• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.291-308
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• 2013

A novel concept of transmissibility based on a wavelet transform for structural damage detection is presented in this paper. The main objective of the research was the development of a method for detecting slight damage at the incipient stage. As a vibration-based approach, the concept of transmissibility has attracted considerable interest because of its advantages and effectiveness in damage detection. However, like other vibration-based methods, transmissibility-based approaches suffer from insensitivity to slight local damage because of the regularity of the traditional Fourier transform. Therefore, the powerful signal processing techniques must be found to solve this problem. Wavelet transform that is able to capture subtle information in measured signals has received extensive attention in the field of damage detection in recent decades. In this paper, we first propose a novel transmissibility concept based on the wavelet transform. Outlier analysis was adopted to construct a damage detection algorithm with wavelet-based transmissibility. The feasibility of the proposed method was numerically investigated with a typical six-degrees-of-freedom spring-mass system, and comparative investigations were performed with a conventional transmissibility approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed transmissibility is more sensitive than conventional transmissibility, and the former is a promising tool for structural damage detection at the incipient stage.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.72-78
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• 2010

A CFRP (Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Plastic) strengthening method is being very widely used to increase the load-carrying capacity of host structures, especially for bridges. However, not only flexure and shear failures but debonding failure also might occur in CFRP strengthened concrete structures. The CFRP debonding failure would cause a collapse accident of the host structure. Therefore, real-time health monitoring about the CFRP bonding condition is strongly required. In this study, a feasibility of the impedance-based damage detection method using PZT sensors is investigated through a series of experimental study monitoring both concrete cracks and CFRP debonding defects.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.85-105
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• 2006

Control of structural response due to seismic excitation in a manner of coupling adjacent buildings has been actively developed, and most attention focused on those buildings of similar height. However, with the rapid development of some modern cities, multi-story buildings constructed with an auxiliary low-rise podium structure to provide extra functions to the complex become a growing construction scheme. Being inspired by the positively examined coupling control approach for buildings with similar height, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive analytical study on control effectiveness of using friction dampers to link the two buildings with significant height difference to supplement the recent experimental investigation carried out by the writers. The analytical model of a coupled building system is first developed with passive friction dampers being modeled as Coulomb friction. To highlight potential advantage of coupling the main building and podium structure with control devices that provide a lower degree of coupling, the inherent demerit of rigid-coupled configuration is then evaluated. Extensive parametric studies are finally performed. The concerned parameters influencing the design of optimal friction force and control efficiency include variety of earthquake excitation and differences in floor mass, story number as well as number of dampers installed between the two buildings. In general, the feasibility of interaction control approach applied to the complex structure for vibration reduction due to seismic excitation is supported by positive results.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.585-599
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• 2016

Steel cables serve as the key structural components in long-span bridges, and the force state of the steel cable is deemed to be one of the most important determinant factors representing the safety condition of bridge structures. The disadvantages of traditional cable force measurement methods have been envisaged and development of an effective alternative is still desired. In the last decade, the vision-based sensing technology has been rapidly developed and broadly applied in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). With the aid of vision-based multi-point structural displacement measurement method, monitoring of the tensile force of the steel cable can be realized. In this paper, a novel cable force monitoring system integrated with a multi-point pattern matching algorithm is developed. The feasibility and accuracy of the developed vision-based force monitoring system has been validated by conducting the uniaxial tensile tests of steel bars, steel wire ropes, and parallel strand cables on a universal testing machine (UTM) as well as a series of moving loading experiments on a scale arch bridge model. The comparative study of the experimental outcomes indicates that the results obtained by the vision-based system are consistent with those measured by the traditional method for cable force measurement.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.1001-1004
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• 2011

The formation of TiC and $Al_2O_3$ particles based on the self-combustion reaction of the $Al-TiO_2-C-CuO$ system in an Al alloy melt was investigated. With an adequate amount of CuO in the system, a spontaneous reaction occurred within the Al alloy melt at $850^{\circ}C$ and thereafter was self-maintained, producing an Al matrix composite reinforced with thermodynamically stable TiC and $Al_2O_3$ particles. TiC and $Al_2O_3$ particles contributed to a considerable increase in the strength and stiffness, demonstrating the feasibility of this method as a practical application for structural parts.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.475-484
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• 2022

