• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.537-565
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• 2016

Australian railway networks possess a large amount of aging timber components and need to replace them in excess of 280 thousands $m^3$ per year. The relatively high turnover of timber sleepers (crossties in a plain track), bearers (skeleton ties in a turnout), and transoms (bridge cross beams) is responsible for producing greenhouse gas emissions 6 times greater than an equivalent reinforced concrete counterparts. This paper presents an innovative solution for the replacement of aging timber transoms installed on existing railway bridges along with the incorporation of a continuous walkway platform, which is proven to provide environmental, safety and financial benefits. Recent developments for alternative composite materials to replace timber components in railway infrastructure construction and maintenance demonstrate some compatibility issues with track stiffness as well as structural and geometrical track systems. Structural concrete are generally used for new railway bridges where the comparatively thicker and heavier fixed slab track systems can be accommodated. This study firstly demonstrates a novel and resilient alterative by incorporating steel-concrete composite slab theory and combines the capabilities of being precast and modulated, in order to reduce the depth, weight and required installation time relative to conventional concrete direct-fixation track slab systems. Clear benefits of the new steel-concrete composites are the maintainability and constructability, especially for existing railway bridges (or brown fields). Critical considerations in the design and finite element modelling for performance benchmarking of composite structures and their failure modes are highlighted in this paper, altogether with risks, compatibilities and compliances.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.796-804
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• 1992

This paper presents a design of a backbone network which uses a rigister-Insertion ring structure, The introduction of a high speed register in sertton backbone ring enables high performance inter-network 4ommunicatlons In a simple and modular structure at low cost and Its concurrent communications.. Two or more bridge nodes can be used to construct a register Insertion backbone ring network. The high bandwidth of the backbone ring sup ports heavy traffic for Inter-segment Eornrnunicatlons. The bridge node does both local address filtering to block data entering the ring and remote address filtering to block data entering the local LAN segment . Title local address greatly reduces the rate on the backbone ring and the remote address filterlng greatly reduces the traffic rate on each LAN segment. An feature makes the network the network reconflguratlon simpler and transparent to users. A throughput analysis Is used to deterrune the bandwidth of the backbone rlr)g transmission medium.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.423-438
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• 2010

Wireless smart sensors enable new approaches to improve structural health monitoring (SHM) practices through the use of distributed data processing. Such an approach is scalable to the large number of sensor nodes required for high-fidelity modal analysis and damage detection. While much of the technology associated with smart sensors has been available for nearly a decade, there have been limited numbers of fulls-cale implementations due to the lack of critical hardware and software elements. This research develops a flexible wireless smart sensor framework for full-scale, autonomous SHM that integrates the necessary software and hardware while addressing key implementation requirements. The Imote2 smart sensor platform is employed, providing the computation and communication resources that support demanding sensor network applications such as SHM of civil infrastructure. A multi-metric Imote2 sensor board with onboard signal processing specifically designed for SHM applications has been designed and validated. The framework software is based on a service-oriented architecture that is modular, reusable and extensible, thus allowing engineers to more readily realize the potential of smart sensor technology. Flexible network management software combines a sleep/wake cycle for enhanced power efficiency with threshold detection for triggering network wide operations such as synchronized sensing or decentralized modal analysis. The framework developed in this research has been validated on a full-scale a cable-stayed bridge in South Korea.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.393-408
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• 2004

There exists a clear need to monitor the performance of civil structures over their operational lives. Current commercial monitoring systems suffer from various technological and economic limitations that prevent their widespread adoption. The wires used to route measurements from system sensors to the centralized data server represent one of the greatest limitations since they are physically vulnerable and expensive from an installation and maintenance standpoint. In lieu of cables, the introduction of low-cost wireless communications is proposed. The result is the design of a prototype wireless sensing unit that can serve as the fundamental building block of wireless modular monitoring systems (WiMMS). An additional feature of the wireless sensing unit is the incorporation of computational power in the form of state-of-art microcontrollers. The prototype unit is validated with a series of laboratory and field tests. The Alamosa Canyon Bridge is employed to serve as a full-scale benchmark structure to validate the performance of the wireless sensing unit in the field. A traditional cable-based monitoring system is installed in parallel with the wireless sensing units for performance comparison.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.53-54
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• 2009

Steel-embedded composite piers provide flexible design alternatives to satisfy the required performance due to various design parameters of composite sections. For the fast construction of composite piers, bolt connection can be utilized for small size piers and post-tensioning to the pier segments for the large size piers. In this paper, experimental results on composite piers were investigated to evlauate the effects of design parameters on the behavior of composite piers. Appropriate sections and their integration methods were suggested according to the design conditions. For the modular construction of bridge piers, pier segments need to be divided considering their weight and careful considerations on details to adjust fabrication and construction error. Connection details for the pier cap were also proposed.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.509-517
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• 2016

In terms of bridge construction, the concrete deck slab is weak members compared to beam members of the bridge supports. Deck slabs must be sound to support and distribute vehicle loads. If slabs are not enough to support the loads, it should be replaced. Bridge deck replacement has been an important industry over the world since the construction is simplified to shorten construction time and to save construction costs. Slab module provides a quickly, easily and reliably construction method in order to avoid high cost and minimum traffic disruption. in addition, slab module shows high reliability since they are factory products. However, slab module should be considered in the performance under various loads. In this study, structural analysis is performed to evaluate the performance of slab module under vehicle loads and temperature loads. Spiral rebar is also utilized around the vertical joints to improve the structural integrity under the lifting loads. In order to confirm the weak area of slab module for the lift condition, numerical analysis has been performed.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-13
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• 2010

This paper proposes an input-series-output-parallel connected ZVS full bridge converter with interleaved control for photovoltaic power conditioning systems (PV PCS). The input-series connection enables a fully modular power-system architecture, where low voltage and standard power modules can be connected in any combination at the input and/or at the output, to realize any given specifications. Further, the input-series connection enables the use of low-voltage MOSFETs that are optimized for a very low RDSON, thus, resulting in lower conduction losses. The system costs decrease due to the reduced current, and the volumes of the output filters due to the interleaving technique. A topology for a photovoltaic (PV) dc/dc converter that can dramatically reduce the power rating and increase the efficiency of a PV system by analyzing the PV module characteristics is proposed. The control scheme, consisting of an output voltage loop, a current loop and input voltage balancing loops, is proposed to achieve input voltage sharing and output current sharing. The total PV system is implemented for a 10-kW PV power conditioning system (PCS). This system has a dc/dc converter with a 3.6-kW power rating. It is only one-third of the total PV PCS power. A 3.6-kW prototype PV dc/dc converter is introduced to experimentally verify the proposed topology. In addition, experimental results show that the proposed topology exhibits good performance.