• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.325-334
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• 2023

Computer vision-based damage detection enables non-contact, efficient and low-cost bridge health monitoring, which reduces the need for labor-intensive manual inspection or that for a large number of on-site sensing instruments. By leveraging recent semantic segmentation approaches, we can detect regions of critical structural components and identify damages at pixel level on images. However, existing methods perform poorly when detecting small and thin damages (e.g., cracks); the problem is exacerbated by imbalanced samples. To this end, we incorporate domain knowledge to introduce a hierarchical semantic segmentation framework that imposes a hierarchical semantic relationship between component categories and damage types. For instance, certain types of concrete cracks are only present on bridge columns, and therefore the noncolumn region may be masked out when detecting such damages. In this way, the damage detection model focuses on extracting features from relevant structural components and avoid those from irrelevant regions. We also utilize multi-scale augmentation to preserve contextual information of each image, without losing the ability to handle small and/or thin damages. In addition, our framework employs an importance sampling, where images with rare components are sampled more often, to address sample imbalance. We evaluated our framework on a public synthetic dataset that consists of 2,000 railway bridges. Our framework achieves a 0.836 mean intersection over union (IoU) for structural component segmentation and a 0.483 mean IoU for damage segmentation. Our results have in total 5% and 18% improvements for the structural component segmentation and damage segmentation tasks, respectively, compared to the best-performing baseline model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.3030-3038
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• 2023

Nowadays, mobile robots have been used to search for uncontrolled radioactive source in indoor environments to avoid radiation exposure for technicians. However, in the indoor environments, especially in the presence of obstacles, how to make the robots with limited sensing capabilities automatically search for the radioactive source remains a major challenge. Also, the source search efficiency of robots needs to be further improved to meet practical scenarios such as limited exploration time. This paper proposes an automatic source search strategy, abbreviated as ACA: the location of source is estimated by a convolutional neural network (CNN), and the path is planned by the A-star algorithm. First, the search area is represented as an occupancy grid map. Then, the radiation dose distribution of the radioactive source in the occupancy grid map is obtained by Monte Carlo (MC) method simulation, and multiple sets of radiation data are collected through the eight neighborhood self-avoiding random walk (ENSAW) algorithm as the radiation data set. Further, the radiation data set is fed into the designed CNN architecture to train the network model in advance. When the searcher enters the search area where the radioactive source exists, the location of source is estimated by the network model and the search path is planned by the A-star algorithm, and this process is iterated continuously until the searcher reaches the location of radioactive source. The experimental results show that the average number of radiometric measurements and the average number of moving steps of the ACA algorithm are only 2.1% and 33.2% of those of the gradient search (GS) algorithm in the indoor environment without obstacles. In the indoor environment shielded by concrete walls, the GS algorithm fails to search for the source, while the ACA algorithm successfully searches for the source with fewer moving steps and sparse radiometric data.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.5-21
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• 2007

Despite a number of advantages of reinforced earth walls over conventional concrete retaining walls, there exit concerns over long-term residual deformation when they are subjected to repeated and/or cyclic loads, especially when used as part of permanent structures. In view of these concerns, in this paper time-dependant deformation characteristics of geosynthetic reinforced modular block walls under sustained anuor repeated loads were investigated using reduced-scale model tests. The results indicated that a sustained or repeated load can yield appreciable magnitude of residual deformation, and that the residual deformations are influenced not only by the loading characteristics but by the mechanical properties of geogrid. It is also found that the preloading technique can be effectively used in controlling residual deformations of reinforced soils subjected to sustained and/or repeated loads.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.385-394
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• 2023

Displacement is an important element for evaluating the stability and failure mechanism of hydraulic structures. Digital image correlation (DIC) is a useful technique to measure a three-dimensional displacement field using two cameras without any contact with test material. The objective of this study is to evaluate the behavior of stacked geotextile tubes using the DIC technique. Geotextile tubes are stacked to build a small-scale temporary dam model to exclude water from a specific area. The horizontal and vertical displacements of four stacked geotextile tubes are monitored using a dual camera system according to the upstream water level. The geotextile tubes are prepared with two different fill materials. For each dam model, the interface layers between upper and lower geotextile tubes are either unreinforced or reinforced with a cementitious binder. The displacement of stacked geotextile tubes is measured to analyze the behavior of geotextile tubes. Experimental results show that as upstream water level increases, horizontal and vertical displacements at each layer of geotextile tubes initially increase with water level, and then remain almost constant until the subsequent water level. The displacement of stacked geotextile tubes depends on the type of fill material and interfacial reinforcement with a cementitious binder. Thus, the proposed DIC technique can be effectively used to evaluate the behavior of a hydraulic structure, which consists of geotextile tubes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.9-21
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• 2023

The parameters of civil engineering structures have time-variant characteristics during their service. When extremely large external excitations, such as earthquake excitation to buildings or overweight vehicles to bridges, apply to structures, sudden or gradual damage may be caused. It is crucially necessary to detect the occurrence time and severity of the damage. The unscented Kalman filter (UKF), as one efficient estimator, is usually used to conduct the recursive identification of parameters. However, the conventional UKF algorithm has a weak tracking ability for time-variant structural parameters. To improve the identification ability of time-variant parameters, an adaptive UKF with forgetting factor (AUKF-FF) algorithm, in which the state covariance, innovation covariance and cross covariance are updated simultaneously with the help of the forgetting factor, is proposed. To verify the effectiveness of the method, this paper conducted two case studies as follows: the identification of time-variant parameters of a simply supported bridge when the vehicle passing, and the model updating of a six-story concrete frame structure with field test during the Yangbi earthquake excitation in Yunnan Province, China. The comparison results of the numerical studies show that the proposed method is superior to the conventional UKF algorithm for the time-variant parameter identification in convergence speed, accuracy and adaptability to the sampling frequency. The field test studies demonstrate that the proposed method can provide suggestions for solving practical problems.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.223-237
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• 2010

