• Computers and Concrete
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.463-470
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• 2018

In the present study, soft computing i.e., machine learning techniques and regression models algorithms have earned much importance for the prediction of the various parameters in different fields of science and engineering. This paper depicts that how regression models can be implemented for the prediction of compressive strength of concrete. Three models are taken into consideration for this; they are Gaussian Process for Regression (GPR), Multi Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS) and Minimax Probability Machine Regression (MPMR). Contents of cement, blast furnace slag, fly ash, water, superplasticizer, coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and age in days have been taken as inputs and compressive strength as output for GPR, MARS and MPMR models. A comparatively large set of data including 1030 normalized previously published results which were obtained from experiments were utilized. Here, a comparison is made between the results obtained from all the above mentioned models and the model which provides the best fit is established. The experimental results manifest that proposed models are robust for determination of compressive strength of concrete.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.17-21
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• 2007

Multi-Agent Robotic System (MARS) is a system that independent autonomous robots in the restricted environments infer their status from pre-assigned conditions and operate their jobs through the cooperation with each other. In the MARS, a robot contains sensor part to percept the situation around themselves, communication part to exchange information, and actuator part to do given work. Especially, in order to cooperate with other robots, communicating with other robots is one of the essential elements. Because Bluetooth has many advantages such as low power consumption, small size module package, and various standard protocols, Bluetooth is rated as one of the efficient communicating technologies which can apply to small-sized robot system. In this paper, we will develop Bluetooth communicating system for autonomous robots. For the purpose, the communication system must have several features-separated module, flexible interface. We will discuss how to construct and what kind of procedure to develop the communicating system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.1347-1360
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• 2009

A multi-dimensional component for the thermal-hydraulic system analysis code, MARS, was developed for a more realistic three-dimensional analysis of nuclear systems. A three-dimensional and two-fluid model for a two-phase flow in Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates was employed. The governing equations and physical constitutive relationships were extended from those of a one-dimensional version. The numerical solution method adopted a semi-implicit and finite-difference method based on a staggered-grid mesh and a donor-cell scheme. The relevant length scale was very coarse compared to commercial computational fluid dynamics tools. Thus a simple Prandtl's mixing length turbulence model was applied to interpret the turbulent induced momentum and energy diffusivity. Non drag interfacial forces were not considered as in the general nuclear system codes. Several conceptual cases with analytic solutions were chosen and analyzed to assess the fundamental terms. RPI air-water and UPTF 7 tests were simulated and compared to the experimental data. The simulation results for the RPI air-water two-phase flow experiment showed good agreement with the measured void fraction. The simulation results for the UPTF downcomer test 7 were compared to the experiment data and the results from other multi-dimensional system codes for the ECC delivery flow.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.977-986
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• 2019

In the thermal-hydraulic system codes, such as MARS and RELAP5/MOD3, the Savannah River Laboratory (SRL) model has been adopted as a subcooled boiling model. It, however, has been shown that the SRL model cannot take into account appropriately the effects of inlet liquid velocity and hydraulic diameter on axial void fraction development. To overcome the problems, Ha et al. (2018) proposed a modified SRL model, which is applicable to low-pressure and low-Pe conditions (P < 9.83 bar and $Pe{\leq}70,000$) only. In this work, the authors extended the modified SRL model by proposing a new net vapor generation (NVG) model and a wall evaporation model so that the new subcooled boiling model can cover a wide range of thermal-hydraulic conditions with pressures ranging from 1.1 to 69 bar, heat fluxes of $97-1186kW/m^2$, Pe of 3600 to 329,000, and hydraulic diameters of 5-25.5 mm. The new model was implemented in the MARS code and has been assessed using various subcooled boiling experimental data. The results of the new model showed better agreements with measured void fraction data, especially at low-pressure conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1231-1240
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• 2019

Unlike land-based nuclear power plants, a marine or floating reactor is affected by external forces due to ocean conditions. These external forces can cause additional accelerations and affect each system and equipment of the marine reactor. Therefore, in designing a marine reactor and evaluating its performance and stability, a thermal hydraulic safety analysis code is necessary to consider the thermal hydrodynamic effects of ship motion. MARS, which is a reactor system analysis code, includes a dynamic motion model that can simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under three-dimensional motion by calculating the body force term included in the momentum equation. In this study, it was verified that the dynamic motion model can simulate fluid motion with reasonable accuracy using conceptual problems. In addition, two modifications were made to the dynamic motion model; first, a user-supplied table to simulate a realistic ship motion was implemented, and second, the flow regime map determination algorithm was improved by calculating the volume inclination information at every time step if the dynamic motion model was activated. With these modifications, MARS could simulate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena under ocean motion more realistically.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.137-150
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• 2019

