• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.608-616
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• 2021

Purpose: Safety inspections by existing personnel have been limited in evaluation and data securing due to concerns about the safety of technicians or difficulty in accessing them, and are becoming a bigger problem as the number of maintenance targets increases due to the aging of facilities. As drone technology develops, it is possible to ensure the safety of personnel, secure visual data, and diagnose quickly, and use it is increasing as safety inspection of facilities by drones was introduced recently. In order to further enhance utilization, it is considered necessary to base a consideration standard for facility appearance investigation by drones, and in this paper, research was conducted on dams. Method: To calculate the quality, existing domestic safety inspection and drone-related consideration standards were investigated, and procedures related to safety inspection using drones were compared and analyzed to review work procedures and construction types. In addition, empirical data were collected through drone photography and elevation image production for the actual dam. Result: Work types for safety inspection of facilities using drones were derived, and empirical survey results were collected for two dams according to work types. The existing guidelines were applied for the adjustment ratios for each structural type and standard of the facility, and if a meteorological reference point survey was necessary, the unmanned aerial vehicle survey of the construction work standard was applied. Conclusion: The finer the GSD in appearance investigation using drones, the greater the number of photographs taken, and the concept of adjustment cost was applied as a correction to calculate the consideration standard. In addition, it was found that the problem of maximum GSD indicating limitations should be considered in order to maintain the safe distance.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.30-39
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• 2023

Large dams, which are critical infrastructures for disaster prevention, are exposed to various risks such as aging, floods, and earthquakes. Better dam safety inspection and diagnosis using digital transformation technologies are needed. Traditional visual inspection methods by human inspectors have several limitations, including many inaccessible areas, danger of working at heights, and know-how based subjective inspections. In this study, drone photogrammetry was performed on two large dams to evaluate the applicability of digital data-based dam safety inspection and propose a data management methodology for continuous use. High-quality 3D digital models with GSD (ground sampling distance) within 2.5 cm/pixel were generated by flat double grid missions and manual photography methods, despite reservoir water surface and electromagnetic interferences, and severe altitude differences ranging from 42 m to 99.9 m of dam heights. Geometry profiles of the as-built conditions were easily extracted from the generated 3D mesh models, orthomosaic images, and digital surface models. The effectiveness of monitoring dam deformation by photogrammetry was confirmed. Cracks and deterioration of dam concrete structures, such as spillways and intake towers, were detected and visualized efficiently using the digital 3D models. This can be used for safe inspection of inaccessible areas and avoiding risky tasks at heights. Furthermore, a methodology for mapping the inspection result onto the 3D digital model and structuring a relational database for managing deterioration information history was proposed. As a result of measuring the labor and time required for safety inspection at the SYG Dam spillway, the drone photogrammetry method was found to have a 48% productivity improvement effect compared to the conventional manpower visual inspection method. The drone photogrammetry-based dam safety inspection is considered very effective in improving work productivity and data reliability.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.873-889
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• 2015

In civil engineering, probabilistic seismic risk assessment is used to predict the economic damage to a lifeline system of possible future earthquakes. The results are used to plan mitigation measures and to strengthen the structures where necessary. Instead, after an earthquake public authorities need mathematical models that compute: the damage caused by the earthquake to the individual vulnerable components and links, and the global behavior of the lifeline system. In this study, a framework that was developed and used for prediction purpose is modified to assess the consequences of an earthquake in quasi real-time after such earthquake happened. This is possible because nowadays entire seismic regions are instrumented with tight networks of strong motion stations, which provide and broadcast accurate intensity measure maps of the event to the public within minutes. The framework uses the broadcasted map and calculates the damage to the lifeline system and its component in quasi real-time. The results give the authorities the most likely status of the system. This helps emergency personnel to deal with the damage and to prioritize visual inspections and repairs. A highway transportation network is used as a test bed but any lifeline system can be analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.321-329
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• 1998

Structural integrity of nuclear components is important for a safe operation of nuclear power plants. Therefore, nuclear power plants require to perform reliable, periodic inservice inspections. Korea Electric Power Company(KEPCO) operates the entire Korean nuclear power plants. Since nuclear power plant safety and the associated inservice inspection(ISI) are under the plant owner's responsibility, Korea Electric Power Research Institute(KEPRI), the R&D division of KEPCO, has established the ISI NDE Total Support system(TSS) for an efficient performance of ISI tasks, and initiated both key ISI NDE technology development program and traing & qualification system development program for an independent ISI operation. This paper describes details of these programs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.398-413
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• 2011

For railway safety, it is very important to detect damages of rails at their early stage because any undetected damage in a rail can break the rail and cause a serious railway accident. In this paper, several NDT applicable to rail inspections are described. Major damage types in rails are discussed first and the rail inspection technology using conventional piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers, which is widely adopted for damage detection of rails, is explained. Other NDT being researched or tested for rail inspection are also discussed as complementary technologies to the concurrent contact type ultrasonic inspection. Characteristics of each rail inspection technologies are evaluated in order to provide requirements for future development of a new rail inspection method.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.195-205
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• 2002