The initial heating rate is well known as one of the most influencing factors on the occurrence of spalling and the loss of strength in concrete after fire initiation. In this study, a series of fire tests were carried out at different initial heating rates to find out its effects on the deterioration of tunnel structural members. Heat transfer analyses combined with an element elimination model were also carried out to verify its applicability in the same conditions as the fire tests. Moreover, the convection heat transfer coefficients compatible with fire test results were derived from parametric studies. In this course, their time-dependent variations were also analyzed at different initial heating rates. Finally, a numerical formula to estimate the heat transfer coefficients at the various initial heating rates was proposed by the interpolation of the results of numerical analyses.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.157-166
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• 2020

Automated rebar fabrication, which requires effective information exchange between model designers and fabricators, has brought the integration and interoperability of data from different sources to the notice of both academics and industry practitioners. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) was one of the most commonly used data formats to represent the semantic information of prefabricated components in buildings, whereas the data format utilized by rebar fabrication machine is BundesVereinigung der Bausoftware (BVBS), which is a numerical data structure exchanging reinforcement information through ASCII encoded files. Seamless transformation between IFC and BVBS empowers the automated rebar fabrication and improve the construction productivity. In order to improve data interoperability between IFC and BVBS, this study presents an IFC extension based on the attributes required by automated rebar fabrication machines with the help of Information Delivery Manual (IDM) and Model View Definition (MVD). IDM is applied to describe and display the information needed for the design, construction and operation of projects, whereas MVD is a subset of IFC schema used to describe the automated rebar fabrication workflow. Firstly, with a rich pool of vocabularies practitioners, OmniClass is used in information exchange between IFC and BVBS, providing a hierarchy classification structure for reinforcing elements. Then, using International Framework for Dictionaries (IFD), the usage of each attribute is defined in a more consistent manner to assist the data mapping process. Besides, in order to address missing information within automated fabrication process, a schematic data mapping diagram has been made to deliver IFC information from BIM models to BVBS format for better data interoperability among different software agents. A case study based on the data mapping will be presented to demonstrate the proposed IFC extension and how it could assist/facilitate the information management.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.319-338
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• 2023

The study presents a new hybrid data-driven method by combining radial basis functions neural networks (RBF-NN) with the Jaya algorithm (JA) to provide effective structural health monitoring of arch dams. The novelty of this approach lies in that only one user-defined parameter is required and thus can increase its effectiveness and efficiency, as compared to other machine learning techniques that often require processing a large amount of training and testing model parameters and hyper-parameters, with high time-consuming. This approach seeks rapid damage detection in arch dams under dynamic conditions, to prevent potential disasters, by utilizing the RBF-NNN to seamlessly integrate the dynamic elastic modulus (DEM) and modal parameters (such as natural frequency and mode shape) as damage indicators. To determine the dynamic characteristics of the arch dam, the JA sequentially optimizes an objective function rooted in vibration-based data sets. Two case studies of hyperbolic concrete arch dams were carefully designed using finite element simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the RBF-NN model, in conjunction with the Jaya algorithm. The testing results demonstrated that the proposed methods could exhibit significant computational time-savings, while effectively detecting damage in arch dam structures with complex nonlinearities. Furthermore, despite training data contaminated with a high level of noise, the RBF-NN and JA fusion remained the robustness, with high accuracy.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.39-46
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• 2023

In this study, the dynamic behavior of friction bearings of PSC (Pre-Stressed Concrete) box train continuous bridge was numerically analyzed at 10 km/h intervals up to 600 km/h according to the increasing speed of the next-generation high-speed train. A frame model was generated targeting the 40-meter single-span and two-span continuous PSC box bridges in the Gyeongbu High-Speed Railway section. The interaction forces including the inertial mass vehicle model with 38 degrees of freedom and the irregularities of the bridge and track were considered. It was calculated the longitudinal displacement, cumulative sliding distance and displacement speed of the bridge bearings at each running speed so that compared with the dynamic behavior trend analysis of the bridge. In addition, long-term friction test standards were applied to evaluate the durability of friction plates.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.425-443
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• 2024

Floods are among the most common natural hazards in urban areas. To mitigate the problems caused by flooding, unstructured data such as images and videos collected from closed circuit televisions (CCTVs) or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been examined for flood management (FM). Many computer vision (CV) techniques have been widely adopted to analyze imagery data. Although some papers have reviewed recent CV approaches that utilize UAV images or remote sensing data, less effort has been devoted to studies that have focused on CCTV data. In addition, few studies have distinguished between the main research objectives of CV techniques (e.g., flood depth and flooded area) for a comprehensive understanding of the current status and trends of CV applications for each FM research topic. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature that proposes CV techniques for aspects of FM using ground camera (e.g., CCTV) data. Research topics are classified into four categories: flood depth, flood detection, flooded area, and surface water velocity. These application areas are subdivided into three types: urban, river and stream, and experimental. The adopted CV techniques are summarized for each research topic and application area. The primary goal of this review is to provide guidance for researchers who plan to design a CV model for specific purposes such as flood-depth estimation. Researchers should be able to draw on this review to construct an appropriate CV model for any FM purpose.