• Composites Research
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.1-6
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• 2009

This paper presents an experimental study on the piezoresistive behavior of nanocomposite strain sensors subjected to various loading modes and their capability to detect structural deformations and damages. The electrically conductive nanocomposites were fabricated in the form of a film using various types of thermoplastic polymers and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) at various loadings. In this study, the nanocomposite strain sensors were bonded to a substrate and subjected to tension, flexure, or compression. In tension and flexure, the resistivity change showed dependence on measurement direction, indicating that the sensors can be used for multi-directional strain sensing. In addition, the sensors exhibited a decreasing behavior in resistivity as the compressive load was applied, suggesting that they can be used for pressure sensing. This study demonstrates that the nanocomposite strain sensors can provide a pathway to affordable, effective, and versatile structural health monitoring.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.303-325
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• 2023

Flexible fiber- or yarn-based one-dimensional (1-D) energy storage devices are essential for developing wearable electronics and have thus attracted considerable attention in various fields including ubiquitous healthcare (U-healthcare) systems and textile platforms. 1-D supercapacitors (SCs), in particular, are recognized as one of the most promising candidates to power wearable electronics due to their unique energy storage and high adaptability for the human body. They can be woven into textiles or effectively designed into diverse architectures for practical use in day-to-day life. This review summarizes recent important development and advances in fiber-based supercapacitors, concerning the active materials, fiber configuration, and applications. Active materials intended to enhance energy storage capability including carbon nanomaterials, metal oxides, and conductive polymers, are first discussed. With their loading methods for fiber electrodes, a summary of the four main types of fiber SCs (e.g., coil, supercoil, buckle, and hybrid structures) is then provided, followed by demonstrations of some practical applications including wearability and power supplies. Finally, the current challenges and perspectives in this field are made for future works.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.71-82
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• 2022

This paper presents the effect on the inelastic behavior and structural performance of concrete and filled steel pipe through a numerical method for reliable judgment under various load conditions of the CJS composite structural system. Variable values optimized for the CJS synthetic structural system and the effects of multiple variables used for finite element analysis to present analytical modeling were compared and analyzed with experimental results. The Winfrith concrete model was used as a concrete material model that describes the confinement effect well, and the concrete structure was modeled with solid elements. Through geometric analysis of shell and solid elements, rectangular steel pipe columns and steel elements were modeled as shell elements. In addition, the slip behavior of the joint between the concrete column and the rectangular steel pipe was described using the Surface-to-Surface function. After finite element analysis modeling, simulation was performed for cyclic loading after assuming that the lower part of the foundation was a pin in the same way as in the experiment. The analysis model was verified by comparing the calculated analysis results with the experimental results, focusing on initial stiffness, maximum strength, and energy dissipation capability.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.939-950
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• 2023

This study was conducted to assess the impact of growing condition variables on alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) productivity. A total of 197 alfalfa yield results were acquired from the alfalfa field trials conducted by the South Korean National Agricultural Cooperative Federation or Rural Development Administration between 1983 and 2008. The corresponding climate and soil data were collected from the database of the Korean Meteorological Administration. Twenty-three growing condition variables were developed as explaining variables for alfalfa forage biomass production. Among them, twelve variables were chosen based on the significance of the partial-correlation coefficients or potential agricultural values. The selected partial correlation coefficients between the variables and alfalfa forage biomass ranged from -0.021 to 0.696. The influence of the selected twelve variables on yearly alfalfa production was summarized into three dominant factors through factor analysis. Along with the accumulated temperature variables, the loading scores of the daily mean temperature higher than 25℃ were over 0.88 in factor 1. The sunshine duration at temperature between 0℃-25℃ was 0.939 in factor 2. Precipitation days were 0.82, which was the greatest in factor 3. Stepwise regression applied with the three dominant factors resulted in the coefficients of factors 1, 2, and 3 for 0.633, 0.485, and 0.115, respectively, and the R-square of the model was 0.602. The environmental conditions limiting alfalfa growth, such as daily temperature higher than 25℃ or daily mean temperature affected annual alfalfa production most substantially among the growing condition variables. Therefore, future cultivar selection should consider the capability of alfalfa to be tolerant to extreme summer weather along with biomass production potential.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.47-58
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• 2020

