• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2023

In order to study the anti-seismic performance of full light-weight concrete utility tunnel, EL Centro seismic waves were input, and the seismic simulation shaking table test was carried out on the four utility tunnel models. The dynamic characteristics and acceleration response of the system consisting of the utility tunnel structure and the soil, and the interlayer displacement response of the structure were analyzed. The influence law of different construction methods, haunch heights and concrete types on the dynamic response of the utility tunnel structure was studied. And the experimental results were compared with the finite element calculation results. The results indicated that with the increase of seismic wave intensity, the natural frequency of the utility tunnel structure system decreased and the damping ratio increased. The assembling composite construction method could be equivalent to replace the integral cast-in-place construction method. The haunch height of the assembling composite full light-weight concrete utility tunnel was increased from 30 mm to 50 mm to enhance the anti-seismic performance during large earthquakes. The anti-seismic performance of the full light-weight concrete utility tunnel was better than that of the ordinary concrete utility tunnel. The peak acceleration of the structure was reduced by 21.8% and the interlayer displacement was reduced by 45.8% by using full light-weight concrete. The finite element simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results, which could provide reference for practical engineering design and application.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.61-74
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• 2023

This article investigates the wave propagation analysis of the imperfect functionally graded (FG) sandwich plates based on a novel simple four-variable integral quasi-3D higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT). The thickness stretching effect is considered in the transverse displacement component. The presented formulation ensures a parabolic variation of the transverse shear stresses with zero-stresses at the top and the bottom surfaces without requiring any shear correction factors. The studied sandwich plates can be used in several sectors as areas of aircraft, construction, naval/marine, aerospace and wind energy systems, the sandwich structure is composed from three layers (two FG face sheets and isotropic core). The material properties in the FG faces sheet are computed according to a modified power law function with considering the porosity which may appear during the manufacturing process in the form of micro-voids in the layer body. The Hamilton principle is utilized to determine the four governing differential equations for wave propagation in FG plates which is reduced in terms of computation time and cost compared to the other conventional quasi-3D models. An eigenvalue equation is formulated for the analytical solution using a generalized displacements' solution form for wave propagation. The effects of porosity, temperature, moisture concentration, core thickness, and the material exponent on the plates' dispersion relations are examined by considering the thickness stretching influence.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.75-85
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• 2023

This work utilizes simplified higher-order shear deformation beam theory (HSDBT) to investigate the vibration response for functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (CNTRC) beam. Novel to this work, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are distributed and aligned in a matrix of polymer throughout the beam, resting on a viscoelastic foundation. Four un-similar patterns of reinforcement distribution functions are investigated for the CNTRC beam. Porosity is another consideration taken into account due to its significant effect on functionally graded materials (FGMs) properties. Three types of uneven porosity distributions are studied in this study. The damping coefficient and Winkler's and Pasternak's parameters are considered in investigating the viscosity effect on the foundation. Moreover, the impact of different parameters on the vibration of the CNTRC beam supported by a viscoelastic foundation is discussed. A comparison to other works is made to validate numerical results in addition to analytical discussions. The findings indicate that incorporating a damping coefficient can improve the vibration performance, especially when the spring constant factors are raised. Additionally, it has been noted that the fundamental frequency of a beam increases as the porosity coefficient increases, indicating that porosity may have a significant impact on the vibrational characteristics of beams.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.99-117
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• 2023

