• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.211-220
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• 2021

Tunnel collapse often occurs during deep underground tunneling (> 40 m depth) in South Korea. Natural cavities as well as water supply pipes, sewer pipes, electric power cables, artificial cavities created by subway construction are complexly distributed in the artificial ground in the shallow depths of the urban area. For deep tunnel excavation, it is necessary to understand the properties of the ground which is characterized by porous elements and various geological structures, and their influence on the stability of the ground. This study analyzed geological factors for risk assessment in deep excavation in South Korea based on domestic and overseas case study. As a result, a total of 7 categories and 38 factors were derived. Factors with high weights were fault and fault clay, differential stress, rock type, groundwater and mud inrush, uniaxial compressive strength, cross-sectional area of tunnel, overburden thickness, karst and valley terrain, fold, limestone alternation, fluctuation of groundwater table, tunnel depth, dyke, RQD, joint characteristics, anisotropy, rockburst and so forth.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.277-288
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• 2022

A novel flat steel plate-concrete-corrugated steel plate (FS-C-CS) sandwich panel was proposed for resisting impact load. The failure mode, impact force and displacement response of the FS-C-CS panel under impact loading were studied via drop-weight impact tests. The combined global flexure and local indentation deformation mode of the FS-C-CS panel was observed, and three stages of impact process were identified. Moreover, the effects of corrugated plate height and steel plate thickness on the impact responses of the FS-C-CS panels were quantitatively analysed, and the impact resistant performance of the FS-C-CS panel was found to be generally improved on increasing corrugated plate height and thickness in terms of smaller deformation as well as larger impact force and post-peak mean force. The Finite Element (FE) model of the FS-C-CS panel under impact loading was established to predict its dynamic response and further reveal its failure mode and impact energy dissipation mechanism. The numerical results indicated that the concrete core and corrugated steel plate dissipated the majority of impact energy. In addition, employing end plates and high strength bolts as shear connectors could prevent the slip between steel plates and concrete core and assure the full composite action of the FS-C-CS panel.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.283-298
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• 2022

Landslides triggered by the combination of heavy precipitation and anthropological disturbance in hilly areas cause severe damage to human lives, properties, and infrastructure constructions. A comprehensive investigation of the influencing factors and failure mechanisms of landslides are significant for disaster mitigation and prevention. This paper utilized the combination of detailed geological investigation, physical experimental testing as well as numerical modelling to determine the failure mechanism, and proposed a countermeasures of the Lantian landslide occurred on 2, July 2017. The results reveal that the Lantian landslide is a catastrophic reactivated slide which occurred in an active tectonic region in Southwest China. Because of the unique geological settings, the fully to highly weathered basalts in the study area with well-developed fractures favored the rainwater infiltration, which is the beneficial to slide reactivation. Engineering excavation and heavy precipitation are the main triggering factors to activate the slide motion. Two failure stages have been identified in the landslide. The first phase involves a shallow mass collapse originated at the upper slopes, which extends from the road to platform at rear part, which is triggered by excavation in the landslide region. Subjected to the following prolonged rainfall from 19 June to 2 July, 2017, the pore water pressure of the slope continually increased, and the groundwater table successively rise, resulting in a significant decrease of soil strength which leads to successive large-scale deep slide. Thereinto, the shallow collapse played a significant role in the formation of the deep slide. Based on the formation mechanisms of the landslide, detailed engineering mitigation measures, involving slope cutting, anchor cable frame, shotcrete and anchorage, retaining wall and intercepting ditch were suggested to reduce the future failure risk of the landslide.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.233-243
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• 2021

