• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.3106-3116
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• 2022

The present work presents analysis results of the core design optimizations for an annular, prismatic High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) with passive decay-heat removal features. Its thermal power is 100 MW_t and the operating temperature is 850 ℃ (1123 K). The neutronic calculations are done for the core with heterogeneous distribution of fuel and burnable poison particles (BPPs) to flatten the reactivity swing and power peaking factor (PPF) during the reactor operation as well as for control rod (CR) insertion into the core to restrain a small excess reactivity less than 1$. The next step of the study is done for evaluation of core reactivity coefficient of temperature.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.3668-3685
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• 2024

The operation of a nuclear power plant relies on precalculated nuclear design predictions based on core calculations of various reactor states. The fuel temperature is a crucial factor in determining the reactor fuel behavior, but assessing the temperature variation in a fuel pellet taking into account neutron transport is challenging. Detailed simulation of the temperature behavior within the fuel pellet can be obtained by coupling of Monte Carlo neutron transport codes with thermal-hydraulics solvers. However, this approach is not practical for standard nuclear design calculations, and computationally cheaper and faster methods must be used. In nuclear core simulators, a concept of a single "effective temperature" that yields the same neutron response as in the case of the actual temperature shape is mainly applied. This paper evaluates various fuel temperature models used in nuclear core simulation calculations, ultimately recommending a new effective temperature model that considers the burnup correction.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.151-176
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• 2017

This paper deals with general equations of motion for free vibration analysis response of thick three-layer doubly curved sandwich panels (DCSP) under simply supported boundary conditions (BCs) using higher order shear deformation theory. In this model, the face sheets are orthotropic laminated composite that follow the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) based on Rissners-Mindlin (RM) kinematics field. The core is made of orthotropic material and its in-plane transverse displacements are modeled using the third order of the Taylor's series extension. It provides the potentiality for considering both compressible and incompressible cores. To find these equations and boundary conditions, Hamilton's principle is used. Also, the effect of trapezoidal shape factor for cross-section of curved panel element ($1{\pm}z/R$) is considered. The natural frequency parameters of DCSP are obtained using Galerkin Method. Convergence studies are performed with the appropriate formulas in general form for three-layer sandwich plate, cylindrical and spherical shells (both deep and shallow). The influences of core stiffness, ratio of core to face sheets thickness and radii of curvatures are investigated. Finally, for the first time, an optimum range for the core to face sheet stiffness ratio by considering the existence of in-plane stress which significantly affects the natural frequencies of DCSP are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.291-298
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• 2014

This paper concerns estimating uncertainties of the core neutronics design parameters of power reactors by direct sampling method (DSM) calculations based on the two-step McCARD/MASTER design system in which McCARD is used to generate the fuel assembly (FA) homogenized few group constants (FGCs) while MASTER is used to conduct the core neutronics design computation. It presents an extended application of the uncertainty propagation analysis method originally designed for uncertainty quantification of the FA FGCs as a way to produce the covariances between the FGCs of any pair of FAs comprising the core, or the covariance matrix of the FA FGCs required for random sampling of the FA FGCs input sets into direct sampling core calculations by MASTER. For illustrative purposes, the uncertainties of core design parameters such as the effective multiplication factor ($k_{eff}$), normalized FA power densities, power peaking factors, etc. for the beginning of life (BOL) core of Yonggwang nuclear unit 4 (YGN4) at the hot zero power and all rods out are estimated by the McCARD/MASTER-based DSM computations. The results are compared with those from the uncertainty propagation analysis method based on the McCARD-predicted sensitivity coefficients of nuclear design parameters and the cross section covariance data.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.15-27
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to develop an indicator of core competency of freshmen of an Institute of Science & Technology (IST). Through the document analysis and the expert survey, core competency indicators that include 5 core competencies and 15 sub-competencies (a total of 48 items) were developed. Then content validity was examined by experts in measurement and statistics and secondary education. Also, by using students' responses, reliability was tested with Cronbach's alpha and construct validity were tested through confirmatory factor analysis. Results suggest that the core competency indicator is reliable and valid in measuring core competencies of freshmen students in an Institute of Science & Technology. Discussions were provided in terms of improving student admission processes.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.485-489
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• 2009

The temperature dependence of the structure of micelles formed by a deuterated polystyrene-poly(ethylene oxide) diblock copolymer (dPS-PEO) in heavy water were investigated with small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). SANS data were analyzed using the hard-sphere structure factor in combination with the form factor of a core-shell model. The micelle aggregation number and corona radius were obtained from the fits to the SANS data. The micelle aggregation numbers varied with temperature from 229 at $25^{\circ}C$ to 240 at $45^{\circ}C$, with a corresponding increase in the core radius. However, the shell thickness of micelles decreased with increasing temperature from 6.2 to 5.8 nm. These structural changes of micelles might be ascribed to the decrease in the hydration volume per hydrophilic group in the corona because of the increase in hydrophobicity of the PEO block with increasing temperature.