The crack under the influence of the higher intensities of the stresses grows and the structure gets collapsed with the time when the crack length reaches to critical value. Therefore, the fracture behavior of a structure in terms of stress intensity factors (SIF) becomes important to determine the remaining fracture strength and capacity of material and structure for avoiding catastrophic failure, increasing safety and further improvement in the design. The robustness of the method has been demonstrated by comparing the numerical results with analytical and experimental results of some problems. XFEM is used to model cracks and holes in structures and predict their strength and reliability under service conditions. Further, XFEM is extended with a stochastic method for predicting the sensitivity in terms of output COVs and fracture strength in terms of mean values of stress intensity factors (SIFs) of a structure with discontinuities (cracks and holes) under tensile loading condition with input individual and combined randomness in different system parameters. In stochastic technique, the second order perturbation technique (SOPT) has been used for the predicting the fracture behavior of the structures. The stochastic/perturbation technique is also known as Taylor series expansion method and it provides the reliable results if the input randomness is less than twenty percentage. From the present numerical analysis it is observed that, the crack tip near to the hole is under the influence of the stress concentration and the variational effect of the input random parameters on the crack tip in terms of the SIFs are lesser so the COVs are the less sensitive. The COVs of mixed mode SIFs are the most sensitive for the crack angles (α=45° to 90°) for all the values of c₁ and d₁. The plate with the shorter distance between hole and crack is the most sensitive with all the crack angles but the crack tip which is much nearer to the hole has the highest sensitivity.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.301-310
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• 2022

Cement-based sensors have been widely used as structural health monitoring systems, however, their long-term sensing performance have not actively investigated. In this study, a deep learning-based methodology is adopted to predict the long-term piezoresistive properties of cement-based sensors. Samples with different multi-walled carbon nanotube contents (0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 wt.%) are fabricated, and piezoresistive tests are conducted over 10,000 loading cycles to obtain the training data. Time-dependent degradation is predicted using a modified long short-term memory (LSTM) model. The effects of different model variables including the amount of training data, number of epochs, and dropout ratio on the accuracy of predictions are analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated by comparing the predictions for long-term piezoresistive sensing performance with untrained experimental data. A sensitivity of 6% is experimentally examined in the sample containing 0.1 wt.% of MWCNTs, and predictions with accuracy up to 98% are found using the proposed LSTM model. Based on the experimental results, the proposed model is expected to be applied in the structural health monitoring systems to predict their long-term piezoresistice sensing performances during their service life.

• Plant Breeding and Biotechnology
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.224-230
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• 2014

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) is a molecular marker technique based on DNA and is extremely useful in detection of high polymorphism between closely related genotypes like Korean wheat cultivars. Six sequence characterized amplified regions (SCARs) have been developed from inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) analysis which enabled the identification and differentiation of 13 Korean wheat cultivars from the other cultivars. We used six combinations of primer sets in our AFLP analysis for developing additional cultivar-specific markers in Korean wheat. Fifty-eight of the AFLP bands were isolated from EA-ACG/MA-CAC, EA-AGC/MA-CTG and EA-AGG/MA-CTA primer combinations. Of which 40 bands were selected to design SCAR primer pairs for Korean wheat cultivar identification. Three of 58 amplified primer pairs, KWSM006, KWSM007 and JkSP, enabled wheat cultivar identification. Consequently, 23 of 32 Korean wheat cultivars were classified by eight SCAR marker sets.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.339-355
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• 2022

The high cost of ultra-high-performance engineered cementitious composite (UHP-ECC) is currently a crucial issue, especially in terms of the polyethylene (PE) fibers use. In this paper, cheap calcium carbonate whiskers (CW) were evaluated on the feasibility of hybrid with PE fibers. Diverse combinations of PE fibers and CW were employed to investigate the multi-scale enhancement on the UHP-ECC performance. A probabilistic-based UHP-ECC tensile strain reliability analysis approach was utilized, which was in general agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, a multi-dimensional integrated representation was conducted for the comprehensive assessment of UHP-ECC. Results illustrated that CW improved the compressive strength and energy dissipation capacity of UHP-ECC owing to the microscopic strengthening mechanism. CW and PE fiber further promoted the saturated cracking of composite by multi-scale crack arresting effect. In particular, PE1.75-CW0.5 specimen possessed the best overall performance. The ultimate cracking width of PE1.75-CW0.5 group had 98 ㎛, which was 46.18% lower compared to PE2-CW0 group, the 28d compressive strength were slightly improved, the tensile strain capacity was comparable to that of PE2-CW0 group. The results above demonstrated that combinations of PE fiber and CW could significantly enhance the comprehensive performance of UHP-ECC, which was beneficial for large-scale engineering applications.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.311-321
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• 2022

