• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.215-227
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• 2017

A finite element model (FEM) for predicting early-age behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge deck slabs with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars is presented. In this model, the shrinkage profile of concrete accounted for the effect of surrounding conditions including air flow. The results of the model were verified against the experimental test results, published by the authors. The model was verified for cracking pattern, crack width and spacing, and reinforcement strains in the vicinity of the crack using different types and ratios of longitudinal reinforcement. The FEM was able to predict the experimental results within 6 to 10% error. The verified model was utilized to conduct a parametric study investigating the effect of four key parameters including reinforcement spacing, concrete cover, FRP bar type, and concrete compressive strength on the behavior of FRP-RC bridge deck slabs subjected to restrained shrinkage at early-age. It is concluded that a reinforcement ratio of 0.45% carbon FRP (CFRP) can control the early-age crack width and reinforcement strain in CFRP-RC members subjected to restrained shrinkage. Also, the results indicate that changing the bond-slippage characteristics (sand-coated and ribbed bars) or concrete cover had an insignificant effect on the early-age crack behavior of FRP-RC bridge deck slabs subjected to shrinkage. However, reducing bar spacing and concrete strength resulted in a decrease in crack width and reinforcement strain.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.131-143
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• 2023

Constitutive equations in a nuclear reactor safety analysis code are mostly empirical correlations developed from experiments, which always accompany uncertainties. The accuracy of the code can be improved by modifying the constitutive equations fitting wider range of data with less uncertainty. Thus, the sensitivity of the code with respect to the constitutive equations is evaluated quantitatively in the paper to understand the room for improvement of the code. A new methodology is proposed which first starts by dividing the thermal hydraulic conditions into multiple sub-regimes using self-organizing map (SOM) clustering method. The sensitivity analysis is then conducted by multiplying an arbitrary set of coefficients to the constitutive equations for each sub-divided thermal-hydraulic regime with SOM to observe how the code accuracy varies. The randomly chosen multiplier coefficient represents the uncertainty of the constitutive equations. Furthermore, the set with the smallest error with the selected experimental data can be obtained and can provide insight which direction should the constitutive equations be modified to improve the code accuracy. The newly proposed method is applied to a steady-state experiment and a transient experiment to illustrate how the method can provide insight to the code developer.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2019

In engineering problems, many random variables have correlation, and the correlation of input random variables has a great influence on reliability analysis results of the mechanical systems. However, correlated variables are often treated as independent variables or modeled by specific parametric joint distributions due to difficulty in modeling joint distributions. Especially, when there are insufficient correlated data, it becomes more difficult to correctly model the joint distribution. In this study, multivariate kernel density estimation with bounded data is proposed to estimate various types of joint distributions with highly nonlinearity. Since it combines given data with bounded data, which are generated from confidence intervals of uniform distribution parameters for given data, it is less sensitive to data quality and number of data. Thus, it yields conservative statistical modeling and reliability analysis results, and its performance is verified through statistical simulation and engineering examples.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.3 s.43
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• pp.33-42
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• 2005

Frequency domain Volterra model is applied to nonlinear parameter identification procedure for dynamic systems modeled by nonlinear function. The frequency domain Volterra kernels, which correspond io linear, quadratic, and cubic transfer functions in lime domain, are incorporated in nonlinear parametric identification procedure. The nonlinear transfer functions, which can be derived from the Volterra series representation of the nonlinear differential equation of the system by Schetzen's method(1980), are directly used for modeling input output relation. The error is defined by the difference between the observed output and the estimated output which is calculated by substituting the observed input to nonlinear frequency domain model. The system parameters are searched by minimizing the error. Volterra model guarantees enough accuracy and convergence and the estimated coefficients have a good agreement with their actual values not only in the linear frequency region but also in the legion where the $2^{nd}\;or\;3^{rd}$ order nonlinearity is dominant.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.288-300
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• 2003

Purpose: To obtain regional blood flow and tissue-blood partition coefficient with time-activity curves from ${H_2}^{15}O$ PET, fitting of some parameters in the Kety model is conventionally accomplished by nonlinear least squares (NLS) analysis. However, NLS requires considerable compuation time then is impractical for pixel-by-pixel analysis to generate parametric images of these parameters. In this study, we investigated several fast parameter estimation methods for the parametric image generation and compared their statistical reliability and computational efficiency. Materials and Methods: These methods included linear least squres (LLS), linear weighted least squares (LWLS), linear generalized least squares (GLS), linear generalized weighted least squares (GWLS), weighted Integration (WI), and model-based clustering method (CAKS). ${H_2}^{15}O$ dynamic brain PET with Poisson noise component was simulated using numerical Zubal brain phantom. Error and bias in the estimation of rCBF and partition coefficient, and computation time in various noise environments was estimated and compared. In audition, parametric images from ${H_2}^{15}O$ dynamic brain PET data peformed on 16 healthy volunteers under various physiological conditions was compared to examine the utility of these methods for real human data. Results: These fast algorithms produced parametric images with similar image qualify and statistical reliability. When CAKS and LLS methods were used combinedly, computation time was significantly reduced and less than 30 seconds for $128{\times}128{\times}46$ images on Pentium III processor. Conclusion: Parametric images of rCBF and partition coefficient with good statistical properties can be generated with short computation time which is acceptable in clinical situation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.88-99
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• 1996

The explicit scheme for finite element analysis of sheet metal forming problems has been widely used for providing practical solutions since it improves the convergency problem, memory size and computational time especially for the case of complicated geometry and large element number. The explicit schemes in general use are based on the elastic-plastic modeling of material requiring large computataion time. In the present work, a basic formulation for rigid-plastic explicit finite element analysis of plain strain sheet metal forming problems has been proposed. The effect of some basic parameters involved in the dynamic analysis has been studied in detail. Thus, the effective ranges of parameters have been proposed for numerical simultion by the rigid-plastic explicit finite element method. A direct trial-and-error method is introduced to treat contact and friction. In computation, sheet material is assumed to possess normal anisotropy and rigid-plastic workhardening characteristics. In order to show the validity and effectiveness of the proposed explicit scheme, computations are carried out for cylindrical punch stretching and the computational results are compared with those by the implicit scheme as well as with a commercial code. The proposed rigid-plastic exlicit finite element method can be used as a robust and efficient computational method for analysis of sheet metal forming.