• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.517-522
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• 2021

In this study, the causes of damage to the concrete sleepers in a ballast track with under sleeper pads attached to the base of the sleepers installed in the sharp curved track(R=180m) of the urban railway bridge were analyzed. The damage types of concrete sleepers were investigated, and the correlation with track irregularity was reviewed. Also, stress generated in the concrete sleeper was reviewed through structural analysis. As a result, most of the cracks of the sleepers occurred in the section with severe track irregularity. In addition, as a result of the analysis, the stress generated in the track components and the sleepers was found to be reduce in the fastening system using the 4-anchor.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.627-635
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• 2021

The fire damage and structural performance of a steel-concrete composite superstructure under a highway bridge exposed to fire loading was evaluated. To enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the numerical analysis, a proposed fluid-structure interaction fire analysis method was implemented in Ansys Fluent and Ansys Mechanical. The temperature distribution and performance evaluation of the steel-concrete composite superstructure according to the vertical distance from the fire source to the bottom flange were evaluated using the proposed analysis method. From the analysis, the temperature of the concrete slab and the bottom flange of the steel-concrete composite superstructure exceeded the critical temperature. Also, when the vertical distance from the fire source was 13 m or greater, the fire damage of the steel-concrete composite superstructure was found to within a safe limit.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

As the aging of large domestic SOC facilities accelerates, facility maintenance is also changing from safety evaluation based on the current condition to performance-oriented preventive and preemptive maintenance based on the prediction of the level of future obsolescence. In particular, in the case of bridges, class 1 and 2 bridges are systematically managed along with many studies, but for small and medium-sized class 3 bridges there is no collection and utilization of historical data presenting performance degradation during their service life. Therefore, in this study, 3D model-based demonstration DB system was designed and developed to intuitively check the damage change rate at the damage location by registering the maintenance history by life cycle for each member's exterior damage in the 3D bridge object and to enable API-based comprehensive performance evaluation.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.605-628
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• 2008

In bridge structures, damage may induce an additional deflection which may naturally contain essential information about the damage. However, inverse mapping from the damage-induced deflection to the actual damage location and severity is generally complex, particularly for statically indeterminate systems. In this paper, a new load concept, called the positive-bending-inspection-load (PBIL) is proposed to construct a simple inverse mapping from the damage-induced deflection to the actual damage location. A PBIL for an inspection region is defined as a load or a system of loads which guarantees the bending moment to be positive in the inspection region. From the theoretical investigations, it was proven that the damage-induced chord-wise deflection (DI-CD) has the maximum value with the abrupt change in its slope at the damage location under a PBIL. Hence, a novel damage localization method is proposed based on the DI-CD under a PBIL. The procedure may be summarized as: (1) identification of the modal flexibility matrices from acceleration measurements, (2) design for a PBIL for an inspection region of interest in a structure, (3) calculation of the chord-wise deflections for the PBIL using the modal flexibility matrices, and (4) damage localization by finding the location with the maximum DI-CD with the abrupt change in its slope within the inspection region. Procedures from (2)-(4) can be repeated for several inspection regions to cover the whole structure complementarily. Numerical verification studies were carried out on a simply supported beam and a three-span continuous beam model. Experimental verification study was also carried out on a two-span continuous beam structure with a steel box-girder. It was found that the proposed method can identify the damage existence and damage location for small damage cases with narrow cuts at the bottom flange.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.149-158
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• 2022

As a bridge ages, its mechanical properties and structural performance deteriorate, degrading its seismic performance during a strong earthquake. In this study, the aging of piers and bridge bearings was quantified in several stages and reflected in the analysis model, enabling the evaluation of the member-level seismic fragility of these bearings. Moreover, by assuming that the failure mechanism of a bridge system is a series system, a method for evaluating the system-level seismic fragility based on the member-level seismic fragility analysis result is formulated and proposed. For piers with rubber and lead-rubber bearings (members vulnerable to aging effects), five quantitative degrees of aging (0, 5, 10, 25, and 40%) are assumed to evaluate the member-level seismic fragility. Then, based on the result, the system-level seismic fragility evaluation was implemented. The pier rather than the bridge bearing is observed to have a dominant effect on the system-level seismic fragility. This means that the seismic fragility of more vulnerable structural members has a dominant influence on the seismic fragility of the entire bridge system.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.165-183
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• 2022