The interfacial bond strength of partially encased composite (PEC) structure tends to 0, therefore, the cast-in-place concrete theoretically cannot embody better composite effect than the fabricated structure. A total of 12 specimens were designed and experimented to investigate the energy dissipation and damage of fabricated PEC beam through unidirectional cyclic loading test. Because the concrete on both sides of the web was relatively independent, some specimens showed obvious asymmetric concrete damage, which led to specimens bearing torsion effect at the later stage of loading. Based on the concept of the ideal elastoplastic model of uniaxial tensile steel and the principle of equivalent energy dissipation, the energy dissipation ductility coefficient is proposed, which can simultaneously reflect the deformability and bearing capacity. In view of the whole deformation of the beam, the calculation formula of energy dissipation is put forward, and the energy dissipation and its proportion of shear-bending region and pure bending region are calculated respectively. The energy dissipation efficiency of the pure bending region is significantly higher than that of the shear-bending region. The setting of the screw arbors is conducive to improving the energy dissipation capacity of the specimens. Under the condition of setting the screw arbors and meeting the reasonable shear span ratio, reducing the concrete pouring thickness can lighten the deadweight of the component and improve the comprehensive benefit, and will not have an adverse impact on the energy dissipation capacity of the beam. A damage model is proposed to quantify the damage changes of PEC beams under cyclic load, which can accurately reflect the load damage and deformation damage.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2016

The abundance of multi-drug resistance ATPase binding cassette and deranged self-renewal pathways shown in cancer stem cells (CSCs) played a crucial role in tumorigenesis, tumor resistance, tumor recurrence, and tumor metastasis. Therefore, elucidation of CSCs biology can improve diagnosis, enable targeted treatment, and guide the follow up of GI cancer patients. In order to achieve chemoquiescence, seizing cancer through complete ablation of CSCs, CSCs are rational targets for the design of interventions that will enhance responsiveness to traditional therapeutic strategies and contribute in the prevention of local recurrence as well as metastasis. However, current cancer treatment strategies fail to either detect or differentiate the CSCs from their non-tumorigenic progenies mostly due to the absence of specific biomarkers and potent agents to kill CSCs. Recent advances in knowledge of CSCs enable to produce several candidates to ablate CSCs in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, especially cancers originated from inflammation-driven mutagenesis such as Barrett's esophagus (BE), Helicobacter pylori-associated gastric cancer, and colitis-associated cancer (CAC). Our research teams elucidated through revisiting old drugs that proton pump inhibitor (PPI) and potassium competitive acid blocker (p-CAB) beyond authentic acid suppression, chloroquine for autophage inhibition, sonic hedgehog (SHH) inhibitors, and Wnt/β-catenin/NOTCH inhibitor can ablate CSCs specifically and efficiently. Furthermore, nanoformulations of these molecules could provide an additional advantage for more selective targeting of the pathways existing in CSCs just like current molecular targeted therapeutics and sustained action, while normal stem cells intact. In this review article, the novel approach specifically to ablate CSCs existing in GI cancers will be introduced with the introduction of explored mode of action.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.455-464
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• 2023

Seismologists now suggest that the earth has entered an active seismic period; many earthquake-related events are occurring globally. Consequently, numerous casualties, as well as economic losses due to earthquakes, have been reported in recent years. Primarily, significant and colossal damage occurs in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with masonry infill wall systems, and the construction of these types of structures have increased worldwide. According to a report from the Ministry of Education in the Republic of Korea, many buildings were built with RC frames with masonry infill walls in the Republic of Korea during the 1980s. For years, most structures of this type have been school buildings, and since the Pohang earthquake in 2017, the government of the Republic of Korea has paid close attention to this social event and focused on damage from earthquakes. From a long-term research perspective, damage from structural collapse due to the short column effect has been a major concern, specifically because the RC frame with a masonry infill wall system is the typical form of structure for school buildings. Therefore, the short column effect has recently been a major topic for research. This study compares one RC frame with four different types of RC frames with masonry infill wall systems. Structural damage due to the short column effect is clearly analyzed, as the result of this research is giving in a higher infill wall system produces a greater shear force on the connecting point between the infill wall system and the column. The study is expected to be a useful reference for research on the short column effect in RC frames with masonry infill wall systems.