• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.96-105
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• 2007

This paper presents a study on the impact of variation of construction material prices on the feasibility of building projects in Vietnam. The paper makes use of Monte-Carlo simulation for financial risk analysis of net present Value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). To well illustrate the influencing, a case study is presented. The research results show that there is a strong correlation between steel prices, gold prices, and $US exchange rate. Outputs of statistics also reveal that the concurrent variation of prices of cement, steel, sand, brick, formwork and stone has strongly negative impact on NPV and IRR of building projects. The results also indicate that the proportion of steel cost to total construction cost is 17.95% which is the cause of risks for the feasibility of building project in Vietnam. The paper stresses that feasibility study of building project must integrate the impact of construction materials prices in order to mitigate risks in developing countries as Vietnam.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.312-318
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• 2022

Robot-based layout automation has been recently promoted for the purpose of improving productivity and quality. Marking robots have various functional demands to secure marking precision and environmental adaptability. In particular, in order to automate marking work of building structure, correction of the marking line through position recognition of rebars placed is required. Because the rebars must maintain a constant cover thickness from the formwork surface, if the rebars are out of planned position, the rebar or marking line need to be corrected to secure the cover thickness. Thus, the marking robot for structural work needs to have the function for determining the position correction of the rebar or the marking line. In order to judge the correction of marking line, it is required to measure the distance between the planned marking line and the rebar placed. Therefore, this study proposes an algorithm that can measure the distance between the planned line and the rebar, and correct marking line for the automatic operation of the marking robot. The results of this study will be utilized as a core function for unmanned operation of the marking robot and contribute to securing precise marking by reflecting construction errors.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.465-472
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• 2022

Manual material handling is the one of the leading causes for musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and lower back discomfort. According to a study, construction formworkers suffer greater rates of muscular injuries and related illness due to manual activities. However, there is still a paucity of information on MSD, preventive posture issues, and corresponding solutions for construction aluminum formworkers. As a result, MSD and disregard of worker health and safety continue to exist at construction sites. Although preventive measures and strategies have been studied in previous research, we believe it is imperative to shed light on this problem through this study. This study aims to 1) implement a simple and cost-effective elevated bench to reduce MSDs, and 2) determine the rapid upper limbs assessment (RULA) and Ovako working posture analyzing system (OWAS) action catagory of workers in different postures to assess their MSD conditions and obtain an optimal position and posture using the Jack human modeling software and simulation tool. The study findings reveal a considerable reduction in MSD discomfort and which posture is acceptable in post-intervention instances.Thus results provide inexpensive and simple ergonomic interventions with favorable RULA and OWAS ratings that can be applied at construction sites. This study demonstrates workstation ergonomic intervention cases that can aid in understanding the urgency of applying existing research strategies into practice.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2022.04a
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• pp.71-72
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• 2022

In the case of free-form buildings, it is difficult to reuse the form for panel production because the shape and size of the interior and exterior panels of the building are different. In general, it is a free-form concrete panel (FCP) production technology using the existing plywood formwork, and the form is produced in a different shape each time and is discarded after only one use. The production of these disposable forms requires enormous resources, including materials, labor and time. Hence, it is necessary to develop innovative forms that can be reused for sustainable FCP construction. In this study, a technology has been developed that combines 3D Plastering Technique (3DPT) to produce FCP. By applying this technology to free-form building projects, the time and cost required for FCP production can be reduced. However, specific studies on the production process for this technology have not been done yet. Therefore, the objective of this study is a basic study of free-form concrete panel production process using 3D plastering technique.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.443-452
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• 2020

Worker's awkward postures and unreasonable physical load can be corrected by monitoring construction activities, thereby increasing the safety and productivity of construction workers and projects. However, manual identification is time-consuming and contains high human variance. In this regard, an automated activity recognition system based on inertial measurement unit can help in rapidly and precisely collecting motion data. With the acceleration data, the machine learning algorithm will be used to train classifiers for automatically categorizing activities. However, input acceleration data are extracted either from designed experiments or simple construction work in previous studies. Thus, collected data series are discontinuous and activity categories are insufficient for real construction circumstances. This study aims to collect acceleration data during long-term continuous work in a construction project and validate the feasibility of activity recognition algorithm with the continuous motion data. The data collection covers two different workers performing formwork at the same site. An accelerator, as well as portable camera, is attached to the worker during the entire working session for simultaneously recording motion data and working activity. The supervised machine learning-based models are trained to classify activity in hierarchical levels, which reaches a 96.9% testing accuracy of recognizing rest and work and 85.6% testing accuracy of identifying stationary, traveling, and rebar installation actions.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2024

