• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.459-475
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• 2009

This paper presents analytical methodologies for remaining life prediction of plain concrete structural components considering tension softening and size effects. Non-linear fracture mechanics principles (NLFM) have been used for crack growth analysis and remaining life prediction. Various tension softening models such as linear, bi-linear, tri-linear, exponential and power curve have been presented with appropriate expressions. Size effect has been accounted for by modifying the Paris law, leading to a size adjusted Paris law, which gives crack length increment per cycle as a power function of the amplitude of a size adjusted stress intensity factor (SIF). Details of tension softening effects and size effect in the computation of SIF and remaining life prediction have been presented. Numerical studies have been conducted on three point bending concrete beams under constant amplitude loading. The predicted remaining life values with the combination of tension softening & size effects are in close agreement with the corresponding experimental values available in the literature for all the tension softening models.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.11 s.242
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• pp.1488-1493
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• 2005

In this study, fatigue tests to obtain S-N curves and FE analyses to obtain structural stress concentration factors were conducted for the two types of cruciform fillet welded joints, that is, load-carrying and non load-carrying types. Then we changed the obtained S-N curve of load carrying joint to that based on hot spot stress. As a result, the S-N curve of load carrying joint based on hot-spot stress was almost exactly coincided with that of non load-carrying joint based on nominal stress. So we have conducted that the fatigue strength of a welded joint with different geometry from the non stress distribution along the expected crack path.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.275-300
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• 2016

Synchronous multi-pressure measurements were carried out with relatively long time duration for a double-layer reticulated shell roof model in the atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel. Since the long roof is open at two ends for the storage of coal piles, three different testing cases were considered as the empty roof without coal piles (Case A), half coal piles inside (Case B) and full coal piles inside (Case C). Based on the wind tunnel test results, non-Gaussian time-dependent statistics of net wind pressure on the shell roof were quantified in terms of skewness and kurtosis. It was found that the direct statistical estimation of high-order moments and peak factors is quite sensitive to the duration of wind pressure time-history data. The maximum value of COVs (Coefficients of variations) of high-order moments is up to 1.05 for several measured pressure processes. The Mixture distribution models are proposed for better modeling the distribution of a parent pressure process. With the aid of mixture parent distribution models, the existing translated-peak-process (TPP) method has been revised and improved in the estimation of non-Gaussian peak factors. Finally, non-Gaussian peak factors of wind pressure, particularly for those observed hardening pressure process, were calculated by employing various state-of-the-art methods and compared to the direct statistical analysis of the measured long-duration wind pressure data. The estimated non-Gaussian peak factors for a hardening pressure process at the leading edge of the roof were varying from 3.6229, 3.3693 to 3.3416 corresponding to three different cases of A, B and C.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.321-337
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• 2007

The investigation on the behaviour of cold-formed stainless steel non-slender circular hollow section columns is presented in this paper. The normal strength austenitic stainless steel type 304 and the high strength duplex materials (austenitic-ferritic approximately equivalent to EN 1.4462 and UNS S31803) were considered in this study. The finite element method has been used to carry out the investigation. The columns were compressed between fixed ends at different column lengths. The geometric and material nonlinearities have been included in the finite element analysis. The column strengths and failure modes were predicted. An extensive parametric study was carried out to study the effects of normal and high strength materials on cold-formed stainless steel non-slender circular hollow section columns. The column strengths predicted from the finite element analysis were compared with the design strengths calculated using the American Specification, Australian/New Zealand Standard and European Code for cold-formed stainless steel structures. The numerical results showed that the design rules specified in the American, Australian/New Zealand and European specifications are generally unconservative for the cold-formed stainless steel non-slender circular hollow section columns of normal and high strength materials, except for the short columns and some of the high strength stainless steel columns. Therefore, different values of the imperfection factor and limiting slenderness in the European Code design rules were proposed for cold-formed stainless steel non-slender circular hollow section columns.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2021

International seismic codes stipulate that adjacent buildings should be separated by a specified minimum distance, otherwise the pounding effect should be considered in the design. Recent researches proposed an alternative method (Double Difference Combination Rule) to estimate seismic gap between structures, as this method considers the cross relation of adjacent buildings behavior during earthquakes. Four different criteria were used to calculate the minimum separation distance using this method and results are compared to the international codes for five separation cases. These cases used four case study buildings classified by different heights, lateral load resisting systems and fundamental periods of vibrations to assess the consistency in results for the alternative methods. Non-linear analysis was performed to calculate the inelastic displacements of the four buildings, and the results were used to evaluate the relation between elastic and inelastic displacements due to the ductility of structural elements resisting seismic loads. A verification analysis was conducted to guarantee that the separation distance calculated is sufficient to avoid pounding. Results shows that the use of two out of the four studied methods yields separation distances smaller than that calculated by the code specified equations without under-estimating the minimum separation distance required to avoid pounding.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.241-247
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• 1996

