• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.11-25
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• 2015

The accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, resulted in a failure of the power systems that are needed to cool the reactors at the plant. The accident progression in the absence of heat removal systems caused Units 1-3 to undergo fuel melting. Containment pressurization and hydrogen explosions ultimately resulted in the escape of radioactivity from reactor containments into the atmosphere and ocean. Problems in containment venting operation, leakage from primary containment boundary to the reactor building, improper functioning of standby gas treatment system (SGTS), unmitigated hydrogen accumulation in the reactor building were identified as some of the reasons those added-up in the severity of the accident. The Fukushima accident not only initiated worldwide demand for installation of adequate control and mitigation measures to minimize the potential source term to the environment but also advocated assessment of the existing mitigation systems performance behavior under a wide range of postulated accident scenarios. The uncertainty in estimating the released fraction of the radionuclides due to the Fukushima accident also underlined the need for comprehensive understanding of fission product behavior as a function of the thermal hydraulic conditions and the type of gaseous, aqueous, and solid materials available for interaction, e.g., gas components, decontamination paint, aerosols, and water pools. In the light of the Fukushima accident, additional experimental needs identified for hydrogen and fission product issues need to be investigated in an integrated and optimized way. Additionally, as more and more passive safety systems, such as passive autocatalytic recombiners and filtered containment venting systems are being retrofitted in current reactors and also planned for future reactors, identified hydrogen and fission product issues will need to be coupled with the operation of passive safety systems in phenomena oriented and coupled effects experiments. In the present paper, potential hydrogen and fission product issues raised by the Fukushima accident are discussed. The discussion focuses on hydrogen and fission product behavior inside nuclear power plant containments under severe accident conditions. The relevant experimental investigations conducted in the technical scale containment THAI (thermal hydraulics, hydrogen, aerosols, and iodine) test facility (9.2 m high, 3.2 m in diameter, and $60m^3$ volume) are discussed in the light of the Fukushima accident.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.185-189
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• 2017

The purpose of earthquake resistant design for typical bridges is the 'No Collapse Design' allowing emergency vehicles just after earthquakes. The Roadway Bridge Design Code provides design provisions to carry out such 'No Collapse Design' with a ductile mechanism and response modification factors given for connections and substructure play key role in this procedure. In case of response modification factors for substructure, the Roadway Bridge Design Code provides values considering ductility and redundancy. On the other hand, 'AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications' provides values considering additionally an artificial factor according to the bridge importance categories divided into critical, essential and others. In this study, a typical bridge with steel bearing connections and reinforced concrete piers is selected and different response modification factors for substructure are applied with design conditions given in the Roadway Bridge Design Code. Based on the comparison study of the design results, supplementary measures are suggested required by applying different response modification factors for substructure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.577-587
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• 2018

The quantitative assessment of the seismic collapse risk of a structure requires the usage of an optimal intensity measure (IM) which can adequately characterise the severity of the ground motion. Research suggests that the average spectral acceleration ($Sa_{avg}$) may be an efficient and sufficient alternate IM as compared to the more traditional first mode spectral acceleration, $Sa(T_1)$, particularly during seismic collapse risk estimation. This study primarily presents a comparative evaluation of the sufficiency of the average spectral acceleration with respect to ground motion duration, and secondarily assesses the impact of ground motion duration on collapse risk estimation. By assembling a suite of 100 historical ground motions, incremental dynamic analysis of 60 different inelastic single-degree-of-freedom (SDF) oscillators with varying periods and ductility capacities were analysed, and collapse risk estimates obtained. Linear regression models are used to comparatively quantify the sufficiency of $Sa_{avg}$ and $Sa(T_1)$ using four significant duration metrics. Results suggests that an improved sufficiency may exist for $Sa_{avg}$ when the period of the SDF system increases, particularly beyond 0.5, as compare to $Sa(T_1)$. In reference to the ground motion duration measures, results indicated that the sufficiency of $Sa_{avg}$ is more sensitive to significant duration definitions that consider almost the full wave train of an accelerogram ($SD_{a5-95}$ and $SD_{v5-95}$). In order to obtain a reduced variability of the collapse risk estimate, the 5-95% significant duration metric defined using the Arias integral ($SD_{a5-95}$) should be used for seismic collapse risk estimation in conjunction with $Sa_{avg}$.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.121-130
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• 2008

