• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.533-544
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• 2016

This paper provides a reference to determine the seal performance of metallic O-rings for a reactor pressure vessel (RPV). A nonlinear elastic-plastic model of an O-ring was constructed by the finite element method to analyze its intrinsic properties. It is also validated by experiments on scaled samples. The effects of the compression ratio, the geometrical parameters of the O-ring, and the structure parameters of the groove on the flange are discussed in detail. The results showed that the numerical analysis of the O-ring agrees well with the experimental data, the compression ratio has an important role in the distribution and magnitude of contact stress, and a suitable gap between the sidewall and groove can improve the sealing capability of the O-ring. After the optimization of the sealing structure, some key parameters of the O-ring (i.e., compression ratio, cross-section diameter, wall thickness, sidewall gap) have been recommended for application in megakilowatt class nuclear power plants. Furthermore, air tightness and thermal cycling tests were performed to verify the rationality of the finite element method and to reliably evaluate the sealing performance of a RPV.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1382-1399
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• 2023

Pressure relief valve (PRV) is one of the important control valves used in nuclear power plants, and its sealing performance is crucial to ensure the safety and function of the entire pressure system. For the sealing performance improving purpose, an explicit function that accounts for all design parameters and can accurately describe the relationship between the multi-design parameters and the seal performance is essential, which is also the challenge of the valve seal design and/or optimization work. On this basis, a surrogate model-based design optimization is carried out in this paper. To obtain the basic data required by the surrogate model, both the Finite Element Model (FEM) and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based numerical models were successively established, and thereby both the contact stresses of valve static sealing and dynamic impact (between valve disk and nozzle) could be predicted. With these basic data, the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) surrogate model which can not only be used for inputs-outputs relationship construction, but also produce the sensitivity of different design parameters were developed. Based on the PCE surrogate model, a new design scheme was obtained after optimization, in which the valve sealing stress is increased by 24.42% while keeping the maximum impact stress lower than 90% of the material allowable stress. The result confirms the ability and feasibility of the method proposed in this paper, and should also be suitable for performance design optimizations of control valves with similar structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.761-766
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• 2011

In this study, the optimized design profiles between a seal ring and a seal seat of contacting seal units has been proposed based on the FEM computed results. The maximum temperatures, the thermal distortions in axial and radial directions, and maximum contact normal stresses between a seal ring and a seal seat have been analyzed for various contact sealing profiles. The FEM computed results present that the contact area between seal rings and seal seats is very important for a good tribological performance such as low friction heating, low wear, high contact normal stress in a primary sealing components. The seal surface model III in which has a small sealing contact area shows low dilatation of primary sealing components, and high contact stress between a seal ring and a seal seat. This model with small contact surface of a seal ring produces high friction heating and contact stress. But the model III produces very small deformations of contacting sealing surface because of high convection heat transfer by cooling water circulation around the seal ring surface. Thus, the analysis results recommend a short width of a primary sealing unit rather than a big width of contact surfaces of contacting seal units for reducing a leakage and axial deformation of primary seal components.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.387-388
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• 2010

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.117-121
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• 2014

Even though a study of airtightness performance of apartment and detached house have been done constantly, there are few of studies of multi-family housing which increasing every year. Therefore, this study analyzed airtightness performance of 20 households of one room in Daejeon to investigate airtightness performance standard. All experiments were performed under the same conditions except sealing windows to investigate airtightness performance without sealing windows (natural condition) and airtightness performance with sealing windows of studio apartment. As results, (1) average ACH50 without sealing windows was 19.2/h for pressurization, and 12.8/h for depressurization and (2) average ACH50 with sealing windows was 16.0/h for pressurization, and 10.7/h for depressurization and ACH50 in both condition, ACH50 under pressurization was about 50% higher than that under depressurization. Throughout this experiment, we can figure out that about 16% of air infiltration rate is occurred in windows, and the other 84% is occurred in rest of places such as Junction structure, socket and ventilating opening.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2012

In the last two decades, several tele-operated and machine-vision-assisted systems have been developed in the construction and maintenance area, such as pavement crack sealing, sewer pipe rehabilitation, and excavation. In developing such tele-operated and machine-vision-assisted systems, trajectory plans are very important tasks for the optimal motions of robots whether their environments are structured or unstructured. This paper presents an optimal trajectory planning algorithm used for a machine-vision-assisted automatic pavement crack sealing system. In this paper, the performance of the proposed optimal trajectory planning algorithm is compared with the greedy trajectory plans, which are used in the previously developed pavement crack sealing systems. The comparison is based on the computational cost vs. the overall gains in crack sealing efficiency. Finally, it is concluded that the proposed algorithm plays an important role in the productivity improvement of the developed automatic pavement crack sealing system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.51-55
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• 2014