The stability of the genetically engineered microorganisms and their recombinant plasmids released in natural environments has been regarded as one of the molecular ecological topics. In this study, the recombinant plasmids pCU103 in which the pcbCD genes involved in biodegradation of biphenyl and 4-chlorobiphenyl were cloned in pBluescript SK(+) vector, were examined for their structural and functional stability in different waters at 15 $^{\circ}C$ by the methods of electrophoresis, Southern hybridization, quantification with fluorescent dye, and transformation. The recombinant plamids maintained their stabilities for about 30 days in sterilized distilled water (SDW), 15 days in autoclaved creek water (AW), 25 days in filtered and autoclaved non-sterile creek water (FAW), 4 days in Luria-Bertani (LB) broth, and less than one day in filtered non-sterile creek water (FW). The covalently closed circular (CCC) form of the plasmid was decreased and open circular (OC) form was increased as a function of incubation time, and then linear (L) form was produced to be ultimately degraded out. The degradation rates of the plasmid were proportionally correlated to trophic level of the water, and the biological factor such as DNases was found to be one of the most critical factors affecting structural and functional stability of the plasmid in non-sterile natural water.

• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.129-136
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• 2019

Non-structural elements are vulnerable to earthquake ground motion. In this study, an experimental study for the electrical non-structural element was performed using tri-axial shaking table tests. A 100kVA UPS(Uninterruptible Power Supply system) was used as the test specimen. The test specimen was anchored to the concrete slab using the conventional installation detail. The input acceleration were generated in accordance with ICC-ES AC156 code. Scale factors of the input acceleration with respect to the required response spectrum defined in ICC-ES AC156 were from 25% to 600%. Based on the test results, damage and dynamic characteristics of UPS were evaluated and analyzed including natural frequency, damping ratio, acceleration time history response, dynamic amplification factor and relative displacement.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.5
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• pp.655-664
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• 2023

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall structures are one of the most widely used structural systems to resist seismic loading all around the world. Although there have been several efforts to provide conceptually simple procedures to reasonably assess the seismic demands of structures over recent decades, it seems that lesser effort has been put on a number of structural forms such as RC shear wall structures. Therefore, this study aims to represent a simple linear response spectrum-based method which can acceptably predict the nonlinear displacements of a non-ductile RC shear wall structure subjected to an individual ground motion record. An effective period and an equivalent damping ratio are introduced as the dynamic characteristics of an equivalent linear SDOF system relevant to the main structure. By applying the fundamental mode participation factor of the original MDOF structure to the linear spectral response of the equivalent SDOF system, an acceptable estimation of the nonlinear displacement response is obtained. Subsequently, the accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated by comparison with another approximate method which is based on linear response spectrum. Results show that the proposed method has better estimations for maximum nonlinear responses and is more utilizable and applicable than the other one.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.529-536
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• 2005

Viral infection causes stress to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The response to endoplasmic reticulum stress, known as the unfolded protein response (UPR), is designed to eliminate misfolded proteins and allow the cell to recover. The role of hepatitis C virus (HCV) non-structural protein NS4B, a component of the HCV replicons that induce UPR, is incompletely understood. We demonstrate that HCV NS4B could induce activating transcription factor (ATF6) and inositol-requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1), to favor the HCV subreplicon and HCV viral replication. HCV NS4B activated the IRE1 pathway, as indicated by splicing of X box-binding protein (Xbp-1) mRNA. However, transcriptional activation of the XBP-1 target gene, EDEM (ER degradation-enhancing $\alpha-mannosidase-like$ protein, a protein degradation factor), was inhibited. These results imply that NS4B might induce UPR through ATF6 and IRE1-XBP1 pathways, but might also modify the outcome to benefit HCV or HCV subreplicon replication.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2019.11a
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• pp.189-190
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• 2019

Designers and builders are omitting structural design and relying on workers' experience, due to the lack of awareness of the importance of scaffolding in domestic construction sites, and there is a high probability of collapsing accidents such as inappropriate wall joint installation and non-compliance with work procedures. Therefore, risk factors were analyzed in detail and major risk factors were derived from opinions of site managers and scaffolding experts in this study.