• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.853-866
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• 2016

This paper examines a methodology for computing the probability of structural failure of reinforced concrete beams subjected to fire. The significant load variables considered are dead load, sustained live load and fire temperature. Resistance is expressed in terms of moment capacity with random variables taken as yield strength of steel, concrete class (or grade of concrete), beam width and depth. The flexural capacity is determined based on the design equations recommended in Indian standard IS456:2000. Simplified method named $500^{\circ}C$ isotherm method detailed in Eurocode 2 is incorporated for fire design. A transient thermal analysis is conducted using finite element software ANSYS$^{(R)}$ Release15. Reliability is evaluated from the initial state to 4h of fire exposure based on the first order reliability method (FORM). A procedure is coded in MATLAB for finding the reliability index. This procedure is validated with available literature. The effect of various parameters like effective cover, yield strength of steel, grade of concrete, distribution of reinforcement bars and aggregate type on reliability indices are studied. Parameters like effective cover of concrete, yield strength of steel has a significant effect on reliability of beams. Different failure modes like limit state of flexure and limit state of shear are checked.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.625-642
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• 2015

Prestressed concrete bridges with corrugated steel webs have emerged as one of the promising bridge forms. This structural form provides excellent structural efficiency with the concrete flanges primarily taking bending and the corrugated steel webs primarily taking shear. In the design of this type of bridges, the flexural ductility and deformability as well as strength need to be carefully examined. Evaluation of these safety-related attributes requires the estimation of full-range behaviour. In this study, the full-range behaviour of beam sections with corrugated steel webs is evaluated by means of a nonlinear analytical method which uses the actual stress-strain curves of the materials and considers the path-dependence of materials. In view of the different behaviour of components and the large shear deformation of corrugated steel webs with negligible longitudinal stiffness, the assumption that plane sections remain plane may no longer be valid. The interaction between shear deformation and local bending of flanges may cause additional stress in flanges, which is considered in this study. The numerical results obtained are compared with experimental results for verification. A parametric study is undertaken to clarify the effects of various parameters on ductility, deformability and strength.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.681-697
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• 2009

Limited, noisy data in vibration testing is a hindrance to the development of structural damage detection. This paper presents a method for optimizing sensor placement and performing damage detection using finite element model updating. Sensitivity analysis of the modal flexibility matrix determines the optimal sensor locations for collecting information on structural damage. The optimal sensor locations require the instrumentation of only a limited number of degrees of freedom. Using noisy modal data from only these limited sensor locations, a method based on model updating and changes in the flexibility matrix successfully determines the location and severity of the imposed damage in numerical simulations. In addition, a steel cantilever beam experiment performed in the laboratory that considered the effects of model error and noise tested the validity of the method. The results show that the proposed approach effectively and robustly detects structural damage using limited, optimal sensor information.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.613-632
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• 2009

The present paper is concerned with the design of a proper patch actuator network in order to track a desired displacement of the sidewalls of a one-storey frame structure; both, for the static and the dynamic case. Weights for each patch of the actuator network found in our previous work were based on beam theory; in the present paper a refinement of these weights by modeling the sidewalls of the frame structure as thin plates is presented. For the sake of calculating the refined weights approximate solutions of the plate equations are calculated by an extended Galerkin method. The solutions based on the analytical plate model are compared with three-dimensional Finite Element results computed in the commercially available code ANSYS. The patch actuator network is put into practice by means of four piezoelectric patches attached to each of the two sidewalls of the frame structures, to which electric voltages proportional to the analytically refined patch weights are applied. Analytical and numerical results coincide very well over a broad frequency range.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.367-384
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• 2014

The study deals with the physical modeling of a typical single storeyed building frame resting on pile foundation and embedded in cohesive soil mass using the finite element based software SAP-IV. Two groups of piles comprising two and three piles, with series and parallel arrangement thereof, are considered. The slab provided at top and bottom of the frame along with the pile cap is idealized as four noded and two dimensional thin shell elements. The beams and columns of the frame, and piles are modeled using two noded one dimensional beam-column element. The soil is modeled using closely spaced discrete linear springs. A parametric study is carried out to investigate the effect of various parameters of the pile foundation, such as spacing in a group and number of piles in a group, on the response of superstructure. The response considered includes the displacement at the top of the frame and bending moment in columns. The soil-structure interaction effect is found to increase the displacement in the range of 38 -133% and to increase the absolute maximum positive and negative moments in the column in the range of 2-12% and 2-11%. The effect of the soil- structure interaction is observed to be significant for the type of foundation and soil considered in this study. The results obtained are compared further with those of Chore et al. (2010), wherein different idealizations were used for modeling the superstructure frame and sub-structure elements (foundation). While fair agreement is observed in the results in either study, the trend of the results obtained in both studies is also same.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.48-53
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• 2019

