• Korean System Dynamics Review
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.5-29
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• 2015

The importance of the concept of safety culture has increased in the security of high-risk facility after Chernobyl accident in 1986. This paper elaborated the concept of safety culture and its main factors by Causal Loop Diagram. Due to the decline of safety culture, the occurrence of incidents and accidents require more and more corrective actions to the members of high-risk facilities and thereby increasing their workloads. Employees who must complete the task within the given time have to have time pressures and don't comply with the rules and procedures. Also, a schedule pressure is a big stress for employees, causing mistakes in precision work. In order to improve these problems, CLD of the safety culture in this paper suggests hiring more workers, re-allocation of given workloads and strengthen the learning, communication capabilities and safety leadership. In addition, the two real accident cases were analyzed to test the feasibility of the System Dynamic simulation model through the process of structuring the fault trees on the stationary black out accident in Kori unit 1 in South Korea and Kleen Energy power station explosion in US. The simulation results show that the various safety factors cause the serious accident combined with mechanical failure and safety culture will reduce the possibility of the accidents in these high-risk organizations. This simulation model can contribute to analyzing the impact of the organizational and human factors of safety culture and can provide the alternatives in high-risk facilities.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.49-53
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• 2020

This study aimed to identify the characteristics of 40 chemical accidents that occurred in Jeollabuk-do from 2004 to 2019. During this time, there were 2.5 accidents per year on average in the province; their types were classified as spill/leak, fire, explosion, adverse reaction, and complex. There were 34 leaks and six explosions, and they are categorized as follows: 12 by worker error, 16 from facility defects, and 12 by transport vehicle accidents. The substances involved in these accidents were ammonia (15%), sulfuric acid (12.5%), and silicon tetrachloride (7.5%). Notably, the rate of chemical accidents (75%) is the highest during spring and summer. In order to reduce chemical accidents, first, there should be compliance with the relevant laws. Second, the quality of safety education and training of workers should be improved. Finally, valuable government support is also necessary to improve facilities.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.27-33
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• 2010

Analysis of gas accidents for 11.5 years, from 1998 to June, 2009, by types has been made in this study to prevent the recurrence of accidents through the analysis of gas accident occurring environment. Gas using environment and gas accidents are forced to be closely connected since the number of gas accidents has not only been decreased but occurred steadily and gas using types are changing by time period, weather, etc. in terms of accident contents. Gas accidents have been occurred more in capital areas with larger gas usage and specific local governments. The possibility of the gas accidents hit the highest when the weather is clear, the wind speed is low and the humidity is in the middle. In addition, leakage of gas, fire or explosion are also considered to be closely related with the weather as a result of model observance of gas accidents types. All the gas related possible accidents are also considered to be predictable if this result is to be analysed in association with the weather.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.294-301
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• 2013

The accidents related to boilers are caused by defects with high risk which can lead to the explosion of the equipment. The number of boiler accidents from 1979 to 2006 is 100 andthe casualties totaled 379, and the scale of accidents has been growing larger every year. The analysis has found that the number of accidents caused by carelessness in management is 59, 72% of total 82 cases and 18by low level of water. The analysis of accidents in foreign countries showed a similar result. From the past till today most of the accidents have been resulted from bad handlingand maintenance. The analysis of accidents for the inspected boilers also showed that the major cause of the accidents was bad handling and maintenance of automatic controllers, safety devices, etc. And in the large-scale explosive accidents, the number one cause of them was the low level of water.

• Architectural research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.151-158
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• 2013

Offshore oil and gas process plants are exposed to hazardous accidents such as explosion and fire, so that the structural components should resist such accidental loads. Given the possibilities of thousands of different scenarios for the occurrence of an accidental hazard, the best way to predict a reasonable size of a specific accidental load would be the employment of a probabilistic approach. Having the fact that a specific procedure for probabilistic accidental hazard analysis has not yet been established especially for explosion and fire hazards, it is widely accepted that engineers usually take simple and conservative figures in assuming uncertainties inherent in the procedure, resulting either in underestimation or more likely in overestimation in the topside structural design for offshore plants. The variation in the results of a probabilistic approach is determined by the assumptions accepted in the procedures of explosion probability computation, explosion analysis, and structural analysis. A design overpressure load for a sample offshore plant is determined according to the proposed probabilistic approach in this study. CFD analysis results using a Flame Acceleration Simulator, FLACS_v9.1, are utilized to create an overpressure hazard curve. Moreover, the negative impulse and frequency contents of a blast wave are considerably influencing structural responses, but those are completely ignored in a widely used triangular form of blast wave. An idealistic blast wave profile deploying both negative and positive pulses is proposed in this study. A topside process module and piperack with blast wall are 3D FE modeled for structural analysis using LS-DYNA. Three different types of blast wave profiles are applied, two of typical triangular forms having different impulse and the proposed load profile. In conclusion, it is found that a typical triangular blast load leads to overestimation in structural design.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2020