This paper was analyzed for a sealing characteristics of single lip contact type o-ring and multiple lip contact type packing for a swivel joint using the finite element method. According to the FE analysis, a conventional o-ring produces a maximum contact normal stress of 2.5MPa for a supplied LP gas pressure of 1.8MPa, which is related to the sealing performance. But, a sealing performance of newly invented multi-lip packing produces a maximum contact normal stress of 3.01MPa, which is 20.4% higher than that of a conventional o-ring. And an extrusion of a conventional o-ring, which is strongly related to the sealing endurance safety, was occurred at a supplied gas pressure of 1.62MPa. But, a multi-lip packing does not produce up to the gas pressure of 1.8MPa. This means that a new type of multi-lip packing may have excellent sealing characteristics because of no extrusion for high gas pressure. Thus, multi-lip packing with multiple lip contacts may be useful for high sealing and endurance safety compared to that of the conventional o-ring with a single lip contact.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.123-124
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• 2006

Usually, hydraulic cylinder is widely used as the actuator in the equipment of construction machines, airplane and military machines. In case of these devices, due to use under severe environment such as water, $SiO^2$ and dust, etc. seal which has high packing ability and long service life has been required. These characteristics are largely influenced by material and geometries of seal such as approach angle, withdrawal angle and interference. Recently, many a study about seal material has been performed so that many materials have been developed. But the concrete studies including the relationships between geometry of seal and sealing performance have hardly been performed yet. Therefore, in this study, we predicted the deformation behavior and contact normal distribution of dust seal with the variation of geometries of seal lip using finite element analysis. And based on the results of analyses, we discussed the effects of the design variables fur sealing performance of the dust seal.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.24-30
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• 2018

Dental implants are currently widely used as artificial teeth due to their good chewing performance and long life cycle. A dental implant consists of an abutment as the upper part and a fixture as the lower part. When chewing forces are repeatedly applied to a dental implant, gap at the interface surface between the abutment and the fixture is often occurred, and results in some deteriorations such as loosening of fastening screw, dental retraction and fixture fracture. To cope with such problems, a sealing-type abutment having a number of grooves along the conical-surface circumference was previously developed, and shows better sealing performance than the conventional one. This study carries out optimization of the groove shape by genetic algorithm(GA) as well as structural analysis in consideration of external chewing force and pretension between the abutment and the fixture. The overall optimization system consists of two subsystems; the one is the genetic algorithm with MATLAB, and the other is the structural analysis with ANSYS. Two subsystems transmit and receive the relevant data with each other throughout the optimization processes. The optimization result is then compared with that of the conventional one with respect to the contact pressure and the maximum stress. The result shows that the optimized model gives better sealing performance than the conventional sealing abutment.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2018

PURPOSES : In order to evaluate a crack resistance at cold joint, sealing tape was adopted to apply at cold joint instead of typical tack coat material(RSC-4). The sealing tape was made by hot sealing material. The crack resistance as function of environmental and traffic loading was measured with visual observation. METHODS : In this study, the crack resistance was evaluated as function of environmental and traffic loading. The freeze-thaw method was adopted for environmental loading of asphalt pavement. condition. The damage of cold joint under freeze-thaw action is initiated by ice expansion load and accelerated by the interfacial damage between new and old asphalt pavement. The traffic loading was applied with wheel tracking machine on the cold joint area of the asphalt pavement for 3 hours at $25^{\circ}C$. The evaluation of crack resistance was measured with visual observation. The freeze-thaw results shows that the sealing tape was significantly increased the crack resistance based on. RESULTS : To estimate the crack resistance at cold joint area due to the environmental loading, the Freeze-thaw test was conducted by exposing the product to freezing temperature(approximately $-18^{\circ}C$) for 24 hours, and then allowing it to thaw at $60^{\circ}C$ for 24 hours. The tack coat material(RSC-4) was debonded after 21 cycles of the Freeze-thaw test. The first crack was observed after 14 freeze-thaw cycle with RSC-4 material. But, the sealing tape was not debonded after 24 cycle test. Also, the sealing tape shows the better performance of the crack resistance under the traffic loading with wheel track test. The crack was generated the under traffic loading with RSC-4(tack coating), however, the crack was not shown with sealing tape. It indicates that the sealing tape has a strong resistance of tensile stress due to traffic loading. CONCLUSIONS :Based on limited laboratory test result, a performance of crack resistance using the sealing tape is better than that of general tack coat material(RSC-4). It means that the sealing tape is possible to extend a pavement service life because the crack, one of the main pavement distresses, will be delayed.