• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.495-504
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• 2015

This work investigated the characteristics of a packed-bed plasma reactor system and the performances of the plasma reactors connected in series or in parallel for the decomposition of ethylene. Before the discharge ignition, the effective capacitance of the ${\gamma}$-alumina packed-bed plasma reactor was larger than that of the reactor without any packing, but after the ignition the effective capacitance was similar to each other, regardless of the packing. The energy of electrons created by plasma depends mainly on the electric field intensity, and was not significantly affected by the gas composition in the range of 0~20% (v/v) oxygen (nitrogen : 80~100% (v/v)). Among the various reactive species generated by plasma, ground-state atomic oxygen and ozone are understood to be primarily involved in oxidation reactions, and as the electric field intensity increases, the amount of ground-state atomic oxygen relatively decreases while that of nitrogen atom increases. Even though there are many parameters affecting the performance of the plasma reactor such as a voltage, discharge power, gas flow rate and residence time, all parameters can be integrated into a single parameter, namely, specific input energy (SIE). It was experimentally confirmed that the performances of the plasma reactors connected in series or in parallel could be treated as a function of SIE alone, which simplifies the scale-up design procedure. Besides, the ethylene decomposition results can be predicted by the calculation using the rate constant expressed as a function of SIE.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.509-521
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• 1994

This study is an effort to develop computer simulation model that produce precipitation patterns from stochastic model. A stochastic model is formulated for the process of daily precipitation with considering the sequences of wet and dry days and the precipitation amounts on wet days. This study consists of 2 papers and the process of precipitation occurrence is modelled by an alternate renewal process (ARP) in paper (I). In the ARP model for the precipitation occurrence, four discrete distributions, used to fit the wet and dry spells, were as follows; truncated binomial distribution (TBD), truncated Poisson distribution (TPD), truncated negative binomial distribution (TNBD), logarithmic series distribution (LSD). In companion paper (II) the process of occurrence is developed by Markov chain. The amounts of precipitation, given that precipitation has occurred, are described by a Gamma. Pearson Type-III, Extremal Type-III, and 3 parameter Weibull distribution. Daily precipitation series model consists of two models, A-Wand A-G model, by combining the process of precipitation occurrence and a continuous probability distribution on the precipitation of wet days. To evaluate the performance of the simulation model, output from the model was compared with historical data of 7 stations in the Nakdong and Seomjin river basin. The results of paper (1) show that it is possible to design a model for the synthetic generation of IX)int precipitation patterns.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.4
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• pp.531-543
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• 2023

The existing concrete bridges are time-varying working systems, where the maintenance strategy should be planned according to the time-varying performance of the bridge. This work proposes a time-dependent residual capacity assessment procedure, which considers the non-stationary bridge load effects under growing traffic and non-stationary structural deterioration owing to material degradations. Lifetime bridge load effects under traffic growth are predicated by the non-stationary peaks-over-threshold (POT) method using time-dependent generalized Pareto distribution (GPD) models. The non-stationary structural resistance owing to material degradation is modeled by incorporating the Gamma deterioration process and field inspection data. A three-span continuous box-girder bridge is illustrated as an example to demonstrate the application of the proposed procedure, and the time-varying reliability indexes of the bridge girder are calculated. The accuracy of the proposed non-stationary POT method is verified through numerical examples, where the shape parameter of the time-varying GPD model is constant but the threshold and scale parameters are polynomial functions increasing with time. The case study illustrates that the residual flexural capacities show a degradation trend from a slow decrease to an accelerated decrease under traffic growth and material degradation. The reliability index for the mid-span cross-section reduces from 4.91 to 4.55 after being in service for 100 years, and the value is from 4.96 to 4.75 for the mid-support cross-section. The studied bridge shows no safety risk under traffic growth and structural deterioration owing to its high design safety reserve. However, applying the proposed numerical approach to analyze the degradation of residual bearing capacity for bridge structures with low safety reserves is of great significance for management and maintenance.