• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.317-328
• /
• 2009

Current maintenance operations and integrity checks on a wide array of structures require personnel entry into normally-inaccessible or hazardous areas to perform necessary nondestructive inspections. To gain access for these inspections, structure must be disassembled and removed or personnel must be transported to remote locations. The use of in-situ sensors, coupled with remote interrogation, can be employed to overcome a myriad of inspection impediments stemming from accessibility limitations, complex geometries, the location and depth of hidden damage, and the isolated location of the structure. Furthermore, prevention of unexpected flaw growth and structural failure could be improved if on-board health monitoring systems were used to more regularly assess structural integrity. A research program has been completed to develop and validate Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM) Sensors for surface crack detection. Statistical methods using one-sided tolerance intervals were employed to derive Probability of Detection (POD) levels for a wide array of application scenarios. Multi-year field tests were also conducted to study the deployment and long-term operation of CVM sensors on aircraft. This paper presents the quantitative crack detection capabilities of the CVM sensor, its performance in actual flight environments, and the prospects for structural health monitoring applications on aircraft and other civil structures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.26 no.2
• /
• pp.49-58
• /
• 2022

The 2017 Pohang earthquake caused severe damage to low-rise piloti buildings. The damage was caused mainly by column shear failure, and some core walls were as well. The damaged piloti buildings in Pohang City could be relieved if they were designed correctly according to the standards at that time. However, the post-earthquake investigation revealed design, construction, and permission problems. To solve the problems, the Piloti Building Structure Design Guidelines that include strict specifications were published in 2018. Separately, KDS 41 17 00, the seismic design standard for buildings, was enacted in 2019 and it included the guideline contents. Therefore, at least after the publication of the guidelines, piloti buildings, designed by the standard and guidelines, can be expected to possess better seismic performance than existing piloti buildings. To confirm this, the probability of exceedance for several damage state thresholds was estimated for existing and designed piloti buildings. As a result, the probability of damage of designed piloti buildings was very low compared to existing ones. Consequently, it was confirmed that the guideline and standard adequately supplement the structural fragility of existing piloti buildings.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.29 no.8
• /
• pp.640-647
• /
• 2018

This study analyzes the tracking accuracy(tracking errors) of fighter radar. Measurement error, detection failure, and radar cross section(RCS) fluctuation in radar measurements degrade the measurement quality and hence affect the tracking accuracy. Therefore, these radar measurement characteristics need to be considered when analyzing the tracking accuracy. In this paper, a method for analyzing the tracking accuracy is proposed; this method considers the detection error, detection probability, and RCS fluctuation. Results from experiments conducted with the proposed method show that the detection probability and RCS fluctuation affect tracking accuracy.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.413-434
• /
• 2010

Wireless sensor networks are usually characterized by dense deployment of energy constrained nodes. Due to the usage of a large number of sensor nodes in uncontrolled hostile or harsh environments, node failure is a common event in these systems. Another common reason for node failure is the exhaustion of their energy resources and node inactivation. Such failures can have adverse effects on the quality of the real-time services in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). To avoid such degradations, it is necessary that the failures be recovered in a proper manner to sustain network operation. In this paper we present a dynamic Energy efficient Real-Time Job Allocation (ERTJA) algorithm for handling node failures in a cluster of sensor nodes with the consideration of communication energy and time overheads besides the nodes' characteristics. ERTJA relies on the computation power of cluster members for handling a node failure. It also tries to minimize the energy consumption of the cluster by minimum activation of the sleeping nodes. The resulting system can then guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) of the cluster application. Further, when the number of sleeping nodes is limited, the proposed algorithm uses the idle times of the active nodes to engage a graceful QoS degradation in the cluster. Simulation results show significant performance improvements of ERTJA in terms of the energy conservation and the probability of meeting deadlines compared with the other studied algorithms.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.701-721
• /
• 2016

Base isolation is a well-established passive strategy for seismic response control of buildings. In this paper, an efficient framework is proposed for reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of isolated buildings subjected to uncertain earthquakes. The framework uses reduced function evaluations method, as an efficient tool for structural reliability analysis, and an efficient optimization algorithm for optimal structural design. The probability of failure is calculated considering excessive base displacement, superstructure inter-storey drifts, member stress ratios and absolute accelerations of floors of the isolated building as failure events. The behavior of rubber bearing isolators is modeled using nonlinear hysteretic model and the variability of future earthquakes is modeled by applying a probabilistic approach. The effects of pulse component of stochastic near-fault ground motions, fixity-factor of semi-rigid beam-to-column connections, values of isolator parameters, earthquake magnitude and epicentral distance on the performance and safety of semi-rigidly connected base-isolated steel framed buildings are studied. Suitable RBDO examples are solved to illustrate the results of investigations.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.523-532
• /
• 2019