The loss of cable tension for civil infrastructure reduces structural bearing capacity and causes harmful deformation of structures. Currently, most of the structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches for cables rely on contact transducers. This paper proposes a cable tension identification technology using percussion sound, which provides a fast determination of steel cable tension without physical contact between cables and sensors. Notably, inspired by the concept of tensioning strings for piano tuning, this proposed technology predicts cable tension value by deep learning assisted classification of "percussion" sound from tapping a steel cable. To simulate the non-linear mapping of human ears to sound and to better quantify the minor changes in the high-frequency bands of the sound spectrum generated by percussions, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) were extracted as acoustic features to train the deep learning network. A convolutional neural network (CNN) with four convolutional layers and two global pooling layers was employed to identify the cable tension in a certain designed range. Moreover, theoretical and finite element methods (FEM) were conducted to prove the feasibility of the proposed technology. Finally, the identification performance of the proposed technology was experimentally investigated. Overall, results show that the proposed percussion-based technology has great potentials for estimating cable tension for in-situ structural safety assessment.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.373-380
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• 2004

This paper presents the feasibility of an impedance-based damage detection technique using piezoelectric (PZT) transducers for civil infrastructures such as steel bridges. The impedance-based damage detection method is based on monitoring the changes in the electrical impedance. Those changes in the electrical impedance are due to the electro-mechanical coupling property of the piezoelectric material and structure. An effective integrated structural health monitoring system must include a statistical process of damage detection that is automated and real time assessment of damage in the structure. Once measured, damage sensitive features from this impedance change can be statistically quantified for various damage cases. The results of the experimental study on three kinds of structural members show that cracks or loosened bolts/nuts near the PZT sensors may be effectively detected by monitoring the shifts of the resonant frequencies. The root mean square (RMS) deviations of impedance functions between before and after damages were also considered as a damage indicator. The subsequent statistical methods using the impedance signature of the PZT sensors were investigated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.89 no.3
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• pp.239-252
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• 2024

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are classified as lateral load-resisting systems. The feasibility of openings in the steel plate is a characteristic of SPSWs. The use of openings in SPSWs can lower the load capacity, stiffness, and energy dissipation. This study proposes a novel form of SPSWs that provides convenient access through openings by combining steel plates and eccentrically braced frames (EBFs). The proposed system also avoids a substantial reduction in the strength and stiffness. Hence, various geometric forms were analyzed through two different structural approaches. Groups 1, 2, and 3 included a steel EBF with a steel plate between the column and EBF in order to improve system performance. In Group 4, the proposed system was evaluated within an SPSW with openings and an EBF on the opening edge. To evaluate the performance of the proposed systems, the nonlinear finite element method (NL-FEM) was employed under cyclic loading. The hysteresis (load-drift) curve, stress contour, stiffness, and damping were evaluated as the structural outputs. The numerical models indicated that local buckling within the middle plate-EBF connection prevented a diagonal tension field. Moreover, in group 4, the EBF and stiffeners on the opening edge enhanced the structural response by approximately 7.5% in comparison with the base SPSW system.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.109-117
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• 2017

Coastal reclamation has created large flat lands, part of which is an attractive site to construct greenhouse complexes for the horticulture industry. Wind environments over these coastal lands are entirely different from those of the inland area, and demand increased structural safety. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural safety of two single-span greenhouses, peach type and even-span type, under the wind characteristics of coastal reclaimed lands. The wind pressure coefficients acting on the walls and roofs of two greenhouses were measured by wind tunnel experiments, and those acting on the roofs were approximately two times larger than those suggested by the existing design guidelines. Consequently, structural analysis conducted by SAP2000 showed that greenhouse structures designed by the existing guidelines might lead to structural failure under coastal wind conditions because their maximum allowable wind speeds were lower than the design wind speed. Especially, the peach type greenhouse constructed in a reclaimed land could be damaged by approximately 48 % of the design wind speed and needed improvement of structural designs. This study suggested increasing the spacing of rafters with thicker pipes for the peach type greenhouse to enhance economic feasibility of the building under strong wind conditions of reclaimed lands.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.1569-1574
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• 2005

In this paper, I propose an intelligent credit rating system using a bankruptcy prediction model based on support vector machines (SVMs). SVMs are promising methods because they use a risk function consisting of the empirical error and a regularized term which is derived from the structural risk minimization principle. This study examines the feasibility of applying SVM in Predicting corporate bankruptcies by comparing it with other data mining techniques. In addition. this study presents architecture and prototype of intelligeht credit rating systems based on SVM models.