• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.66
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• pp.285-312
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• 2015

Export and import of food, agriculture, forestry, fishery products are suffering from low growth rate due to the European financial crisis, global recession, and Japan's 2012 export expansion following the aftermath of 2011 earthquake. Upon the signing and enactment of Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and the EU, agriculture and fishery product have become the center of attention. Agriculture and fishery was reported to be 80million dollars, 1.46% of total national export, in 2012. Starting from2000, South Korea's government began its effort to expand agriculture and fishery export and as a result, export has steadily increased despite decreased consumption led by global recession. K-Sure has started an insurance program with the purpose of promoting SME business's export. It protects SME business against risk arising from credit, emergency, bad debt, and domestic price increase. This study aims to evaluate the service quality of K-Sure's insurance program via surveying SME businesses in the agriculture and fishery industry. Also this study will identify key service factors for SME businesses and explore ways to expand SME exports of agriculture and fishery by analyzing consumer satisfaction index. Results indicated service product quality factor, service communication quality factor, and social quality factor was key to improving consumer satisfaction for SME businesses in agriculture and fishery industry. Service product quality factor had a negative effect on consumer satisfaction in term of variety and results indicated that service communication quality factor's responsiveness element had minimal impact on consumer satisfaction. Conversely, all elements for social quality factor had positive effects on consumer satisfaction. Thus, leading to the conclusion that improvements in service product quality factor and service communication quality factor will indeed increase consumer satisfaction.

• 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.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.653-677
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• 2005

Concrete filled steel tubular columns (CFT) are widely used in civil engineering works, especially in large scale of works because of high strength, deformation, toughness and so on. On the other hand, as a kind of strengthening measure for seriously damaged reinforced concrete piers of viaduct in Hansin-Awaji earthquake of Japan in 1995, reinforced concrete piers were wrapped with steel plate. Then, a new kind of structure appeared, that is, reinforced concrete filled steel tubular column (RCFT). In this paper, compression test and bending-shearing test on RCFT are carried out. The main parameters of experiments are (1) strength of concrete, (2) steel tube with or without rib, (3) width-thickness ratio and (4) arrangement of reinforcing bars. According to the experimental results, the effect of parameters on mechanical characteristics of RCFT is analyzed clearly. At the same time, strength evaluation formula for RCFT column is proposed and tested by experimental results and existed recommendations (AIJ 1997). The strength calculated by the proposal formula is in good agreement with test result. As a result, the proposed evaluation formula can evaluate the strength of RCFT column properly.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2010

The importance of seismic design is greatly emphasized recently in Korea, resulting in an increase in the number of dynamic analysis being performed. One of the most important input parameters for the dynamic seismic analysis is input ground motion. However, it is common practice to use recorded motions from U.S. or Japan without considering the seismic environment of Korea or synthetic motions generated in the frequency domain. The recorded motions are not suitable for the seismic environment of Korea since the variation in the duration and energy with the earthquake magnitude cannot be considered. The artificial motions generated in frequency domain used to generated design response spectrum compatible ground motion has the problem of generating motions that have different frequency characteristics compared to real recordings. In this study, an algorithm that generates target response spectrum compatible ground motions in time domain is used to generate a suite of input ground motions. The generated motions are shown to preserve the non-stationary characteristics of the real ground motion and at the same, almost perfectly match the design response spectrum.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.41-47
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• 2007

Recent investigations into earthquake-induced damage have reported that liquefaction may take place on not only sands but also fine-contained soils or non-plastic silts. Although not a few study has been performed to understand the liquefaction of sands, relatively little effort has been devoted to improving our understanding of the liquefaction characteristics for non-plastic soils. Given that liquefaction strength is largely associated to shear wave velocity, bender element test as well as direct simple shear test is employed to examine the stiffness of non-plastic silt more precisely. Through the soil tests, the stiffness of non-plastic silts from the bender element tests is identified as slightly greater than that from the direct simple shear test. Further, the stiffness of non-plastic silts appears to be smaller than that of clay.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.179-188
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• 2011

The performance-based design is highlighted as an alternative for the current design method, which cannot definitely specify the performance level that a building requires. Research on it is already in progress, however, in developed countries like the United States and Japan, to establish the basis for a performance-based design. Many studies on such design are also being conducted in South Korea, but South Korea still lags behind other countries in all-around technology. On the other hand, the column members, especially the lower external column, are affected by the variation of the axial force by overturning the moments in the case of lateral loads by earthquake. Varying the axial force can affect the time of local buckling and the ultimate behavior. Thus, in this study, the structural performance, such as the time of local buckling and the ultimate behavior, was analyzed through an experimental study on column members under varying axial force. The feasibility of a domestic study proposing a performance level with a story drift angle formed about a structural-performance-based steel structure design was also verified.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.319-325
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• 2021

