• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.368-375
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• 2013

Failure of small bore piping welds is a recurring problem at nuclear power plants. And the socket weld cracking in small bore piping has caused unplanned plant shutdowns for repair and high economic impact on the plants. Consequently, early crack detection, including the detection of manufacturing defects, is of the utmost importance. Until now, the surface inspection methods has been applied according to ASME Section XI requirements. But the ultrasonic inspection as a volumetric method is also applying to enforce the inspection requirement. However, the conventional manual ultrasonic inspection techniques are used to detect service induced fatigue cracks. And there was uncertainty on manual ultrasonic inspection because of limited access to the welds and difficulties with contact between the ultrasonic probe and the OD(outer diameter) surface of small bore piping. In this study, phased array ultrasonic inspection technique is applied to increase inspection speed and reliability. To achieve this object, the 3.5 MHz phased array ultrasonic transducer are designed and fabricated. The manually encoded scanner was also developed to enhance contact conditions and maintain constant signal quality. Additionally inspection system is configured and inspection procedure is developed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.1-13
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• 1982

Transition process of plastic region. displacements, stresses and strains ahead the flaw tips were analysed by the finite element method on the steel plate with the circular hole and the one with the elliptical hole under completely alternating load (repetition of tensile loading, unloading and compressive loading). As the results, the followings were obtained. Transition process of elastic failure (yielding) region was estimated. From this the tendency was confirmed that the fracture would be initiated from ahead the flaw tip, and propagated along the $45^{\circ}$ direction. The fundamental data available in estimating the stress intensity factor that was considered as the core in analysing the fracture mechanism of steel plates were obtained. It was indicated that when unloading after tension the effect of compressive loading, and even the compressive reyield, was occured ahead the flaw tip. Similarly it was indicated that when unloading after compression the effect of tensile loading, and even the tensile reyield, was occured ahead the flaw tip. It was considered that these phenomena were occured because the unloading effect was constrained by the residual strains when unloading. It was considered that the fatigue phenomenon was occured ahead, the flaw tip by repetition of tensile yield, the above compressive reyield, compressive yeild and the above tensile reyield. In addition, the tendency was confirmed that the fracture ahead the flaw tip was occured as the flaw was changed from the circular hole to the elliptical hole and became to be the crack lastly.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2005

Conventional eddy current testing has been used for the detection of the defect-like fatigue crack in the conductive materials, such as aluminum, which uses a sinusoidal signal with very narrow frequency bandwidth, Whereas, the pulsed eddy current method uses a pulse signal with a broad bandwidth. This can allow multi-frequency eddy current testing, and the penetration depth is greater than that of the conventional eddy current testing. In this work, a pulsed eddy current instrument was developed for evaluating the metal loss. The developed instrument was composed of the pulse generator generating the maximum square pulse voltage of 40V, an amplifier controlled up to 52dB, an A/D converter of 16 bit and the sampling frequency of 20 MHz, and an industrial personal computer operated by the Windows program. A pulsed eddy current probe was designed as a pancake type in which the sensing roil was located inside the driving roil. The output signals of the sensing roil increased rapidly wich the step pulse driving voltage かn off, and the latter part of the sensing coil output voltage decreased exponentially with time. The decrement value of the output signals increased as the thickness of the aluminum test piece increased.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.69-76
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• 2008

Three failure cases of CNG composite vessels were reported since after January 2005. The 1st and 2nd accidents were indebted to vessel defect and installation mistake. The 3rd was caused by gas leak at pipe connections. In this paper various aspects were studied based on information of the three failure analysis, which must be improved for better safety of the CNG bus system. Overpressure region caused by vessel explosion was theoretically predicted and also assessed by PHAST program. Explosion of 120 l vessel under 20 MPa is equivalent to 1.2 kg TNT explosion. The predicted value by PHAST was more serious than theoretical one. However, actual consequence of explosion was much less than both of the predicted consequences. Since the CNG vessel was designed by the performance based design methodology, it is difficult to verify whether the required process and tests were properly conducted or not after production. If material toughness is not enough, the vessel should be weak in brittle fracture at early in the morning of winter season since the metal temperature can be lower than the transition temperature. If autofrettage pressure is not correct, fatigue failure due to tensile stress during repeated charging is possible. One positive aspect is that fire did not ocurred after vessel failure. This may be indebted to fast diffusion of natural gas which hindered starting fire.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.11-19
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• 2014