A bone metastasis is an important factor for prognosis and treatment of breast or prostate cancer patients. [$^{18}F$]Sodium fluoride ([$^{18}F$]NaF) is a PET radiopharmaceutical that can detect bone metastasis. Conventional [$^{18}F$]NaF production process included radioactive metal impurities because the product was prepared by adding saline after beam irradiation to $[^{18}O]H_2O$. In this study, we apply the method of removing radionuclidic impurities. To meet the criteria prescribed by GMP in quality control, we designed the custom-made [$^{18}F$]NaF automatic module. The mean radiochemical yield was $82.1{\pm}4.4%$ (n = 32) productions for 3 years) and the total preparation time was 4 min. The final produced [$^{18}F$]NaF solution meets the USP criteria for quality control. Thus, this fully automated system is validated for clinical use.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.476-490
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• 2022

With the recent advances in technology, automatic speech recognition (ASR) has been widely used in real-world applications. The efficiency of converting large amounts of speech into text accurately with limited resources has become more vital than ever. In this study, we propose a method to rapidly recognize a large speech database via a transformer-based end-to-end model. Transformers have improved the state-of-the-art performance in many fields. However, they are not easy to use for long sequences. In this study, various techniques to accelerate the recognition of real-world speeches are proposed and tested, including decoding via multiple-utterance-batched beam search, detecting end of speech based on a connectionist temporal classification (CTC), restricting the CTC-prefix score, and splitting long speeches into short segments. Experiments are conducted with the Librispeech dataset and the real-world Korean ASR tasks to verify the proposed methods. From the experiments, the proposed system can convert 8 h of speeches spoken at real-world meetings into text in less than 3 min with a 10.73% character error rate, which is 27.1% relatively lower than that of conventional systems.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.701-708
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• 2022

The mass attenuation coefficients (μ_m) of polyethylene glycol (PEG) of different molecular weights (1000-200,000) were measured using single-beam photon transmission. The X-ray fluorescent (XRF) photons from Zinc (Zn), Zirconium (Zr), Molybdenum (Mo), Silver (Ag) and Cadmium (Cd) targets were used to determine the attenuation of gamma radiation of energy range between 8.67 and 23.19 keV in PEG samples. The results were compared to theoretical values using XCOM and Monte Carlo simulation using Geant4 toolkit which was developed to validate the experiment at those certain energies. The mass attenuation coefficients were then used to compute the effective atomic numbers, electron density and half value layers for the studied samples. The outcomes showed good agreement between experimental and simulated results with those calculated theoretically by XCOM within 5% deviation. The PEG 1000 sample showed slightly higher μ_m value compared with the other samples. The dependence of the photon energy and PEG composition on the values of μ_m and HVL were investigated and discussed. In addition, the values of Z_eff and N_eff for all PEG samples behaved similarly in the given photon energy range, and they decreased as the photon energy increased.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.2742-2746
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• 2023

The corrosion behavior of copper immersed in dilute oxychloride solution (100 mM) was studied through surface investigation and in-situ monitoring of open-circuit potential. The copper corrosion was initiated with copper dissolution into a form of CuCl^-₂, resulting in mass decrease within the first 40 h of immersion. This was followed by a hydrolysis reaction initiated by the CuCl^-₂ at the copper surface, after which oxide products were formed and deposited on the surface, resulting in a mass increase. The formation of nucleation sites for copper oxide and its lateral extension during the corrosion process were examined using focused ion beam (FIB)-scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The presence of metastable compounds such as atacamite (CuCl₂·3Cu(OH)₂) on the corroded copper surface was revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)-energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) analysis.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.539-543
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• 2005

The research presented in this paper enables real-time 3D modeling to help make construction processes ultimately faster, more predictable and safer. Initial research efforts used an emerging sensor technology and proved its usefulness in the acquisition of range information for the detection and efficient representation of static and moving objects. Based on the time-of-flight principle, the sensor acquires range and intensity information of each image pixel within the entire sensor's field-of-view in real-time with frequencies of up to 30 Hz. However, real-time working range data processing algorithms need to be developed to rapidly process range information into meaningful 3D computer models. This research ultimately focuses on the application of safer heavy equipment operation. The paper compares (a) a previous research effort in convex hull modeling using sparse range point clouds from a single laser beam range finder, to (b) high-frame rate update Flash LADAR (Laser Detection and Ranging) scanning for complete scene modeling. The presented research will demonstrate if the FlashLADAR technology can play an important role in real-time modeling of infrastructure assets in the near future.