• BMB Reports
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.176-181
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• 2010

The primary sigma factor ($\sigma^{A}$) of Staphylococcus aureus, a potential drug target, was little investigated at the structural level. Using an N-terminal histidine-tagged $\sigma^{A}$ (His-$\sigma^{A}$), here we have demonstrated that it exits as a monomer in solution, possesses multiple domains, harbors primarily $\alpha$-helix and efficiently binds to a S. aureus promoter DNA in the presence of core RNA polymerase. While both N- and C-terminal ends of His-$\sigma^{A}$ are flexible in nature, two Trp residues in its DNA binding region are buried. Upon increasing the incubation temperature from 25$^{\circ}$ to 40$^{\circ}C$, $\sim$60% of the input His-$\sigma^{A}$ was cleaved by thermolysin. Aggregation of His-$\sigma^{A}$ was also initiated rapidly at 45$^{\circ}C$. From the equilibrium unfolding experiment, the Gibbs free energy of stabilization of His-$\sigma^{A}$ was estimated to be +0.70 kcal $mol^{-1}$. The data together suggest that primary sigma factor of S. aureus is an unstable protein. Core RNA polymerase however stabilized $\sigma^{A}$ appreciably.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.235-243
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• 2000

A one-dimensional neutronics formulation is established within the framework of the nonlinear analytic nodal method such that it can result in consistent one-dimensional models that produce the same axial information as their corresponding reference three-dimension81 models. Consistency is achieved by conserving axial interface currents as well as the planar reaction rates of the three-dimensional case. For current conservation, flux discontinuity is introduced in the solution of the two-node problem. The degree of discontinuity, named the current conservation factor, is determined such that the surface averaged axial current of the reference three-dimensional case can be retrieved from the two-node calculation involving the radially collapsed group constants and the discontinuity factor. The current conservation factors are derived from the analytic nodal method and various core configurations are analyzed to show that the errors in K-eff and power distributions can be reduced by a order of magnitude by the use of the current conservation factor with no significant computational overhead.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.149-154
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• 2019

The structural system of domestic high-rise apartments can be divided into two parts; the core wall system, which is composed of walls concentrated in the center and the shear wall system, which comprises a great number of walls distributed in the plan. In order to analyze the lateral behavior of each system, buildings with typical domestic high-rise apartment plans were selected and nonlinear static analysis was performed to investigate the their collapse mechanism. From the force-displacement relation derived from nonlinear static analysis, response modification factor was evaluated by calculating the overstrengh and ductility factor, which are important in the seismic response. The ductility of core wall system is small, but as it is governed by wind load, its overstrength is greatly estimated, and its response modification factor is calculated by the overstrengh factor. Due to a large number of walls, shear wall system has a large ductility, making the response modification factor considerably large.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.650-656
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• 2014

We propose a novel active fiber design for selectively generating cylindrical vector beams (CVBs) or cylindrical vector modes (CVMs) which can be applied to conventional fiber lasers. A fiber is designed to have a ring-shaped core refractive index profile which can lead to the best overlap between the active dopant distribution profile and the lowest-order CVM (LCVM) field profile. Therefore, the overlap factor (OVF) of the LCVM becomes even higher than that of the fundamental mode. We emphasize that this condition cannot be satisfied by a conventional step-index core fiber (SICF) but by the ring-doped core fiber (RDCF). Because the lasing threshold is inversely proportional to the OVF, the LCVM can predominantly be stimulated even without going through special procedures to impose extra loss mechanisms to the fundamental mode. We numerically verify that the OVF of the LCVM with the doped ions can significantly exceed that of the fundamental mode if the proposed fiber design is applied. In addition, an RDCF of the proposed fiber design can also operate in a regime containing no higher-order modes besides the LCVM, so that it can selectively and efficiently generate the LCVM without being disrupted by the parasitic lasing of the higher-order modes. We highlight that an optimized RDCF can lead to a >30 % higher OVF ratio than a SICF having the same doped area. The proposed model is expected to be useful for enhancing the efficiency of generating CVBs in an all-fiber format.