• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.301-308
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• 2010

Quest for reliability of hydraulic runners is a concern for all mature electricity producers. The fatigue damage caused by dynamics loads is frequently the root cause of runner failure. This paper presents the damage tolerance approach based on fracture mechanics as the method chosen by Alstom and Hydro-Qu$\acute{e}$bec to predict effects of damage on runner lifetime and consequently to be use as a design method. This is sustained by a research on fracture mechanics properties of runner materials and by recommendations on the strategy to define a safety margin for design. The acquired knowledge permits to identify potential improvement of the runner lifetime without significant cost increase, like being more specific on some chemical composition or heat treatment.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2021

This paper aims at the temperature and slenderness ratio effects on physical and mechanical properties of Beishan granite. A series of uniaxial compression tests with various slenderness ratios and temperatures were carried out, and the acoustic emission signal was also collected. As the temperature increases, the fracture aperture of intercrystalline cracks gradually increases, and obvious transcrystalline cracks occurs when T > 600℃. The failure patterns change from tensile failure mode to ductile failure mode with the increasing temperature. The elastic modulus decreases with the temperature and increases with slenderness ratio, then tends to be a constant value when T = 1000℃. However, the peak strain has the opposite evolution as the elastic modulus under the effects of temperature and slenderness ratio. The uniaxial compression strength (UCS) changes a little for the low-temperature specimens of T < 400℃, but a significant decrease happens when T = 400℃ and 800℃ due to phase transitions of mineral. The evolution denotes that the critical brittle-ductile transition temperature increases with slenderness ratio, and the critical slenderness ratio corresponding to the characteristic mechanical behavior tends to be smaller with the increasing temperature. Additionally, the AE quantity also increases with temperature in an exponential function.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4647-4658
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• 2023

In this paper, elastic-plastic fracture mechanics analysis is performed to determine the critical crack sizes of the multipurpose canister (MPC) manufactured using austenitic stainless steel under dynamic loading conditions that simulate drop accidents. Firstly, dynamic finite element (FE) analysis is performed using Abaqus v.2018 with the KORAD (Korea Radioactive Waste Agency)-21 model under two drop accident conditions. Through the FE analysis, critical locations and through-thickness stress distributions in the MPC are identified, where the maximum plastic strain occurs during impact loadings. Then, the evaluation using the failure assessment diagram (FAD) is performed by postulating an external surface crack at the critical location to determine the critical crack depth. It is found that, for the drop cases considered in this paper, the principal failure mechanism for the circumferential surface crack is found to be the plastic collapse due to dominant high bending axial stress in the thickness. For axial cracks, the plastic collapse is also the dominant failure mechanism due to high membrane hoop stress, followed by the ductile tearing analysis. When incorporating the strain rate effect on yield strength and fracture toughness, the critical crack depth increases from 10 to 20%.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.177-190
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• 2008

Material failure behavior is generally dependent on loading rate. Especially in brittle and quasi-brittle materials, rate dependent material behavior can be significant. Empirical formulations are often used to predict the rate dependency, but such methods depend on extensive experimental works and are limited by practical constraints of physical testing. Numerical simulation can be an effective means for extracting knowledge about rate dependent behavior and for complementing the results obtained by testing. In this paper, the failure behavior of a brittle material under different loading rates is simulated by molecular dynamics analysis. A notched specimen is modeled by sub-million particles with a normalization scheme. Lennard-Jones potential is used to describe the interparticle force. Numerical simulations are performed with six different loading rates in a direct tensile test, where the loading velocity is normalized to the ratio of the pseudo-sonic speed. As a consequence, dynamic features are achieved from the numerical experiments. Remarkable failure characteristics, such as crack surface interaction/crack arrest, branching, and void nucleation, vary in case of the six loading cases. These characteristics are interpreted by the energy concept approach. This study provides insight into the change in dynamic failure mechanism under different loading rates.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.803-823
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• 2011

In this paper, the three dimensional Parallel Realistic Failure Process Analysis ($RFPA^{3D}$-Parallel) code based on micromechanical model is employed to investigate the bonding behavior in FRP sheet bonded to concrete in single shear test. In the model, the heterogeneity of brittle disordered material at a meso-scale was taken into consideration in order to realistically demonstrate the mechanical characteristics of FRP-to-concrete. Modified Mohr-coulomb strength criterion with tension cut-off, where a stressed element can damage in shear or in tension, was adopted and a stiffness degradation approach was used to simulate the initiation, propagation and growth of microcracks in the model. In addition, a Master-Slave parallel operation control technique was adopted to implement the parallel computation of a large numerical model. Parallel computational results of debonding of FRP-concrete visually reproduce the spatial and temporal debonding failure progression of microcracks in FRP sheet bonded to concrete, which agrees well with the existing testing results in laboratory. The numerical approach in this study provides a useful tool for enhancing our understanding of cracking and debonding failure process and mechanism of FRP-concrete and our ability to predict mechanical performance and reliability of these FRP sheet bonded to concrete structures.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.503-512
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• 2020

