• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.22 no.5
• /
• pp.587-609
• /
• 2018

There is greater significance in identifying the incipient damages in structures at the time of their initiation as timely rectification of these minor incipient cracks can save huge maintenance cost. However, the change in the global dynamic characteristics of a structure due to these subtle damages are insignificant enough to detect using the majority of the current damage diagnostic techniques. Keeping this in view, we propose a hybrid damage diagnostic technique for detection of minor incipient damages in the structures. In the proposed automated hybrid algorithm, the raw dynamic signatures obtained from the structure are decomposed to uni-modal signals and the dynamic signature are reconstructed by identifying and combining only the uni-modal signals altered by the minor incipient damage. We use these reconstructed signals for damage diagnostics using ARMAX model. Numerical simulation studies are carried out to investigate and evaluate the proposed hybrid damage diagnostic algorithm and their capability in identifying minor/incipient damage with noisy measurements. Finally, experimental studies on a beam are also presented to compliment the numerical simulations in order to demonstrate the practical application of the proposed algorithm.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.87-102
• /
• 2013

Vibration-based damage detection methods are popular for structural health monitoring. However, they can only detect fairly large damages. Usually impact pulse, ambient vibrations and sine-wave forces are applied as the excitations. In this paper, we propose the method to use the chaotic excitation to vibrate structures. The attractors built from the output responses are used for the minor damage detection. After the damage is detected, it is further quantified using the Kalman Filter. Simulations are conducted. A 5-story building is subjected to chaotic excitation. The structural responses and related attractors are analyzed. The results show that the attractor distances increase monotonously with the increase of the damage degree. Therefore, damages, including minor damages, can be effectively detected using the proposed approach. With the Kalman Filter, damage which has the stiffness decrease of about 5% or lower can be quantified. The proposed approach will be helpful for detecting and evaluating minor damages at the early stage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.50 no.3
• /
• pp.494-503
• /
• 2018

As public acceptance of nuclear energy in Korea worsens due to the Fukushima accident and the earthquakes that occurred in the Gyeongju area near the Wolsong nuclear power plant (NPP), estimating the effects of earthquakes has become more essential for the nuclear industry. Currently, most countermeasures against earthquakes are limited to large-scale disasters. Minor-scale earthquakes used to be ignored. Even though people do not feel the shaking due to minor earthquakes and minor earthquakes incur little damage to NPPs, they can change the environmental conditions, for instance, underground water level and the conductivity of the groundwater. This study conducted a questionnaire survey of residents living in the vicinity of an NPP to determine their perception and acceptance of plant safety against minor earthquakes. The results show that the residents feel earthquakes at levels that can be felt by people, but incur little damage to NPPs, as minor earthquakes (magnitude of 2.0-3.9) and set this level as a standard for countermeasures. Even if a minor earthquake has little impact on the safety of an NPP, there is still a possibility that public opinion will get worse. This study provides analysis results about problems of earthquake measures of Korean NPPs and specific things that can bring about an effect of deterioration of public acceptance. Based on these data, this article suggests that active management of minor earthquakes is necessary for the sustainability of nuclear energy.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
• /
• 2006.11a
• /
• pp.226-229
• /
• 2006

The safety of on-going ships is one of important concerns in the view of environment and human life. The ship in bad condition is likely to be subjected to accidental loads such as collision. Once she has one or several minor collision damages in the form of circle or ellipse, her ultimate strength under compression or tension load will be reduced. Here, it is important to evaluate the reduction ratio of ultimate strength due to the damage from safety point of view. The problem of strength reduction of a plate with cutout such as opening hole has been treated by many researchers. As a result, a closed-form formula on the reduction of ultimate strength of a plate considering the effect of several forms of cutout was suggested. However, the structure of ships is composed of a plate and a stiffener so-called a stiffened plate, and it is likely to be damaged at a plate and stiffeners together in collision. This paper is to investigate the effect of minor collision damage on ultimate strength of a stiffened plate by using numerical analysis. For this study, the shape of minor collision damage of a stiffened plate was made by using contact algorithm. The deformed shape was used as an initial shape for ultimate stress analysis. Then, a series of nonlinear FE analysis was conducted to investigate the reduction effects of ultimate strength of the stiffened plate. The boundary condition was applied as simply supported at all boundaries, and the tripping of stiffener among failure mode under compression loading was neglected. These results were settled in the form of reduction ratio between ultimate of original intact stiffened plate and that of damaged stiffened plate.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.617-627
• /
• 2018

After earthquakes FRP sheets are often used for the rehabilitation of damaged Reinforced Concrete (RC) beamcolumn connections. Connections with minor to moderate damage are often dealt with by applying FRP sheets after a superficial repair of the cracks using resin paste or high strength mortar but without infusion of thin resin solution under pressure into the cracking system. This technique is usually adopted in these cases due to the fast and easy-to-apply procedure. The experimental investigation reported herein aims at evaluating the effectiveness of repairing the damaged beam-column connections using FRP sheets after a meticulous but superficial repair of their cracking system using resin paste. The investigation comprises experimental results of 10 full scale beam-column joint specimens; five original joints and the corresponding retrofitted ones. The repair technique has been applied to RC joints with different joint reinforcement arrangements with minor to severe damage brought about by cyclic loading for the purposes of this work. Aiming at quantitative concluding remarks about the effectiveness of the repair technique, data concerning response loads, loading stiffness and energy absorption values have been acquired and commented upon. Furthermore, comparisons of damage index values and values of equivalent viscous damping, as obtained during the test of the original specimens, with the corresponding ones observed in the loading of the repaired ones have also been evaluated and commented. Based on these comparisons, it is deduced that the technique under investigation can be considered to be a rather satisfactory repair technique for joints with minor to moderate damage taking into account the rapid, convenient and easy-to-apply character of its application.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.107-112
• /
• 2013