Rib spalling is a major issue affecting the safety of steeply inclined coal seam. And the failure coal face and support system can be affected with each other to generate a vicious cycle along with inducing large-scale collapse of surrounding rock in steeply inclined coal seam. In order to analyze failure mechanism and propose the corresponding prominent control measures of steeply inclined coal working face, mechanical model based on coal face-support-roof system and mechanical model of coal face failure was established to reveal the disaster mechanism of rib spalling and the sensitive analysis of related factors was performed. Furthermore, taking 3402 working face of Chen-man-zhuang coal mine as engineering background, numerical model by using FLAC3D was built to illustrate the propagation of displacement and stress fields in steeply inclined coal seam and verify the theory analysis as mentioned in this study. The results show that the coal face slide body in steeply inclined working face can be observed as the failure height of upper layer smaller than that of lower layer exhibiting with an irregular quadrilateral pyramid shape. Moreover, the cracks were originated from the upper layer of sliding body and gradually developed to the lower layer causing the final rib spalling. The influence factors on the stability of coal face can be ranked as overlying strata pressure (P) > mechanical parameters of coal body (e.g., cohesion (c), internal fraction angle (φ)) > support strength (F) > the support force of protecting piece (F') > the false angle of working face (Θ). Moreover, the corresponding control measures to maintain the stability of the coal face in the steeply inclined working face were proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.36-43
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• 2022

Generally, in construction sites, the pipe support installation workers often use support pins of 9~10 mm which are much smaller than the safety standard sizes for work convenience. Although the safety certification standard thickness of the support pins is 11 mm, and the supervisors are often indifferent to this. Hence, products with far lower performance than the pipe support safety certification value of 40,000 N, which is applied in the supporting post-structural review, are used. Accordingly, this acts as a factor causing collapse accidents in the process of pouring concrete at the construction site. Therefore, this study performed compression experiments on new and reused pipe supports to determine how the thickness of the support pins affects the structural compression performance of the pipe support by considering the thickness of the support pins as a critical variable among various factors affecting the pipe support performance. In the course of the study, the compression test of the pipe support (V2, V4) for the new products showed that only 14 (58.3%) of the total 24 samples satisfied the safety certification standard value of 40,000 N, which indicates that more thorough quality control is required in the manufacturing process. Additionally, comparing the thickness of the support pins and their fracture shape shows that the pipes with support length of 4.0 m or longer are much more affected by the buckling of the entire length than the thickness of the support pins. Of the several factors affecting the performance of reused pipe supports, it was found that, similar to the new products, the use of support pins, with thickness of 12 mm rather than 11 mm, can satisfy the safety certification value more appropriately. Therefore, regardless of the state of usage, it could be concluded that it is necessary to use 12 mm products, whose thickness is larger than that of the safety certification standard value of 11 mm, to improve the performance of the pipe supports.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.66-83
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• 2022

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is to assumed to be one of next generation technology which determine technological competitiveness and strategic advantage of a certain country. By using the patent data, this study aims to have a comparative analysis of the technological competitiveness of evolving artificial intelligence at different stages of development among the five largest intellectual property offices in the world (IP5). For the analysis data, all AI technology patent data from 1956 to 2019 were utilized according to the classification system presented in the "WIPO 2019 Technology Trend: Artificial Intelligence" report published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2019. The results shows that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of the number of patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence technology. However, in the domains of the United States, Europe, Japan, and Korea, the technology competitiveness of the United States is far ahead of China. Interestingly, the rate of increase of Korea's technology competitiveness is also very fast, and it has been shown that the technology strength is ahead of China in non-Chinese domains. The significance of this study can be found in the fact that the temporal and spatial change process of technological competitiveness of significant countries in the field of artificial intelligence technology artificial intelligence was viewed as a macro-framework using the technology index (TS) the differences were compared.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3260-3267
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• 2023

