 20 cm. Free fall test was carried out with the drop height adjusted from 10 cm to 50 cm at increments of 10 cm. This study intends to compare and analyze the correlation between the degree of compaction obtained from the unit weight of soil test based on the sand cone method and the depth of penetration of the penetration needle obtained from the FFPT meter. As such, it is expected that a portable penetration tester will make it easy to test the degree of compaction at many construction sites, and will lead to a reduction in time, equipment, and manpower which are the disadvantages of the current degree of compaction test, ultimately contributing to accurate and simple measurements of the degree of compaction as well as greater economic feasibility.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.5-14
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• 2018

Worldwide, soil compaction work is one of the most important activities that are carried out on civil engineering works sites. Compaction work, particularly in the area of road construction, is considered to be important, as poor compaction work is closely related with poor construction even after a construction is complete. Currently, the plate bearing test or the sand cone method relative to the unit weight of soil test are commonly used to measure the degree of compaction, but as these require a great deal of time, equipment and manpower, it is difficult to secure economic efficiency. The method that is used to measure the degree of compaction according to the penetration depth achieved by free fall objects through gravity is the Free-Fall Penetration Test (FFPT), which uses a so-called "portable compaction measuring meter (PCMM)." In this study, the degree of compaction was measured and a penetration depth graph was developed after the field test using the portable compaction measuring meter. The coefficient of determination was 0.963 at a drop height of 10 cm, showing the highest level of accuracy. Both horizontal axis and longitudinal axis were developed in a decimal form of graph, and the range of allowable error was ${\pm}1.28mm$ based on the penetration depth. The portable compaction measuring meter makes it possible to measure the degree of compaction simply, quickly and accurately in the field, which will ensure economic efficiency and facilitate the process management.