• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.733-761
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• 2008

The failure of reinforced concrete structures in recent earthquakes caused concern about the performance of beam column joints. Confinement of joint is one of the ways to improve the performance of beam column joints during earthquakes. This paper describes an experimental study of exterior beam-column joints with two non-conventional reinforcement arrangements. One exterior beam-column joint of a six story building in seismic zone III of India was designed for earthquake loading. The transverse reinforcement of the joint assemblages were detailed as per IS 13920:1993 and IS 456:2000 respectively. The proposed nonconventional reinforcement was provided in the form of diagonal reinforcement on the faces of the joint, as a replacement of stirrups in the joint region for joints detailed as per IS 13920 and as additional reinforcement for joints detailed as per IS 456. These newly proposed detailing have the basic advantage of reducing the reinforcement congestion at the joint region. In order to study and compare the performance of joint with different detailing, four types of one-third scale specimens were cast (two numbers in each type). The main objective of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed reinforcement detailing. All the specimens were tested under reverse cyclic loading, with appropriate axial load. From the test results, it was found that the beam-column joint having confining reinforcement as per IS: 456 with nonconventional detailing performed well. Test results indicate that the non-conventionally detailed specimens, Type 2 and Type 4 have an improvement in average ductility of 16% and 119% than their conventionally detailed counter parts (Type1 and Type 3). Further, the joint shear capacity of the Type 2 and Type 4 specimens are improved by 8.4% and 15.6% than the corresponding specimens of Type 1 and Type 3 respectively. The present study proposes a closed form expression to compute the yield and ultimate load of the system. This is accomplished using the theory of statics and the failure pattern observed during testing. Good correlation is found between the theoretical and experimental results.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.674-680
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• 2007

The probabilistic roadmap (PRM) method, which is a popular path planning scheme, for a manipulator, can find a collision-free path by connecting the start and goal poses through a roadmap constructed by drawing random nodes in the free configuration space. PRM exhibits robust performance for static environments, but its performance is poor for dynamic environments. On the other hand, reinforcement learning, a behavior-based control technique, can deal with uncertainties in the environment. The reinforcement learning agent can establish a policy that maximizes the sum of rewards by selecting the optimal actions in any state through iterative interactions with the environment. In this paper, we propose efficient real-time path planning by combining PRM and reinforcement learning to deal with uncertain dynamic environments and similar environments. A series of experiments demonstrate that the proposed hybrid path planner can generate a collision-free path even for dynamic environments in which objects block the pre-planned global path. It is also shown that the hybrid path planner can adapt to the similar, previously learned environments without significant additional learning.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.233-242
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• 2002

This study is to investigate experimentally the shear capacity of high-strength lightweight-aggregate reinforced concrete beams subjected to monotonic loading. Ten beams made of fly-ash artificial lightweight high-strength concrete were tested to determine their diagonal cracking and ultimate shear capacities. The variables in the test program were longitudinal reinforcement ratio; which variabled (between 0.83 and 1.66 percent), shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d=1.5, 2.5 and 3.5), and web reinforcement(0, 0.137, 0.275 and 0.554 percent). Six of the test beams had no web reinforcement and the other six had web reinforcement along the entire length of the beam. Most of beams failed brittly by distinct diagonal shear crack, and have reserved shear strength due to the lack of additional resisting effect by aggregate interlocking action after diagonal cracking. Test results indicate that the ACI Building Code predictions of Eq. (11-3) and (11-5) for lightweight concretes are unconservative for beams with tensile steel ratio of 1.66, a/d ratios greater than 2.5 without web reinforcement. Through a more rational approach to compute the contribution of concrete to the shear capacity, a postcracking shear strength in concrete is observed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.44-51
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• 2023

With the recent increase in gas energy use, risk management for explosion accidents has been emphasized. Protective walls can be used to reduce damage from explosions. The KOSHA GUIDE D-65-2018 suggests the minimum thickness and height of protective walls, minimum reinforcement diameter, and maximum spacing of reinforcements for the structural safety of the protective walls. However, no related evidence has been presented. In this study, the blast load carrying capacity of the protective wall was analyzed by the pressure-impulse diagrams while changing the yield strength of the reinforcement, concrete compressive strength, reinforcement ratio, protective wall height, and thickness, to check the adequacy of the KOSHA GUIDE. Results show that failure may occur even with design based on the criteria presented by KOSHA GUIDE. In order to achieve structural safety of protective walls, additional criteria for minimum reinforcement yield strength and maximum height of protective wall are suggested for inclusion in KOSHA GUIDE. Moreover, the existing value for minimum reinforcement ratio and the thickness of the protective wall should be increased.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.2866-2874
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• 2000