PURPOSES : The purpose of this article is to investigate the predicted life of jointed concrete pavement (JCP) with two variables effecting on axle load spectra (ALS). The first variable is different data acquisition methods whether using high-speed weigh-in-motion (HS-WIM) or not and the other one is spectra distribution due to overweight enforcement on main-lane of expressway using HS-WIM. METHODS : Three sets of ALS had been collected i) ALS provided by Korea Pavement Research Program (KPRP), which had been obtained without using HS-WIM ii) ALS collected by HS-WIM before the enforcement at Kimcheon and Seonsan site iii) ALS collected after the enforcement at the same sites. And all ALS had been classified into twelve vehicle classes and four axle types to compare each other. Among the vehicle classes, class 6, 7, 10 and 12 were selected as the major target for comparing each ALS because these were considered as the primary trucks with a high rate of overweight loading. In order to analyze the performance of JCP based on pavement life, fatigue crack and International Roughness Index (IRI) were predicted using road pavement design program developed by KPRP and each ALS with same annual average daily traffic (AADT) was applied to design slab thickness. RESULTS : Comparison ALS of KPRP with those of HS-WIM shows that the ALS of KPRP has a low percentage of heavy spectra such as 6~9 tonnes for single axle, 18~21 tonnes for tandem axle and 27~30 tonnes for tridem axle than other two ALS of HS-WIM in most vehicle classes and axle types. It means that ALS of KPRP was underestimated. And after the enforcement, percentage of heavy spectra close to 10 tonnes per an axle are lowered than before the enforcement by the effect of overweight enforcement because the spectra are related to overweight regulation. Prediction results of pavement life for each ALS present that the ALS of HS-WIM collected before the enforcement makes the pavement life short more than others. On the other hand, the ALS of KPRP causes the longest life under same thickness of slab. Thus, it is possible that actual performance life of JCP under the traffic like ALS of HS-WIM could be short than predicted life if the pavement was designed based on ALS provided by KPRP. CONCLUSIONS : It is necessary to choose more reliable and practical ALS when designing JCP because ALS can be fairly affected by acquisition methods. In addition, it is important to extend performance life of the pavement in service by controlling traffic load such as overweight enforcement.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.253-260
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• 1993

High strength and fracture toughness of Al-Li-Cu alloy(2090 Al alloy) have been achieved by the improvement of melting and casting, extrusion and heat treatment techniques. To establish the sucessful process for semi-industrial scale ingot(20Kg) the following areas have been investigated: (1) Improvement of melting and casting techniques for ingot by introducing atmospheric modifications, vacuum and rotary degassing, and deslagging. (2) The effect of heat treatment on mechanical properties (3) Mechanical characterization by tensile test, fracture toughness test and fatigue crack propagation test. High mechanical properties were found to be intimately related with ingot soundness. Tensile strength of final products varied from 534MPa to 566MPa in peak aged condition while elongation/ductility ranged from 9.0% to 11.9%. From the fracture toughness test with using compact tensile specimen, plane strain fracture toughness($K_{Ic}$) appeared to be 39MPa${\surd}$m in peak aged condition and 23MPa${\surd}$ m in underaged condition. When load ratios of 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 were given ${\Delta}K_{th}$ was 6.0MPa${\surd}$ m, 5.3MPa${\surd}$ m and 4.3MPa${\surd}$ m respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.176-183
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• 2014

Acoustic emission testing (AET) of cylinders is advantageous in that it can be directly conducted on cylinders installed in a car, without needing to dissemble them on a real-time basis. Therefore, users prefer AET over other nondestructive testing methods. Owing to these advantages of AET, it has been approved by the Department of Transportation of the U.S. as a safety evaluation method for pressure containers or as an alternative to the hydroproof testing method. This paper presents a study of the quantitative evaluation criteria for a container having ultrasonic testing defects and also for Type 1 and Type 2 gas cylinders, which are defective seamless pressure containers provided by NK, a manufacturer of pressure containers. For the Type 1 cylinder, the process from crack growth to leak was observed in a repetitive fatigue test using a 113 L container according to ASTM E 1419-02. Further, for the Type 2 cylinder, integrity was evaluated using a 119 L sound container and a container damaged by hydraulic pressure, by the slow-fill method according to ASTM E 2191-02. Based on the AET results of the Type 1 and Type 2 cylinders, quantitative evaluation criteria were established for a defective and non-defective container.

