• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.47-56
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• 2014

In winter season, the pore water inside the ground freezes and thaws repetitively due to the cold air temperature. When the freezing-thawing processes are repeated on the ground, the change in soil particle structure occurs and thus the damage of the infrastructure may be following. This study was performed in order to investigate the stiffness change of soils due to the freeze-thaw by using elastic waves. Sand-silt mixtures are prepared with in the silt fraction of 40 %, 60 % and 80 % in weight and in the degree of saturation of 40 %. The specimens are placed into the square freezing-thawing cell by the temping method. For the measurement of the elastic waves, a pair of the bender elements and a pair of piezo disk elements are installed on the cell, and a thermocouple is inserted into soils for the measurement of the temperature. The temperature of the mixtures is decreased from $20^{\circ}C$ to $-10^{\circ}C$ during freezing, is maintained at $-20^{\circ}C$ for 18 hours, is gradually increased up to the room temperature of $20^{\circ}C$ to thaw the specimens. The shear waves, the compressional waves and the temperature are measured during the freeze-thaw process. The experimental result indicates that the shear and the compressional wave velocities after thawing are smaller than those of before freezing. The velocity ratio of after thawing to before freezing of shear wave is smaller than that of the compressional wave. As silt fraction increases from 40 % to 80 %, the shear and compressional wave velocities are gradually increased. This study suggests that the freezing-thawing process in unsaturated soil loosens the soil particle structure, and the shear wave velocity reflects the effect of freezing-thawing more sensitively than the compressional wave velocity.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.441-448
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• 2014

From several researches, recently, it was found that using hollowed precast concrete (HPC) column made more compact concrete casting in joint region possible than using normal solid PC (Precast concrete) column. Therefore, the rigidity of joints can be improved like those of monolithic reinforced concrete (RC). After filling the hollow with grout concrete, however, it is expected that the HPC column behaviors like composite structure since PC element and grout concrete have different materials as well as there is a contact surface between two elements. These may affect the structural behavior and strength of the composite column. A compressive strength test was performed for the HPC column with parameter of hollow ratio for the case with and without grout in the hollow and the result is presented in this paper. The hollow ratios in the test are 35, 50 and 59% of whole section of column. Concentrated axial force was applied to top of the specimens supported as pin connection for both ends. In addition, finite element (FE) analysis was performed to simulate the failure behavior of HPC column for axial compression. As a result, it was found that the hollow ratio did not affect the initial stiffness of HPC filled with grout regardless of the strength difference of HPC and grout. However the strength was increased inversely corresponding to the hollow ratio. The structural capacity of HPC without grout closely related to the hollow size. Especially, the local collapse governs the overall failure when the thickness of HPC is too thin. Based on these effect, a suitable equation was suggested for calculation of the compressive strength of HPC column with or without grout. FE analysis considering the contact surface between HPC and grout produced a good result matched to the test result.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.515-525
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• 2007

In this investigation, results of laboratory tests on four reinforced concrete flat plate interior connections with elongated rectangular column support which has been used widely in tall residential buildings are presented. The purpose of this study is to evaluate an effect of column aspect ratio (${\beta}_c={c_1}/{c_2}$=side length ratio of column section in the direction of lateral loading $(c_1)$ to the direction of perpendicular to $c_1$) on the hysteretic behavior under earthquake type loading. The aspect ratio of column section was taken as $0.5{\sim}3\;(c_1/c_2=1/2,\;1/1,\;2/1,\;3/1)$ and the column perimeter was held constant at 1200mm in order to achieve nominal vertical shear strength $(V_c)$ uniformly. Other design parameters such as flexural reinforcement ratio $(\rho)$ of the slab and concrete strength$(f_{ck})$ was kept constant as ${\rho}=1.0%$ and $f_{ck}=40MPa$, respectively. Gravity shear load $(V_g)$ was applied by 30 percent of nominal vertical shear strength $(0.3V_o)$ of the specimen. Experimental observations on punching failure pattern, peak lateral-load and story drift ratio at punching failure, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation in the hysteresis loop, and steel and concrete strain distributions near the column support were examined and discussed in accordance with different column aspect ratio. Eccentric shear stress model of ACI 318-05 was evaluated with experimental results. A fraction of transferring moment by shear and flexure in the design code was analyzed based on the test results.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.185-193
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• 2015

Ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) has been developed to overcome the low tensile strengths and brittleness of conventional concrete. Considering that UHPC, owing to its composition and the use of steel fibers, develops a compressive strength of 180 MPa as well as high stiffness, the top flange of the steel girder may be superfluous in the composite beam combining a slab made of UHPC and the steel girder. In such composite beam, the steel girder takes the form of an inverted-T shaped structure without top flange in which the studs needed for the composition of the steel girder with the UHPC slab are disposed in the web of the steel girder. This study investigates experimentally and analytically the flexural behavior of this new type of composite beam to propose details like stud spacing and slab thickness for further design recommendations. To that goal, eight composite beams with varying stud spacing and slab thickness were fabricated and tested. The test results indicated that stud spacing running from 100 mm to 2 to 3 times the slab thickness can be recommended. In view of the relative characteristic slip limit of Eurocode-4, the results showed that the composite beam developed ductile behavior. Moreover, except for the members with thin slab and large stud spacing, most of the specimens exhibited results different to those predicted by AASHTO LRFD and Eurocode-4 because of the high performance developed by UHPC.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.761-769
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• 2014

Ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) has been developed to overcome the low strengths and brittleness of conventional concrete. Considering that UHPC, owing to its composition and the use of steel fibers, develops a compressive strength of 180 MPa as well as high stiffness, the top flange of the steel girder may be superfluous in the composite beam combining a slab made of UHPC and the steel girder. In such composite beam, the steel girder takes the form of an inverted-T shaped structure without top flange in which the studs needed for the composition of the steel girder with the UHPC slab are disposed in the web of the steel girder. This study investigates experimentally and analytically the flexural behavior of this new type of composite beam to propose details like stud spacing and slab thickness for further design recommendations. To that goal, eight composite beams with varying stud spacing and slab thickness were fabricated and tested. The test results indicated that stud spacing running from 100 mm to 2 to 3 times the slab thickness can be recommended. In view of the relative characteristic slip limit of Eurocode-4, the results showed that the composite beam developed ductile behavior. Moreover, except for the members with thin slab and large stud spacing, most of the specimens exhibited results different to those predicted by AASHTO LRFD and Eurocode-4 because of the high performance developed by UHPC.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.1-2
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• 2011

Hybrid rockets have lately attracted attention as a strong candidate of small, low cost, safe and reliable launch vehicles. A significant topic is that the first commercially sponsored space ship, SpaceShipOne vehicle chose a hybrid rocket. The main factors for the choice were safety of operation, system cost, quick turnaround, and thrust termination. In Japan, five universities including Hokkaido University and three private companies organized "Hybrid Rocket Research Group" from 1998 to 2002. Their main purpose was to downsize the cost and scale of rocket experiments. In 2002, UNISEC (University Space Engineering Consortium) and HASTIC (Hokkaido Aerospace Science and Technology Incubation Center) took over the educational and R&D rocket activities respectively and the research group dissolved. In 2008, JAXA/ISAS and eleven universities formed "Hybrid Rocket Research Working Group" as a subcommittee of the Steering Committee for Space Engineering in ISAS. Their goal is to demonstrate technical feasibility of lowcost and high frequency launches of nano/micro satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. Hybrid rockets use a combination of solid and liquid propellants. Usually the fuel is in a solid phase. A serious problem of hybrid rockets is the low regression rate of the solid fuel. In single port hybrids the low regression rate below 1 mm/s causes large L/D exceeding a hundred and small fuel loading ratio falling below 0.3. Multi-port hybrids are a typical solution to solve this problem. However, this solution is not the mainstream in Japan. Another approach is to use high regression rate fuels. For example, a fuel regression rate of 4 mm/s decreases L/D to around 10 and increases the loading ratio to around 0.75. Liquefying fuels such as paraffins are strong candidates for high regression fuels and subject of active research in Japan too. Nakagawa et al. in Tokai University employed EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) to modify viscosity of paraffin based fuels and investigated the effect of viscosity on regression rates. Wada et al. in Akita University employed LTP (Low melting ThermoPlastic) as another candidate of liquefying fuels and demonstrated high regression rates comparable to paraffin fuels. Hori et al. in JAXA/ISAS employed glycidylazide-poly(ethylene glycol) (GAP-PEG) copolymers as high regression rate fuels and modified the combustion characteristics by changing the PEG mixing ratio. Regression rate improvement by changing internal ballistics is another stream of research. The author proposed a new fuel configuration named "CAMUI" in 1998. CAMUI comes from an abbreviation of "cascaded multistage impinging-jet" meaning the distinctive flow field. A CAMUI type fuel grain consists of several cylindrical fuel blocks with two ports in axial direction. The port alignment shifts 90 degrees with each other to make jets out of ports impinge on the upstream end face of the downstream fuel block, resulting in intense heat transfer to the fuel. Yuasa et al. in Tokyo Metropolitan University employed swirling injection method and improved regression rates more than three times higher. However, regression rate distribution along the axis is not uniform due to the decay of the swirl strength. Aso et al. in Kyushu University employed multi-swirl injection to solve this problem. Combinations of swirling injection and paraffin based fuel have been tried and some results show very high regression rates exceeding ten times of conventional one. High fuel regression rates by new fuel, new internal ballistics, or combination of them require faster fuel-oxidizer mixing to maintain combustion efficiency. Nakagawa et al. succeeded to improve combustion efficiency of a paraffin-based fuel from 77% to 96% by a baffle plate. Another effective approach some researchers are trying is to use an aft-chamber to increase residence time. Better understanding of the new flow fields is necessary to reveal basic mechanisms of regression enhancement. Yuasa et al. visualized the combustion field in a swirling injection type motor. Nakagawa et al. observed boundary layer combustion of wax-based fuels. To understand detailed flow structures in swirling flow type hybrids, Sawada et al. (Tohoku Univ.), Teramoto et al. (Univ. of Tokyo), Shimada et al. (ISAS), and Tsuboi et al. (Kyushu Inst. Tech.) are trying to simulate the flow field numerically. Main challenges are turbulent reaction, stiffness due to low Mach number flow, fuel regression model, and other non-steady phenomena. Oshima et al. in Hokkaido University simulated CAMUI type flow fields and discussed correspondence relation between regression distribution of a burning surface and the vortex structure over the surface.