The 2011 East Japan Earthquake caused accidents at a number of nuclear power plants in Fukushima, highlighting the need for a study on the seismic safety of multiple NPP (Nuclear Power Plant) units. In the case of nuclear power plants built on a site that shows a similar seismic response, there is at least a correlation between the seismic damage of structures, systems, and components (SSCs) of nuclear power plants. In this study, a probabilistic seismic safety assessment was performed for the loss of essential power events of twin units. To derive an appropriate seismic damage correlation coefficient, a probabilistic seismic response analysis was performed. Using the external event mensuration system program, we analyzed the seismic fragility and seismic risk by composing a failure tree of multiple loss of essential power events. Additionally, a comparative analysis was performed considering the seismic damage correlation between SSCs as completely independent and completely dependent.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.160-167
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• 2021

Seabed deformation due to the fault failure have both a spatial variation and temporal history. When the faulting process initiates at a certain point beneath seabed, the failure spreads out to neighboring points, resulting in temporal changes of deformation. In particular, such a process induces tsunami waves from the vertical motion of seabed. The uprising speed of seabed affects the formation of initial surface profile, eventually altering the arrival time and runup of tsunamis at the coast. In this work, we developed a numerical model that can simulate the generation and propagation of tsunami waves by considering the horizontal and vertical changes of seabed in an active and dynamic manner. For the verification of the model, it was applied to the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake in Japan and the results confirmed that the accuracy was improved compared to the existing passive and static model.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.93-105
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• 2023

Seismic isolation and vibration control techniques have been developed and put into practical use by challenging researchers and engineers worldwide since the latter half of the 20th century, and after more than 40 years, they are now used in thousands of buildings, private residences, highways in many seismic areas in the world. Seismic isolation and vibration control structures can keep the structures undamaged even in a major earthquake and realize continuous occupancy. This performance has come to be recognized not only by engineers but also by ordinary people, becoming indispensable for the formation of a resilient society. However, the dynamic characteristics of seismically isolated bearings, the key elements, are highly dependent on the size effect and rate-of-loading, especially under extreme loading conditions. Therefore, confirming the actual properties and performance of these bearings with full-scale specimens under prescribed dynamic loading protocols is essential. The number of testing facilities with such capacity is still limited and even though the existing labs in the US, China, Taiwan, Italy, etc. are conducting these tests, their dynamic loading test setups are subjected to friction generated by the large vertical loads and inertial force of the heavy table which affect the accuracy of measured forces. To solve this problem, the authors have proposed a direct reaction force measuring system that can eliminate the effects of friction and inertia forces, and a seismic isolation testing facility with the proposed system (E-isolation) will be completed on March 2023 in Japan. This test facility is designed to conduct not only dynamic loading tests of seismic isolation bearings and dampers but also to perform hybrid simulations of seismically isolated structures. In this paper, design details and the realization of this system into an actual dynamic testing facility are presented and the outcomes are discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.374-374
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• 2023

Groundwater is the main source of water on which relies many countries in case of emergency, this is the case of Japan in 2011 after the great Sendai Earthquake. This important resource is found to be heavily influenced by human induced factors such as wetland area reduction. For groundwater sustainable management in perfect cohesion with wetland it is important to understand the relationship between both resources. Wetlands have a strong interaction with both groundwater and surface water, influencing catchment hydrology and water quality. Quantifying groundwater-wetland interactions can help better identify locations for wetlands restoration and/or protection. This study uses observation data from piezometers and wetland to study the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the correlation. Groundwater level, wetland area, chemical, organic and inorganic contaminants are the important parameters used. the results proved that few contaminants in the wetland are found in groundwater and in general the wetland quality does not affect that much groundwater quality. The strong linear relationship found between wetland water level and nearest groundwater level proved that, in term of quantity, groundwater and wetland are strongly correlated. While wetland becoming dry, groundwater level has dropped in the region about 0.52m. The area of wetland was found to be lightly correlated with groundwater level, proving that wetlands dry has contributed to groundwater level declining. This study has showed that whilst rainfall variability contributed to the decline and loss of wetlands, the impacts from landuse changes and groundwater extraction were likely to be significant contributors to the observed losses.