• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.373-379
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• 2006

Vibration-based structural health monitoring is one of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques for civil infrastructures. This paper presents a novel fiber optic accelerometer system to monitor civil engineering structures and a successful application of the novel sensor system for measuring ambient vibration of a real building structure. This sensor system integrates the Moire fringe phenomenon with fiber optics to achieve accurate and reliable measurements. The sensor system is immune to electromagnetic (EM) interference making it suitable for difficult applications in such environments involving strong EM fields, electrical spark-induced explosion risks, and cabling problems, prohibiting the use of conventional electromagnetic accelerometers. A prototype sensor system has been developed, together with a signal processing software. The experimental studies demonstrated the high-performance of the fiber optic sensor system. Especially, the sensor was successfully used for monitoring a real building on UCI (University of California Irvine, USA).

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.703-718
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• 2021

An irrigation monitoring system is an efficient approach to save water and to provide effective irrigation scheduling for rice cultivation in desert soils. This research aimed to design, fabricate, and evaluate the basic performance of an irrigation monitoring system based on information and communication technology (ICT) for rice cultivation under drip and micro-sprinkler irrigation in desert soils using a Raspberry Pi. A data acquisition system was installed and tested inside a rice cultivating net house at the United Arab Emirates University, Al-Foah, Al-Ain. The Raspberry Pi operating system was used to control the irrigation and to monitor the soil water content, ambient temperature, humidity, and light intensity inside the net house. Soil water content sensors were placed in the desert soil at depths of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 cm. A sensor-based automatic irrigation logic circuit was used to control the actuators and to manage the crop irrigation operations depending on the soil water content requirements. A developed webserver was used to store the sensor data and update the actuator status by communicating via the Pi-embedded Wi-Fi network. The maximum and minimum average soil water contents, ambient temperatures, humidity levels, and light intensity values were monitored as 33.91 ± 2 to 26.95 ± 1%, 45 ± 3 to 24 ± 3℃, 58 ± 2 to 50 ± 4%, and 7160-90 lx, respectively, during the experimental period. The ICT-based monitoring system ensured precise irrigation scheduling and better performance to provide an adequate water supply and information about the ambient environment.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2014

Purpose: In protected crop production facilities such as greenhouse and plant factory, farmers should be present and/or visit frequently to the production site for maintaining optimum environmental conditions and better production, which is time and labor consuming. Monitoring of environmental condition is highly important for optimum control of the conditions, and the condition is not uniform within the facility. Objectives of the paper were to investigate spatial and vertical variability in ambient environmental variables and to provide useful information for sensing and control of the environments. Methods: Experiments were conducted in a strawberry-growing greenhouse (greenhouse 1) and a cherry tomato-growing greenhouse (greenhouse 2). Selected ambient environmental variables for experiment in greenhouse 1 were air temperature and humidity, and in greenhouse 2, they were air temperature, humidity, PPFD (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density), and $CO_2$ concentration. Results: Considerable spatial, vertical, and temporal variability of the ambient environments were observed. In greenhouse 1, overall temperature increased from 12:00 to 14:00 and increased after that, while RH increased continuously during the experiments. Differences between the maximum and minimum temperature and RH values were greater when one of the side windows were open than those when both of the windows were closed. The location and height of the maximum and minimum measurements were also different. In greenhouse 2, differences between the maximum and minimum air temperatures at noon and sunset were greater when both windows were open. The maximum PPFD were observed at a 3-m height, close to the lighting source, and $CO_2$ concentration in the crop growing regions. Conclusions: In this study, spatial, vertical, and temporal variability of ambient crop growing conditions in greenhouses was evaluated. And also the variability was affected by operation conditions such as window opening and heating. Results of the study would provide information for optimum monitoring and control of ambient greenhouse environments.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to develop an environment field monitoring system to measure crop growth. The environment field monitoring system consisted of sensors, a data acquisition system, and GPS. The sensors used in the environment field monitoring system consisted of an ambient sensor, a soil sensor, and an intensity sensor. The temperature and humidity of the atmosphere were measured with the ambient sensor. The temperature, humidity, and EC of the soil were measured with the soil sensor. The data acquisition system was developed using the Arduino controller. The field monitoring data were collected before a rainy day, on a rainy day, and after the rainy day. The measured data using the environment field monitoring system were compared with the Daejeon regional meteorological office data. The correlation between the data from the environment field monitoring system and the data from the Daejeon regional meteorological office was analyzed for performance evaluation. The correlation of the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere was analyzed because the Daejeon regional meteorological office only provided data for the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere. The correlation coefficients were 0.86 and 0.90, respectively. The result showed a good correlation between the data from the environment field monitoring system and the data from the Daejeon regional meteorological office. Therefore, the developed system could be applied to monitoring the field environment of agricultural crops.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.91-98
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• 2008

Curved bridges are important components of a highway transportation network for connecting local roads and highways, but very few data have been collected in terms of their field performance. This paper presents two-years monitoring and system identification results of a curved concrete box-girder bridge, the West St. On-Ramp, under ambient traffic excitations. The authors permanently installed accelerometers on the bridge from the beginning of the bridge life. From the ambient vibration data sets collected over the two years, the element stiffness correction factors for the columns, the girder, and boundary springs were identified using the back-propagation neural network. The results showed that the element stiffness values were nearly 10% different from the initial design values. It was also observed that the traffic conditions heavily influence the dynamic characteristics of this curved bridge. Furthermore, a probability distribution model of the element stiffness was established for long-term monitoring and analysis of the bridge stiffness change.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.96-103
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• 2012

