• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.922-929
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• 2019

This paper presents the drop performance test of the control rod assembly which is one of the main components strongly related to the safety of the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor. To investigate the drop performance, a real-sized control rod assembly that was recently modified based on the drop analysis results was newly fabricated, and several free drop tests under different flow rate conditions were carried out. Then the results were compared with those obtained from the previous tests conducted on the conceptually designed control rod assembly to demonstrate the improvement in performance. Moreover, the drop performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loadings were also conducted to investigate the effect of the seismic loading on the drop performance of the modified control rod assembly. The results showed that the effects of the type and magnitude of the seismic loading on the drop performance of the modified control rod assembly were not significant. Also, the drop time requirement was successfully satisfied, even under the seismic loading conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.855-864
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• 2017

The control rod assembly controls reactor power by adjusting its position during normal operation and shuts down chain reactions by its free drop under scram conditions. Therefore, the drop performance of the control rod assembly is important for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In this study, the drop performance of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor that is being developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as a next-generation nuclear reactor was experimentally investigated. For the performance test, the test facility and test procedure were established first, and several free drop performance tests of the control rod assembly under different flow rate conditions were then carried out. Moreover, performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loading conditions were also conducted to investigate the effects of seismic loading on the drop performance of the control rod assembly. The drop time of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for 0% of the tentatively designed flow rate was measured to be 1.527 seconds, and this agrees well with the analytically calculated drop time. It was also observed that the effect of seismic loading on the drop time was not significant.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.26 no.6_spc
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• pp.697-704
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• 2016

The second shutdown drive mechanism (SSDM) that is classified into seismic category I as an active mechanical equipment shall maintain the structural integrity and its designed inherent safety functions during and/or after normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences, accidents and seismic occurrences. Therefore, not only a structural integrity assessment through numerical analyses but also a qualification test by using the prototype SSDM shall be conducted to verify the adequacy of the SSDM design. This paper describes a sort of seismic qualification test of the prototype SSDM to demonstrate that the structural integrity and operability (functionality) of SSDM are maintained during and/or after seismic excitations. From the results, this paper shows that the SSDM satisfies all design requirements without any malfunctions during and after the seismic test.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.369-378
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• 2018

Full-scale seismic retrofit of old and deteriorated masonry buildings requires a lot of cost and time. In such buildings, installing an emergency evacuation space can be considered as an alternative. In this study, requirements of the earthquake-proof table used as an emergency evacuation space for buildings hit by earthquake are investigated. Load conditions required for the table, including the impact effects due to building debris drop, are explained. To investigate the impact effects in more detail, weight drop test is performed for an prototype earthquake-proof table. In the test, the weight of the falling object and free fall height were considered as the main test parameters. The results showed that the duration of impact is very short (0.0226~0.0779sec), and thus the impact forces increase to 15.8~45.2 times the weight of the falling object. Based on these results, design considerations and performance verification criteria of the earthquake-proof table as an emergency evacuation space are given.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.552-558
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• 2016

A control rod drive mechanism(CRDM) is a reactor regulating system, which inserts, withdraws or maintains a control rod within a reactor core to control the reactivity of the core. The CRDM for Jordan Research and Training Reactor with 5MW power has been designed and fabricated based on the HANARO’s experience through KAERI and DAEWOO consortium. This paper describes the seismic test results to demonstrate the operability, the drop performance and the structural integrity of CRDM during or after seismic excitations. The seismic tests are carried out under 5 OBE and 1 SSE loads at three Test Rigs simulating the reactor structure and the pool top. From the tests, the CRDM is smoothly driven without a malfunction of stepping motor under OBE load. The pure drop time under OBE and SSE loads is measured as 1.169s and 1.855s to meet the design requirement. Also, it is found that the CRDM maintains the structural integrity without a change of the function and natural frequency before and after seismic loads.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.83-93
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• 2022

In this study, to verify the structural performance of the Composite Joint System (CJS) hybrid structural model, a cyclic load test was performed and evaluated and verified through the test. To verify the structural performance of the CJS hybrid structural systems' joint and evaluate the seismic performance, four three-dimensional real-size specimens were developed with three internal beam-column specimens and one external beam-column specimen. The three interior column specimens were classified by different methods of joining the upper column and lower column, and the same bonding method as the primary specimen was used for the exterior column. The structural performances in terms of drift, strength, and energy dissipation capacity were analyzed and compared based on the experimental results. From the displacement-based loading experiment, all specimens showed a lateral drift of 4.0% without any significant strength drop and stable energy dissipation capacity.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.181-187
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• 2017

