• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.27-34
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• 2024

The direct and indirect damages caused by fires in underground utility tunnels have a great impact on society as a whole, so efforts are needed to prevent and manage them in advance. To this end, research is ongoing to prevent disasters such as fire flooding by applying digital twin technology to underground utility tunnels. A network is required to transmit the sensed signals from each sensor to the platform. In essence, it is necessary to analyze the application of wireless networks in the underground utility tunnel environments because the tunnel lacks the reception range of external wireless communication systems. Within the underground utility tunnels, electromagnetic interference caused by transmission and distribution cables, and diffuse reflection of signals from internal structures, obstacles, and metallic pipes such as water pipes can cause distortion or size reduction of wireless signals. To ensure real-time connectivity for remote surveillance and monitoring tasks through sensing, it is necessary to measure and analyze the wireless coverage in underground utility tunnels. Therefore, in order to build a wireless network environment in the underground utility tunnels. this study minimized the shaded area and measured the actual cavity environment so that there is no problem in connecting to the wireless environment inside the underground utility tunnels. We analyzed the data transmission rate, signal strength, and signal-to-noise ratio for each section of the terrain of the underground utility tunnels. The obtained results provide an appropriate wireless planning approach for installing wireless networks in underground utility tunnels.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.205-213
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• 2024

In the seismic evaluation of underground utility tunnels, selecting an analytical method is critical to estimating reasonable seismic responses. In simplified pseudo-static analysis methods widely applied to typical seismic design and evaluation of underground tunnels in practice, it is essential to check whether the methods provide valid results for cut-and-cover tunnels buried in shallow to medium depth. The differences between the two simplified pseudo-static methods are discussed in this study, and the analysis results are compared to those obtained from FLAC models. In addition to the analysis methods, seismic site classification, overburden soil depth, and sectional configuration are considered variables to examine their effects on the seismic response of underground utility tunnels. Based on the analysis results, the characteristics derived from the concepts and details of each simplified model are discussed. Also, general observations are made for the application of simplified analysis methods.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.413-419
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• 2016

Damage of infrastructures by an earthquake causes the secondary damage through the world at large more than the damage of the structures themselves. Amomg them, underground utility tunnel structures comes under the special life line: communication, gas, electricity and etc. and it has a need to evaluate its fragility to an earthquake exactly. Therefore, the destruction ability according to peak ground acceleration of earthquakes for the underground utility tunnels is evaluated in this paper. As an input ground motion for evaluating seismic fragilities, real earthquakes and artificial seismic waves which could be generated in the Korean peninsula are used. And as a seismic analysis method, response displacement method and time history analyzing method are used. An limit state which determines whether destruction is based on the bending moment and shear deformation. A method used to deduct seismic fragility curve is method of maximum likelihood and the distribution function is assumed to the log normal distribution. It could evaluate the damage of underground utility tunnels to an earthquake and could be applied as basic data for seismic design of underground utility tunnel structures.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.135-147
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• 2015

Recent underground common utility tunnels are underground facilities for jointly accommodating more than 2 kinds of air-conditioning and heating facilities, vacuum dust collector, information processing cables as well as electricity, telecommunications, waterworks, city gas, sewerage system required when citizens live their daily lives and facilities responsible for the central function of the country but it is difficult to cope with fire accidents quickly and hard to enter into common utility tunnels to extinguish a fire due to toxic gases and smoke generated when various cables are burnt. Thus, in the event of a fire, not only the nerve center of the country is paralyzed such as significant property damage and loss of communication etc. but citizen inconveniences are caused. Therefore, noticing that most fires break out by a short circuit due to electrical works and degradation contact due to combustible cables as the main causes of fires in domestic and foreign common utility tunnels fire cases that have occurred so far, the purpose of this paper is to scientifically analyze the behavior of a fire by producing the model of actual common utility tunnels and reproducing the fire. A fire experiment was conducted in a state that line type fixed temperature detector, fire door, connection deluge set and ventilation equipment are installed in underground common utility tunnels and transmission power distribution cables are coated with fire proof paints in a certain section and heating pipes are fire proof covered. As a result, in the case of Type II, the maximum temperature was measured as $932^{\circ}C$ and line type fixed temperature detector displayed the fire location exactly in the receiver at a constant temperature. And transmission power distribution cables painted with fire proof paints in a certain section, the case of Type III, were found not to be fire resistant and fire proof covered heating pipes to be fire resistant for about 30 minutes. Also, fire simulation was carried out by entering fire load during a real fire test and as a result, the maximum temperature is $943^{\circ}C$, almost identical with $932^{\circ}C$ during a real fire test. Therefore, it is considered that fire behaviour can be predicted by conducting fire simulation only with common utility tunnels fire load and result values of heat release rate, height of the smoke layer, concentration of O2, CO, CO2 etc. obtained by simulation are determined to be applied as the values during a real fire experiment. In the future, it is expected that more reliable information on domestic underground common utility tunnels fire accidents can be provided and it will contribute to construction and maintenance repair effectively and systematically by analyzing and accumulating experimental data on domestic underground common utility tunnels fire accidents built in this study and fire cases continuously every year and complementing laws and regulations and administration manuals etc.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.1597-1603
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• 2017