• Composites Research
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.317-322
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• 2021

When a complex load such as torsion, low-speed impact, or fatigue load is applied, the properties in the thickness direction are weakened through microcracks inside the material due to the nature of the laminated composite material, and delamination occurs. To prevent the interlaminar delamination, various three-dimensional reinforcement methods such as Z-pinning and stitching, and structural health monitoring techniques that detect the microcrack of structures in real time have been continuously studied. In this paper, the single-lap joints with I-fiber stitching process were manufactured by a co-curing method and their strengths and failure detection capability were evaluated. AE and electric resistance method were used for detection of crack and failure signal and electric circuit for signal analysis was manufactured, and failure signal was analyzed during the tensile test of a single-lap joint. From the experiment, the strength of the single lap joint reinforced by I-fiber stitching process was improved by about 44.6% compared to the co-cured single lap joint without reinforcement. In addition, as the single-lap joint reinforced by I-fiber stitching process can detect failure in both the electrical resistance method and the AE method, it has been proven to be an effective structure for failure monitoring as well as strength improvement.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.547-553
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• 2020

As aging infrastructures increase along with time, the efficient maintenance becomes more significant and accurate responses from the sensors are pre-requisite. Among various responses, strain is commonly used to detect damage such as crack and fatigue. Optical fiber sensor is one of the promising sensing techniques to measure strains with high-durability, immunity for electrical noise, long transmission distance. Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) is a point sensor to measure the strain based on reflected signals from the grating, while Brillouin Optic Correlation Domain Analysis (BOCDA) is a distributed sensor to measure the strain along with the optical fiber based on scattering signals. Although the FBG provides the signal with high accuracy and reproducibility, the number of sensing points is limited. On the other hand, the BOCDA can measure a quasi-continuous strain along with the optical fiber. However, the measured signals from BOCDA have low accuracy and reproducibility. This paper proposed a multi-fidelity data-fusion method based on Gaussian Process Regression to improve the fidelity of the strain distribution by fusing the advantages of both systems. The proposed method was evaluated by laboratory test. The result shows that the proposed method is promising to improve the fidelity of the strain.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.513-523
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• 2015

In steel moment frames constructed of H-shapes, strong-axis moment connections should be used for maximum structural efficiency if possible. And most of cyclic seismic testing, domestic and international, has been conducted for strong-axis moment connections and cyclic test data for weak-axis connections is quite limited. However, when perpendicular moment frames meet, weak-axis moment connections are also needed at the intersecting locations. Especially, both strong- and weak-axis moment connections have been frequently used in domestic practice. In this study, cyclic seismic performance of RBS (reduced beam section) weak-axis welded moment connections was experimentally investigated. Test specimens, designed according to the procedure proposed by Gilton and Uang (2002), performed well and developed an excellent plastic rotation capacity of 0.03 rad or higher, although a simplified sizing procedure for attaching the beam web to the shear plate in the form of C-shaped fillet weld was used. The test results of this study showed that the sharp corner of C-shaped fillet weld tends to be the origin of crack propagation due to stress concentration there and needs to be trimmed for the better weld shape. Different from strong-axis moment connections, due to the presence of weld access hole, a kind of CJP butt joint is formed between the beam flange and the horizontal continuity plate in weak-axis moment connections. When weld access hole is large, this butt joint can experience cyclic local buckling and subsequent low cycle fatigue fracture as observed in this testing program. Thus the size of web access hole at the butt joint should be minimized if possible. The recommended seismic detailing such as stickout, trimming, and thicker continuity plate for construction tolerance should be followed for design and fabrication of weak-axis welded moment connections.