• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2014

A light water reactor (LWR) fuel rod consists of zirconium alloy cladding tube and uranium dioxide pellets with a slight gap between them. The modeling of heat transfer across the gap between fuel pellets and the protective cladding is essential to understanding fuel behavior under irradiated conditions. Many researchers have been developing fuel performance codes based on finite element method (FE) to calculate temperature, stress and strain for multidimensional analysis. The gap conductance model for multi-dimension is difficult issue in terms of convergence and nonlinearity because gap conductance is function of gap thickness which depends on mechanical analysis at each iteration step. In this paper, virtual link gap element (VLG) has been proposed to resolve convergence issue and nonlinear characteristic of multidimensional gap conductance. In terms of calculation accuracy and convergence efficiency, the proposed VLG model has been evaluated for variable cases.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.123-148
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• 2013

The nonlinear finite element method with eight noded isoparametric quadrilateral element for concrete and two noded element for reinforcement is used for the prediction of the behavior of reinforcement concrete structures. The disturbed state concept (DSC) including the hierarchical single surface (HISS) plasticity model with associated flow rule with modifications is used to characterize the constitutive behavior of concrete both in compression and in tension which is named DSC/HISS-CT. The HISS model is applied to shows the plastic behavior of concrete, and DSC for microcracking, fracture and softening simulations of concrete. It should be noted that the DSC expresses the behavior of a material element as a mixture of two interacting components and can include both softening and stiffening, while the classical damage approach assumes that cracks (damage) induced in a material treated acts as a void, with no strength. The DSC/HISS-CT is a unified model with different mechanism, which expresses the observed behavior in terms of interacting behavior of components; thus the mechanism in the DSC is much different than that of the damage model, which is based on physical cracks which has no strength and interaction with the undamaged part. This is the first time the DSC/HISS-CT model, with the capacity to account for both compression and tension yields, is applied for concrete materials. The DSC model allows also for the characterization of non-associative behavior through the use of disturbance. Elastic perfectly plastic behavior is assumed for modeling of steel reinforcement. The DSC model is validated at two levels: (1) specimen and (2) practical boundary value problem. For the specimen level, the predictions are obtained by the integration of the incremental constitutive relations. The FE procedure with DSC/HISS-CT model is used to obtain predictions for practical boundary value problems. Based on the comparisons between DSC/HISS-CT predictions, test data and ANSYS software predictions, it is found that the model provides highly satisfactory predictions. The model allows computation of microcracking during deformation leading to the fracture and failure; in the model, the critical disturbance, Dc, identifies fracture and failure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.925-942
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• 2016

With ongoing development of earthquake engineering research and the lessons learnt from a series of strong earthquakes, the seismic design concept of "resilience" has received much attention. Resilience describes the capability of a structure or a city to recover rapidly after earthquakes or other disasters. As one of the main features of urban constructions, tall buildings have greater impact on the sustainability and resilience of major cities. Therefore, it is important and timely to quantify their seismic resilience. In this work, a quantitative comparison of the seismic resilience of two tall buildings designed according to the Chinese and US seismic design codes was conducted. The prototype building, originally designed according to the US code as part of the Tall Building Initiative (TBI) Project, was redesigned in this work according to the Chinese codes under the same design conditions. Two refined nonlinear finite element (FE) models were established for both cases and their seismic responses were evaluated at different earthquake intensities, including the service level earthquake (SLE), the design-based earthquake (DBE) and the maximum considered earthquake (MCE). In addition, the collapse fragility functions of these two building models were established through incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). Based on the numerical results, the seismic resilience of both models was quantified and compared using the new-generation seismic performance assessment method proposed by FEMA P-58. The outcomes of this study indicate that the seismic resilience of the building according to the Chinese design is slightly better than that according to the US design. The conclusions drawn from this research are expected to guide further in-depth studies on improving the seismic resilience of tall buildings.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.895-906
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• 2014

A fundamental study of the dynamically penetrating anchor (DPA - colloquially known as torpedo anchor) embedded into deep seabed was conducted using measurement data and numerical approaches. Numerical simulation of such a structure penetration was often suffered by severe mesh distortion arising from very large soil deformation, complex contact condition and nonlinear soil behavior. In recent years, a Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian method (CEL) has been used to solve geomechanical boundary value problems involving large deformations. In this study, 3D finite element analyses using the CEL formulation are carried out to simulate the construction process of dynamic anchors. Through comparisons with results of field measurements, the CEL method in the present study is in good agreement with the general trend observed by in-situ measurements and thus, predicts a realistic large deformation movement for the dynamic anchors by free-fall dropping, which the conventional FE method cannot. Additionally, the appropriate parametric studies needed for verifying the characteristic of dynamic anchor are also discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.90 no.4
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• pp.371-390
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• 2024

Investigating the impact of openings on the structural behavior of ferrocement I-beams with two distinct types of reinforcing metallic and non-metallic meshes is the primary goal of the current study. Up until failure, eight 250x200x2200 mm reinforced concrete I-beams were tested under flexural loadings. Depending on the kind of meshes used for reinforcement, the beams are split into two series. A control I-beam with no openings and three beams with one, two, and three openings, respectively, are found in each series. The two series are reinforced with three layers of welded steel meshes and two layers of tensar meshes, respectively, in order to maintain a constant reinforcement ratio. Structural parameters of investigated beams, including first crack, ultimate load, deflection, ductility index, energy absorption, strain characteristics, crack pattern, and failure mode were reported. The number of mesh layers, the volume fraction of reinforcement, and the kind of reinforcing materials are the primary factors that vary. This article presents the outcomes of a study that examined the experimental and numerical performance of ferrocement reinforced concrete I-beams with and without openings reinforced with welded steel mesh and tensar mesh separately. Utilizing ANSYS-16.0 software, nonlinear finite element analysis (NLFEA) was applied to illustrate how composite RC I-beams with openings behaved. In addition, a parametric study is conducted to explore the variables that can most significantly impact the mechanical behavior of the proposed model, such as the number of openings. The FE simulations produced an acceptable degree of experimental value estimation, as demonstrated by the obtained experimental and numerical results. It is also noteworthy to demonstrate that the strength gained by specimens without openings reinforced with tensar meshes was, on average, 22% less than that of specimens reinforced with welded steel meshes. For specimens with openings, this value is become on average 10%.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.9-16
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• 2020