To proactively respond to internal and external changes such as the recent demographic change and rising demand for diversified housing types, this study investigated the framed-structure free plan public house model proposed by the LH to look at the seismic performance of framed-structure apartment according to damper system use through non-linear analysis. The effectiveness thereof was also examined in terms of performance and economy. As a result, the proposed damper system application method to framed-structure free plan public house model was found to meet the performance requirements of the present earthquake-resistant design (KBC2016) and effective to apply to designs. The max response displacement and max response acceleration were compared based on the nonlinear analysis. As a result, the building with damper system showed better earthquake resistance performance than earthquake-resistant structure thanks to the damper system, although the base shear of earthquake-resistant system was reduced by 20% in design. The damper system is expected to help reduce building damage while ensuring excellent earthquake resistance performance. In addition, the framework quantities of earthquake-resistant structure and structure with damping system were compared. As a result, columns were found to reduce concrete amount by about 3.9% and rebar, by about 7.3%. Walls showed about 12.6% reduction in concrete and about 10.7% in rebar. In terms of cost, framework construction cost including formwork and foundation expenses was expected to drop by about 5~6%.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.441-456
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• 2023

Aiming at the development trend of light weight and high strength of engineering structures, this paper experimentally investigated the seismic performance of circular-in-square high-strength concrete-filled double skin steel tubular (HCFDST) stub columns with out-of-code width-to-thickness (B/t) ratios. Typical failure mode of HCFDST stub columns appeared with the infill material crushing, steel fracture and local buckling of outer tubes as well as the inner buckling of inner tubes. Subsequently, the detailed analysis on hysteretic curves, skeleton curves and ductility, energy dissipation, stiffness degradation and lateral force reduction was conducted to reflect the influences of hollow ratios, axial compression ratios and infill types, e.g., increasing hollow ratio from 0.54 to 0.68 and 0.82 made a slight effect on bearing capacity compared to the ductility coefficients; the higher axial compression ratio (e.g., 0.3 versus 0.1) significantly reduced the average bearing capacity and ductility; the HCFDST column SCFST-6 filled with concrete obviously displayed the larger initial secant stiffness with a percentage 34.20% than the column SCFST-2 using engineered cementitious composite (ECC); increasing hollow ratios, axial compression ratios could accelerate the drop speed of stiffness degradation. The out-of-code HCFDST stub columns with reasonable design could behave favorable hysteretic performance. A theoretical model considering the tensile strength effect of ECC was thereafter established and verified to predict the moment-resisting capacity of HCFDST columns using ECC. The reported research on circular-in-square HCFDST stub columns can provide significant references to the structural application and design.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.139-152
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• 2022

Steel-reinforced concrete (SRC) L-shaped column is the vertical load-bearing member with high spatial adaptability. The seismic behavior of SRC L-shaped column is complex because of their irregular cross sections. In this study, the hysteretic performance of six steel truss reinforced concrete L-shaped columns specimens under the combined loading of compression, bending, shear, and torsion was tested. There were two parameters, i.e., the moment ratio of torsion to bending (γ) and the aspect ratio (column length-to-depth ratio (φ)). The failure process, torsion-displacement hysteresis curves, and bending-displacement hysteresis curves of specimens were obtained, and the failure patterns, hysteresis curves, rigidity degradation, ductility, and energy dissipation were analyzed. The experimental research indicates that the failure mode of the specimen changes from bending failure to bending-shear failure and finally bending-torsion failure with the increase of γ. The torsion-displacement hysteresis curves were pinched in the middle, formed a slip platform, and the phenomenon of "load drop" occurred after the peak load. The bending-displacement hysteresis curves were plump, which shows that the bending capacity of the specimen is better than torsion capacity. The results show that the steel truss reinforced concrete L-shaped columns have good collapse resistance, and the ultimate interstory drift ratio more than that of the Chinese Code of Seismic Design of Building (GB50011-2014), which is sufficient. The average value of displacement ductility coefficient is larger than rotation angle ductility coefficient, indicating that the specimen has a better bending deformation resistance. The specimen that has a more regular section with a small φ has better potential to bear bending moment and torsion evenly and consume more energy under a combined action.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.1083-1095
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• 2016

The design of Prototype Gen-IV Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (PGSFR) has been developed and the validation and verification (V&V) activities to demonstrate the system performance and safety are in progress. In this paper, the current status of test activities is described briefly and significant results are discussed. The large-scale sodium thermal-hydraulic test program, Sodium Test Loop for Safety Simulation and Assessment-1 (STELLA-1), produced satisfactory results, which were used for the computer codes V&V, and the performance test results of the model pump in sodiumshowed good agreement with those in water. The second phase of the STELLA program with the integral effect tests facility, STELLA-2, is in the detailed design stage of the design process. The sodium thermal-hydraulic experiment loop for finned-tube sodium-to-air heat exchanger performance test, the intermediate heat exchanger test facility, and the test facility for the reactor flow distribution are underway. Flow characteristics test in subchannels of a wire-wrapped rod bundle has been carried out for safety analysis in the core and the dynamic characteristic test of upper internal structure has been performed for the seismic analysis model for the PGSFR. The performance tests for control rod assemblies (CRAs) have been conducted for control rod drive mechanism driving parts and drop tests of the CRA under scram condition were performed. Finally, three types of inspection sensors under development for the safe operation of the PGSFR were explained with significant results.