In this paper, surrogate models such as multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and M5P model tree (M5P MT) methods have been investigated in order to propose a new formulation for the 28-days compressive strength of self-compacting concrete (SCC) incorporating metakaolin as a supplementary cementitious materials. A database comprising experimental data has been assembled from several published papers in the literature and the data have been used for training and testing. In particular, the data are arranged in a format of seven input parameters covering contents of cement, coarse aggregate to fine aggregate ratio, water, metakaolin, super plasticizer, largest maximum size and binder as well as one output parameter, which is the 28-days compressive strength. The efficiency of the proposed techniques has been demonstrated by means of certain statistical criteria. The findings have been compared to experimental results and their comparisons shows that the MARS and M5P MT approaches predict the compressive strength of SCC incorporating metakaolin with great precision. The performed sensitivity analysis to assign effective parameters on 28-days compressive strength indicates that cementitious binder content is the most effective variable in the mixture.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.60-72
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• 2019

The air-cooled passive decay heat removal system (APDHR) was proposed to provide the ultimate heat sink for non-LOCA accidents. The APDHR is a modified one of Passive Auxiliary Feed-water system (PAFS) installed in APR+. The PAFS has a heat exchanger in the Passive Condensate Cooling Tank (PCCT) and can remove decay heat for 8 h. After that, the heat transfer rate through the PAFS drastically decreases because the heat transfer condition changes from water to air. The APDHR with a vertical heat exchanger in PCCT will be able to remove the decay heat by air if it has sufficient natural convection in PCCT. We conducted the thermal-hydraulic simulation by the MARS code to investigate the behavior of the APR + selected as a reference plant for the simulation. The simulation contains two phases based on water depletion: the early phase and the late phase. In the early phase, the volume of water in PCCT was determined to avoid the water depletion in three days after shutdown. In the late phase, when the number of the HXs is greater than 4089 per PCCT, the MARS simulation confirmed the long-term cooling by air is possible under extended Station Blackout (SBO).

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.305-317
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• 2021

The bond between the concrete and bar is a main factor affecting the performance of the reinforced concrete (RC) members, and since the steel corrosion reduces the bond strength, studying the bond behavior of concrete and GFRP bars is quite necessary. In this research, a database including 112 concrete beam test specimens reinforced with spliced GFRP bars in the splitting failure mode has been collected and used to estimate the concrete-GFRP bar bond strength. This paper aims to accurately estimate the bond strength of spliced GFRP bars in concrete beams by applying three soft computing models including multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS), Kriging, and M5 model tree. Since the selection of regularization parameters greatly affects the fitting of MARS, Kriging, and M5 models, the regularization parameters have been so optimized as to maximize the training data convergence coefficient. Three hybrid model coupling soft computing methods and genetic algorithm is proposed to automatically perform the trial and error process for finding appropriate modeling regularization parameters. Results have shown that proposed models have significantly increased the prediction accuracy compared to previous models. The proposed MARS, Kriging, and M5 models have improved the convergence coefficient by about 65, 63 and 49%, respectively, compared to the best previous model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.1126-1135
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• 2022

The MARS code has been assessed for the prediction of onset of flow instability (OFI) in a vertical channel. For assessment, we built an experiment database that consists of experiments under various geometry and thermal-hydraulic condition. It covers pressure from 0.12 to 1.73 MPa; heat flux from 0.67 to 3.48 MW/m²; inlet sub-cooling from 39 to 166 ℃; hydraulic diameters between 2.37 and 6.45 mm of rectangular channels and pipes. It was shown that the MARS code can predict the OFI mass flux for pipes reasonably well. However, it could not predict the OFI in a rectangular channel well with a mean absolute percentage error of 8.77%. In the cases of rectangular channels, the error tends to depend on the hydraulic diameter. Because the OFI is directly related to the subcooled boiling in a flow channel, we suggest a modified subcooled boiling model for better prediction of OFI in a rectangular channel; the net vapor generation (NVG) model and the modified wall evaporation model were modified so that the effect of hydraulic diameter and heat flux can be accurately considered. The assessment of the modified model shows the prediction of OFI mass flux for rectangular channels is greatly improved.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4373-4391
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• 2022

Marine reactor systems experience platform movement, and therefore, the system thermal-hydraulic analysis code needs to reflect the motion effect on the fluid to evaluate reactor safety. A moving reactor model for MARS-KS was developed to simulate the hydrodynamic phenomena in the reactor under motion conditions; however, its applicability does not cover the MULTID component used in multidimensional flow analyses. In this study, a moving reactor model is implemented for the MULTID component to address the importance of multidimensional flow effects under dynamic motion. The concept of the volume connection is generalized to facilitate the handling of the junction of MULTID. Further, the accuracy in calculating the pressure head between volumes is enhanced to precisely evaluate the additional body force. Finally, the Coriolis force is modeled in the momentum equations in an acceleration form. The improvements are verified with conceptual problems; the modified model shows good agreement with the analytical solutions and the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation results. Moreover, a simplified gravity-driven injection is simulated, and the model is validated against a ship flooding experiment. Throughout the verifications and validations, the model showed that the modification was well implemented to determine the capability of multidimensional flow analysis under ocean conditions.