• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.51-57
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• 1985

In the design of civil engineering structures, the designers are invariably faced to the uncertainties and the randomness of the design parameters such as material properties and loads. Even when the structures are built, the actual geometries of the structures are also subject to their random variations from their nominal design values. Thus, the reliability of a structure in terms of these uncertainties and variations becomes a matter of great concern to the structural designers. This study employs the First Order Second Moment Method to evluate numerically the reliability of a simple tension member and discusses the influence on the final failure probability of that structure due to: 1) use of equivalent normal distribution in place of non-normal distribution, 2) linearization of non linear limit state equation. A discussion is also made on the necessity of fundamental studies on the distrubution characteristics of the strength of locally produced construction materials and those of the loads frequently encountered in the structural design.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.215-219
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• 2004

A vehicle structure needs to be more precisely analyzed because of complexities and varieties. Structural fatigue which is generated by fluctuations of stresses during the service life of a mechanical system is the primary concern in the structural design for safety. A fatigue life is difficult to obtain in structural components during the service life of mechanical systems since the fluctuating stress contributes to fatigue. This study introduces new procedures to measure the lethargy coefficient and to predict the fatigue life of a mechanical structure by using molecular dynamic simulation. A lethargy coefficient is the total defect-estimating coefficient, which was obtained by using the results of a simple tensile test in this study. With this lethargy coefficient, fatigue life was estimated. The proposed method will be useful in predicting the fatigue life of a structurally-modified vehicle design. The effectiveness of the proposed method using lethargy coefficient measurement to predict the fatigue life of a structure was examined by applying this method to predict the fatigue life of SS41 steel, used extensively as material of vehicle structures. Two types of specimen such as pre-cracked plate and simple plate is discussed. equation of fatigue life using the lethargy coefficient and failure time, both obtained from a simple tensile test, will be useful in engineering. This measurement and prediction technology will be extended for use in analysis of any geometric shapes of modified automotive structures.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.98-108
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• 1996

In the reliability analysis of general structures, the limit state equations are implicit and cannot be described in closed form. Thus, sampling methods such as the Crude Monte-Carlo simulation, and probabilistic FEM are often used, but these methods are not so effective in view of computational cost, because a number of structural analysis are required and the derivatives must be calculated for probabilistic FEM. Alternatively the response surface approach, which approximates the limit state surface by using several results of structural analysis in the region adjacent to MPFP, could be applied effectively. In this paper, the central composite design, Bucher-Bourgund method and the approximation method using artificial neural network are studied for the calculation of probability of failure by the response surface method. Through the example comparisons, it is found that Bucher-Bourgund method is very effective and Neural network method for the reliability analysis is comparable with other methods. Specially, the central composite design method is found to be rational and useful in terms of mathematical consistency and accuracy.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.511-519
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• 2019

The concrete gravity dam is one of the most important parts of the nation's infrastructure. Besides the benefits, the dam also has some potentially catastrophic disasters related to the life of citizens directly. During the lifetime of service, some degradations in a dam may occur as consequences of operating conditions, environmental aspects and deterioration in materials from natural causes, especially from dynamic loads. Cumulative Absolute Velocity (CAV) plays a key role to assess the operational condition of a structure under seismic hazard. In previous researches, CAV is normally used in Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) fields, but there are no particular criteria or studies that have been made on dam structure. This paper presents a method to calculate the limitation of CAV for the Bohyeonsan Dam in Korea, where the critical Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) is estimated from twelve sets of selected earthquakes based on High Confidence of Low Probability of Failure (HCLPF). HCLPF point denotes 5% damage probability with 95% confidence level in the fragility curve, and the corresponding PGA expresses the crucial acceleration of this dam. For determining the status of the dam, a 2D finite element model is simulated by ABAQUS. At first, the dam's parameters are optimized by the Minitab tool using the method of Central Composite Design (CCD) for increasing model reliability. Then the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is used for updating the model and the optimization is implemented from the selected model parameters. Finally, the recorded response of the concrete gravity dam is compared against the results obtained from solving the numerical model for identifying the physical condition of the structure.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.884-891
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• 2020

The collapse of bridges can cause massive casualties and economic losses. Therefore, it is thus essential to evaluate the structural safety of bridges. For this task, structural reliability analysis, considering various bridge-related uncertainty factors, is often used. This paper proposes a new computational platform to perform structural reliability analysis for bridges and evaluate their structural safety under various loading conditions. For this purpose, a software package of reliability analysis, Finite Element Reliability Using MATLAB (FERUM), was integrated with MIDAS/CIVIL, which is a widely-used commercial software package specialized for bridges. Furthermore, a graphical user interface (GUI) control module has been added to FERUM to overcome the limitations of software operation. In this study, the proposed platform was applied to a simple frame structure, and the analysis results of the FORM (First-Order Reliability Method) and MCS (Monte Carlo simulation), which are representative reliability analysis methods, were compared. The proposed platform was verified by confirming that the calculated failure probability difference was less than 5%. In addition, the structural safety of a pre-stressed concrete (PSC) bridge was evaluated considering the KL-510 vehicle model. The proposed new structural reliability analysis platform is expected to enable an effective reliability-based safety evaluation of bridges.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.387-393
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• 2001

