• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.59-62
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• 2004

The number of tunnel has fast increased with the rapid expansion of highway network. Tunnel should be designed to provide for drivers both safety and pleasant driving conditions. In this perspective, the design for tunnel lightning is very important in order to provide its safety, pleasantness, and cost-efficiency of maintenance, all of which should be considered and analyzed for a better tunnel lighting. This paper attempts to compare the low-pressure sodium lamp, which have usually been used for tunnel lighting, with the fluorescent lamp, which we consider as an alternative for the former. In an effort to determine the number of lamps to meet the required illuminance in the tunnel, this research employs a simulation technique which would allow us to conjecture, with the aid of basic model, the life cycle cost for illumination per each tunnel. This analysis is expected to provide a basic method and related information for tunnel development and design.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.17 no.2 s.75
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• pp.227-241
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• 2005

This paper presents a practical and realistic Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) optimum design methodology for steel bridges considering the long-term effect of environmental stressors such as corrosion and heavy truck traffics on bridge reliability. The LCC functions considered in the LCC optimization consist of initial cost, expected life-cycle maintenance cost, and expected life-cycle rehabilitation costs including repair/replacement costs, loss of contents or fatality and injury losses, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. For the assessment of the life-cycle rehabilitation costs, the annual probability of failure, which depends upon the prior and updated load and resistance histories, should be accounted for. For the purpose, Nowak live load model and a modified corrosion propagation model, which takes into consideration corrosion initiation, corrosion rate, and repainting effect, are adopted in this study. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC optimum design problem of an actual steel box girder bridge with 3 continuous spans (40m+50m+40m=130m). Various sensitivity analyses are performed to investigate the effects of various design parameters and conditions on the LCC-effectiveness. From the numerical investigation, it has been observed that local corrosion environments and the volume of truck traffic significantly influence the LCC-effective optimum design of steel bridges. Thus, these conditions should be considered as crucial parameters for the optimum LCC-effective design.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1A
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• pp.75-89
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• 2006

This paper presents a practical and realistic Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) optimum design methodology of steel bridges considering time effect of bridge reliability under environmental stressors such as corrosion and heavy truck traffics. The LCC functions considered in the LCC optimization consist of initial cost, expected life-cycle maintenance cost and expected life-cycle rehabilitation costs including repair/replacement costs, loss of contents or fatality and injury losses, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. For the assessment of the life-cycle rehabilitation costs, the annual probability of failure which depends upon the prior and updated load and resistance histories should be accounted for. For the purpose, Nowak live load model and a modified corrosion propagation model considering corrosion initiation, corrosion rate, and repainting effect are adopted in this study. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC optimum design problem of an actual steel box girder bridge with 3 continuous spans (40 m+50 m+40 m=130 m), and various sensitivity analyses of types of steel, local corrosion environments, average daily traffic volume, and discount rates are performed to investigate the effects of various design parameters and conditions on the LCC-effectiveness. From the numerical investigation, it has been observed that local corrosion environments and the number of truck traffics significantly influence the LCC-effective optimum design of steel bridges, and thus realized that these conditions should be considered as crucial parameters for the optimum LCC-effective design.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.571-582
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• 2022

Optimal life-cycle management is a challenging issue for deteriorating regional bridges. Due to the complexity of regional bridge structural conditions and a large number of inspection and maintenance actions, decision-makers generally choose traditional passive management strategies. They are less efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This paper suggests a deep reinforcement learning framework employing double-deep Q-networks (DDQNs) to improve the life-cycle management of deteriorating regional bridges to tackle these problems. It could produce optimal maintenance plans considering restrictions to maximize maintenance cost-effectiveness to the greatest extent possible. DDQNs method could handle the problem of the overestimation of Q-values in the Nature DQNs. This study also identifies regional bridge deterioration characteristics and the consequence of scheduled maintenance from years of inspection data. To validate the proposed method, a case study containing hundreds of bridges is used to develop optimal life-cycle management strategies. The optimization solutions recommend fewer replacement actions and prefer preventative repair actions when bridges are damaged or are expected to be damaged. By employing the optimal life-cycle regional maintenance strategies, the conditions of bridges can be controlled to a good level. Compared to the nature DQNs, DDQNs offer an optimized scheme containing fewer low-condition bridges and a more costeffective life-cycle management plan.

