• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.53-72
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• 2019

Safety measures for tower cranes are extremely important among the seismic countermeasures at high-rise building construction sites. In particular, the collapse of a tower crane from a high position is a very serious catastrophe. An example of such an accident due to an earthquake is the case of the Taipei 101 Building (the author was the project director), which occurred on March 31, 2002. Failure of the bolted joints of the tower-crane mast was the direct cause of the collapse. Therefore, it is necessary to design for this eventuality and to take the necessary measures on construction sites. This can only be done by understanding the precise dynamic behavior of mast joints during an earthquake. Consequently, we created a new hybrid-element model (using beam, shell, and solid elements) that not only expressed the detailed behavior of the site joints of a tower-crane mast during an earthquake but also suppressed any increase in the total calculation time and revealed its behavior through computer simulations. Using the proposed structural model and simulation method, effective information for designing safe joints during earthquakes can be provided by considering workability (control of the bolt pretension axial force and other factors) and less construction cost. Notably, this analysis showed that the joint behavior of the initial pretension axial force of a bolt is considerably reduced after the axial force of the bolt exceeds the yield strength. A maximum decrease of 50% in the initial pretension axial force under the El Centro N-S Wave ($v_{max}=100cm/s$) was observed. Furthermore, this method can be applied to analyze the seismic responses of general temporary structures in construction sites.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.144-159
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• 2022

The present study developed a sequential approach-based numerical simulator for modeling coupled thermal-hydrological-mechanical (THM) processes in the ground and investigated the computational performance of the coupling analysis algorithm. The present sequential approach linked the two different solvers: an open-source numerical code, OpenGeoSys for solving the thermal and hydrological processes in porous media and a commercial code, FLAC3D for solving the geomechanical response of the ground. A benchmark test of the developed simulator was carried out using a THM problem where an analytical solution is given. The benchmark problem involves the coupled behavior (variations in temperature, pore pressure, stress, and deformation with time) of a fully saturated porous medium which is subject to a point heat source. The results of the analytical solution and numerical simulation were compared and the validity of the numerical simulator was investigated.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.36-48
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• 2022

As a valid numerical method to obtain a high-resolution result of a flow field, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have been widely used to study coolant flow and heat transfer characteristics in fuel rod bundles. However, the time-consuming, iterative calculation of Navier-Stokes equations makes CFD unsuitable for the scenarios that require efficient simulation such as sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification. To solve this problem, a reduced-order model (ROM) based on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and machine learning (ML) is proposed to simulate the flow field efficiently. Firstly, a validated CFD model to output the flow field data set of the rod bundle is established. Secondly, based on the POD method, the modes and corresponding coefficients of the flow field were extracted. Then, an deep feed-forward neural network, due to its efficiency in approximating arbitrary functions and its ability to handle high-dimensional and strong nonlinear problems, is selected to build a model that maps the non-linear relationship between the mode coefficients and the boundary conditions. A trained surrogate model for modes coefficients prediction is obtained after a certain number of training iterations. Finally, the flow field is reconstructed by combining the product of the POD basis and coefficients. Based on the test dataset, an evaluation of the ROM is carried out. The evaluation results show that the proposed POD-ROM accurately describe the flow status of the fluid field in rod bundles with high resolution in only a few milliseconds.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.235-243
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• 2022

The paper presents the effect of operating temperatures and flow rates on the distillate flux that can be obtained from a hydrophobic membrane having the characteristics: pore size of 0.15 ㎛; thickness of 130 ㎛; and 85% porosity. That membrane in the present investigation could be the direct contact (DCMD) or the air-gap membrane distillation (AGMD). To model numerically the membrane distillation processes, the two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic (CFD) is used for the DCMD and AGMD cases here. In this work, DCMD and AGMD models have been validated with the experimental data using different flows (Parallel and Counter-current flows) in non-steady-state situations. A good agreement is obtained between the present results and those of the experimental data in the literature. The new approach in the present numerical modeling has allowed examining effects of the nature of materials (Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymers, copolymers, and blends) used on thermal properties. Moreover, the effect of the area surface of the membrane (0.021 to 3.15 ㎡) is investigated to explore both the laminar and the turbulent flow regimes. The obtained results found that copolymer P(VDF-TrFE) (80/20) is more effective than the other materials of membrane distillation (MD). The mass flux and thermal efficiency reach 193.5 (g/㎡s), and 83.29 % using turbulent flow and an effective area of 3.1 ㎡, respectively. The increase of feed inlet temperatures and its flow rate, with the reduction of cold temperatures and its flow rate are very effective for increasing distillate water flow in MD applications.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.745-760
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• 2021

Dynamic buckling of structure is one of the failure modes that needs to be considered since it may result in catastrophic failure of the structure in a short period of time. For a thin fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) plate under compression, buckling is an inherent hazard which will be intensified by the existence of defects like holes, cracks, and delamination. On the other hand, the growth of the delamination is another prime concern for thin FRP plates. In the current paper, reinforcing the plates against buckling is realized by using SMA wires in the form of stitches. A numerical framework is proposed to simulate the dynamic instability emphasizing the effect of the SMA stitches in suppressing delamination growth. The suggested algorithm is more accurate than the other methods when considering the transformation point of the SMA wires and the modeling of the cohesive zone using simple and yet reliable technique. The computational design of the method by producing the line by line orders leads to a simple algorithm for simulating the super-elastic behavior. The Lagoudas constitutive model of the SMA material is implemented in the form of user material subroutines (VUMAT). The normal bilinear spring model is used to reproduce the cohesive zone behavior. The nonlinear finite element formulation is programmed into FORTRAN using the Newmark-beta numerical time-integration approach. The obtained results are compared with the results obtained by the finite element method using ABAQUS/Explicit solver. The obtained results by the proposed algorithm and those by ABAQUS are in good agreement.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.241-254
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• 2022