Zr-Nb alloy have been widely used as fuel rods in nuclear power plants. However, from the Fukushima nuclear accident, the weakness of the rod was revealed under harsh conditions, and research on the safety of these types of rods was conducted after the disaster. The method of depositing chromium onto the existing Zr-Nb alloy fuel rods is being considered as a means by which to compensate for the weakness of Zr-Nb alloy rods because chromium is strong against oxidation at high temperatures and has high strength. In order to secure these advantages, it is important to maintain the Cr thickness of the rods and properly inspect the rods before and during their use in power generation. Eddy current testing is a typical means of evaluating the thickness of thin metals and detecting surface defects. Depending on the size and shape of the inspected object, various eddy current sensors can be applied. In particular, because pancake sensors can be manufactured in very small sizes, they can be used for inspections even in narrow spaces, such as a nuclear fuel assembly. In this study, an eddy current technique was developed to confirm the feasibility of Cr coating thickness evaluations. After determining the design parameters of the pancake sensor by means of a FEM simulation, a FPCB pancake sensor was manufactured and the optimal frequency was selected by measuring minute changes in the Cr-coating thickness using the developed sensor.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.69-84
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• 2023

This paper proposes a novel frame element on Winkler-Pasternak foundation for analysis of a non-ductile reinforced concrete (RC) member resting on foundation. These structural members represent flexural-shear critical members, which are commonly found in existing buildings designed and constructed with the old seismic design standards (inadequately detailed transverse reinforcement). As a result, these structures always experience shear failure or flexure-shear failure under seismic loading. To predict the characteristics of these non-ductile structures, efficient numerical models are required. Therefore, the novel frame element on Winkler-Pasternak foundation with inclusion of the shear-flexure interaction effect is developed in this study. The proposed model is derived within the framework of a displacement-based formulation and fiber section model under Timoshenko beam theory. Uniaxial nonlinear material constitutive models are employed to represent the characteristics of non-ductile RC frame and the underlying foundation. The shear-flexure interaction effect is expressed within the shear constitutive model based on the UCSD shear-strength model as demonstrated in this paper. From several features of the presented model, the proposed model is simple but able to capture several salient characteristics of the non-ductile RC frame resting on foundation, such as failure behavior, soil-structure interaction, and shear-flexure interaction. This confirms through two numerical simulations.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.25-35
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• 2008

It has been recognized that the behaviour of unsaturated soil plays an important role in geomechanics. However, up to now, only a few experimental data are available for the technical difficulties related to both volume changes and suction measurements. In this study, the volume changes of unsaturated compacted silty soil were monitored with proximeter during various triaxial compression tests, which gave a realistic estimation in the volume changes of unsaturated soil sample. From the test results, the behaviours of wetting-induced collapses are observed during the drainage/water absorption tests. Under exhausted-drained conditions during shearing, the shear strength increases with an increasing initial suction. On the other hand, the volume changes become small with an increase in the initial suction. And, the volumetric strain during shearing is independent of the confining pressure.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.793-804
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• 2023

In this study, cyclic loading tests were conducted to assess the seismic performance of cast-in-place (CIP) concrete-filled hollow core precast concrete columns (HPCC) constructed using steel ducts and rubber tubes. The outer shells of HPCC, with a hollow ratio of 47%, were fabricated using steel ducts and rubber tubes, respectively. Two combinations of shear studs & long threaded bars or cross-deformed bars & V-ties were employed to ensure the structural integrity of the old concrete (outer shell) and new CIP concrete. Up to a drift ratio of 3.8%, the hysteresis loop, yielding stiffness, dissipated energy, and equivalent damping ratio of the HPCC specimens were largely comparable to those of the solid columns. Besides the similarities in cyclic load-displacement responses, the strain history of the longitudinal bars and the transverse confinement of the three specimens also exhibited similar patterns. The measured maximum moment exceeded the predicted moment according to ACI 318 by more than 1.03 times. However, the load reduction of the HPCC specimen after reaching peak strength was marginally greater than that of the solid specimen. The energy dissipation and equivalent damping ratios of the HPCC specimens were 20% and 25% lower than those of the solid specimen, respectively. Taking into account the overall results, the structural behavior of HPCC specimens fabricated using steel ducts and rubber tubes is deemed comparable to that of solid columns. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the two combinations for securing structural integrity functioned as expected, and that rubber air-tubes can be effectively used to create well-shaped hollow sections.