• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.69-89
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• 2009

Reinforced and prestressed concrete (RC and PC) thin walls are crucial to the safety and serviceability of structures subjected to shear. The shear strengths of elements in walls depend strongly on the softening of concrete struts in the principal compression direction due to the principal tension in the perpendicular direction. The past three decades have seen a rapid development of knowledge in shear of reinforced concrete structures. Various rational models have been proposed that are based on the smeared-crack concept and can satisfy Navier's three principles of mechanics of materials (i.e., stress equilibrium, strain compatibility and constitutive laws). The Cyclic Softened Membrane Model (CSMM) is one such rational model developed at the University of Houston, which is being efficiently used to predict the behavior of RC/PC structures critical in shear. CSMM for RC has already been implemented into finite element framework of OpenSees (Fenves 2005) to come up with a finite element program called Simulation of Reinforced Concrete Structures (SRCS) (Zhong 2005, Mo et al. 2008). CSMM for PC is being currently implemented into SRCS to make the program applicable to reinforced as well as prestressed concrete. The generalized program is called Simulation of Concrete Structures (SCS). In this paper, the CSMM for RC/PC in material scale is first introduced. Basically, the constitutive relationships of the materials, including uniaxial constitutive relationship of concrete, uniaxial constitutive relationships of reinforcements embedded in concrete and constitutive relationship of concrete in shear, are determined by testing RC/PC full-scale panels in a Universal Panel Tester available at the University of Houston. The formulation in element scale is then derived, including equilibrium and compatibility equations, relationship between biaxial strains and uniaxial strains, material stiffness matrix and RC plane stress element. Finally the formulated results with RC/PC plane stress elements are implemented in structure scale into a finite element program based on the framework of OpenSees to predict the structural behavior of RC/PC thin-walled structures subjected to earthquake-type loading. The accuracy of the multiscale modeling technique is validated by comparing the simulated responses of RC shear walls subjected to reversed cyclic loading and shake table excitations with test data. The response of a post tensioned precast column under reversed cyclic loads has also been simulated to check the accuracy of SCS which is currently under development. This multiscale modeling technique greatly improves the simulation capability of RC thin-walled structures available to researchers and engineers.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.41-48
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• 2008

Enhanced machine reliability has dramatically reduced the rate and number of railway accidents but for further reduction human error should be considered together that accounts for about 20% of the accidents. Therefore, the objective of this study was to suggest a new taxonomy of performance shaping factors (PSFs) that could be utilized to identify the causes of a human error associated with railway accidents. Four categories of human factor, task factor, environment factor, and organization factor and 14 sub-categories of physical state, psychological state, knowledge/experience/ability, information/communication, regulation/procedure, specific character of task, infrastructure, device/MMI, working environment, external environment, education, direction/management, system/atmosphere, and welfare/opportunity along with 131 specific factors was suggested by carefully reviewing 8 representative published taxonomy of Casualty Analysis Methodology for Maritime Operations (CASMET), Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method (CREAM), Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), Integrated Safety Investigation Methodology (ISIM), Korea-Human Performance Enhancement System (K-HPES), Rail safety and Standards Board (RSSB), $TapRoot^{(R)}$, and Technique for Retrospective and Predictive Analysis of Cognitive Errors (TRACEr). Then these were applied to the case of the railway accident occurred between Komo and Kyungsan stations in 2003 for verification. Both cause decision chart and why-because tree were developed and modified to aid the analyst to find causal factors from the suggested taxonomy. The taxonomy was well suited so that eight causes were found to explain the driver's error in the accident. The taxonomy of PSFs suggested in this study could cover from latent factors to direct causes of human errors related with railway accidents with systematic categorization.