Mining activities focus on the production of mineral resources for energy generation and raw material requirements worldwide and it is a known fact that shallow reserves become scarce. For this reason, exploration of new resources proceeds consistently to meet the increasing energy and raw material demand of industrial activities. Rock mechanics has a vital role in underground mining and surface mining. Devices and instruments used in laboratory testing to determine rock mechanics related parameters might have limited sensing capability of the failure behavior. However, methodologies such as, thermal cameras, digital speckle correlation method and acoustic emission might enable to investigate the initial crack formation in detail. Regarding this, in this study, thermographic analysis was performed to analyze the failure behaviors of different types of rock specimens during uniaxial compressive strength experiments. The energy dissipation profiles of different types of rocks were characterized by the temperature difference recorded with an infrared thermal camera during experiments. The temperature increase at the failure moment was detected as 4.45℃ and 9.58℃ for andesite and gneiss-schist specimens, respectively. Higher temperature increase was observed with respect to higher UCS value. Besides, a temperature decreases of about 0.5-0.6℃ was recorded during the experiments of the marble specimens. The temperature change on the specimen is related to release of radiation energy. As a result of the porosity tests, it was observed that increase in the porosity rate from 5.65% to 20.97% can be associated to higher radiation energy released, from 12.68 kJ to 297.18 kJ.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.495-506
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• 2005

A neural network based model is developed for the structural analysis of masonry infilled steel frames, which can account for the non-linearities in the material properties and structural behaviour. Using the data available from the analytical methods, an ANN model with input parameters consisting of dimension of frame, size of infill, properties of steel and infill was developed. It was found to be acceptable in predicting the failure modes of infilled frames and corresponding failure load subject to limitations in the training data and the predicted results are tested using the available experimental results. The study shows the importance of validating the ANN models in simulating structural behaviour especially when the data are limited. The ANN model was also compared with the available experimental results and was found to perform well.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.8
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• pp.961-970
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• 2012

Often, probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) approaches have been adopted to quantify the failure probabilities of Ni-base alloy components, especially due to primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC), in a primary piping system of pressurized water reactors. In this paper, the key features of an advanced PFM code, PINEP-PWSCC (Probabilistic INtegrity Evaluation for nuclear Piping-PWSCC) for such purpose, are described. In developing the code, we adopted most recent research results and advanced models in calculation modules such as PWSCC crack initiation and growth models, a performance-based probability of detection (POD) model for Ni-base alloy welds, and so on. To verify the code, the failure probabilities for various Alloy 182 welds locations were evaluated and compared with field experience and other PFM codes. Finally, the effects of pre-existing crack, weld repair, and POD models on failure probability were evaluated to demonstrate the applicability of PINEP-PWSCC.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.257-265
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• 2011

Plant-specific analyses of 5 types of domestic reactors in Korea are performed to assure the structural integrity of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) during transients which are expected to initiate pressurized thermal shock (PTS) events. The failure probability of the RPV due to PTS is obtained by performing probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis. The through-wall cracking frequency is calculated and compared to the acceptance criterion. Considering the fluence at the end of life expected by surveillance test, the sufficient safety margin is expected for the structural integrity of all reactor pressure vessels except for the oldest one during the pressurized thermal shock events. If the flaw with aspect ratio of 1/12 is considered to eliminate the conservatism, the acceptance criteria is not exceeded for all plants until the fluence level of $8{\times}10^{19}\;n/cm^2$, generating sufficient margin beyond the design life.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.519-533
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• 2005

The numerical simulations on the influence of mesoscopic structures on the macroscopic strength and fracture characteristics are carried out based on that the concrete is assumed to be a three-phase composite composed of matrix (mortar), aggregate and bond between them by using a numerical code named MFPA. The finite element program is employed as the basic stress analysis tool when the elastic damage mechanics is used to describe the constitutive law of meso-level element and the maximum tensile strain criterion and Mohr-Coulomb criterion are utilized as damage threshold. It can be found from the numerical results that the bond between matrix and aggregate has a significant effect on the macroscopic mechanical performance of concrete.