Present paper deals with the cost effective design of reinforced concrete building frame employing unified particle swarm optimization (UPSO). A building frame with G+8 stories have been adopted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present algorithm. Effect of seismic loads and wind load have been considered as per Indian Standard (IS) 1893 (Part-I) and IS 875 (Part-III) respectively. Analysis of the frame has been carried out in STAAD Pro software.The design loads for all the beams and columns obtained from STAAD Pro have been given as input of the optimization algorithm. Next, cost optimization of all beams and columns have been carried out in MATLAB environment using UPSO, considering the safety and serviceability criteria mentioned in IS 456. Cost of formwork, concrete and reinforcement have been considered to calculate the total cost. Reinforcement of beams and columns has been calculated with consideration for curtailment and feasibility of laying the reinforcement bars during actual construction. The numerical analysis ensures the accuracy of the developed algorithm in providing the cost optimized design of RC building frame considering safety, serviceability and constructional feasibilities. Further, Monte Carlo simulations performed on the numerical results, proved the consistency and robustness of the developed algorithm. Thus, the present algorithm is capable of giving a cost effective design of RC building frame, which can be adopted directly in construction site without making any changes.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.87-93
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• 2024

Recently, the floor construction method of buildings is rapidly being replaced by the steel deck construction method of factory products from the past cast-in-place formwork method in order to shorten construction period, reduce labor costs, and improve constructability. In this study, the bending capacity of a newly developed lattice integrated rib-type deck plate that is economical and constructible was evaluated through a simple beam test. As a result of the experiment, the lattice integrated rib-type deck installed by adding rib to the existing flat deck had excellent initial rigidity and maximum load-bearing ability, confirming the feasibility of practical use. In addition, the test specimen in which the tensile rebar is not integrated with the lattice and deck has very low initial stiffness, which is insufficient to support the load at the construction stage, and new details need to be developed to overcome this.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.97-105
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• 2006

The reinforced concrete flat plate system provides architectural flexibility, clear space, reduced building height, simple formwork, which consequently enhance constructibility. One of the serious problem in the flat plate system is brittle punching shear failure due to transfer of shear force and unbalanced moments in column-slab connection. Since the use of high strength concrete recently has become in practice for reinforced concrete structures, it is highly desired to establish the structural design method for flat plate construction using high strength concrete. In this paper, interior column-slab connection constructed with high strength concrete were tested under lateral and gravity loads to evaluate their strength and behavior. The test parameters were slab reinforcement ratio and the gravity load levels.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.43-48
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• 2020

It is considered that most of reusable pipe supports, which are used as formwork support posting at construction sites, do not meet the performance standard. Due to the use of reusable pipe supports that do not meet such performance standard the potential risk of collapse accident is increasing. Therefore, this study identifies the status of compliance with performance standard, and presents the requirements for improving quality control to prevent the collapse of pipe supports reused at the construction site. First, if the female thread of the product with no clearance and new support pin with the diameter of 12mm are replaced at the same time for use, it is considered that the performance will be improved. Second, as the quality performance during use can be improved in the case of larger thickness of inner diameter compared to the case of larger thickness of outer diameter, it is necessary to increase the inner pipe thickness greatly than the current thickness. Based on the results of this study, it is expected that the performance the reusable pipe support (V4) can be improved, if the diameter of the support pin is 12mm, the female thread has a small clearance, and the inner tube thickness is 2.3 ~ 2.7mm. In addition, it is considered that other performance improvement factors included in the study results could be used as important data for improving the performance of reusable pipe support.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.235-248
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• 2020

Progressive collapse in a structure occurs when load bearing members are failed and the adjoining structural elements cannot resist the redistributed forces and fails subsequently, that leads to complete collapse of structure. Recently, construction using precast concrete technology is adopted increasingly because it offers many advantages like faster construction, less requirement of skilled labours at site, reduced formwork and scaffolding, massive production with reduced amount of construction waste, better quality and better surface finishing as compared to conventional reinforced concrete construction. Connections are the critical elements for any precast structure, because in past, major collapse of precast structure took place because of connection failure. In this study, behavior of four different precast wet connections with U shaped reinforcement bars provided at different locations is evaluated. Reduced 1/3^rd scale precast beam column assemblies having two span beam and three columns with removed middle column are constructed and examined by performing experiments. The response of precast connections is compared with monolithic connection, under column removal scenario. The connection region of test specimens are filled by cast-in-place micro concrete with and without polypropylene fibers. Performance of specimen is evaluated on the basis of ultimate load carrying capacity, maximum deflection at the location of removed middle column, crack formation and failure propagation. Further, Finite element (FE) analysis is carried out for validation of experimental studies and understanding the performance of structural components. Monolithic and precast beam column assemblies are modeled using non-linear Finite Element (FE) analysis based software ABAQUS. Actual experimental conditions are simulated using appropriate boundary and loading conditions. Finite Element simulation results in terms of load versus deflection are compared with that of experimental study. The nonlinear FE analysis results shows good agreement with experimental results.