• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.409-415
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• 2021

Medical waste management is becoming increasingly important, specifically in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, as hospitals, clinics, quarantine centers, and medical research institutes are generating tons of medical waste every day. Previously, a traditional incineration process was utilized for managing medical waste, but the lack of landfill sites, and accompanying environmental concerns endanger public health. Consequently, an innovative sterilization shredding system was developed to resolve this problem. In this research, we focused on the design and numerical analysis of a shredding system for hazardous and infectious medical waste, to establish its operational performance. The shredding machine's components were modeled in a CAD application, and finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted using ABAQUS software. Static, fatigue, and dynamic loading conditions were used to analyze the structural stability of the cutting blade. The blade geometry proved to be effective based on the cutting force applied to shred medical waste. The dynamic stability of the structure was verified using modal analysis. Furthermore, an S-N curve was generated using a high cycle fatigue study, to predict the expected life of the cutting blade. Resultantly, an appropriate shredder system was devised to link with a sterilization unit, which could be beneficial in reducing the volume of medical waste and disposal time, thereof, thus eliminating environmental issues, and potential health hazards.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.315-325
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• 2017

The design dimension may not be satisfactory at the final stage due to the welding during the assembly stage, leading to cutting or adding the components in large structure constructions. The productivity is depend on accuracy of the welding quality especially at assembly stage. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to decide the component dimension during each assembly stage considering the above situations during the designing stage by exactly predicting welding deformation before the welding is done. Further, if the system that predicts whether welding deformation is equipped, it is possible to take measures to reduce deformation through FE analysis, helping in saving time for correcting work by arresting the parts which are prone to having welding deformation. For the FE analysis to predict the deformation of a large steel structure, calculation time, modeling, constraints in each assembly stage and critical welding length have to be considered. In case of fillet welding deformation, around 300 mm is sufficient as a critical welding length of the specimen as proposed by the existing researches. However, the critical length in case of butt welding is around 1000 mm, which is far longer than that suggested in the existing researches. For the external constraint, which occurs as the geometry of structure is changed according to the assembly stage, constraint factor is drawn from the elastic FE analysis and test results, and the magnitude of equivalent force according to constraint is decided. The comparison study for the elastic FE analysis result and measurement for the large steel structure based on the above results reveals that the analysis results are in the range of 80-118% against measurement values, both matching each other well. Further, the deformation of fillet welding in the main plate among the total block occupies 66-89%, making welding deformation in the main plate far larger than the welding deformation in the longitudinal and transverse girders.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.337-353
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• 2018

In previous weak-axis moment connection tests, brittle fracture always initiated near the edge of the beam flange groove weld due to force flow towards the stiffer column flanges, which is the opposite pattern as strong-axis moment connections. As part of the China NSFC (51278061) study, this paper tested two full-scale novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, including one exterior frame connection specimen SJ-1 under beam end monotonic loading and one interior frame joint specimen SJ-2 under column top cyclic loading. Test results showed that these two specimens were able to satisfy the demands of FEMA-267 (1995) or ANSI/AISC 341-10 (2010) without experiencing brittle fracture. A parametric analysis using the finite element software ABAQUS was carried out to better understand the cyclic performance of the novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, and the influence of the distance between skin plate and reduced beam section, a, the length of the reduced beam section, b, and the cutting depth of the reduced beam section, c, on the cyclic performance was analyzed. It was found that increasing three parametric values reasonably is beneficial to forming beam plastic hinges, and increasing the parameter a is conducive to reducing stress concentration of beam flange groove welds while increasing the parameters b and c can only reduce the peak stress of beam flange groove welds. The rules recommended by FEMA350 (2000) are suitable for designing the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connection, and a proven calculation formulation is given to determine the thickness of skin plate, the key components in the proposed weak-axis connections. Based on the experimental and numerical results, a design procedure for the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connections was developed.