The ICEC (Index of Construction Engineer's Competency) quantifies the competence of construction engineers using such parameters as experience, education, and qualifications and assigns four technical grades (expert, advanced, intermediate, and beginners) to construction engineers according to their scores for the efficient management and loading of technical personnel. However, as of 2020, the seventh year since its implementation, ICEC has shown many problems in its application, unlike its intended purpose. So institutional supplementation is required to provide improvement measures that can cope with the changing labor market environment and complement the current ICEC. Therefore, this study examined the current status of the career management system after the introduction of the ICEC, suggested a career index proportional to the competence of construction engineers from the beginner to the expert level, and developed an effective capability evaluation model I²CEC. The improved model presented in this study provides a means to comprehensively judge the performance, experience, and the professional work abilities of construction management engineers. Furthermore, the results of this study are expected to contribute to the development of efficient manpower and career management systems for enhancing the competitiveness of the domestic construction industry.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.16 no.5 s.96
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• pp.482-487
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• 2005

In this paper, we propose the control method of output impedance of each cascode unit cell of distributed amplifier by connecting varactors in the gate-terminal of common gate. Compared to common source unit cell, cascode unit cell has many advantages such as high gain and high output impedance as well as negative resistance loading. But if the transistor model which is used in design is inaccurate and process parameter is changed, oscillation sometimes can occur at band edge in which the gain start to drop. Therefore, we need control circuit which can prevent oscillation, although the circuit has already fabricated, and varactor connected to gate-terminal of common gate of cascode gain cell can play that part. Measured result of fabricated distributed amplifier shows the capability of contol of gain characteristic by adjusting of value of varactors, this can guarantee the stability of the circuit. The gain is $8.92\pm0.82dB$ over 49 GHz, the group delay is $\pm9.3 psec$ over 41 GHz. All transistor which has $0.15{\mu}m$ gate length is GaAs based p-HEMT, and distributed amplifier is put together with 4 stages.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.123-127
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• 2005

Compression Hip Screw (CHS) is one of the most widely-used prostheses for the treatment of intertrochanteric fractures because of its strong fixation capability. Fractures at the neck and screw holes are frequently noted as some of its clinical drawbacks, which warrant more in-depth biomechanical analysis on its design variables. The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in the strength with respect to the changes in design such as the plate thickness and the number of screw holes. Both mechanical test and FEM analysis were used to systematically investigate the sensitivities of the above-mentioned design variables. For the first part of the mechanical test, CHS (n=20) were tested until failure. The CHS specimens were classified into four groups: Group Ⅰ was the control group with the neck thickness of 6-㎜ and 5 screw holes on the side plate, Group Ⅱ 6-㎜ thick and 8 holes, Group Ⅲ 7.5-㎜ thick and 5 holes, and Group Ⅳ 7.5-㎜ thick and 8 holes. Then, the fatigue test was done for each group by imparting 50% and 75% of the failure loads for one million cycles. For the FEM analysis, FE models were made for each group. Appropriate loading and boundary conditions were applied based on the failure test results. Stresses were assessed. Mechanical test results indicated that the failure strength increased dramatically by 80% with thicker plate. However, the strength remained unchanged or decreased slightly despite the increase in number of holes. These results indicated the higher sensitivity of plate thickness to the implant strength. No fatigue failures were observed which suggested the implant could withstand at least one million cycles of fatigue load regardless of the design changes. Our FEM results also supported the above results by showing a similar trend in stress as those of mechanical test. In summary, our biomechanical results were able to show that plate thickness could be a more important variable in design for reinforcing the strength of CHS than the number of screw holes.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.201-207
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• 2002

Objective: To observe the capability of fertilization and embryo development including blastocyst formation of the oocytes in simple media after thawing of the cryopreserved cumulus-free mouse oocytes by vitrification method. Methods: Oocytes were collected from 5 to 6 weeks old ICR female mice, and were denuded from the cumulus cells by 0.1% hyaluronidase. Recovered mature oocytes in study group were cryopreserved by vitrification method using EM grid for $5{\sim}7$ days. In brief, oocytes were exposed in dPBS containing 1.5 M EG and 5.5 M EG+1 M sucrose for 2.5 minutes and 20 seconds each, and then executed vitrification by plunging in LN2 after loading on EM grid. Thawing treated by exposure of 1, 0.5, 0.25 and 0.125 M sucrose solution for 2.5 minutes each in order and used for experiments. Spermatozoa aspirated form the epididymis of 12 weeks old ICR male mice were used for insemination after capacitation. T6 media containing 0.4% BSA were used for fertilization and development. Results: Survival and fertilization rates after thawing were 76.9% and 79.6% respectively. Fertilization rate was lower (p<0.005) than that of control group (92.9%). There was no difference in embryo developmental rates from 2-cell to morula, however, the blastocyst formation rate and mean cell numbers of blastocysts in study group (63.3%, $58.9{\pm}9.2$) were lower compared with those of control group (76.1%, $63.5{\pm}8.9$). Conclusion: Vitrification is an effective method for mouse mature oocyte cryopreservation with high survival and fertilization rate after thawing. And in simple media, fertilization rates and embryo development of frozen-thawed mouse oocytes are satisfactory.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.993-994
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• 2008

