• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2002

In the past, safety assessment on the site of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plants against tsunamis was carried out with probable maximum earthquake magnitude and related tsunamigenic fault parameters. Recently, however, based on the seismic gap theory, some seismologists warned about earthquakes of larger magnitudes than had been expected. In this study, we revaluated tsunami risk with a finite difference model based on linear and nonlinear shallow water equations. Firstly, we simulated the\`83 tsunami and compared the calculated water surface profile with the observed wave heights. Secondly, we evaluated the rise and drop of sea water level at the site of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plant with fault parameters of the past '83, '93 tsunamis and some dangerous faults. Finally, we showed that the cooling water intake facility of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plants would be safely operated in disastrous tsunamis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.573-582
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• 2011

The in-cabinet response spectrum is used to define the input motion in the seismic qualification of instruments and devices mounted inside an electrical cabinet. This paper presents a procedure for generating the in-cabinet response spectrum for electrical equipment based on in-situ testing by an impact hammer. The proposed procedure includes an algorithm to build the relationship between the impact forces and the measured acceleration responses of cabinet structures by estimating the state-space model. This model is used to predict seismic responses to the equivalent earthquake forces. Three types of structural model are analyzed for numerical verification of the proposed method. A comparison of predicted and simulated response spectra shows good convergence, demonstrating the potential of the proposed method to predict the response spectra for real cabinet structures using vibration tests. The presented procedure eliminates the uncertainty associated with constructing an analytical model of the electrical cabinet, which has complex mass distribution and stiffness.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.556-562
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• 2007

This paper presents the use of a novel fiber optic accelerometer system to monitor ambient vibration (both wind-induced one and vehicle-induced) of a real bridge structure. This sensor system integrates the $Moir\'{e}$ fringe phenomenon with fiber optics to achieve accurate and reliable measurements. A low-cost signal processing unit implements unique algorithms to further enhance the resolution and increase the dynamic bandwidth of the sensors. The fiber optic accelerometer has two major benefits in using this fiber optic accelerometer system for monitoring civil engineering structures. One is its immunity to electromagnetic (EM) interference making it suitable for difficult applications in such environments involving strong EM fields, electrical spark-induced explosion risks, and cabling problems, prohibiting the use of conventional electromagnetic accelerometers. The other is its ability to measure both low- and high-amplitude vibrations with a constantly high resolution without pre-setting a gain level, as usually required in a conventional accelerometer. The second benefit makes the sensor system particularly useful for real-time measurement of both ambient vibration (that is often used for structural health monitoring) and strong motion such as earthquake. Especially, the semi-strong motion and the small ambient one are successfully simulated and measured by using the new fiber optic accelerometer in the experiment of the structural health monitoring of a real bridge.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.119-133
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• 2015

This paper proposed a structural time-varying damage detection method by using synchrosqueezing wavelet transform. The instantaneous frequencies of a structure with time-varying damage are first extracted using the synchrosqueezing wavelet transform. Since the proposed synchrosqueezing wavelet transform is invertible, thus each individual component can be reconstructed and the modal participation factor ratio can be extracted based on the amplitude of the analytical signals of the reconstructed individual components. Then, the new time-varying damage index is defined based on the extracted instantaneous frequencies and modal participation factor ratio. Both free and forced vibrations of a classical Duffing nonlinear system and a simply supported beam structure with abrupt and linear time-varying damage are simulated. The proposed synchrosqueezing wavelet transform method can successfully extract the instantaneous frequencies of the damaged structures under free vibration or vibration due to earthquake excitation. The results also show that the defined time-varying damage index can effectively track structural time-varying damage.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.253-272
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• 2013

The use of steel bracing systems is a popular method for the strengthening of existing reinforced concrete (RC) frames and may lead to a substantial increase of both strength and stiffness. However, in most retrofitting cases, the main target is the increase of the energy dissipation capacity. This paper studies numerically the efficiency of a specific strengthening methodology which utilizes a steel link element having a cross-section of various shapes, connected to the RC frame through bracing elements. The energy is dissipated through the yielding of the steel link element. The case studied is a typical one bay, single-storey RC frame, constructed according to older code provisions, which is strengthened through two different types of link elements. The presented numerical models are based on tests which are simulated in order to gain a better insight of the behaviour of the strengthened structures, but also in order to study the effects of different configurations for the link element. The behaviour of the strengthened frames is studied with respect to the one of the original bare frame. Moreover, the numerically obtained results are compared to the experimentally obtained ones, in order to verify the effectiveness of the applied simulation methodology.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.345-360
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• 2019