Most tunnel damage such as cracks or leakage which exist in tunnel liner commonly, is caused by the cavities that exist behind the tunnel liner, through the tunnel safety inspections. These cavities were analysed to check if they affect the stability of tunnels. This study is on the development of the controlled low-strength and flowable filling material which an be applied to the cavity behind the tunnel lining. The backfilling material studied here is crushed sand and stone-dust which is in cake-state and is a by-product obtained in the producing process of aggregate. Varying the compound mixing ratio, laboratory tests of compression test and chemical analyses were carried out. In addition, the material was applied to an old tunnel for the performance assessment.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.357-369
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• 2014

In the existing bridge management systems, assessment of the structural behavior is based on the results of visual inspections in which corresponding condition states are assigned to individual elements. In this process, limited attention is given to the correlation between bridge elements from structural perspective. Also, the uncertainty of parameters which affect the structural capacity is ignored. A system reliability-based assessment model is potentially an appropriate replacement for the existing procedures. The aim of this research is to evaluate the system reliability of existing conventional Steel-Reinforced bridge decks over time. The developed method utilizes the reliability theory and evaluates the structural safety for such bridges based on their failure mechanisms. System reliability analysis has been applied to simply-supported concrete bridge superstructures designed according to the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC-S6) and the deterioration pattern is achieved based on the reliability estimates. Finally, the bridge condition index of an old existing bridge in Montreal has been estimated using the developed deterioration pattern. The results obtained from the developed reliability-based deterioration model and from the evaluation done by bridge engineers have been found to be in accordance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.156-161
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• 2001

Currently, agricultural facilities are evaluated using either basic inspections or detailed analysis. However, conventional analyses as well as methods based on fuzzy logic and rule of thumb have not been very successful in providing a clear relationship between rating and real state of agricultural facilities, because they can't provide exactly acceptable reliability of degraded structures with manager or supervisor. Therefore, in this stage, we must define probabilistic variables for representing degradation of structures being given damages during a survival time. This paper describes the application of neural network system in developing the relation between subjective ratings and parameters of agricultural reservoir as well as that between subjective and analytical ratings. It is shown that neural networks can be trained and used successfully in estimating a rating based on several parameters. The specific application problem for agricultural reservoir in the rural area of Korea is presented and database is constructed to maintain training data set, the information of inspection and facilities. This study showed that a successful training of a neural network could be useful, especially if the input data set for target problem contains parameters with a diverse combination of inter-correlation coefficients. And the networks had a prediction rating of about $^{\ast}^{\ast}^{\ast}%$. The neural network system is expected to show high performance fairly in estimate than statistical method to use equation that is consisted of very lowly interrelated variables.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.321-335
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• 2020

The aim of the present contribution is to consider and underline the essential interactions among the historical knowledge, the seismic vulnerability assessment, the investigation experimental tools, the preservation of the architectural quality and the strengthening design in regard to architectural heritage conservation. These topics are argued in relation to Palazzo Murena in Perugia, designed in the eighteenth century by the famous Architect Luigi Vanvitelli, and currently headquarters of the city's University. Based on the surveys and the visual inspections, a preliminary a priori global analysis has been performed by means of the FME method. The obtained results permitted to plan an experimental tests campaign inclusive of structural health monitoring. The new achieved "knowledge" of the building allowed to refine the seismic safety assessment. In particular it was highlighted that the "mezzanine floor" can be a vulnerable element of the building with the collapse of its masonry walls. Preserving the architectural characteristics, a local reinforcement intervention is proposed for the above-mentioned level; this consists of the application of plaster with FRCM, assuring an adequate strength, without burden the masonry structure with additional weight, and therefore a decreasing of the seismic vulnerability. The necessity to consider, in this ongoing research, other local mechanisms is highlighted in the unfolding of the last part of work.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1864-1874
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• 2007

Korean trains pass many mountain areas, so the volume of structures like bridge and tunnel has large part of railway lines. Train speed-up naturally needs a straight line in railway, then structures are increasing, and the length of structure has more than 70% in Kyongbu high-speed railway. The stiffness of bridge and tunnel is higher than the soil in the roadbed in spite of dynamic difference in vibration and displacement. Differences in stiffness have more dynamic effects and increase the deformation and destruction in the track and roadbed. This influences passenger's comfort and the safety of operation, and it needs more track maintenance. This study selected tunnel with ballast track, tunnel with concrete track, and structure's approaches with short maintenance cycle in the roadbed and had track acceleration tests and track liner inspections using track master in the field. This study will measure periodically to structure's approaches which have very fast track irregularity and analyze dynamic differences and track irregularity near structure's approaches, so realize the cause of track irregularity of structure's approaches and use basic data for reasonably strengthening method of structure's approaches.