• Journal of Information Technology and Architecture
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.323-334
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• 2013

There are many studies on the project planning, project management and quality management. The cost of the new project takes only 20% of system's lifetime resource and the costs of the maintenance and infrastructure take more than 80%, so the study on the maintenance is much more important than the study on the new project. There has been many studies on the economic life cycle of the system using it's maintenance cost, but no studies on it's infrastructure cost. This paper provides how we can adapt infrastructure cost, which takes more than 40% of system's life cycle cost, to the economic life cycle of the system and its effects on the system's economic life cycle.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.720-723
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• 2004

This study is intended to propose a systematic approach for determining optimum Life-Cycle Cost (LCC)-effective seismic design for continuous PSC bridges considering lifetime expected seismic risks. In the paper, a set of cost function for LCC analysis of bridges is proposed. The total LCC functions consist of initial cost and direct/indirect damage costs considering repair/replacement costs, human losses and property damage costs, road user costs, and indirect socio-economic losses. The damage costs are expressed in terms of Park-Ang median global damage indices (Park and Ang, 1985) and lifetime damage probabilities. The proposed approach is applied to model bridges of both moderate seismicity regions like Korea and high seismicity regions like Japan. Since, in case of bridges, a number of parameters may have an influence on optimal target reliability, various sensitivity analyses are performed in this study. It may be expected that the proposed approach can be effectively utilized for the development of cost-effective performance criteria for design and upgrading of various types of bridges as well as continuous PC bridges.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.6A
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• pp.977-988
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• 2006

The goal of this study is to develop a realistic methodology for determination of the Life-Cycle Cost (LCC)-effective optimal seismic retrofit and maintenance strategy of deteriorating bridges. The proposed methodology is based on the concept of minimum LCC which is expressed as the sum of present value of seismic retrofit costs, expected maintenance costs, and expected economic losses with the constraints such as design requirements and acceptable risk of death. The proposed methodology is applied to the LCC-effective optimal seismic retrofit and maintenance strategy of a steel bridge considered as a example bridge in the accompanying study, and various conditions such as corrosion environments and Average Daily Traffic Volumes (ADTVs) are considered to investigate the effects on total expected LCC. In addition, to verify the validity of the developed methodology, the results are compared with the existing methodology. From the numerical investigation, it may be positively expected that the proposed methodology can be effectively utilized as a practical tool for the decision-making of LCC-effective optimal seismic retrofit and maintenance strategy of deteriorating bridges.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.2081-2091
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• 2013

Recently, the demand on the practical application of life-cycle cost effectiveness for design and rehabilitation of civil infrastructure is rapidly growing unprecedently in civil engineering practice. Accordingly, in the 21st century, it is almost obvious that life-cycle cost together with value engineering will become a new paradigm for all engineering decision problems in practice. However, in spite of impressive progress in the researches on the LCC, the most researches have only focused on the Deterministic or Probabilistic LCC analysis approach and general bridge at design stage. Thus, the goal of this study is to develop a practical and realistic methodology for the Life-Cycle Cost LCC-effective optimum decision-making based on reliability analysis of bridges at design stage. The proposed updated methodology is based on the concept of Life Cycle Performance(LCP) which is expressed as the sum of present value of expected direct/indirect maintenance costs with expected optimal maintenance scenario. The updated LCC methodology proposed in this study is applied to the optimum design problem of an actual highway bridge with Cable Stayed Bridges. In conclusion, based on the application of the proposed methods to an actual example bridge, it is demonstrated that a updated methodology for performance-based LCC analysis proposed in this thesis, shown applicably in practice as a efficient, practical, process LCC analysis method at design stage.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.321-332
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• 2013

Costs and expenses are intertwined and incurred throughout an entire construction project, even from the pre-construction phase, and each phase has a different impact on the life cycle cost (LCC). However, the cost breakdown structure (CBS) is different in each phase of a building construction project, which makes it hard to reasonably calculate construction cost. For this reason, the boundary conditions were analyzed in this study based on the life cycle cost break structure (LCCBS). In addition, breakdown factors were analyzed based on the boundary conditions to derive a linkage method. The validity of the linkage method was verified through application to actual construction projects. Through the analysis, it was found that the problem of items being left out was reduced by more than 97.2 percent, and the work was done an average of 6 hours faster compared to the conventional method. It is expected that by applying the new LCC system, LCC will be both reduced and calculated in a more efficient manner.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11b
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• pp.176-178
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• 2004

HTS (High Temperature Superconducting) Transformer has the several useful characteristics in the viewpoints of technical and economical. Especially, an HTS transformer replaces the copper wire coils in a conventional transformer with lower loss HTS wire In addition, inexpensive, environmentally benign liquid nitrogen replaces the conventional oil as the electrical insulation (dielectric) and provides the necessary cooling for the HTS transformer Therefore, the Life-cycle cost of an HTS transformer is much more attractive than conventional because it is more energy efficient, lighter in weight, smaller in size, and environmentally compliant. HTS transformer can be the best way to replace with conventional transformer in the future. In this paper, we investigate the expected price of HTS transformer to have a merit in viewpoint of economic aspect. First, life-cycle cost of conventional transformer is calculated and based on this, the expected price of HTS transformer is evaluated, which HTS transformer is competitive against conventional transformer.