Gas explosion accidents are steadily being issued due to increased gas consumption in Korea and foreign countries. To analyze the effects of these gas explosions, a TNT equivalent method is used. In this study, the TNT equivalent was calculated in the event of an explosion due to the volume content in the air of CO, CH₄ and C₂H₄, the typical flammable gases emitted by coal. Also, the peak overpressure and impulse variation with the distance from explosion point were compared and analyzed by gas using the calculated equivalent value of TNT. The upper limit of the TNT equivalent for the three mixed gases is up to five times larger than the other gases mixture. In addition, the peak overpressure and impulse, which are factors of the TNT characteristic curve, are also increasing as the number of gases increases.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.134-140
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• 2023

Activated carbon is a carbonaceous material mainly used as a gaseous or liquid adsorbent. As fire-related accidents occur consistently due to the accumulation of heat of adsorption and oxidation of volatile organic compounds, the explosive characteristics and thermal stability of powdered and granular activated carbon made from coal and coconut shells were evaluated. As a result of the particle size analysis, the powdered activated carbon was in the particle size range (0.4~3) ㎛, and thermal properties such as exothermic onset temperature and decomposition behavior were analyzed using a differential scanning calorimetry and a thermogravimetric analysis. As a result of the evaluation of the explosion hazards for dust, both coal-based and coconut-based powdered activated carbon are classified as St1 class with weak explosion, but this is a relative and does not mean that the explosion hazards is absolutely low. Therefore, it is necessary to establish countermeasures for reducing the damage.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.31-41
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• 2012

This study collected 5,100 cases of gas accident occurred in Korea for 14 years from 1995 to 2008, established Database and based on it, analyzed them by detailed forms and reasons. As the result of analyzing the whole city gas accidents with Poisson analysis, the item of "Careless work-Explosion-Pipeline' showed the highest rate of accidents for the next 5 years. And, "Joint Losening and corrosion-Release-Pipeline" showed the lowest rate of accident. In addition, for the result of analyzing only accidents related to LPG vaporizer, "LPG-Vaporizer-Fire" showed the highest rate of accident and "LPG-Vaporizer-Products Faults" showed the lowest rate of accident. Also, as the result of comparing and analyzing foreign LPG accident accompanied by Jet fire, facility's defect which is liquid outflow cut-off device and heat exchanger's defect were analyzed as the main reason causing jet fire, like the case of Korea, but the number of accidents for the next 5 years was the highest in "LPG-Mechanical-Jet fire" and "LPG-Mechanical-Vapor Cloud" showed the highest rate of accidents. By grafting Poisson distribution theory onto gas accident expecting program of the future, it's expected to suggest consistent standard and be used as the scale which can be used in actual field.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2009

In the last five years, 91 accidents from portable gas ranges and non-refillable metallic gas cartridges have occurred. The gas cylinder installed with a relief valve was developed to prevent an explosive accident from the gas cartridge. In this study it was carried out to evaluate the safety of a gas cylinder mounted with a relief valve which can prevent an explosion. Under the real using condition and the extreme condition the gas cylinder is heated with an electric heater. Simultaneously, the operating pressure is checked and the suitability of releasing flux is evaluated. And the possibility of fire or explosion was tested when the gas was released from the relief valve at the real using condition. Using a numerical simulation method, the diffusion of butane gas released from a relief valve was visualized.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.215-221
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• 1993

A required initial condition for a steam explosion to occur following core meltdown accidents of a nuclear power plant is the formation of a coarse mixture of molten fuel and water. The extent of a premixing is the measure of efficiency of steam explosion that may follow. A simple one-dimensional, transient model and the flooding criteria have been applied to evaluate the fuel/coolant mixing limit. Also, both instant breakup and dynamic breakup models for the mixing process have been separately used here and compared each other. The results indicate that fuel temperature, ambient pressure, mixing diameter, water depth, and pouring diameter are the important parameters affecting the mixing behavior.