• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.151-164
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• 2021

During the pipe forming process, a steel plate undergoes inelastic behavior multiple times under a load condition repeating tension and compression in the circumferential direction. It derives local reduction or increase of yield strength within the thickness of steel pipes by the plastic hardening and Bauschinger effect. In this study, a combined hardening model is proposed to effectively predict variations of yield strength in the circumferential direction of API-X65 and X70 steel pipes with relatively low t/D ratio during the forming process, which is expected to experience accumulated plastic strain of 2~3%, the typical Lüder band range in a low-carbon steel. Cyclic tensile tests of API-X65 and X70 steels were performed, and the parameters of the proposed model for the steels were calibrated using the test results. Bending-flattening tests to simulate repeated tension and compression during pipe forming were followed for API-X65 and X70 steels, and the results were compared with those by the proposed model and Zou et al. (2016), in order to verify the process of material model calibration based on tension-compression cyclic test, and the accuracy of the proposed model. Finally, parametric analysis for the yield strength of the steel plate in the circumferential direction of UOE pipe was conducted to investigate the effects of t/D and expansion ratios after O-forming on the yield strength. The results confirmed that the model by Zou et al. (2016) underestimated the yield strength of steel pipe with relatively low t/D ratio, and the parametric analysis showed that the t/D and expansion ratio have a significant impact on the strength of steel pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.545-552
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• 2020

This study evaluated the support performance of fiber-net integrated shotcrete in tunnel support system developed for the purpose of improving constructability and stability while fully performing its mechanical performance as a tunnel support materials by four-point bending test, two-dimensional numerical analysis, and cross-sectional analysis. As a result of evaluating the flexural performance through a four-point bending test, in the case of fiber-net reinforced shotcrete, the tensile performance of fiber-net resulted in a continuous increase in load after crack occurrence, unlike steel fiber reinforced shotcrete. Also, the results of the tunnel cross-sectional structure analysis for ground conditions and the cross-sectional analysis of fiber-net and steel fiber reinforced shotcrete showed that sufficient support performance can be exhibited even if the thickness of fiber-net reinforced shotcrete was reduced compared to the previous one. Additionally, through these results, the support pattern of fiber-net integrated shotcrete in tunnel support system, which can be applied efficiently to the construction sections requiring higher stability among the rock mass class III, was proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.25-34
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• 2021

Since the dredging reclaimed land consisting of soft ground is very weak in support, the difficult and complex factors should be considered in the design to calculate accurate bearing capacity of soft ground. Recently, various reinforcement construction methods of soft ground have been designed for dredged landfills, but the stabilities are predicted by calculating conventional Meyerhof (1974) equation for trafficability in soft ground. Conventional equations increase economic costs by underestimating bearing capacity of weak ground in order to ensure constructive safety, so a modified equation has been proposed from the literature. The paper attempts to experiment and compute important factors, such as stitching fiber and seam tensile strength of geotextiles, that are not theoretically considered and can be identified in the field. In addition, The evaluation of the bearing capacity of the modified equation is verified to be stable for trafficability through the plate bearing test performed on site.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.466-473
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• 2022

The effect of Cr and Mo contents on the hydrogen embrittlement of tempered martensitic steels was investigated in this study. After the steels with different Cr and Mo contents were austenitized at 820 ℃ for 90 min, they were tempered at 630 ℃ for 120 min. The steels were composed of fully tempered martensite with a lath-type microstructure, but the characteristics of the carbides were dependent on the Cr and Mo contents. As the Cr and Mo contents increased, the volume fraction of film-like cementite and prior austenite grain size decreased. After hydrogen was introduced into tensile specimens by electrochemical charging, a slow strain-rate test (SSRT) was conducted to investigate hydrogen embrittlement behavior. The SSRT results revealed that the steel with lower Cr or lower Mo content showed relatively poor hydrogen embrittlement resistance. The hydrogen embrittlement resistance of the tempered martensitic steels increased with increasing Mo content, because the reduction in the film-like cementite and prior austenite grain size plays an important role in improving hydrogen embrittlement resistance. The results indicate that controlling the Cr and Mo contents is essential to achieving a tempered martensitic steel with a combination of high strength and excellent hydrogen embrittlement resistance.

