• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.593-604
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• 2021

In this study, a comparative test was conducted on a specially developed elastic waterproof paint and general water-based paint for the purpose of responding to cracks occurring on the outer wall of concrete structures and improving watertightness. Through the comparative experiment, it was confirmed that the watertightness could be improved by securing the crack shielding property, and it was also confirmed that about 10 times more crack responsiveness was secured compared to general water-based paint. In addition, it was confirmed that the adhesion performance of at least 1.3MPa and resistance to a water permeation pressure of 0.1MPa were possible, confirming that stability was secured from a waterproofing perspective.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.365-381
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• 2023

The existing vision-based techniques for inspection and condition assessment of civil infrastructure are mostly manual and consequently time-consuming, expensive, subjective, and risky. As a viable alternative, researchers in the past resorted to deep learning-based autonomous damage detection algorithms for expedited post-disaster reconnaissance of structures. Although a number of automatic damage detection algorithms have been proposed, the scarcity of labeled training data remains a major concern. To address this issue, this study proposed a semi-supervised learning (SSL) framework based on consistency regularization and cross-supervision. Image data from post-earthquake reconnaissance, that contains cracks, spalling, and exposed rebars are used to evaluate the proposed solution. Experiments are carried out under different data partition protocols, and it is shown that the proposed SSL method can make use of unlabeled images to enhance the segmentation performance when limited amount of ground truth labels are provided. This study also proposes DeepLab-AASPP and modified versions of U-Net++ based on channel-wise attention mechanism to better segment the components and damage areas from images of reinforced concrete buildings. The channel-wise attention mechanism can effectively improve the performance of the network by dynamically scaling the feature maps so that the networks can focus on more informative feature maps in the concatenation layer. The proposed DeepLab-AASPP achieves the best performance on component segmentation and damage state segmentation tasks with mIoU scores of 0.9850 and 0.7032, respectively. For crack, spalling, and rebar segmentation tasks, modified U-Net++ obtains the best performance with Igou scores (excluding the background pixels) of 0.5449, 0.9375, and 0.5018, respectively. The proposed architectures win the second place in IC-SHM2021 competition in all five tasks of Project 2.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.333-348
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• 2023

Fast infrastructure development boosts the demand for shotcrete. Despite sand and stone being the most common coarse and fine aggregates for shotcrete, excessive exploration of these materials challenges the ecological environment. This study utilized an industrial solid waste, high-titanium heavy slag, blended with steel fibers to form Wet Shotcrete of Steel Fiber-reinforced High-Titanium Heavy Slag (WSSFHTHS). It investigated its workability, shotcrete performance and mechanical properties under different water-to-cement ratios, fly ash content, superplasticizer dosage, and steel fiber content. The tunnel excavation and support were investigated by conducting finite element numerical simulation analysis and was used in 3 tunnel lining pipes in Zhonggouwan tailing pond. The major findings are as follows: (1) The water-to-cement ratio (w/c ratio) significantly impacted the compressive strength of WSSFHTHS. The highest 28-day compressive strength of 60 MPa was achieved when the w/c ratio was 0.38; (2) Adding fly ash improved the workability and shotcrete performance and strength development of WSSFHTHS. The best anti-permeability performance was achieved when the fly ash constituted 15%, with the lowest permeability coefficient of 4.596 × 10-11 cm/s; (3) The optimum superplasticizer dosage for WSSFHTHS is 0.8%. It provided the best workability and shotcrete performance. Excessive dosage resulted in water bleeding and poor aggregate encapsulation, while insufficient dosage decreased flowability and adversely affected shotcrete performance; (4) The dosage of steel fibers significantly impacted the flexural and tensile strength of WSSFHTHS. When the steel fiber dosage was 45 kg/m³, the 28-day flexural and tensile strengths were 8.95 MPa and 6.15 MPa, respectively; (5) By integrating existing shotcrete techniques, the optimal lining thickness was 80 mm for WSSFHTHS per simulation. The results revealed that after using WSSFHTHS, the displacement of the tunnel surrounding the rock significantly improved, with no cracks or hollows, similar to the simulation results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.4
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• pp.485-500
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• 2023