Base on insurance vehicle collision and bodily injury claim reports, 23,655 cases of vehicle to vehicle accidents occurred in Korea 2010 are investigated in order to understand vehicle damage severities, repair costs and occupant injury types. The results of our statistical analysis reveal that minor damages with small dent or scratches on vehicle body panels which is assumed to imply during very low speed crashes are major portion of accident severities types. The most vulnerable body regions due to the real-world accident are neck. The 86.3% of total injured driver in minor rear damaged vehicles has reported neck pains and they are followed by whole bodies and head but with much lower occurrence rates.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.103-108
• /
• 2018

The fragility curves for CFRD dams are derived in this study for probabilistic damage estimation as a function of a ground motion intensity. The dam crest settlement, which is a widely used damage index, is used for minor, moderate, and extensive damage states. The settlement is calculated from nonlinear dynamic numerical simulations. The accuracy of the numerical model is validated through comparison with a centrifuge test. The fragility curve is represented as a log normal distribution function and presented as a function of the peak ground acceleration. The fragility curves developed in this study can be utilized for real time assessment of the damage of dams.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.475-486
• /
• 2023

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is an important task of civil engineering structure monitoring and inspection, but minor damage such as small cracks in local structure is difficult to observe. If cracks continued expansion may cause partial or even overall damage to the structure. Therefore, monitoring and detecting the structure in the early stage of crack propagation is important. The crack detection technology based on machine vision has been widely studied, but there are still some problems such as bad recognition effect for small cracks. In this paper, we proposed a deep learning method based on sweep signals to evaluate concrete surface crack with a width less than 1 mm. Two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used to analyze the one-dimensional (1D) frequency sweep signal and the two-dimensional (2D) time-frequency image, respectively, and the probability value of average damage (ADPV) is proposed to evaluate the minor damage of structural. Finally, we use the standard deviation of energy ratio change (ERVSD) and infrared thermography (IRT) to compare with ADPV to verify the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper. The experiment results show that the method proposed in this paper can effectively predict whether the concrete surface is damaged and the severity of damage.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.277-293
• /
• 2024

Shored Mechanically Stabilized Earth (SMSE) walls are types of soil retaining structures that increase soil stability under static and dynamic loads. The damage caused by an earthquake can be determined by evaluating the probabilistic seismic response of SMSE walls. This study aimed to assess the seismic performance of SMSE walls and provide fragility curves for evaluating failure levels. The generated fragility curves can help to improve the seismic performance of these walls through assessing and controlling variables like backfill surface settlement, lateral deformation of facing, and permanent relocation of the wall. A parametric study was performed based on a non-linear elastoplastic constitutive model known as the hardening soil model with small-strain stiffness, HSsmall. The analyses were conducted using PLAXIS 2D, a Finite Element Method (FEM) program, under plane-strain conditions to study the effect of the number of geogrid layers and the axial stiffness of geogrids on the performance of SMSE walls. In this study, three areas of damage (minor, moderate, and severe) were observed and, in all cases, the wall has not completely entered the stage of destruction. For the base model (Model A), at the highest ground acceleration coefficient (1 g), in the moderate damage state, the fragility probability was 76%. These values were 62%, and 54%, respectively, by increasing the number of geogrids (Model B) and increasing the geogrid stiffness (Model C). Meanwhile, the fragility values were 99%, 98%, and 97%, respectively in the case of minor damage. Notably, the probability of complete destruction was zero percent in all models.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.34-37
• /
• 2007

The safety of ships is one of the most important concerns in terms of the environment and human life. A ship in bad condition is likely to be subject to accidents, such as collision and grounding. When a ship has minor collision damages in the form of circle or ellipse, its ultimate strength will be reduced. It is important to evaluate the reduction ratio of a ship's ultimate strength that results from damages. The strength reduction of a plate with a cutout in the form of hole has been treated by many researchers. A closed-form formula for the reduction of ultimate strength of a plate, considering the effect of several forms of cutout, has been suggested. However, the structure of ships is composed of plates and stiffeners so-called stiffened plates and it is likely that plates and stiffeners will be damaged together in collisions. This paper investigates the effect of minor collision damages on the ultimate strength of a stiffened plate by using numerical analysis. For this study, the deformed shape of minor collision damages on a stiffened plate was made by using a contact algorithm and was used as the initial shape for ultimate stress analysis. Then, a series of nonlinear FE analyses was conducted to investigate the reduction effects on the ultimate strength of the stiffened plate. The boundary conditions were simply supported at all boundaries, and the tripping of stiffener was neglected. The results are presented in the form of reduction ratio between the ultimate strength of an original, intact stiffened plate and that of a damaged stiffened plate.