Different types of gas reservoir such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) are among the strategic infrastructures, and have great importance for any government or their private owners. To keep the tank and its contents safe during earthquakes especially if the contents are of hazardous or flammable materials; using seismic protection systems such as base isolator can be considered as an effective solution. However, the major deficiency of this system can be the large deformation in the isolation level which may lead to the failure of bearing system. In this paper, as a solution, the efficacy of an optimally designed combined vibration control system, the combined laminated rubber isolator and rotational friction damper, is investigated to evaluate the enhancement of an existing metal tank response under both far- and near-field earthquakes. Responses like impulsive and convective accelerations, base shear, and sloshing height are studied herein. The probabilistic framework is used to consider the uncertainties in the structural modeling, as well as record-to-record variability. Due to the high calculation cost of probabilistic methods, a simplified structural model is used. By using the Mont-Carlo simulation approach, it is revealed that this combined isolation system is a highly reliable system which provides considerable enhancement in the performance of reservoir, not only leads to the reduction of probability of catastrophic failure of the tank but also decrease the reservoir damage during the earthquake. Moreover, the relative displacement of the isolation level is controlled very well by this combined system.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2003.04a
• /
• pp.1130-1135
• /
• 2003

The need to increase the reliability of a structural system has been significantly brought in the procedure of real designs to consider, for instance, the material properties or geometric dimensions that reveal a random or incompletely known nature. Reliability based design optimization of a real system now becomes an emerging technique to achieve reliability, robustness and safety of these problems. Finite element analysis program and the reliability analysis program are necessary to evaluate the responses and the probabilities of failure of the system, respectively. Moreover, integration of these programs is required during the procedure of reliability based design optimization. It is well known that reliability based design optimization can often have so many local minima that it cannot converge to the specified probability of failure. To overcome this problem, barrier function method in reliability based design optimization is suggested. To illustrate the proposed formulation, reliability based design optimization of a bracket is performed. AMV and FORM are employed for reliability analysis and their optimization results are compared based on the accuracy and efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Esthetic Dentistry
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.75-81
• /
• 2018

The aim of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical behavior and long-term safety of high performance polymer PEKK as an intraradicular dental post-core material through comparative finite element analysis (FEA) with other conventional post-core materials. A 3D FEA model of a maxillary central incisor was constructed. A cyclic loading force of 50 N was applied at an angle of $45^{\circ}$ to the longitudinal axis of the tooth at the palatal surface of the crown. For comparison with traditionally used post-core materials, three materials (gold, fiberglass, and PEKK) were simulated to determine their post-core properties. PEKK, with a lower elastic modulus than root dentin, showed comparably high failure resistance and a more favorable stress distribution than conventional post-core material. However, the PEKK post-core system showed a higher probability of debonding and crown failure under long-term cyclic loading than the metal or fiberglass post-core systems.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.131-141
• /
• 2019

Structural control systems have uncertainties in their structural parameters and control devices which by using reliability analysis, uncertainty can be modeled. In this paper, reliability of controlled structures equipped with semi-active Magneto-Rheological (MR) dampers is investigated. For this purpose, at first, the effect of the structural parameters and damper parameters on the reliability of the seismic responses are evaluated. Then, the reliability of MR damper force is considered for expected levels of performance. For sensitivity analysis of the parameters exist in Bouc- Wen model for predicting the damper force, the importance vector is utilized. The improved first-order reliability method (FORM), is used to reliability analysis. As a case study, an 11-story shear building equipped with 3 MR dampers is selected and numerically obtained experimental data of a 1000 kN MR damper is assumed to study the reliability of the MR damper performance for expected levels. The results show that the standard deviation of random variables affects structural reliability as an uncertainty factor. Thus, the effect of uncertainty existed in the structural model parameters on the reliability of the structure is more than the uncertainty in the damper parameters. Also, the reliability analysis of the MR damper performance show that to achieve the highest levels of nominal capacity of the damper, the probability of failure is greatly increased. Furthermore, by using sensitivity analysis, the Bouc-Wen model parameters which have great importance in predicting damper force can be identified.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.461-475
• /
• 2021

Strategic structures are a potential target of the growing terrorist attacks, so their performance under explosion hazard has been paid attention by researchers in the last years. In this regard, the aim of this study is to evaluate the blast-resistance performance of lead-rubber bearing (LRB) base isolation system based on a probabilistic framework while uncertainties related to the charge weight and standoff distance have been taken into account. A sensitivity analysis is first performed to show the effect of explosion uncertainty on the response of base-isolated buildings. The blast fragility curve is then developed for three base-isolated steel moment-resisting buildings with different heights of 4, 8 and 12 stories. The results of sensitivity analysis show that although LRB has the capability of reducing the peak response of buildings under explosion hazard, this control system may lead to increase in the peak response of buildings under some explosion scenarios. This shows the high importance of probabilistic-based assessment of isolated structures under explosion hazard. The blast fragility analysis shows effective performance of LRB in mitigating the probability of failure of buildings. Therefore, LRB can be introduced as effective control system for the protection of buildings from explosion hazard regarding uncertainty effect.