The non-linear static analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures using the three-dimensional (3D) finite element method is a time-consuming and challenging task. Moreover, this type of analysis encounters numerical problems such as the lack of convergence of results in the stages of growth and propagation of cracks in the structure. The time integration analysis along with the mass scaling (MS) technique is usually used to overcome these limitations. Despite the use of this method in the 3D finite element analysis of RC structures, a comprehensive study has not been conducted so far to assess the effects of the MS method on the accuracy of results. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of the MS method in the non-linear quasi-static finite element analysis of RC structures. To this aim, different types of RC structures were simulated using the finite element approach based on the implicit time integration method and the mass scaling technique. The influences of effective parameters of the MS method (i.e., the allowable values of increase in the mass of the RC structure, the relationship between the duration of the applied load and fundamental vibration period of the RC structure, and the pattern of applied loads) on the accuracy of the simulated results were investigated. The accuracy of numerical simulation results has been evaluated through comparison with existing experimental data. The results of this study show that the achievement of accurate structural responses in the implicit time integration analyses using the MS method involves the appropriate selection of the effective parameters of the MS method.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2A
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• pp.249-257
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• 2008

Various methods have been used to reinforce the cementitious material such as mortar and concrete that have weak tensile strength. Major reinforcing method is to mix matrix with fibers which have strong tensile strength. Recently, micro-fiber reinforced mortar has been studied which removes coarse aggregate and uses micro-fiber with small diameter in order to homogenize the matrix properties and maximize the performance of fiber. Performance of micro-fiber reinforced mortar showing multiple cracking behavior is hardly represented only by the flexural toughness. Therefore, This paper reports the cracking behavior as well as mechanical behavior for various mixtures which have different fiber type and mixture proportions to find the proper parameter representing the cracking characteristic. Correlations between flexural toughness and various cracking characteristics such as cracking area, width and number are explored. As a result, it is found that flexural toughness, volume of fiber and number of cracks are suitable for representing the characteristics of micro-fiber reinforced mortar.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.31-48
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• 2024

In order to get a better understanding of seismic performance of exterior beam-column joint, reciprocating loading tests with variable loading speeds or axial forces were carried out. The main findings indicate that only few cracks exist on the surface of the joint core area, while the plastic hinge region at the beam end is seriously damaged. The damage of the specimen is more serious with the increase of the upper limit of variable axial force. The deflection ductility coefficient of specimen decreases to various degrees after the upper limit of variable axial force increases. In addition, the higher the loading speed is, the lower the deflection ductility coefficient of the specimen is. The stiffness of the specimen decreases as the upper limit of variable axial force or the loading speed increase. Compared to the influence of variable axial force, the influence of the loading speed on the stiffness degradation of the specimen is more obvious. The cumulative energy dissipation and the equivalent viscous damping coefficient of specimen decrease with the increase of loading speed. The influence of variable axial force on the energy dissipation of specimen varies under different loading speeds. Based on the truss model, the biaxial stress criterion, the Rankine criterion, the Kent-Scott-Park model, the equivalent theorem of shearing stress, the softened strut-and-tie model, the controlled slip theory and the proposed equations, a calculation method for the shear capacity is proposed with satisfactory prediction results.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.327-335
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• 2009