Ambient particulate matter (PM) and particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations were measured continuously for 70 days at a Korean elementary school located near a highway. The $PM_{10}$, $PM_{2.5}$, and $PM_1$ values were measured with a light-scattering, multi-channel, aerosol spectrometer (Grimm, Model 1.107). The number concentrations of the particles were measured using a scanning mobility particle sizer and counter (SMPS+C) which counted particles from 11.1 to 1083.3 nm classified in 44 channels. Particle-bound PAHs were measured with a direct reading, photoelectric aerosol sensor. The daily $NO_2$, $SO_2$, and CO concentrations were obtained from a national air-monitoring station located near the school. The average concentrations of $PM_{10}$, $PM_{2.5}$, and $PM_1$ were 75.3, 59.3, and $52.1{\mu}g/m^3$, respectively. The average number concentration of the ultrafine particles (UFPs) was $46,307/cm^3$, and the averaged particle-bound PAHs concentration was $17.9ng/cm^3$ during the study period. The ambient UFP variation was strongly associated with traffic intensity, particularly peak concentrations during the traffic rush hours. Particles <100 nm corresponded to traffic-related pollutants, including PAHs. Additional longterm monitoring of ambient UFPs and high-resolution traffic measurements should be carried out in future studies. In addition, transient variations in the ambient particle concentration should be taken into consideration in epidemiology studies in order to examine the short-term health effects of urban UFPs.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.425-448
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• 2012

In this paper, a new damage detection and quantification method has been presented to perform detection and quantification of structural damage under ambient vibration loadings. To extract modal properties of the structural system under ambient excitation, natural excitation technique (NExT) and eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA) are employed. Sensitivity matrices of the dynamic residual force vector have been derived and used in the parameter subset selection method to identify multiple damaged locations. In the sequel, the steady state genetic algorithm (SSGA) is used to determine quantified levels of the identified damage by minimizing errors in the modal flexibility matrix. In this study, performance of the proposed damage detection and quantification methodology is evaluated using a finite element model of a truss structure with considerations of possible experimental errors and noises. A series of numerical examples with five different damage scenarios including a challengingly small damage level demonstrates that the proposed methodology can efficaciously detect and quantify damage under noisy ambient vibrations.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.393-405
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• 2018

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are representative air pollutants due to their detrimental effects on human health and their role in formation of secondary organic aerosols. Assessments and monitoring programs of VOCs using periodic grab sampling like Tedlar bags, canisters, and sorbent traps provide limited information, often with delay times of days or weeks. Selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS) is an emerging analytical technique for the real-time quantification of VOCs in air. It relies on chemical ionization of the VOCs molecules in air introduced into helium carrier gas using $H_3O^+$, $NO^+$, and $O_2{^+}$ precursor ions. Real-time monitoring method of 60 VOCs in the ambient air was developed using TO-15 standard gas mixture. Calibration curves, method detection limit, and quantitation reproducibility of the target compounds were tested. Dynamic dilution system was used to dilute standard gas from 0.174 ppbv to 100 ppbv, where calibration curves showed good linearity with $r^2$> 0.95 in all target analytes. Limit of detection (LOD) all compounds were sub ppbv, and some halogenated compounds showed pptv levels. Seven consecutive analyses of target compounds showed good repeatability with relative standard deviation of less than 10%. One day monitoring of VOCs in ambient air was conducted in Geoje. Average concentration of target VOCs in Geoje were relatively lower than other regions, among which formaldehyde showed the highest concentration ($15.4{\pm}5.78ppbv$). SIFT-MS provided good temporal resolution data (1 data per 3.2 minute), which can be used for identifying ephemeral short-term event. It is expected that SIFT-MS will be a versatile monitoring platform for VOCs in ambient air.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.447-468
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• 2015

Modal identification of civil engineering structures based on ambient vibration measurement has been widely investigated in the past decades, and a variety of output-only operational modal identification methods have been proposed. However, vibration modes, even fundamental low-order modes, are not always identifiable for large-scale structures under ambient vibration excitation. The identifiability of vibration modes, deficiency in modal identification, and criteria to evaluate robustness of the identified modes when applying output-only modal identification techniques to ambient vibration responses were scarcely studied. In this study, the mode identifiability of the cable-stayed Ting Kau Bridge using ambient vibration measurements and the influence of the excitation intensity on the deficiency and robustness in modal identification are investigated with long-term monitoring data of acceleration responses acquired from the bridge under different excitation conditions. It is observed that a few low-order modes, including the second global mode, are not identifiable by common output-only modal identification algorithms under normal ambient excitations due to traffic and monsoon. The deficient modes can be activated and identified only when the excitation intensity attains a certain level (e.g., during strong typhoons). The reason why a few low-order modes fail to be reliably identified under weak ambient vibration excitations and the relation between the mode identifiability and the excitation intensity are addressed through comparing the frequency-domain responses under normal ambient vibration excitations and under typhoon excitations and analyzing the wind speeds corresponding to different response data samples used in modal identification. The threshold value of wind speed (generalized excitation intensity) that makes the deficient modes identifiable is determined.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.1273-1276
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• 2001