• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.558-567
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• 2022

The evolution of temperature and thermal stress in a granite specimen is studied via heating experiment in the context of a high-level radioactive waste repository. A heating condition based on the decay-induced heat is applied to a cubic granite specimen to measure the temperature and stress distributions and their evolution over time. The temperature increases quickly due to heat conduction along the heated surfaces, but a significant amount of thermal energy is also lost through other surfaces due to air convection and conduction into the loading machine. A three-dimensional finite element-based model is used to numerically reproduce the experiment, and the thermo-mechanical coupling behavior and modeling conditions are validated with the comparison to the experimental results. The most crucial factors influencing the heating experiment are analyzed and summarized in this paper for future works.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2006

Glass is one of brittle materials. Generally, brittle material is weak for tensile stress but strong for compression stress. Laser breaking of glass used this brittle characteristics. Laser breaking of glass was simulated to optimize breaking condition by using commercial FEM code MARC which is applicable to thermo-mechanical coupling analysis. Various shapes of heat sources were applied to the analysis and the distance between heating and cooling source were varied for each simulation. The shapes of heat sources were circle, single and double ellipse and the distance was varied from 0mm to 30mm. Moving heat sources were designed on the basis of experimental condition. As a result, double elliptic shape of heat source was the most suitable among them in laser breaking of glass. And it should be useful to determine optimal condition of laser breaking for glass.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 1998

This paper investigates coupled thermal, mechanical and hydraulic phenomena in deep rock mass especially for underground heat storage system. Firstly, concepts of underground heat storage were presented and coupling phenomena in this area were illustrated. In order to understand the basic mechanism of thermal, hydraulic and deformation behavior in rock cavern disturbed by thermal gradient about 10$0^{\circ}C$, various numerical experiments were conducted using several codes. The study involves the behavior of fractured rock mass including rock joint. In spite of the limitation of codes modelling fully coupled effects, these codes could be applied in analysis of underground heat storage. The heat loss in rock mass, which is a major factor in heat storage, is insignificant in all results.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.203-214
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• 2005

In the Part 1 paper (Gawin, et al. 2005) some experimental results concerning micro-structural tests, permeability measurements and stress-strain tests of four types of High Performance Concrete, exposed to elevated temperatures (up to $700^{\circ}C$) are presented and discussed. On the basis of these experimental results parameters of the constitutive relationships describing influence of damage and temperature upon material intrinsic permeability at high temperature were determined. In this paper the effects of various formulations of damage-permeability coupling on results of computer simulations are analysed and compared with the results obtained by means of the previously proposed approach, that does not take into account the thermo-chemical concrete damage directly. Numerical solutions are obtained using the recently developed fully coupled model of hygro-thermal and damage phenomena in concrete at elevated temperatures. High temperature effects are considered by means of temperature and pressure dependence of several material parameters. Based on the mathematical model, the computer code HITECOSP was developed. Material parameters of the model were measured by several European laboratories, which participated in the "HITECO" research project. A model problem, concerning hygro-thermal behaviour and degradation of a HPC structure during fire, is solved. The influence of two different constitutive descriptions of the concrete permeability changes at high temperature, including thermo-chemical and mechanical damage effects, upon the results of computer simulations is analysed and discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.19 no.4 s.68
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• pp.135-140
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• 2004

Wear mechanisms may be briefly classified by mechanical, chemical and thermal wear. A plane strain finite element method is used with a new material stress and temperature fields to simulate orthogonal machining with continuous chip formation. Deformation of the workpiece material is healed as elastic-viscoplastic with isotropic strain hardening and the numerical solution accounts for coupling between plastic deformation and the temperature field, including treatment of temperature-dependent material properties. Effect of the uncertainty in the constitutive model on the distributions of strait stress and temperature around the shear zone are presented, and the model is validated by comparing average values of the predicted stress, strain, and temperature at the shear zone with experimental results.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.89-98
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• 1993

As the construction of nuclear power plants are increased, nuclear wastes disposal has been faced as a serious problem. If nuclear wastes are to be buried in the underground stratum, thermo-mechanical behavior of stratum must be analyzed, because high temperature distribution has a significant effect on tunnel and surrounding stratum. In this study, in order to analyze the structural behavior of the underground which is subject to concentrated heat sources, a coupling method of nonlinear finite elements and linear boundary elements is proposed. The nonlinear finite elements (NFE) are applied in the vicinity of nuclear depository where thermo-mechanical stress is concentrated. The boundary elements are also used in infinite domain where linear behavior is expected. Using the similar method as for the problem in mechanical field, the coupled nonlinear finite element-boundary element (NFEBE) is developed. It is found that NFEBE method is more efficient than NFE which considers nonlinearity in the whole domain for the nuclear wastes depository that is expected to exhibit local nonlinearity behavior. The effect of coefficients of the rock mass such as Poisson's ratio, elastic modulus, thermal diffusivity and thermal expansion coefficient is investigated through the developed method. As a result, it is revealed that the displacements around tunnel are largely dependent on the thermal expansion coefficients.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.363-373
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• 2018