This paper is concerned with the optimum design for external reinforcement of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel(RPV) in a severe accident. During the severe reactor accident of molten core, the temperature and the pressure in the nuclear reactor rise to a certain level depending on the initial and subsequent condition of a severs accident. The reis of the temperature and the internal pressure cause deterioration of the load carrying capacity and could cause failure of the RPV lower head. The deterioration of failure can be mitigated by the external cooling or the reinforcement of the lower head with additional structures. While the external cooling forces the temperature of an RPV to drop to the desired level, the reinforcement of the lower head can attain both the increase of the load carrying capacity and the temperature drop. The reinforcement of the lower head can be optimized to have the maximum effect on the collapse pressure and the temperature at the inner wall. Optimization results are compared to both the result without the reinforcement and the result with the designated reinforcement.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.349-356
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• 2000

Strenght and ductility are major factors in the aseismic design of a bridge pier. In spite of good performance in both steel piers have not been used widely due to high cost. But with the filled-in concrete the steel pier have advantages compare to the steel pier only such as improved strength ductility fast construction small section and reasonable cost. In this paper concrete-filled steel piers are tested using quasi-static cyclic lateral load with constant axial load to evaluate the performance. The secondary reinforcement devices such as bolts corner plate and turn buckle are used inside of the piers to improve the ductility with minimum additional cost. Test results shows filled-in concrete and secondary reinforcement devices increase the strength and the ductility of the steel pier.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.567-572
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• 2003

An experimental work is presented to evaluate the retrofit method for improving the flexural capacity of shear walls. Fives shear wall specimens are designed and retrofitted by using carbon fiber materials such as rod, sheet and plate. Cyclic horizontal loads are applied to the specimens under constant axial load, $0.1f_{ck}A_g$. Test result shows that specimens with additional flexural reinforcement have the increased initial stiffness and deformation capacity. However, the strength is not improved as much as expected. This is because that the flexural reinforcement is pulled out from the foundation at the latter half of cycles. In order to maximize the flexural retrofit, therefore, it is required to study the anchorage behavior of the flexural reinforcement for retrofit.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.39-50
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• 2001

In this study, in order to investigate the effects of reinforcement length and vertical spacing on the factor of safety, the road embankment reinforced by geogrid was analyzed using RSS(Reinforced Slope Stability) program based on limit equilibrium analysis. The result by computer analysis showed that the factor of safety for reinforced slope increased with increasing length of reinforcement and with decreasing vertical spacing of reinforcement up to certain limit. Also, numerical analysis by FLAC was performed on reinforced slope to evaluate the horizontal displacement, horizontal stress, and distribution of tensile forces of reinforcements in the cases of several reinforcement length. The results of analysis showed that the critical failure mode was toe failure or slope failure and the effect by the additional reinforcement length on the slope stability was negligible under stabilized condition.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.929-934
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• 2002

Eight full-scale columns were constructed and tested under monotonic axial compression loading to investigate the influence of headed bars on the confinement of the concrete. One column represented a column with no transverse reinforcement and another column had poor detailing and little confinement. A third column contained seismic hoops and crossties, which represented current detailing practice for significant confinement. A fourth column test is conducted to investigate the response with the seismic crossties replaced by headed bars. Two column specimens were constructed and tested with all of the transverse reinforcement provided by headed bars. These six specimens enabled an assesment of the effectiveness of headed bars in confining the concrete. It was found that the use of headed bars improved the confinement of the columns. Two additional specimens were constructed without any transverse reinforcement. These columns were later retrofitted, by drilling horizontal holes in the columns, adding special headed bars (one head fixed and the other head threaded) and then filling the drilled holes with epoxy. These retrofitted specimens with these added headed bars provided insight into the rehabilitation of older structures containing poorly detailed columns. All of the test specimens were instrumented to determine strain localization during failure and to monitor the strain in the longitudinal and transverse reinforcement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2001.03a
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• pp.245-248
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• 2001

During the core drilling for the design of a railway bridge crossing over the inferred fault system along the river, fracture zone, extends vertically more than the bottom of borehole, filled with fault gouge was found. The safety of bridge could be threatened by the excessive subsidence or the reduced bearing capacity of bedrock, if a fault would be developed under or around the pier foundation. Thus, a close examination of the fault was required to rearrange pier locations away from the fault or to select a reinforcement method if necessary. Geophysical methods, seismic reflection method and electrical resistivity survey over the water covered area, were applied to delineate the weak zone associated with the fault system. The results of geophysical survey clearly showed a number of faults extending vertically more than 50m. Reinforcement was not desirable because of the high cost and the water contamination, etc. The pier locations were thus rearranged based on the results of geophysical surveys to avoid the undesirable situations, and additional core drillings on the rearranged pier locations were carried out. The bedrock conditions at the additional drilling sites turned out to be acceptable for the construction of piers.