Installing vibration control devices in the structure rises as a solution instead of increasing structural strength considering construction cost. Especially, viscoelastic dampers show excellent vibration control performance at low cost and are easy to install in existing structures compared with other control devices. Therefore, cost-effectiveness of structure with viscoelastic dampers needs to be evaluated. Previous cost-effectiveness evaluation method for the seismically isolated structure(Koh et al., 1999;2000)is applied on the building structure with viscoelastic dampers, which combines optimal design and cost-effectiveness evaluation for seismically isolated structures based on minimum life-cycle cost concept. Input ground motion is modeled in the form of spectral density function to take into account acceleration and site coefficients. Damping of the viscoelastic damper is considered by modal strain energy method. Stiffness of shear building and shear area of viscoelastic damper are adopted as design variables for optimization. For the estimation of failure probability, transfer function of the structure with viscoelastic damper for spectral analysis is derived from the equation of motion. Results reveal that cost-effectiveness of the structure with viscoelastic dampers is relatively high in how seismic region and stiff soil condition.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.2
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• pp.201-214
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• 2020

This study aims at evaluating composite moment frame structures (CFS) using wavelet analysis of the displacement behavior of these structures. Five seismic damage mitigation systems' models of 9-story CFS are examined namely, basic (Model 1), reinforced (Model 2), buckling restrained braced (BRB) (Model 3), lead rubber bearing (LRB) (Model 4), and composite (Model 5) moment frames. A novel integration between continuous and discrete wavelet transforms is designed to estimate the wavelet power energy and variance of measurements' behaviors. The behaviors of the designed models are evaluated under influence of four seismic loads to study the dynamic performance of CFS in the frequency domain. The results show the behaviors of models 3 and 5 are lower than other models in terms of displacement and frequency performances. Model 3 has been shown lower performances in terms of energy and variance wavelets along the monitoring time; therefore, Model 3 demonstrates superior performance and low probability of failure under seismic loads. Furthermore, the wavelet variance analysis is shown a powerful tool that can be used to assess the CFS under seismic hazards.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.193-209
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• 2020

In this paper, the efficiency of five Machine Learning (ML) methods consisting of Deep Learning (DL), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (DT), and Gradient Tree Booting (GTB) for regression and classification of the Ultimate Load Factor (ULF) of nonlinear inelastic steel frames is compared. For this purpose, a two-story, a six-story, and a twenty-story space frame are considered. An advanced nonlinear inelastic analysis is carried out for the steel frames to generate datasets for the training of the considered ML methods. In each dataset, the input variables are the geometric features of W-sections and the output variable is the ULF of the frame. The comparison between the five ML methods is made in terms of the mean-squared-error (MSE) for the regression models and the accuracy for the classification models, respectively. Moreover, the ULF distribution curve is calculated for each frame and the strength failure probability is estimated. It is found that the GTB method has the best efficiency in both regression and classification of ULF regardless of the number of training samples and the space frames considered.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.316-324
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• 2020

This paper presents comparative studies of reliability analysis and meta-modeling using the sampling method of Monte Carlo simulation for the structure design of an automatic ocean salt collector (AOSC). The thickness sizing variables of structure members are considered as random variables. Probabilistic performance functions are selected from strength performances evaluated via the finite element analysis of an AOSC. The sampling methods used in the comparative studies are simple random sampling and Sobol sequences with varied numbers of sampling. Approximation methods such as the Kriging model is applied to the meta-model generation. Reliability performances such as the probability failure and distribution are compared based on the variation of the sampling method of Monte Carlo simulation. The meta-modeling accuracy is evaluated for the Kriging model generated from the Monte Carlo simulation and Sobol sequence results. It is discovered that the Sobol sequence method is applicable to not only to the reliability analysis for the structural design of marine equipment such as the AOSC, but also to Kriging meta-modeling owing to its high numerical efficiency.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.17-30
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• 2021

This paper develops a convenient approach for deterministic and probabilistic evaluations of tunnel face stability using support vector machine classifiers. The proposed method is comprised of two major steps, i.e., construction of the training dataset and determination of instance-based classifiers. In step one, the orthogonal design is utilized to produce representative samples after the ranges and levels of the factors that influence tunnel face stability are specified. The training dataset is then labeled by two-dimensional strength reduction analyses embedded within OptumG2. For any unknown instance, the second step applies the training dataset for classification, which is achieved by an ad hoc Python program. The classification of unknown samples starts with selection of instance-based training samples using the k-nearest neighbors algorithm, followed by the construction of an instance-based SVM-KNN classifier. It eventually provides labels of the unknown instances, avoiding calculate its corresponding performance function. Probabilistic evaluations are performed by Monte Carlo simulation based on the SVM-KNN classifier. The ratio of the number of unstable samples to the total number of simulated samples is computed and is taken as the failure probability, which is validated and compared with the response surface method.