Electrochromic (EC) devices are capable of reversibly changing their optical properties upon charge injection and extraction induced by the external voltage. The characteristics of the EC device, such as low power consumption, high coloration efficiency, and memory effects under open circuit status, make them suitable for use in a variety of applications including smart windows and electronic papers. Coloration due to reduction or oxidation of redox chromophores can be used for EC devices (e-paper), but the switching time is slow (second level). Recently, with increasing demand for the low cost, lightweight flat panel display with paper-like readability (electronic paper), an EC display technology based on dye-modified $TiO_2$ nanoparticle electrode was developed. A well known organic dye molecule, viologen, was adsorbed on the surface of a mesoporous $TiO_2$ nanoparticle film to form the EC electrode. On the other hand, ZnO is a wide bandgap II-VI semiconductor which has been applied in many fields such as UV lasers, field effect transistors and transparent conductors. The bandgap of the bulk ZnO is about 3.37 eV, which is close to that of the $TiO_2$ (3.4 eV). As a traditional transparent conductor, ZnO has excellent electron transport properties, even in ZnO nanoparticle films. In the past few years, one-dimension (1D) nanostructures of ZnO have attracted extensive research interest. In particular, 1D ZnO nanowires renders much better electron transportation capability by providing a direct conduction path for electron transport and greatly reducing the number of grain boundaries. These unique advantages make ZnO nanowires a promising matrix electrode for EC dye molecule loading. ZnO nanowires grow vertically from the substrate and form a dense array (Fig. 1). The ZnO nanowires show regular hexagonal cross section and the average diameter of the ZnO nanowires is about 100 nm. The cross-section image of the ZnO nanowires array (Fig. 1) indicates that the length of the ZnO nanowires is about $6\;{\mu}m$. From one on/off cycle of the ZnO EC cell (Fig. 2). We can see that, the switching time of a ZnO nanowire electrode EC cell with an active area of $1\;{\times}\;1\;cm^2$ is 170 ms and 142 ms for coloration and bleaching, respectively. The coloration and bleaching time is faster compared to the $TiO_2$ mesoporous EC devices with both coloration and bleaching time of about 250 ms for a device with an active area of $2.5\;cm^2$. With further optimization, it is possible that the response time can reach ten(s) of millisecond, i.e. capable of displaying video. Fig. 3 shows a prototype with two different transmittance states. It can be seen that good contrast was obtained. The retention was at least a few hours for these prototypes. Being an oxide, ZnO is oxidation resistant, i.e. it is more durable for field emission cathode. ZnO nanotetropods were also applied to realize the first prototype triode field emission device, making use of scattered surface-conduction electrons for field emission (Fig. 4). The device has a high efficiency (field emitted electron to total electron ratio) of about 60%. With this high efficiency, we were able to fabricate some prototype displays (Fig. 5 showing some alphanumerical symbols). ZnO tetrapods have four legs, which guarantees that there is one leg always pointing upward, even using screen printing method to fabricate the cathode.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.211-221
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• 2003

At Aspo hard rock laboratory in Sweden, an in-situ heater experiment called "$\"{A}"{s}"{p}"{o}$ Pillar Stability Experiment (APSE)" is prepared to assess capability to predict spatting and stability in a rock mass between deposition holes for radioactive waste. To Predict reasonably fracturing process at rock pillar under a planned configuration before testing, a boundary element code FRACOD has been applied for modelling. The code has been improved to simulate explicitly fracture evolution both at rock boundaries and in intact rocks. A new inverse stress reconstruction technique using boundary element has been also developed to transfer stress field by excavation and thermal loading into the FRACOD model. This article presents the results from predictive modelling far the planned in-situ test condition. Excavation induced stresses might cause slight fracturing in the pillar walls. Typical shear fractures have been initiated and propagated near central pillar walls during 120 days of heating, but overall rock mass remained stable under the considered configuration. The effects of pre-existing joints and properties of fractures are also discussed. It is found from the results that FRACOD can properly model essential rock spatting and propagation at deep tunnels and boreholes.at deep tunnels and boreholes.