• Composites Research
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.463-468
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• 2022

The high porosity of the infill pattern of carbon chopped fiber-reinforced Nylon composite structures fabricated by the fused filament fabrication (FFF) type 3D printers determines the mechanical performance of the printed structures. This study experimentally evaluated the mechanical performance of Onyx composite specimens fabricated with a rectangular infill structure under the hot-pressing condition to improve the mechanical properties by reducing the porosity of the infill pattern of the printed structure, and evaluated the best mechanical performance. The hot-pressing conditions (145℃, 4 MPa, 12 min) that induce the most appropriate mechanical properties were found. As a result of microscopic observation, it was confirmed that the infill porosity of the composite specimens subjected to post hot-pressing treatment was effectively reduced. In order to confirm the mechanical performance of the post-treated specimen, a tensile test and a three-point bending test were performed with a control specimen without post-treatment and a specimen printed with the same density and dimensions after post-treatment to evaluate the mechanical properties. As a result of comparison, it was confirmed that the mechanical properties were effectively improved when the post-treatment of hot-pressing was performed.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.697-726
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• 2023

Brittleness as an important property of rock plays a crucial role both in the failure process of intact rock and rock mass response to excavation in engineering geological and geotechnical projects. Generally, rock brittleness indices are calculated from the mechanical properties of rocks such as uniaxial compressive strength, tensile strength and modulus of elasticity. These properties are generally determined from complicated, expensive and time-consuming tests in laboratory. For this reason, in the present research, an attempt has been made to predict the rock brittleness indices from simple, inexpensive, and quick laboratory test results namely dry unit weight, porosity, slake-durability index, P-wave velocity, Schmidt rebound hardness, and point load strength index using multiple linear regression, exponential regression, support vector machine (SVM) with various kernels, generating fuzzy inference system, and regression tree ensemble (RTE) with boosting framework. So, this could be considered as an innovation for the present research. For this purpose, the number of 39 rock samples including five igneous, twenty-six sedimentary, and eight metamorphic were collected from different regions of Iran. Mineralogical, physical and mechanical properties as well as five well known rock brittleness indices (i.e., B₁, B₂, B₃, B₄, and B₅) were measured for the selected rock samples before application of the above-mentioned machine learning techniques. The performance of the developed models was evaluated based on several statistical metrics such as mean square error, relative absolute error, root relative absolute error, determination coefficients, variance account for, mean absolute percentage error and standard deviation of the error. The comparison of the obtained results revealed that among the studied methods, SVM is the most suitable one for predicting B₁, B₂ and B₅, while RTE predicts B₃ and B₄ better than other methods.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.359-376
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• 2023

Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) has become an attractive cast-in-place repairing material for existing engineering structures. The present study aims to investigate age-dependent high-early-strength UHPC (HESUHPC) material properties (i.e., compressive strength, elastic modulus, flexural strength, and tensile strength) as well as interfacial shear properties of HESUHPC-normal strength concrete (NSC) composites cured at different season temperatures (i.e., summer, autumn, and winter). The typical temperatures were kept for at least seven days in different seasons from weather forecasting to guarantee an approximately consistent curing and testing condition (i.e., temperature and relative humidity) for specimens at different ages. The HESUHPC material properties are tested through standardized testing methods, and the interfacial bond performance is tested through a bi-surface shear testing method. The test results quantify the positive development of HESUHPC material properties at the early age, and the increasing amplitude decreases from summer to winter. Three-day mechanical properties in winter (with the lowest curing temperature) still gain more than 60% of the 28-day mechanical properties, and the impact of season temperatures becomes small at the later age. The HESUHPC shrinkage mainly occurs at the early age, and the final shrinkage value is not significant. The HESUHPC-NSC interface exhibits sound shear performance, the interface in most specimens does not fail, and most interfacial shear strengths are higher than the NSC-NSC composite. The HESUHPC-NSC composites at the shear failure do not exhibit a large relative slip and present a significant brittleness at the failure. The typical failures are characterized by thin-layer NSC debonding near the interface, and NSC pure shear failure. Two load-slip development patterns, and two types of main crack location are identified for the HESUHPC-NSC composites tested in different ages and seasons. In addition, shear capacity of the HESUHPC-NSC composite develops rapidly at the early age, and the increasing amplitude decreases as the season temperature decreases. This study will promote the HESUHPC application in practical engineering as a cast-in-place repairing material subjected to different natural environments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4146-4158
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• 2022

Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has been widely utilized in military and civil protective structures to resist intensive loadings attributed to its excellent properties, e.g., high tensile/compressive strength, high dynamic toughness and impact resistance. At present, aiming to improve the defects of the traditional vertical concrete cask (VCC), i.e., the external storage facility of spent fuel, with normal strength concrete (NSC) shield, e.g., heavy weight and difficult to fabricate/transform, the feasibility of UHPC applied in the shield of VCC is numerically examined considering its high radiation and corrosion resistance. Firstly, the finite element (FE) analyses approach and material model parameters of NSC and UHPC are verified based on the 1/3 scaled VCC tip-over test and drop hammer test on UHPC members, respectively. Then, the refined FE model of prototypical VCC is established and utilized to examine its dynamic behaviors and damage distribution in accidental tip-over and end-drop events, in which the various influential factors, e.g., UHPC shield thickness, concrete ground thickness, and sealing methods of steel container are considered. In conclusion, by quantitatively evaluating the safety of VCC in terms of the shield damage and vibrations, it is found that adopting the 300 mm-thick UHPC shield instead of the conventional 650 mm-thick NSC shield can reduce about 1/3 of the total weight of VCC, i.e., about 50 t, and 37% floor space, as well as guarantee the structural integrity of VCC during the accidental drop simultaneously. Besides, based on the parametric analyses, the thickness of concrete ground in the VCC storage site is recommended as less than 500 mm, and the welded connection is recommended for the sealing method of steel containers.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.179-190
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• 2023

The effect of glass fibres (GF) and polypropylene fibres (PPF) on the fresh properties and mechanical properties of lightweight concrete (LWC) exposed to high temperatures is investigated in this study. In this study, fifteen LWC mixtures were carried out in three different groups reinforced with PPF or GF fibers by 0%, 0.2%, and 0.4% by volume of concrete. The first group included aluminum powder (AP) as an air agent at 0.03% with the normal weight coarse aggregate (NWCA) by 100% of the weight of coarse aggregate. In the second group, 33% of the NWCA weight was replaced by lightweight coarse aggregate (LWCA). In the third group, 67% of the NWCA weight was replaced by LWCA. The slump, unit weight, Compressive strength (CS), tensile strength (TS), and flexural strength (FS) were examined. For two hours, the CS and FS were subjected to elevated temperatures of 200℃, 400℃, and 600℃, in addition to microstructure analysis of concrete. In comparison to the reference mixture, the fresh properties and bulk density of LWC decreased with the use of the air agent or the replacement of 67% of the NWCA with LWCA. As a result of the fiber addition, both the slump test and the bulk density decreased. The addition of fibers increased the CS; the highest CS was 38.5 MPa when 0.4% GF was added, compared to 28.9 MPa for the reference mixture at the test age of 28 days. In addition, flexural and TS increased by 53% and 38%, respectively, for 0.4% GF mixes. As well as, adding 0.4% GF to LWC maintained a higher CS than other mixtures.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.577-595
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• 2023

A dynamic triaxial discrete element numerical model of lightweight soil was established using the discrete element method to study the microscopic mechanism of expanded polystyrene (EPS) particles in the soil under cyclic loading. The microscopic parameters of the discrete element model of the lightweight soil were calibrated depending on the dynamic triaxial test hysteresis curves. Based on the calibration results, the effects of the EPS particles volume ratio and amplitude on the contact force, displacement field, and velocity field of the lightweight soil under different accumulated strains were studied. The results showed that the hysteresis curves of lightweight soil exhibit nonlinearity, hysteresis, and strain accumulation. The strain accumulated in remolded soil is mainly tensile strain, and that in lightweight soil is mainly compressive strain. As the volume ratio of EPS particles increased, the contact force first increased and then decreased, and the displacement and velocity of the particles increased accordingly. With an increase in amplitude, the dynamic stress of the particle system increased, and the accumulation rate of the dynamic strain of the samples also increased. At 5% compressive strain, the contact force of the particles changed significantly and the number of particles deflected in the direction of velocity also increased considerably. These results indicated that the cemented structure of the lightweight soil began to fail at a compressive strain of 5%. Thus, a compressive strain of 5% is more reasonable than the dynamic strength failure standard of lightweight soil.