• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.247-257
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• 2021

The study area has been contaminated with explosive materials and heavy metals for several decades. For the design of the pump and treat remediation method, groundwater flow before and during groundwater pumping in a contaminated aquifer system was simulated, calibrated, and predicted using a generalized multidimensional hydrological numerical model. A three-dimensional geologic formation model representing the geology, hydrogeology, and topography of the aquifer system was established. A steady-state numerical simulation with model calibration was performed to obtain initial steady-state spatial distributions of groundwater flow and groundwater table in the aquifer system before groundwater pumping, and its results were illustrated and analyzed. A series of transient-state numerical simulations were then performed during groundwater pumping with the four different pumping rates at a potential location of the pumping well. Its results are illustrated and analyzed to provide primary reference data for the pump and treat remediation method. The results of both steady-state and transient-state numerical simulations show that the spatial distribution and properties of the geologic media and the topography have significant effects on the groundwater flow and thus depression zone.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.471-484
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• 2020

Previous earthquakes show that, structural safety evaluations should include the evaluation of nonstructural components. Failure of nonstructural components can affect the operational capacity of critical facilities, such as hospitals and fire stations, which can cause an increase in number of deaths. Additionally, failure of nonstructural components may result in economic, architectural, and historical losses of community. Accelerations and random vibrations must be under the predefined limitations in structures with high technological equipment, data centers in this case. Failure of server equipment and anchored server racks are investigated in this study. A probabilistic study is completed for a low-rise rigid sample structure. The structure is investigated in two versions, (i) conventional fixed-based structure and (ii) with a base isolation system. Seismic hazard assessment is completed for the selected site. Monte Carlo simulations are generated with selected parameters. Uncertainties in both structural parameters and mechanical properties of isolation system are included in simulations. Anchorage failure and vibration failures are investigated. Different methods to generate fragility curves are used. The site-specific annual hazard curve is used to generate risk curves for two different structures. A risk matrix is proposed for the design of data centers. Results show that base isolation systems reduce the failure probability significantly in higher floors. It was also understood that, base isolation systems are highly sensitive to earthquake characteristics rather than variability in structural and mechanical properties, in terms of accelerations. Another outcome is that code-provided anchorage failure limitations are more vulnerable than the random vibration failure limitations of server equipment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.92-100
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• 2022

Of the Korean military's 3,959 ammunition depots, 1,007 - more than 25% - violate safety requirements for distance and equipment. There is a risk of explosion in old depots that are vulnerable to various interior and exterior accidents. This paper examines 10 scenarios, with varying values for ammunition amount and safety distance. The study calculated the overpressure that can be applied to risk-exposure objects, based on the safety distance; expected damage was predicted using constructed spatial information from 3D explosion simulations. The simulations confirmed that explosion overpressure increased the most when the safety distance violation rate increased from 80% to 90%. It also confirmed that secondary damage such as fire and explosion can cause casualties and property damage when the violation rate is 60% or higher. The results show that building collapse becomes a risk with a violation rate of 70% or higher. We conclude that taking ammunition depot safety distance violation into account when planning military facilities and their land utilization could better protect life and property.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.9-15
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• 2023

Hydrogen is gaining attention as a sustainable and renewable energy source, potentially replacing fossil fuels. Its high diffusivity, wide flammable range, and low ignition energy make it prone to ignition even with minimal friction, potentially leading to fire and explosion risks. Workplaces manage ignition risks by classifying areas with explosive atmospheres. However, the effective installation of a blast wall can significantly limit the spread of hydrogen, thereby enhancing workplace safety. To optimize the wall installation of this barrier, we employed the response surface methodology (RSM), considering variables such as wall distance, height, and width. We performed 17 simulations using the Box-Behnken design, conducted using FLACS software. This process yielded two objective functions: explosion likelihood near the barrier and explosion overpressure affecting the blast wall. We successfully achieved the optimal solution using multi-objective optimization for these two functions. We validated the optimal solution through verification simulations to ensure reliability, maintaining a margin of error of 5%. We anticipated that this method would efficiently determine the most effective installation of a blast wall while enhancing workplace safety.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.9
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• pp.923-928
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• 2015

The FDS is one of the most used programs for fire analysis and needs an optimal grid selection for an accurate analysis. This study selected various grid aspect ratios (ARs) for selection of optimal grid and analyzed them with FDS v 6.1.2. A calculation time of 10 min. was used, which is enough to obtain the time average value of temperature changes. Temperature, visibility, and the time average value of mass balance are obtained from 200-600 s, which is a period of maintaining quasi-steady state. Two polyurethane fires of 1 [MW] and 2 [MW] in two enclosures of $10{\times}10{\times}3[m^3]$ and $20{\times}20{\times}3[m^3]$ were considered. Time variations of heat release rates, temperature, visibility, and mass balance were compared for ARs from 1-6. The heat release rates were accurate for all aspect ratios regardless of fire and enclosure sizes. The quasi-steady state temperature and visibility were well predicted for $AR{\leq}5$. Temperature drop and skewness of mass conservation, however, increased with increasing aspect ratio. Therefore, careful investigation of the grid size is recommended in performance-based design when $AR{\geq}3$, where temperature and visibility in early stage of a fire are important parameters. For accurate simulations of enclosure fires, grid sizes of 0.1~0.2 [m] and smaller in the vertical direction and $AR{\leq}2$ are recommended.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.363-377
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• 2018