Recently, we can see an increasing amount of dam damage or failure due to aging, earthquakes occurrence and unusual changes in weather. For this reason, dam safety is gaining more importance than ever before in terms of disaster management at a national level. Therefore, the government is trying to come up with an array of legal actions to secure consistent dam safety. Other dam management organizations are also taking various institutional and technical measures for the same purpose. In this study, Dam Safety Management System, KDSMS, has developed for consistent and efficient dam safety management. The KDSMS consists of dam and reservoir data, a hydrological information system, a field inspection and data management system, a instrumentation and monitoring system including earthquake monitoring, a field investigation and safety evaluation system, and a collective information system. The KDSMS is a kind of enterprise management system which has been developed to deal with safety management of each field, research center, and headquarter office and their correlation as well as detailed safety information management.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.138-147
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• 2018

With the recent series of damage caused by earthquakes in Korea, such as Gyeongju and Pohang, we know that Korea is no longer a safe zone for earthquakes and that we need to be prepared for them. In addition, bridges built prior to the introduction of seismic design concepts remain without adequate seismic reinforcement measures, and earthquake reinforcement should be performed efficiently considering economic and structural safety. Preliminary assessment of seismic performance of existing bridges is divided into four seismic groups, taking into account seismicity, vulnerability and Impact, considering the magnitude of the existing bridge's seismic, and prioritization for further evaluation of seismic performance. In this study, unlike the existing anti-seismic reinforcement priority method, scores are calculated based on the seismic design criteria applied to bridges, importance coefficient of the bridge including the zone coefficient and the Importance, vulnerability index of the bridge including the soil condition and the elapsed years, detail coefficient of the bridge including the superstructure form, the span length, the width, the height, the design load, and the daily traffic volume. The calculated score items will be weighted and grouped according to the results. Using this, a simpler and more efficient algorithm was proposed to determine the priority of seismic reinforcement on a bridge.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.261-272
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• 2016

The whole world has been damaged by dramatic increase of natural disasters such as localized torrential downpour, earthquake and drought, while suffering from climate changes caused by global warming. In Korea where the continental climate and oceanic one are crossed, the frequency and the size of damages are increased by stronger typhoons and localized torrential downpours and landslides, storms and floods. Therefore, this study analyzed damage cases and their causes and examined foreign plans to prevent natural disasters, by limiting to rural villages where serious damages occur due to typhoons and localized torrential downpours and measures and infra-structures against such disasters are poorly prepared. From the findings, it attempts to suggest some plans to establish disaster safety villages by abstracting plan factors applicable to rural areas in Korea, on the basis of facilities and spatial projects.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.73 no.4
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• pp.427-436
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• 2020

The use of final IGS precise orbit and clock products for high-rate GNSS-PPP proved its effectiveness in capturing dynamic displacement of engineering structures caused by earthquakes. However, the main drawback of using the final products is that they are available after approximately two weeks of data collection, which is not suitable for timely measures after an event. In this study, the use of ultra-rapid products (observed part), which are available after a few hours of data collection, and rapid products, which are available in less than 24 hrs, are investigated and their results are compared to the more precise final products. The tests are designed such that harmonic oscillations with different frequencies and amplitudes and ground motion of a simulated real earthquake are generated using a single axis shake table and the PPP was used to capture these movements by monitoring time-change of the table positions. To evaluate the accuracy of PPP using ultra-rapid, rapid and final products, their results were compared with relative GNSS positioning and LVDT (Linear Variable Differential Transformer) data, treated as reference. The results show that the high-rate GNSS-PPP solutions based on the three products can capture frequencies of harmonic oscillations and dynamic displacement with good accuracy. There were slight differences between ultra-rapid, rapid and final products, where some of the tested events indicated that the latter two produced are more accurate and provide better results compared to the ultra-rapid product for monitoring short-term dynamic displacements.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.807-819
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• 2019

