• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.169-176
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• 2015

The mechanical properties of living tissues have been major subjects of interest in biomechanics. In particular, the characteristics of very soft materials such as the brain have not been fully understood because experiments are often severely limited by ethical guidelines. There are increasing demands for studies on remote medical operations using robots. We conducted compression tests on brain-like specimens made of gelatin to find substitutes with the mechanical properties of brain tissues. Using a finite element analysis, we compared our experimental data with existing data on the brain in order to establish material models for brain tissues. We found that our substitute models for brain tissues effectively simulated their mechanical behaviors.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.9
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• pp.859-869
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• 2009

The sharp indenters such as Berkovich and conical indenters have a geometrical self-similarity in theory, but different materials have the same load-depth curve in case of single indentation. In this study, we analyze the load-depth curves of conical indenter with angles of indenter via finite element method. From FE analyses of dual-conical indentation test, we investigate the relationships between indentation parameters and load-deflection curves. With numerical regressions of obtained data, we finally propose indentation formulae for material properties evaluation. The proposed approach provides stress-strain curve and the values of elastic modulus, yield strength and strain-hardening exponent with an average error of less than 2%. It is also discussed that the method is valid for any elastically deforming indenters made of tungsten carbide and diamond for instance. The proposed indentation approach provides a substantial enhancement in accuracy compared with the prior methods.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.447-451
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• 2015

The objective of this study is to predict the structural characteristics of a heat exchanger mounted on an aircraft engine using finite element analysis. The plastic fracture and life of the heat exchanger were estimated by a thermo-mechanical analysis. Tensile tests were conducted under high temperature conditions (700, 800, 900, 1000 K) using five specimens to obtain the mechanical properties of the Inconel 625 tubes. To assess the structural characteristics of the heat exchanger, the full and partial models were applied under the operating conditions given by the thermo-mechanical and inertial load. As a result, the case, tubesheet, flange, and mounting components have a reasonable safety margin to the allowable stress assuming a fatigue strength of Inconel 625 of 10000 cycles under 1000 K.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.423-434
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• 2017

In this paper a systematic numerical analysis is performed to obtain the hysteresis behavior of partially restrained top and seat angle connections subjected to cyclic loading. This connection includes superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) angles and rods in order to secure the recentering capacities as well as proper energy dissipation effects of a CFT composite frame. The three-dimensional nonlinear finite element models are constructed to investigate the rotational stiffness, bending moment capacity and failure modes. A wide scope of additional structural behaviors explain the different influences of the connection's parameters, such as the various thickness of connection angles and the gage distance of steel and SMA rods.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1143-1179
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• 2016

Offshore wind turbines are considered as a fundamental part to develop substantial, alternative energy sources. In this highly flexible structures, monopiles are usually used as support foundations. Since the monopiles are large diameter (3.5 to 7 m) deep foundations, they result in extremely stiff short monopiles where the slenderness (length to diameter) may range between 5 and 10. Consequently, their elastic deformation patterns under lateral loading differ from those of small diameter monopiles usually employed for supporting structures in offshore oil and gas industry. For this reason, design recommendations (API and DNV) are not appropriate for designing foundations for offshore wind turbine structures as they have been established on the basis of full-scale load tests on long, slender and flexible piles. Furthermore, as these facilities are very sensitive to rotations and dynamic changes in the soil-pile system, the accurate prediction of monopile head displacement and rotation constitutes a design criterion of paramount importance. In this paper, the Fourier Series Aided Finite Element Method (FSAFEM) is employed for the determination of static impedance functions of monopiles for OWT subjected to horizontal force and/or to an overturning moment, where a non-homogeneous soil profile has been considered. On the basis of an extensive parametric study, and in order to address the problem of head stiffness of short monopiles, approximate analytical formulae are obtained for lateral stiffness $K_L$, rotational stiffness $K_R$ and cross coupling stiffness $K_{LR}$ for both rough and smooth interfaces. Theses expressions which depend only on the values of the monopile slenderness $L/D_p$ rather than the relative soil/monopile rigidity $E_p/E_s$ usually found in the offshore platforms designing codes (DNV code for example) have been incorporated in the expressions of the OWT natural frequency of four wind farm sites. Excellent agreement has been found between the computed and the measured natural frequencies.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.77-90
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• 2018