The incidence of fire in underground utility tunnel is lower than other fires, but the damage caused by fire can cause social loss due to social management paralysis as well as economic loss. Hereupon, this paper presents the results of an empirical test on the construction of the underground utility tunnel condition monitoring system using the leakage coaxial cable installed in the underground utility tunnel. For this reason, a verification test was conducted by connecting a inductive coupler 200 Mbps power line communication modem with insertion loss characteristics of $-6{\pm}2dB$ to the installed the leakage coaxial cable installed in the underground utility tunnel. As a result, We confirmed sending/receiving of IP cameras up to 500 m. Therefore, it is judged that it is possible to construct a condition monitoring system for underground utility tunnel by using the leakage coaxial cables installed in the underground utility tunnels without installing additional communication lines for data transmission.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.11-27
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• 2017

The road network system of major domestic urban areas such as city of Seoul was rapidly developed and regionally expanded. In addition, many kinds of life-lines such as electrical cables, telephone cables, water&sewerage lines, heat&cold conduits and gas lines were needed in order for urban residents to live comfortably. Therefore, most of the life-lines were individually buried in underground and individually managed. The utility tunnel is defined as the urban planning facilities for commonly installing life-lines in the National Land Planning Act. Expectation effectiveness of urban utility tunnels is reducing repeated excavation of roads, improvement of urban landscape; road pavement durability; driving performance and traffic flow. It can also be expected that ensuring disaster safety for earthquakes and sinkholes, smart-grind and electric vehicle supply, rapid response to changes in future living environment and etc. Therefore, necessity of urban utility tunnels has recently increased. However, all of the constructed utility tunnels are cut-and-cover tunnels domestically, which is included in development of new-town areas. Since urban areas can not accommodate all buried life-lines, it is necessary to study the feasibility assessment system for utility tunnel by urban patterns and capacity optimization for urban utility tunnels. In this study, we break away from the new-town utility tunnels and suggest a quantitative assessment model based on the evaluation index for urban areas. In addition, we also develop a program that can implement a quantitative evaluation system by subdividing the feasibility assessment system of urban patterns. Ultimately, this study can contribute to be activated the urban utility tunnel.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.1845-1850
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• 2003

The underground utility tunnels are important facility as a mainstay of country because of communication developments. The communication and electrical duct banks as well as various utility lines for urban life are installed in the underground utility tunnel systems. If a fire breaks out in this life-line tunnel, the function of the city will be discontinued and the huge damages are occurred. In order to improve the safety of life-line tunnel systems and the fire detection, the behaviors of the fire-induced smoke flow and temperature distribution are investigated. In this study we assumed that the fire is occurred at the contact or connection points of cable. Numerical calculations are carried out using different velocity of ventilation in utility tunnel. The fire source is modeled as a volumetric heat source. Three-dimensional flow and thermal characteristics in the underground tunnel are solved by means of FVM (Finite Volume Method) using SIMPLE algorithm and standard ${\kappa}-{\varepsilon}$ model for Reynolds stress terms. The numerical results of the fire-induced flow characteristics in an underground utility tunnel with different velocity of ventilation are graphically prepared and discussed.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.479-493
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• 2023

The need for safety management has arisen due to the increasing number of years of operated underground structures, such as tunnels and utility tunnels, and accidents caused by those aging infrastructures. However, in the case of privately managed underground utility ducts, there is a lack of detailed guidelines for facility safety and maintenance, resulting in inadequate safety management. Furthermore, the absence of basic design information and the limited space for safety assessments make applying currently used non-destructive testing methods challenging. Therefore, this study suggests non-destructive inspection methods using ultrasonic and impact-echo techniques to assess the quality of underground structures. Thickness, presence of rebars, depth of rebars, and the presence and depth of internal defects are assessed to provide fundamental data for the safety assessment of box-type general underground structures. To validate the proposed methodology, different conditions of concrete specimens are designed and cured to simulate actual field conditions. Applying ultrasonic and impact signals and collecting data through multi-channel accelerometers determine the thickness of the simulated specimens, the depth of embedded rebar, and the extent of defects. The predicted results are well agreed upon compared with actual measurements. The proposed methodology is expected to contribute to developing safety diagnostic methods applicable to general underground structures in practical field conditions.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2003

The United States Antarctic program (USAP) through its principal Support Contractor Raytheon polar Services Co. (RPSC), has recently finished a 3 years projects, almost 936m length of underground utility tunnels at Amundsen-Scott station. It accommodates the piping that conveys fresh water from current well sites, as well as waste water to repositories in abandoned wells. The under snow tunnels allow year-round access for system operations and maintenance.

• Magazine of korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.49-57
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• 2021