The proper functioning of critical points on transport infrastructure is decisive for the entire network. Tunnels and bridges certainly belong to the critical points of the surface transport network, both road and rail. Risk management should be a holistic and dynamic process throughout the entire life cycle. However, the level of risk is usually determined only during the design stage mainly due to the fact that it is a time-consuming and costly process. This paper presents a simplified quantitative risk analysis method that can be used any time during the decades of a tunnel's lifetime and can estimate the changing risks on a continuous basis and thus uncover hidden safety threats. The presented method is a decision support system for tunnel managers designed to preserve or even increase tunnel safety. The CAPITA method is a deterministic scenario-oriented risk analysis approach for assessment of mortality risks in road tunnels in case of the most dangerous situation - a fire. It is implemented through an advanced risk analysis CAPITA SW. Both, the method as well as the resulting software were developed by the authors' team. Unlike existing analyzes requiring specialized microsimulation tools for traffic flow, smoke propagation and evacuation modeling, the CAPITA contains comprehensive database with the results of thousands of simulations performed in advance for various combinations of variables. This approach significantly simplifies the overall complexity and thus enhances the usability of the resulting risk analysis. Additionally, it provides the decision makers with holistic view by providing not only on the expected risk but also on the risk's sensitivity to different variables. This allows the tunnel manager or another decision maker to estimate the primary change of risk whenever traffic conditions in the tunnel change and to see the dependencies to particular input variables.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.2_3_4
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• pp.291-300
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• 2002

An efficient large eddy simulation algorithm is used to compute surface pressure distributions on an eleven story (target) building on the NIST campus. Local meteorology, neighboring buildings, topography and large vegetation (trees) all play an important part in determining the flows and therefore the pressures experienced by the target. The wind profile imposed at the upstream surface of the computational domain follows a power law with an exponent representing a suburban terrain. This profile accounts for the flow retardation due to friction from the surface of the earth, but does not include fluctuations that would naturally occur in this flow. The effect of neighboring buildings on the time dependent surface pressures experienced by the target is examined. Comparison of the pressure fluctuations on the single target building alone with those on the target building in situ show that, owing to vortices shed by the upstream buildings, fluctuations are larger when such buildings are present. Even when buildings are lateral to or behind the target, the pressure disturbances generate significantly different flows around this building. A simple grid-free mathematical model of a tree is presented in which the trunk and the branches are each represented by a collection of spherical particles strung together like beads on a string. The drag from the tree, determined as the sum of the drags of the component particles, produces an oscillatory, spreading wake of slower fluid, suggesting that the behavior of trees as wind breakers can be modeled usefully.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.59-68
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• 2013

Because of the recent increase in maritime cargo capacity, the production and price of crude oil have been rising. As oil prices have risen, many problems have occurred in the industry. To solve these problems, marine resources are being actively developed, and there has been an increase in the orders for special vessels and marine structures for the development of marine resources. However, consequently, various kinds of accidents have also occurred in these special vessels and structures. One of the major types of accidents involves fire and explosion, which cause many casualties and property damage. Therefore, various studies to estimate and prevent such accidents have been carried out. In this study, as basic research for the prevention of fire and explosion, numerical simulations on combustion were carried out by using a commercial grid generation program, Gridgen, and a CFD program, ANSYS-CFX. The influences of some parameters, such as the grid system, turbulence model, turbulent dissipation rate, and so on, on the simulation results were investigated, and optimum ones were chosen. It was found that the present results adopting these parameters agreed moderately well with other experimental and numerical ones.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.105-114
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• 2013

Lots of orders of special vessels and offshore plants for developing the resources in deepwater have been increased in recent. Because the most of accidents on those structures are caused by fire and explosion, many researchers have been investigated quantitatively to predict the cause and effect of fire and explosion based on both experiments and numerical simulations. The first step of the evaluation procedures leading to fire and explosion is to predict the dispersion of flammable or toxic material, in which the released material mixes with surrounding air and be diluted. In particular turbulent mixing, but density differences due to molecular weight or temperature as well as diffusion will contribute to the mixing. In the present paper, the numerical simulation of hydrogen dispersion inside a simple-shaped offshore structure was performed using a commercial CFD program, ANSYS-CFX. The simulated results for concentration of released hydrogen are compared to those of experiment and other simulation in Jordan et al.(2007). As a result, it is seen that the present simulation results are closer to the experiments than other simulation ones. Also it seems that the hydrogen dispersion is closely related to turbulent mixing and the selection of the turbulence model properly is significantly of importance to the reproduction of dispersion phenomena.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.29 no.9 s.240
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• pp.988-996
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• 2005

Flame structure and extinction mechanism of counterflow methane/air non-premixed flame diluted with nitrogen are studied by NASA 2.2 s drop tower experiments and two-dimensional numerical simulations with finite rate chemistry and transport properties. Extinction mechanism at low strain rate is examined through the comparison among results of microgravity experiment, 1D and 2D simulations with a finite burner diameter. A two-dimensional simulation in counterflow flame especially with a finite burner diameter is shown to be very important in explaining the importance of multidimensional effects and lateral heat loss in flame extinction, effects that cannot be understood using a one-dimensional flamelet model. Extinction mechanism at low strain rate is quite different from that at high strain rate. Low strain rate flame is extinguished initially at the outer flame edge, the flame shrinks inward, and finally is extinguished at the center. It is clarified from the overall fractional contribution by each term in energy equation to heat release rate that the contribution of radiation fraction with 1D and 2D simulations does not change so much and the overall fractional contribution is decisively attributed to radial conduction ('lateral heat loss'). The experiments by Maruta et at. can be only completely understood if multi-dimensional heat loss effects are considered. It is, as a result, verified that the turning point, which is caused only by pure radiation heat loss, has to be shifted towards much lower global strain rate in microgravity flame.