• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.15-22
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• 2020

With the need for efficient maintenance technology to reduce maintenance costs for steel bridges, repainting robots are being developed to automate the work in narrow and poor bridge spaces. The repainting robot is equipped with a blasting module to remove paint layers and contaminants. This study developed a prototype monitoring module to be mounted on the repainting robot. The monitoring module analyzes the condition of the painting surface through a camera installed in the front, guides the direction of movement of the robot, and provides the operator with a video to check the working status after blasting through a camera installed in the back. Various image visibility enhancement technologies were applied to the monitoring module to overcome worksite challenges where incomplete lighting and dust occurs.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2022

Recently, a re-painting robot was developed to semi-automatically conduct blasting work in bridge spaces to improve work productivity and worker safety. In this study, a vision sensor-based monitoring module was developed to automatically move the re-painting robot along the path. The monitoring module provides direction information to the robot by analyzing the boundary between the painting surface and the metal surface. To stably measure images in unstable environments, various techniques for improving image visibility were applied in this study. Then, the driving performance was verified in a similar environment.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1631-1638
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• 2018

In the periodic repainting of steel bridges, often the steel surface has to be prepared by using power tools to remove surface contaminants, such as deteriorated paint film and rust, and to increase the adhesive strengths of the paint films to be applied newly. Surface preparation by bristle roll-brush grinding, which is a type of power tool, may additionally introduce compressive residual stress and increase the fatigue resistance of welded joints owing to the impact of rotating bristle tips. In this study, fatigue tests were conducted for longitudinally out-of-plane gusset fillet welded joints and transversely butt-welded joints to evaluate the effect of bristle roll-brush grinding prior to repainting on the fatigue resistance of the welded joints. The test results showed that bristle roll-brush grinding introduced compressive residual stress and significantly increased fatigue limits by over 50%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.63-68
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• 2002

Life Cycle Cost analysis technique is introduced to evaluate cost-effectiveness of two paint systems of steel bridges. The systems are a conventional paint system and a galvanized paint system. The all costs during safe lift such as initial cost repainting costs, disposal costs are considered for the lift cycle cost analysis. The NIST model is used and BridgeLCC 1.0 developed by the NST is utilized as the lift cycle cost analysis tool. It is concluded that, in spite of expensive initial cost, the durable paint system may be cost-effective compared with conventional paint system.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.17 no.2 s.75
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• pp.227-241
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• 2005

This paper presents a practical and realistic Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) optimum design methodology for steel bridges considering the long-term effect of environmental stressors such as corrosion and heavy truck traffics on bridge reliability. The LCC functions considered in the LCC optimization consist of initial cost, expected life-cycle maintenance cost, and expected life-cycle rehabilitation costs including repair/replacement costs, loss of contents or fatality and injury losses, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. For the assessment of the life-cycle rehabilitation costs, the annual probability of failure, which depends upon the prior and updated load and resistance histories, should be accounted for. For the purpose, Nowak live load model and a modified corrosion propagation model, which takes into consideration corrosion initiation, corrosion rate, and repainting effect, are adopted in this study. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC optimum design problem of an actual steel box girder bridge with 3 continuous spans (40m+50m+40m=130m). Various sensitivity analyses are performed to investigate the effects of various design parameters and conditions on the LCC-effectiveness. From the numerical investigation, it has been observed that local corrosion environments and the volume of truck traffic significantly influence the LCC-effective optimum design of steel bridges. Thus, these conditions should be considered as crucial parameters for the optimum LCC-effective design.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.449-470
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• 2018

A review of research trends on wood surface protection for exterior use obtained the following conclusions: It has been reported that inorganic compounds such as chrome and copper used as wood preservatives can protect wood from weathering. It has been shown that precoating with hydrophobic substances such as wax and oil, UV absorbers, and HALS (Hindered Amine Light Stabilizers) enhances weathering resistance on the surface of ACQ-treated wood. Opaque coatings of paint/stains and semitransparent stains on the surface of preservative treated wood can increase the synergistic effects on prevention of weathering deterioration. Also the need for repainting periodically for the protection of the preservative treated wood surface has also been suggested. ZnO or $TiO_2$ of fine particles, metal ions such as Co, Cr, Fe, Mn, Ni and Ti, and UV absorbers such as tris-resorcinol triazine derivatives, triazine and benzotriazole were introduced as additives for preventing UV in the transparent coating on wood. Several reports showed that chemical modification such as methylation, acetylation, or alkylations have made some increases the effects of preventing weathering with the increasing weight gain of chemical formulas. In heat-treated wood, there were various contradictory reports on the resistance of weathering, and there were some other reports emphasizing the necessity of painting with UV resistance, which leads to the necessity of more advanced studies.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1A
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• pp.75-89
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• 2006

This paper presents a practical and realistic Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) optimum design methodology of steel bridges considering time effect of bridge reliability under environmental stressors such as corrosion and heavy truck traffics. The LCC functions considered in the LCC optimization consist of initial cost, expected life-cycle maintenance cost and expected life-cycle rehabilitation costs including repair/replacement costs, loss of contents or fatality and injury losses, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. For the assessment of the life-cycle rehabilitation costs, the annual probability of failure which depends upon the prior and updated load and resistance histories should be accounted for. For the purpose, Nowak live load model and a modified corrosion propagation model considering corrosion initiation, corrosion rate, and repainting effect are adopted in this study. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC optimum design problem of an actual steel box girder bridge with 3 continuous spans (40 m+50 m+40 m=130 m), and various sensitivity analyses of types of steel, local corrosion environments, average daily traffic volume, and discount rates are performed to investigate the effects of various design parameters and conditions on the LCC-effectiveness. From the numerical investigation, it has been observed that local corrosion environments and the number of truck traffics significantly influence the LCC-effective optimum design of steel bridges, and thus realized that these conditions should be considered as crucial parameters for the optimum LCC-effective design.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.1731-1741
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• 2014

Recently, many overpasses, highway, and advanced transit systems have been constructed to distribute the traffic congestion, thus small size of curved bridges with small curvature such as ramp structures have been increasing. Many of early curved bridges had been constructed by using straight beams with curved slabs, but curved steel beams have replaced them due to the cost, aesthetic and the advantage in building the section form and manipulating the curvature of beams, thereby large portion of curved bridges were applied with steel box girders. However, steel box girder bridges needs comparatively high initial costs and continuous maintenance such as repainting, which is the one of the reason for increasing the cost. Moreover, I-type steel plate girder which is being studied by many researchers recently, seem to have problems in stability due to the low torsional stiffness, resulting from the section characteristics with thin plate used for web and open section forms. Therefore, in recent studies, researchers have proposed curved precast PSC girders with low cost and could secured safety which could replace the curved steel girder type bridges. Hence, this study developed a Smart Mold system to manufacture efficient curved precast PSC girders. And by using this mold system a 40 m 2-girder bridge was constructed for a static flexural test, to evaluate the safety and performance under ultimate load. At the manufacturing stage, each single girder showed problems in the stability due to the torsional moment, but after the girders were connected by cross beams and decks, the bridge successfully distributed the stress, thereby the stability was confirmed. The static loading test results show that the initial crack was observed at 1,400 kN when the design load was 450 kN, and the load at the allowable deflection by code was 1,800 kN, which shows that the safety and usability of the curved precast PSC bridge manufactured by Smart Mold system is secured.