This paper presents a combined numerical, experimental, and theoretical study on the behavior of the concrete-filled double circular steel tubular (CFDT) stub columns under axial compressive loading. Four groups of stub column specimens were tested in this study to find out the effects of the concrete strength, steel ratio and diameter ratio on the mechanical behavior of CFDT stub columns. Nonlinear finite element (FE) models were also established to study the stresses of different components in the CFDT stub columns. The change of axial and transverse stresses in the internal and external steel tubes, as well as the change of axial stress in the concrete sandwich and concrete core, respectively, was thoroughly investigated for different CFDT stub columns with the same steel ratio. The influence of inner-to-outer diameter ratio and steel ratio on the ultimate bearing capacity of CFDT stub columns was identified, and a reasonable section configuration with proper inner-to-outer diameter ratio and steel ratio was proposed. Furthermore, a practical formula for predicting the ultimate bearing capacity was proposed based on the ultimate equilibrium principle. The predicted results showed satisfactory agreement with both experimental and numerical results, indicating that the proposed formula is applicable for design purposes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.4
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• pp.477-485
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• 2020

Finite element (FE) model based structural damage detection (SDD) methods play vital roles in effectively locating and quantifying structural damages. Among these methods, structural model updating should be conducted before SDD to obtain benchmark models of real structures. However, the characteristics of updating parameters are not reasonably considered in existing studies. Inspired by the l_∞ norm regularization, a novel anti-sparse representation method is proposed for structural model updating in this study. Based on sensitivity analysis, both frequencies and mode shapes are used to define an objective function at first. Then, by adding l_∞ norm penalty, an optimization problem is established for structural model updating. As a result, the optimization problem can be solved by the fast iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm (FISTA). Moreover, comparative studies with classical regularization strategy, i.e. the l₂ norm regularization method, are conducted as well. To intuitively illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a 2-DOF spring-mass model is taken as an example in numerical simulations. The updating results show that the proposed method has a good robustness to measurement noises. Finally, to further verify the applicability of the proposed method, a six-storey aluminum alloy frame is designed and fabricated in laboratory. The added mass on each storey is taken as updating parameter. The updating results provide a good agreement with the true values, which indicates that the proposed method can effectively update the model parameters with a high accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.2
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• pp.251-267
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• 2020

Transmission tower-line systems have come to represent one of the most important infrastructures in today's society. Recent strong earthquakes revealed that transmission tower-line systems are vulnerable to earthquake excitations, and that ground motions may arrive at such structures from any direction during an earthquake event. Considering these premises, this paper presents experimental and numerical studies on the dynamic responses of a 1000 kV ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) transmission tower-line system under different seismic incidence angles. Specifically, a 1:25 reduced-scale experimental prototype model is designed and manufactured, and a series of shaking table tests are carried out. The influence of the seismic incidence angle on the dynamic structural response is discussed based on the experimental data. Additionally, the incidence angles corresponding to the maximum peak displacement of the top of the tower relative to the ground (referred to herein as the critical seismic incidence angles) are summarized. The experimental results demonstrate that seismic incidence angle has a significant influence on the dynamic responses of transmission tower-line systems. Subsequently, an approximation method is employed to orient the critical seismic incidence angle, and a corresponding finite element (FE) analysis is carried out. The angles obtained from the approximation method are compared with those acquired from the numerical simulation and shaking table tests, and good agreement is observed. The results demonstrate that the approximation method can properly predict the critical seismic incidence angles of transmission tower-line systems. This research enriches the available experimental data and provides a simple and convenient method to assess the seismic performance of UHV transmission systems.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.2878-2885
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• 2012

In this study, the training and sporting equipment for leg rehabilitation featuring the MR fluids is proposed. The compact MR fluid brake is designed and manufactured to apply to the rehabilitation training and sporting mechanism. The resistance characteristic of the MR fluid brake is controllable by varying the magnetic field around the fluid. Under consideration of spatial limitation, design parameters which are related with the magnetic strength are determined to maximize to a torque using finite element method. The FE analysis is performed using a commercial code, ANSYS Workbench. The proposed brake device is manufactured, and its field-dependant torque is experimentally evaluated. When the electric current is supplied, the torque of the MR fluid brake is increased and the response is very fast. Depending on the strength of the current supply, torques of the MR fluid brake also increase similar to Bingham property of MR fluid.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.335-340
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• 2018

The behavior of concrete slabs in composite beam with C and L shaped angle shear connectors has been studied in this paper. These two types of angle shear connectors' instalment have been commonly utilized. In this study, the finite element (FE) analysis and soft computing method have been used both to present the shear connectors' push out tests and providing data results used later in soft computing method. The current study has been performed to present the aforementioned shear connectors' behavior based on the variable factors aiming the study of diverse factors' effects on C and L shaped angle in shear connectors. ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System), has been manipulated in providing the effective parameters in shear strength forecasting by providing input-data comprising: height, length, thickness of shear connectors together with concrete strength and the respective slip of shear connectors. ANFIS has been also used to identify the predominant parameters influencing the shear strength forecast in C and L formed angle shear connectors.