In recent earthquakes, the failure of ceiling systems has been one of the most widely reported damage and the major cause of functionality interruption in some buildings. In an effort to mitigate this damage, some scholars have studied a series of ceiling systems including plaster ceilings and mineral wool ceilings. But few studies have involved the backdrop metal ceiling used in some important constructions with higher rigidity and frequency such as the main control area of nuclear power plants. Therefore, in order to evaluate its seismic performance, a full-scale backdrop metal ceiling system, including steel runners and metal panels, was designed, fabricated and installed in a steel frame in this study. And the backdrop metal ceiling system with two perimeter attachments variants was tested: (i) the ends of the runners were connected with the angle steel to form an effective lateral constraint around the backdrop metal ceiling, (ii) the perimeter attachments of the main runner were retained, but the perimeter attachments of the cross runner were removed. In the experiments, different damage of the backdrop metal ceiling system was observed in detail under various earthquakes. Results showed that the backdrop metal ceiling had good integrity and excellent seismic performance. And the perimeter attachments of the cross runner had an adverse effect on the seismic performance of the backdrop metal ceiling under earthquakes. Meanwhile, a series of seismic construction measures and several suggestions that need to be paid attention were proposed in the text so that the backdrop metal ceiling can be better applied in the main control area of nuclear power plants and other important engineering projects.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.233-244
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• 2019

In this work, we have studied the effects of different soil thicknesses, haunch heights, reinforcement forms and construction technologies on the seismic performance of a composite precast fabricated utility tunnel by pseudo-static tests. Five concrete specimens were designed and fabricated for low-cycle reciprocating load tests. The hysteretic behavior of composite precast fabricated utility tunnel under simulated seismic waves and the strain law of steel bars were analyzed. Test results showed that composite precast fabricated utility tunnel met the requirements of current codes and had good anti-seismic performance. The use of a closed integral arrangement of steel bars inside utility tunnel structure as well as diagonal reinforcement bars at its haunches improved the integrity of the whole structure and increased the bearing capacity of the structure by about 1.5%. Increasing the thickness of covering soil within a certain range was beneficial to the earthquake resistance of the structure, and the energy consumption was increased by 10%. Increasing haunch height within a certain range increased the bearing capacity of the structure by up to about 19% and energy consumption by up to 30%. The specimen with the lowest haunch height showed strong structural deformation with ductility coefficient of 4.93. It was found that the interfaces of haunches, post-casting self-compacting concrete, and prefabricated parts were the weak points of utility tunnel structures. Combining the failure phenomena of test structures with their related codes, we proposed improvement measures for construction technology, which could provide a reference for the construction and design of practical projects.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.141-151
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• 2019

In this paper, it is aimed to present a detail investigation about the comparison of static and dynamic behavior of historical masonry arch bridges considering different arch curvature. $G{\ddot{o}}derni$ historical masonry two-span arch bridge which is located in Kulp town, Diyarbakir, Turkey is selected as a numerical application. The bridge takes part in bowless bridge group and built in large measures than the others. The restoration projects were approved and rehabilitation studies have still continued. Finite element model of the bridge is constituted with special software to determine the static and dynamic behavior. To demonstrate the arch curvature effect, the finite element model are reconstructed considering different arch curvature between 2.86 m-3.76 m for first arch and 2.64 m-3.54 m for second arch with the increment of 0.10 m, respectively. Dead and live vehicle loads are taken into account during static analyses. 1999 Kocaeli earthquake ground motion record is considered for time history analyses. The maximum displacements, principal stresses and elastic strains are compared with each other using contour diagrams. It is seen that the arch curvature has more influence on the structural response of historical masonry arch bridges. At the end of the study, it is seen that with the increasing of the arch heights, the maximum displacements, minimum principal stresses and minimum elastic strains have a decreasing trend in all analyses, in addition maximum principal stresses and maximum elastic strains have unchanging trend up to optimum geometry.