The evaluation of Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) coupling behavior is important for the development of underground space for various purposes. For a high-level radioactive waste repository excavated in a deep underground rock mass, the accurate prediction of the complex THM behavior is essential for the long-term safety and stability assessment. In order to develop reliable THM analysis techniques effectively, an international cooperation project, Development of Coupled models and their Validation against Experiments (DECOVALEX), was carried out. In DECOVALEX-2015 Task B2, the in situ THM experiment that was conducted at Horonobe Underground Research Laboratory(URL) by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), was modeled by the research teams from the participating countries. In this study, a THM coupling technique that combined TOUGH2 and FLAC3D was developed and applied to the THM analysis for the in situ experiment, in which rock, buffer, backfill, sand, and heater were installed. With the assistance of an artificial neural network, the boundary conditions for the experiment could be adequately implemented in the modeling. The thermal, hydraulic, and mechanical results from the modeling were compared with the measurements from the in situ THM experiment. The predicted buffer temperature from the THM modelling was about $10^{\circ}C$ higher than measurement near by the overpack. At the other locations far from the overpack, modelling predicted slightly lower temperature than measurement. Even though the magnitude of pressure from the modeling was different from the measurements, the general trends of the variation with time were found to be similar.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.17 no.1 s.66
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• pp.32-42
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• 2007

Severe damage can occur around deposition holes due to complex interaction of thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) loading during the long term operation of high level radioactive waste repository. Many candidate sites for repository are located in crystalline rock mass, therefore mechanism of damage follows the form of brittle fracture and failure. This paper briefly introduces major outcomes from 15 years international collaborative project, DECOVALEX, and presents major study results for current ongoing benchmark test study from DECOVALEX-THMC, to evaluate the effect of THM loading to rock mass in excavation damaged zone (EDZ) near deposition holes. Through benchmark test model by simplifying THM loading to boundary loading obtained numerical results are compared, and discrete fracture interaction after up to 1 million years operation is discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.69 no.4
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• pp.439-455
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• 2019

This research deals with thermo-electro-mechanical buckling analysis of the sandwich nano-beams with face-sheets made of functionally graded carbon nano-tubes reinforcement composite (FG-CNTRC) based on the nonlocal strain gradient elasticity theory (NSGET) considering various higher-order shear deformation beam theories (HSDBT). The sandwich nano-beam with FG-CNTRC face-sheets is subjected to thermal and electrical loads while is resting on Pasternak's foundation. It is assumed that the material properties of the face-sheets change continuously along the thickness direction according to different patterns for CNTs distribution. In order to include coupling of strain and electrical field in equation of motion, the nonlocal non-classical nano-beam model contains piezoelectric effect. The governing equations of motion are derived using Hamilton principle based on HSDBTs and NSGET. The differential quadrature method (DQM) is used to calculate the mechanical buckling loads of sandwich nano-beam as well as critical voltage and temperature rising. After verification with validated reference, comprehensive numerical results are presented to investigate the influence of important parameters such as various HSDBTs, length scale parameter (strain gradient parameter), the nonlocal parameter, the CNTs volume fraction, Pasternak's foundation coefficients, various boundary conditions, the CNTs efficiency parameter and geometric dimensions on the buckling behaviors of FG sandwich nano-beam. The numerical results indicate that, the amounts of the mechanical critical load calculated by PSDBT and TSDBT approximately have same values as well as ESDBT and ASDBT. Also, it is worthy noted that buckling load calculated by aforementioned theories is nearly smaller than buckling load estimated by FSDBT. Also, similar aforementioned structure is used to building the nano/micro oscillators.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.355-367
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• 2021

This paper investigates the mechanical response of simply supported one-way reinforced concrete slabs under fire through numerical analysis. The numerical model is constructed using the software ABAQUS, and verified by experimental results. Generally, mechanical response of the slab can be divided into four stages, accompanied with drastic stress redistribution. In the first stage, the bottom of the slab is under tension and the top is under compression. In the second stage, stress at bottom of the slab becomes compression due to thermal expansion, with the tension zone at the mid-span section moving up along the thickness of the slab. In the third stage, compression stress at bottom of the slab starts to decrease with the deflection of the slab increasing significantly. In the fourth stage, the bottom of the slab is under tension again, eventually leading to cracking of the slab. Parametric studies were further performed to investigate the effects of load ratio, thickness of protective layer, width-span ratio and slab thickness on the performance of the slab. Results show that increasing the thickness of the slab or reducing the load ratio can significantly postpone the time that deflection of the slab reaches span/20 under fire. It is also worth noting that slabs with the span ratio of 1:1 reached a deflection of span/20 22 min less than those of 1:3. The thickness of protective layer has little effect on performance of the slab until it reaches a deflection of span/20, but its effect becomes obvious in the late stages of fire.