• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.555-576
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• 2015

The large number of long-span bridges constructed in China motivates the applications of structural health monitoring (SHM) technology. Many bridges have been equipped with sophisticated SHM systems in the mainland of China and in Hong Kong of China. Recently, SHM technology has been extended to field test systems. In this view, SHM can serve as a tool to develop the methods of life-cycle performance design, evaluation, maintenance and management of bridges; to develop new structural analysis methods through validation and feedback from SHM results; and to understand the behavior of bridges under natural and man-made disasters, rapidly assess the damage and loss of structures over large regions after disasters, e.g., earthquake, typhoon, flood, etc. It is hoped that combining analytical methods, numerical simulation, small-scale tests and accelerated durability tests with SHM could become the main engine driving the development of bridge engineering. This paper demonstrates the above viewpoint.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.467-479
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• 2017

The stud is one of the most frequently used shear connectors which are important to the steel-concrete composite action. The static and fatigue behavior of stud in the steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) were particularly concerned in this study through the push-out tests and analysis. It was for the purpose of investigating and explaining a tendency proposed by the current existing researches that the SFRC may ameliorate the shear connector's mechanical performance, and thus contributing to the corresponding design practice. There were 20 test specimens in the tests and 8 models in the analysis. According to the test and analysis results, the SFRC had an obvious effect of restraining the concrete damage and improving the stud static performance when the compressive strength of the host concrete was relatively low. As to the fatigue aspect, the steel fibers in concrete also tended to improve the stud fatigue life, and the favorable tensile performance of SFRC may be the main reason. But such effect was found to vary with the fatigue load range. Moreover, the static and fatigue test results were compared with several design codes. Particularly, the fatigue life estimation of Eurocode 4 appeared to be less conservative than that of AASHTO, and to have higher safety redundancy than that of JSCE hybrid structure guideline.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.24 no.6_2
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• pp.861-872
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• 2021

An efficient cost management is important for the domestic social overhead capital(SOC) based on a long lifecycle after 30 years since completion. Maintenance in South Korea have had the restrictions of consistency and suitability of decision-making by the establishment of a budget plan based on the company estimate and repair and reinforcement methods determined by the inspection and diagnosis engineers' subjective determination for each facility. To resolve this issue, the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology is currently in development of a methodology to propose an optimum maintenance method according to the damage of components by artificial intelligence. This study has deduced the primary factors by analyzing information generated during bridge maintenance and management as a prior step for the development of technologies, and conducted a preliminary analysis to select the optimum artificial intelligence technology.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.389-403
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• 2021

Skewed bridges, being irregular structures with complicated dynamic behavior, are more susceptible to earthquake damage. Reliable seismic-resistant design of skewed bridges can be achieved by accurate determination of nonlinear seismic demands. However, the effect of geometric characteristics on the response modification factor (R-factor) is not accounted for in bridge design practices. This study attempts to investigate the effects of changes in the number of spans, skew angle and bearing stiffness on R-factor values and to assess the seismic fragility of skewed bridges. Results indicated that changes in the skew angle had no significant effect on R-factor values which were in consonance with code-prescribed R values. Also, unlike the increase in the number of spans that resulted in a decrease in the R-factor, the increase in bearing stiffness led to higher R-factor values. Findings of the fragility analysis implied that although the increase in the number of spans, as well as the increase in the skew angle, led to a higher failure probability, greater values of bearing stiffness reduced the collapse probability. For practicing design engineers, it is recommended that maximum demands on substructure elements to be calculated when the excitation angle is applied along the principal axes of skewed bridges.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2021

Digging well foundation has been widely used in railway bridges due to its good economy and reliability. In other instances, bridges with digging well foundation still have damage risks during earthquakes. However, there is still a lack of knowledge of lateral behavior of digging well foundation considering the soil-foundation interaction. In this study, scaled models of bridge pier-digging well foundation system are constructed for quasi-static test to investigate their lateral behaviors. The failure mechanism and responses of the soil-foundation-pier interaction system are analyzed. The testing results indicate that the digging foundations tend to rotate as a rigid body under cyclic lateral load. Moreover, the depth-width ratio of digging well foundation has a significant influence on the failure mode of the interaction system, especially on the distribution of foundation displacement and the failure of pier. The energy dissipation capacity of the interaction system is discussed by using index of the equivalent viscous damping ratio. The damping varies with the depth-width ratio changing. The equivalent stiffness of soil-digging well foundation-pier interaction system decreases with the increase of loading displacement in a nonlinear manner. The absolute values of the interaction system stiffness are significantly influenced by the depth-width ratio of the foundation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.27-44
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• 2022