The shear keys are set in a seismic isolation system to resist the long-term service loadings, and are cut off to isolate the earthquakes. This paper investigated the influence of shear keys on the seismic performance of a vertical spring-viscous damper-concave Coulomb friction isolation system by an incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) and a performance-based assessment. Results show that the cutting off process of shear keys should be simulated in a numerical analysis to accurately predict the seismic responses of isolation system. Ignoring the cutting off process of shear keys usually leads to untrue seismic responses in a numerical analysis, and many of them are unsafe for the design of isolated structure. And those errors will be increased by increasing the cutting off force of shear keys and decreasing the spring constant of shear keys, especially under a feeble earthquake. The viscous damping action postpones the cutting off time of shear keys during earthquakes, and reduces the seismic isolation efficiency. However, this point can be improved by increasing the spring constant of shear keys.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.41-54
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• 2019

Reinforced Concrete (RC) shear walls are widely used in Nuclear power plants as effective lateral force resisting elements of the structure and these may experience nonlinear behavior for higher earthquake demand. Short shear walls of aspect ratio less than 1.5 generally experience combined shear flexure interaction. This paper presents the results of the displacement-controlled experiments performed on six RC short shear walls with varying aspect ratios (1, 1.25 and 1.5) for monotonic and reversed quasi-static cyclic loading. Simulation of the shear walls is then carried out by Finite element modeling and also by macro modeling considering the coupled shear and flexure behaviour. The shear response is estimated by softened truss theory using the concrete model given by Vecchio and Collins (1994) with a modification in softening part of the model and flexure response is estimated using moment curvature relationship. The accuracy of modeling is validated by comparing the simulated response with experimental one. Moreover, based on the experimental work a multi-linear hysteretic model is proposed for short shear walls. Finally ultimate load, drift, ductility, stiffness reduction and failure pattern of the shear walls are studied in details and hysteretic energy dissipation along with damage index are evaluated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.269-280
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls with L-shaped sections are commonly used in RC buildings. The walls are often expected to sustain biaxial load and Unsymmetrical bending in an earthquake event. However, there currently exists limited experimental evidence regarding their seismic behaviour in these lateral loading directions. This paper makes experimental and numerical investigations to these walls behaviours. Experimental evidences are presented for four L-shaped wall specimens which were tested under simulated seismic load from different lateral directions. The results highlighted some distinct behaviour of L-shaped walls sustaining Unsymmetrical bending relating to their seismic performance. First, due to the Unsymmetrical bending, out-of-plane reaction forces occur for these walls, which contribute to accumulation of the out-of-plane deformations of the wall, especially when out-of-plane stiffness of the section is reduced by horizontal cracks in the cyclic load. Secondly, cracking was found to affect shear centre of the specimens loaded in the Unsymmetrical bending direction. The shear centre of these specimens distinctly differs in the flange in the positive and negative loading direction. Cracking of the flange also causes significant warping in the bottom part of the wall, which eventually lead to out-of-plane buckling failure.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.445-452
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• 2019

In this paper, dynamic stress, strain and deflection analysis of concrete pipes conveying nanoparticles-water under the seismic load are studied. The pipe is buried in the soil which is modeled by spring and damper elements. The Navier-Stokes equation is used for obtaining the force induced by the fluid and the mixture rule is utilized for considering the effect of nanoparticles. Based on refined two variables shear deformation theory of shells, the pipe is simulated and the equations of motion are derived based on energy method. The Galerkin and Newmark methods are utilized for calculating the dynamic stress, strain and deflection of the concrete pipe. The influences of internal fluid, nanoparticles volume percent, soil medium and damping of it as well as length to diameter ratio of the pipe are shown on the dynamic stress, strain and displacement of the pipe. The results show that with enhancing the nanoparticles volume percent, the dynamic stress, strain and deflection decrease.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.319-344
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• 2020

Inverse analysis of non-linear reinforced concrete bridge pier using recursive Gaussian filtering for in-situ condition assessment is the main theme of this work. For this purpose, minimum variance unbiased estimation using unscented sigma points is adopted here. The uniqueness of this inverse analysis lies in its approach for strain based updating of engineering demand parameters, where appropriate bound and constrained conditions are introduced to ensure numerical stability and convergence. In this analysis, seismic input is also identified, which is an added advantage for the structures having no dedicated sensors for earthquake measurement. First, the proposed strategy is tested with a simulated example whose hysteretic properties are obtained from the slow-cyclic test of a frame to investigate its efficiency and accuracy. Finally, the experimental test data of a full-scale bridge pier is used to study its in-situ condition in terms of Park & Ang damage index. Overall the study shows the ability of the augmented minimum variance unbiased estimation based recursive time-marching algorithm for non-linear system identification with the aim to estimate the engineering damage parameters that are the fundamental information necessary for any future decision making for retrofitting/rehabilitation.