The cables in a cable-stayed bridge are critical load-carrying parts. The potential damage to cables should be identified early to prevent disasters. In this study, an efficient deep learning model is proposed for the damage identification of cables using both a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and a graph neural network (GNN). Datasets are first generated using the practical advanced analysis program (PAAP), which is a robust program for modeling and analyzing bridge structures with low computational costs. The model based on the MLP and GNN can capture complex nonlinear correlations between the vibration characteristics in the input data and the cable system damage in the output data. Multiple hidden layers with an activation function are used in the MLP to expand the original input vector of the limited measurement data to obtain a complete output data vector that preserves sufficient information for constructing the graph in the GNN. Using the gated recurrent unit and set2set model, the GNN maps the formed graph feature to the output cable damage through several updating times and provides the damage results to both the classification and regression outputs. The model is fine-tuned with the original input data using Adam optimization for the final objective function. A case study of an actual cable-stayed bridge was considered to evaluate the model performance. The results demonstrate that the proposed model provides high accuracy (over 90%) in classification and satisfactory correlation coefficients (over 0.98) in regression and is a robust approach to obtain effective identification results with a limited quantity of input data.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.697-711
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• 2021

In this work, a simple quasi 3-D parabolic shear deformation theory is developed to examine the bending response of antisymmetric cross-ply laminated composite plates under different types of mechanical loading. The main feature of this theory is that, in addition to including the transverse shear deformation and thickness stretching effects, it has only five-unknown variables in the displacement field modeling like Mindlin's theory (FSDT), yet satisfies the zero shear stress conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the plate without requiring a shear correction factor. The static version of principle of virtual work was employed to derive the governing equations, while the bending problem for simply supported antisymmetric cross-ply laminated plates was solved by a Navier-type closed-form solution procedure. The adequacy of the proposed model is handled by considering the impact of side-to-thickness ratio on bending response of plate through several illustrative examples. Comparison of the obtained numerical results with the other shear deformation theories leads to the conclusion that the present model is more accurate and efficient in predicting the displacements and stresses of laminated composite plates.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2008

The control and prediction of surface settlement, gradient and ground displacement are the main factors in shallow tunnel design and construction in urban area. For deformation analysis of shallow tunnel due to excavation it is important to identify possible deformation mechanism of shear bands developing from tunnel shoulder to the ground surface. This paper investigaties quantitatively the deformation behavior of shallow tunneling by model tunnel test and strain softening analysis Incorporating the reduction of shear stiffness and strength parameters. The comparison of model tunnel test result and numerical simulation using strain softening analysis showed good agreement in crown settlement, normalized subsidence settlement and developing shear bands above tunnel shoulder. In this study, it is blown that the strain softening modeling is applicable to the nonlinear deformation analysis of shallow tunnel.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.133-140
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• 2023

Soil erosion can cause scouring and failures of underwater structures, therefore, various soil improvement techniques are used to increase the soil erosion resistance. The microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) method is proposed to increase the erosion resistance, however, there are only limited experimental and numerical studies on the use of MICP treatment for improvement of surface erosion resistance. Therefore, this study investigates the improvement in surface erosion resistance of sands by MICP through laboratory experiments and numerical modeling. The surface erosion behaviors of coarse sands with various calcium carbonate contents were first investigated via the erosion function apparatus (EFA). The test results showed that MICP treatment increased the overall erosion resistance, and the contribution of the precipitated calcium carbonate to the erosion resistance and critical shear stress was quantified in relation to the calcium carbonate contents. Further, these surface erosion processes occurring in the EFA test were simulated through the coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) with the cohesion bonding model to reflect the mineral precipitation effect. The simulation results were compared with the experimental results, and the developed CFD-DEM model with the cohesion bonding model well predicted the critical shear stress of MICP-treated sand. This work demonstrates that the MICP treatment is effective in improving soil erosion resistance, and the coupled CFD-DEM with a bonding model is a useful and promising tool to analyze the soil erosion behavior for MICP-treated sand at a particle scale.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.503-515
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• 2022

This paper presents the development of seismic fragility curves for a precast reinforced concrete bridge instrumented with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The bridge is located near an active seismic fault in the Dominican Republic (DR) and provides the only access to several local communities in the aftermath of a potential damaging earthquake; moreover, the sample bridge was designed with outdated building codes and uses structural detailing not adequate for structures in seismic regions. The bridge was instrumented with an SHM system to extract information about its state of structural integrity and estimate its seismic performance. The data obtained from the SHM system is integrated with structural models to develop a set of fragility curves to be used as a quantitative measure of the expected damage; the fragility curves provide an estimate of the probability that the structure will exceed different damage limit states as a function of an earthquake intensity measure. To obtain the fragility curves a digital twin of the bridge is developed combining a computational finite element model and the information extracted from the SHM system. The digital twin is used as a response prediction tool that minimizes modeling uncertainty, significantly improving the predicting capability of the model and the accuracy of the fragility curves. The digital twin was used to perform a nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with selected ground motions that are consistent with the seismic fault and site characteristics. The fragility curves show that for the maximum expected acceleration (with a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years) the structure has a 62% probability of undergoing extensive damage. This is the first study presenting fragility curves for civil infrastructure in the DR and the proposed methodology can be extended to other structures to support disaster mitigation and post-disaster decision-making strategies.