Gravelly soil is a kind of special geotechnical material, which is widely used in the subgrade engineering of railway, highway and airport. Its mechanical properties are very complex, and will greatly influence the stability of subgrade engineering. To investigate the mechanical properties and failure mechanism of gravelly soils, this paper introduced and verified a new discrete element method (DEM) of gravelly soils in large scale direct shear test, which considers the actual shape and broken characteristics of gravels. Then, the stress and strain characteristics, particle interaction, particle contact force, crack development and energy conversion in gravelly soils during the shear process were analyzed using this method. Moreover, the effects of gravel content (GC) on the mechanical properties and failure characteristics were discussed. The results reveal that as GC increases, the shear stress becomes more fluctuating, the peak shear stress increases, the volumetric strain tends to dilate, the average particle contact force increases, the cumulative number of cracks increases, and the shear failure plane becomes coarser. Higher GC will change the friction angle with a trend of "stability", "increase", and "stability". Differently, it affects the cohesion with a law of "increase", "stability" and "increase".

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.209-224
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• 2022

In this study, the numerical analysis model of π-beam explosion is established to compare and analyze the failure modes of the π-beam under the action of explosive loads, thus verifying the accuracy of the numerical model. Then, based on the numerical analysis of different protection forms of π beams under explosive loads, the peak pressure of π beam under different protection conditions, the law of structural energy consumption, the damage pattern of the π beam after protection, and the protection efficiency of different protective layers was studied. The testing results indicate that the pressure peak of π beam is relatively small under the combined protection of steel plate and aluminum foam, and the peak value of pressure decays quickly along the beam longitudinal. Besides, as the longitudinal distance increases, the pressure peak attenuates most heavily on the roof's explosion-facing surface. Meanwhile, the combined protective layer has a strong energy consumption capacity, the energy consumed accounts for 90% of the three parts of the π beam (concrete, steel, and protective layer). The damaged area of π beam is relatively small under the combined protection of steel plate and aluminum foam. We also calculate the protection efficiency of π beams under different protection conditions using the maximum spalling area of concrete. The results show that the protective efficiency of the combined protective layer is 45%, demonstrating a relatively good protective ability.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.169-176
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• 2015

The protection facilities against the collision of the vehicle should be considered in the design of the bridge by the regulations, but there is no regulation against the collision of the vehicle in the design of the column of underpass. Impact analysis for the column of underpass was performed in order to evaluate the damage of the structure by the collision of the vehicle. Impact analysis was performed according to the various parameters such as material properties of the structure and types and velocities of the vehicle. From the numerical results, the structural damage for the column of underpass by the collision of the vehicle was evaluated and considerations in the design for a column of underpass against the collision of the vehicle were examined.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.92-98
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• 2015

Recently, buildings tend to be large size, complex shape and functional. As the size of buildings is becoming massive, the need for structural health monitoring (SHM) technique is increasing. Various SHM techniques have been studied for buildings which have different dynamic characteristics and influenced by various external loads. "Abnormal behavior point" is a moment when the structure starts vibrating abnormally and this can be detected by comparing between before and after abnormal behavior point. In other words, anomalous behavior is a sign of damage on structures and estimating the abnormal behavior point can be directly related to the safety of structure. Abnormal behavior causes damage on structures and this leads to enormous economic damage as well as damage for humans. This study proposes an estimating technique to find abnormal behavior point using Hilber-Huang Transform which is a time-frequency signal analysis technique and the proposed algorithm has been examined through laboratory tests with a bridge model using a shaking table.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.215-221
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• 2008

Dynamic characteristics of a structure, i.e., natural frequency and mode shape, have been widely using as an input data in the area of structural integrity or health monitoring which combined with the damage evaluation and structural system identification techniques. It is very difficult, however, to get those information by the conventional modal analysis method from large structures, such as the offshore structure or the long-span bridge, since the source of vibration is not available. In this paper, a method to obtain the frequencies and the mode shapes of a large span truss structure using only acceleration responses is studied. The calculation procedures to obtain acceleration responses and frequency response functions are provided utilizing a numerical model of the truss, and the process to extract natural frequencies and mode shapes from the modal analysis is cleary explained. The extracted mode shapes by proposed method are compared with those from eigenvalue analysis for the estimation of accuracy. The validity of the mode shapes is also demonstrated using an existing damage detection technique for the truss structure by simulated damage cases.