A CFRP sheet has been applied as a structural reinforcement in the field, and various studies are conducted to evaluate the effect of CFRP sheets on reinforced concrete. Although many experiments were performed from previous studies, there are still limitations to analyze structural behaviors with various parameters in experiments directly. This study shows the FEA on structural behaviors of RC beams reinforced with CFRP sheets using ABAQUS software. To simulate debonding failure of CFRP sheets which is a major failure mode of RC beam with CFRP sheets, a cohesive element was applied between the bottom surface of RC beam and CFRP sheets. Both quasi-static method and 2-D symmetric FE model technique were performed to solve nonlinear problems. Results obtained from the FE models show good agreements with experimental results. It was found that reinforcement level of CFRP sheets is closely related to structural behavior of reinforced concrete including maximum strength, initial stiffness and deflection at failure. Also, as over-reinforcement of CFRP sheets could give rise to the brittle failure of RCstructure using CFRP sheets, an appropriate measure should be required when installing CFRP sheets in the structure.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.18 no.2 s.92
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• pp.257-266
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• 2006

Flat-plate building systems are utilized extensively for construction of apartments, hotels and office buildings because of short construction period, low floor-to-floor height and flexibility in plan design. Recently, to increase lateral seismic resistance of flat-plate building systems, wall-columns are used frequently. Therefore, to estimate strength of flat-plate column connection accurately, the effect of column section shape on the behavior of flat-plate column connection should be considered properly, In the present study, a numerical analysis was performed for interior connections of continuous flat-plate to analyze the effect of column section shape. For the purpose, a computer program for nonlinear FE analysis was developed, and the validity was verified. Through the parametric study, the variations of shear stress distribution around the connection were investigated. According to the result of numerical analysis, as the length of the cross section of column in the direction of lateral load increases, the effective area and the maximum shear strength providing the torsional resistance decrease considerably. Therefore, these effects should be considered properly to estimate the strength of flat-plate connection accurately.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.18 no.3 s.93
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• pp.405-414
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• 2006

In the present study, a numerical analysis was performed for interior connections of continuous flat plate to analyze the effect of design parameters such as column section shape, gravity load and slab span on the behavioral characteristics of the connections. For the purpose, a computer program for nonlinear FE analysis was developed, and the validity was verified. Through the parametric study, the variations of shear stress distribution around the connection were investigated. According to the result of numerical analysis, as the length of the cross section of column in the direction of lateral load increases and gravity load increases, the effective area and the maximum shear strength providing the torsional resistance decrease considerably. And as the slab span loaded with relatively large gravity load increases, the negative moment around the connection increases and therefore the strength of connection against unbalanced moment decreases. By considering the effect of design parameters on the strength of the connections, the effective shear strength to calculate the torsional moment capacity of connection was proposed and the effectiveness of the proposed shear strength was verified.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.197-205
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• 2015

Offshore structures for the gas production are exposed to the risk of gas leaks, and gas explosions can result in fatal damages to the primary structures as well as secondary structures. To minimize the damage from the critical accidents, the study of the dynamic response of structural members subjected to blast loads must be conducted. Furthermore, structural dynamic analysis has to be performed considering relationships between the natural frequency of structural members and time duration of the explosion loading because the explosion pressure tends to increase and dissipate within an extremely short time. In this paper, the numerical model based on time history data were proposed considering the negative phase pressure in which considerable negative phase pressures were observed in CFD analyses of gas explosions. The undamped single degree of freedom(SDOF) model was used to characterize the dynamic response under the blast loading. A blast wall of FPSO topside was considered as an essential structure in which the wall prevents explosion pressures from the process area to utility and working areas. From linear/nonlinear transient analyses using LS-DYNA, it was observed that dynamic responses of structures were influenced by significantly the negative time duration.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.601-609
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• 2022

Jack-up drilling rigs are mobile offshore platforms widely used in the offshore oil and gas exploration industry. These are independent, three-legged, self-elevating units with a cantilevered drilling facility for drilling and production. A typical jack-up rig includes a triangular hull, a tower derrick, a cantilever, a jackcase, living quarters and legs which comprise three-chord, open-truss, X-braced structure with a spudcan. Generally, jack-up rigs can only operate in water depths ranging from 130m to 170m. Recently, there has been an increasing demand for jack-up rigs for operating at deeper water levels and harsher environmental conditions such as waves, currents and wind loads. All static and dynamic loads are supported through legs in the jack-up mode. The most important issue by society is to secure the safety of the leg structure against collision that causes large instantaneous impact energy. In this study, nonlinear FE -analysis and verification of the requirement against collision for 35MJ recommended by DNV was performed using LS-Dyna software. The colliding ship used a 7,500ton of shore supply vessel, and five scenarios of collisions were selected. From the results, all conditions do not satisfy the class requirement of 35MJ. The loading conditions associated with chord collision are reasonable collision energy of 15M and brace collisions are 6MJ. Therefore, it can be confirmed that the identical collision criteria by DNV need to be modified based on collision scenarios and colliding members.