Most transportation departments have recognized and developed procedures to address the ever-increasing weights of trucks traveling on bridges in a service today. Transportation agencies also recognize the issues with overheight vehicles' collisions with bridges, but few stakeholders have definitive countermeasures. Bridges are becoming more vulnerable to collisions from overheight vehicles. The exact response under lateral impact force is difficult to predict. In this paper, nonlinear impact analysis shows that the degree of deformation recorded through the modeling of the unprotected vehicle-girder model provides realistic results compared to the observation from the US-61 bridge overheight vehicle impact. The predicted displacements are 0.229 m, 0.161 m, and 0.271 m in the girder bottom flange (lateral), bottom flange (vertical), and web (lateral) deformations, respectively, due to a truck traveling at 112.65 km/h. With such large deformations, the integrity of an impacted bridge becomes jeopardized, which in most cases requires closing the bridge for safety reasons and a need for rehabilitation. We proposed different sacrificial cushion systems to dissipate the energy of an overheight vehicle impact. The goal was to design and tune a suitable energy absorbing system that can protect the bridge and possibly reduce stresses in the overheight vehicle, minimizing the consequences of an impact. A material representing a Sorbothane high impact rubber was chosen and modeled in ANSYS. Out of three sacrificial schemes, a sandwich system is the best in protecting both the bridge and the overheight vehicle. The mitigation system reduced the lateral deflection in the bottom flange by 89%. The system decreased the stresses in the bridge girder and the top portion of the vehicle by 82% and 25%, respectively. The results reveal the capability of the proposed sacrificial system as an effective mitigation system.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.153-175
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• 2009

Damage detection methods using structural dynamic responses have received much attention in the past decades. For bridge and offshore structures, these methods are usually based on beam models. To ensure the successful application of these methods, it is necessary to examine the sensitivity of modal properties to structural damages. To this end, an analytic solution is presented of the modal properties of simply-supported Euler-Bernoulli beams that contain a general damage with no additional assumptions. The damage can be a reduction in the bending stiffness or a loss of mass within a beam segment. This solution enables us to thoroughly discuss the sensitivities of different modal properties to various damages. It is observed that the lower natural frequencies and mode shapes do not change so much when a section of the beam is damaged, while the mode of rotation angle and curvature modes show abrupt change near the damaged region. Although similar observations have been reported previously, the analytical solution presented herein for clarifying the mechanism involved is considered a contribution to the literature. It is helpful for developing new damage detection methods for structures of the beam type.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.399-418
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• 2015

Automated damage detection through Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques has become an active area of research in the bridge engineering community but widespread implementation on in-service infrastructure still presents some challenges. In the meantime, visual inspection remains as the most common method for condition assessment even though collected information is highly subjective and certain types of damage can be overlooked by the inspector. In this article, a Frequency Response Functions-based model updating algorithm is evaluated using experimentally collected data from the University of Central Florida (UCF)-Benchmark Structure. A protocol for measurement selection and a regularization technique are presented in this work in order to provide the most well-conditioned model updating scenario for the target structure. The proposed technique is composed of two main stages. First, the initial finite element model (FEM) is calibrated through model updating so that it captures the dynamic signature of the UCF Benchmark Structure in its healthy condition. Second, based upon collected data from the damaged condition, the updating process is repeated on the baseline (healthy) FEM. The difference between the updated parameters from subsequent stages revealed both location and extent of damage in a "blind" scenario, without any previous information about type and location of damage.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.539-561
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• 2017

In this study, the effects of initial damage of concrete columns on the post-repair performance of reinforced concrete (RC) columns strengthened with carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite are investigated experimentally. Four kinds of compression-damaged RC cylinders were reinforced using external CFRP composite wraps, and the stress-strain behavior of the composite/concrete system was investigated. These concrete cylinders were compressed to four pre-damaged states including low -level, medium -level, high -level and total damage states. The percentages of the stress levels of pre-damage were, respectively, 40, 60, 80, and 100% of that of the control RC cylinder. These damaged concrete cylinders simulate bridge piers or building columns subjected to different magnitudes of stress, or at various stages in long-term behavior. Experimental data, as well as a stress-strain model proposed for the behavior of damaged and undamaged concrete strengthened by external CFRP composite sheets are presented. The experimental data shows that external confinement of concrete by CFRP composite wrap significantly improves both compressive strength and ductility of concrete, though the improvement is inversely proportional to the initial degree of damage to the concrete. The failure modes of the composite/damaged concrete systems were examined to evaluate the benefit of this reinforcing methodology. Results predicted by the model showed very good agreement with those of the current experimental program.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.261-268
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• 2019

This paper proposes damage indices efficient on evaluating the seismic safety of cable-stayed bridges, especially dual-plane, cable-stayed bridges with H-type pylons. The research assumes that the location of accelerometers is already defined as given in the 2017 Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) guideline. In other words, the paper does not attempt to suggest optimal sensor location for the seismic safety evaluation of cable-stayed bridges. The proposed damage indices are based on those for building structures widely applied in the field already. Those include changes in natural frequencies and changes in relative lateral displacements. In addition, the study proposes other efficient damage indices as the rotation changes at the top of pylons and in the midspan of the girder system. Sensitivity analysis for various damage indices is performed through dynamic analysis using selected earthquake ground motions. The paper compares the effectiveness of the damage indices.