In the seismic region, non-ductile structures often form soft story and exhibit brittle collapse. However, structure demolition and new structure construction strategies have serious problems, as construction waste, environmental pollution and popular complain. And these methods can be uneconomical. Therefore, to satisfy seismic performance, so many seismic retrofit methods have been investigated. There are some retrofit methods as infill walls, steel brace, continuous walls, buttress, wing walls, jacketing of column or beam. Among them, the infilled frames exhibit complex behavior as follows: flexible frames experiment large deflection and rotations at the joints, and infilled shear walls fail mainly in shear at relatively small displacements. Therefore, the combined action of the composite system differs significantly from that of the frame or wall alone. Purpose of research is evaluation on the seismic performance of infill walls, and improvement concept of this paper is use of SHCCs (strain-hardening cementitious composites) to absorb damage energy effectively. The experimental investigation consisted of cyclic loading tests on 1/3-scale models of infill walls. The experimental results, as expected, show that the multiple crack pattern, strength, and energy dissipation capacity are superior for SHCC infill wall due to bridging of fibers and stress redistribution in cement matrix.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.77-85
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• 2012

In a material, micro-cracks can be progressively occurred, propagated and finally lead to failure when it is subjected to cyclic or periodic loading less than its ultimate strength. This phenomenon, fatigue, is usually considered in a metal, alloy and structures under repeated loading conditions. In underground structures, a static creep behavior rather than a dynamic fatigue behavior is mostly considered. However, when compressed air is stored in a rock cavern, an inner pressure is periodically changed due to repeated in- and-out process of compressed air. Therefore mechanical properties of surrounding rock mass and an inner lining system under cyclic loading/unloading conditions should be investigated. In this study, considering an underground lined rock cavern for compressed air energy storage (CAES), the mechanical properties of a lining system, that is, concrete lining and plug under periodic loading/unloading conditions were characterized through cyclic bending tests and shear tests. From these tests, the stability of the plug was evaluated and the S-N line of the concrete lining was obtained.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is evaluating the characteristics of tensile strength of UHPC and examining tensile performance of notched specimens by direct tensile test. For test variables, 120, 150, and 180MPa of target design standard strength were aimed at. With general water curing and $90^{\circ}C$ high temperature steam as curing conditions, the properties were reviewed. Overall, it was represented that the specimens of notch-type direct tensile strength concrete was effective in inducing central cracks compared with existing direct tension specimens. Through this, it was judged that data construction with high reliability was possible. Above all, in a graph of direct tensile strength and strain, in the case of steam curing at high temperature, there was great difference of initial tensile strength compared with water curing. As passing of ages, an aspect that the difference gradually decreased was shown. Maximum tensile strength was found to increase steadily with increasing age for all target design strengths in water curing, in the case of steam curing, the tendency to increase significantly due to the initial strength development effect at 7 days of age. The initial crack strength increases with age in case of underwater curing, in the case of steam curing, it was higher than that of water curing in 7 days, while the strength of 28 days was lowered. In this part, it is considered necessary to examine the arrangement condition of the steel fiber.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.677-684
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• 2007

This study investigates the failure mechanism of RC beams strengthened with GFRP (glass fiber reinforced polymer) sheets. After analyzing failure mechanisms, the various methods to prevent the debonding failures, such as increasing bonded length of GFRP sheets, U-shape wrappings and epoxy shear keys are examined. The bonded length of GFRP sheets are calculated based on the assumed bond strengths of epoxy resin. The U-shape wrappings are either adopted at the end or center of the CFRP sheets bonded to the beam soft. The epoxy shear keys are embedded to the beam soft to provide sufficient bond strength. The end U-wrappings and the center U-wrappings are conventional, while epoxy shear keys are new details developed in this study. A total six half-scale RC beams have been constructed and tested to investigate the effectiveness of each methods to prevent debonding failure of GFRP sheets. From the experimental results, it was found that increasing bonded length or end U-wrappings do not prevent debonding failure. On the other hand, the beams with center U-wrappings and shear keys reached an ultimate state with their sufficient performance. The center U-wrappings tended to control debonding of the longitudinal GFRP sheets because the growth of the longitudinal cracks along the edges of the composites was delayed. In the case of shear keys, it was sufficient to prevent debonding and the beam was failed by GFRP sheets rupture.