• 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 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.

• 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 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.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-79
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• 2021

The influence of ground motions on the seismic response of utility tunnels was investigated. A series of small-scale shaking table model tests were carried out under uniform excitation in the transverse direction. Different peak accelerations of EL-Centro and Taft earthquake waves were applied. The acceleration responses, earth pressure, seismic strain, bending moment and structure deformations were measured and discussed. The results showed that the types of earthquake waves had significant influences on the soil-structure acceleration responses. However, the amplitude of the soil acceleration along the depth showed consistent variation regardless of the types of earthquake waves and tunnels. The horizontal soil pressure near the top and bottom slabs showed obviously larger values than those at other depths. In general, the strain response in the outer surface was more significant than that on the inner surface, and the peak strain in the end section of the model was larger than that in the middle section. Moreover, the bending moment at the corner points was much larger than that at middle point, and the bending moment was greatly affected by both input accelerations and seismic wave types. The opposite direction of shear deformation on the top and bottom slabs presented a rotation trend of the model structure.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1073-1090
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• 2018

Since the domestic utility tunnels were built mainly in the development project of the new city, they are all in the form of cut-and-cover box tunnel. But, in the case of overseas construction of utility tunnels for existing urban areas, the bored tunnel types are mainly adopted. It is reasonable to install bored tunnels in a downtown area because it is difficult to block the roads or install bypass roads due to heavy traffic and civil complaints. In order to activate the utility tunnels in bored type, it is necessary to secure optimized cross-sectional design technology considering the optimal supplying capacity and mutual influencing factors (Thermal Interference, electrolytic corrosion, efficiency of the maintenance, etc.) of utilities (power cables, telecommunication cables, water pipes, etc.). The optimal cross-section design method for bored utility tunnels is ultimately to derive the optimal arrangement technique for the utilities. In order to develop the design methods, firstly, the cases of tunnel cross-section (Shield TBM, Conventional Tunneling) in overseas shall be investigated to analyze the characteristics of the installation of utilities in the section and installation of auxiliary facilities, It is necessary to sort out and analyze the criteria related to the inner cross-section design (arrangement) presented in the standards and guidelines.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.563-571
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• 2020

The purpose of a utility tunnel is to prevent repeated excavation as well as disasters and calamity. Domestic utility tunnels have been built in new town development plans. Currently, it is difficult to establish a utility tunnel due to a conflict of opinions by organization and financing. In this paper, research was conducted based on systematic procedures to suggest ways of improving the activation of utility tunnels in new cities and existing cities. First, a survey was conducted on the laws and status of utility tunnels, and problems were derived based on the review and analysis of the status. Finally, a method suggesting improvement measures to solve problems was applied. Based on the related laws and problems, the status of the development project was analyzed to select the installation scale in the utility tunnel, and the appropriate scale was reviewed through economic feasibility analysis of the installation scale under 2 million square meters. Considering the new city and the existing city, it was proposed to support administrative expenses to reduce the burden on additional installation areas and occupied institutions in a utility tunnel. In addition, improvement plans were presented for the details of the master plan for reviewing the installation regional of the utility tunnel. This paper will help officials to work smoothly when planning and installing utility tunnels in the future.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.110-118
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• 2018

Due to recent earthquakes, there is a growing awareness that Korea is not a safe zone for earthquakes any more. Therefore, the review of various aspects of the seismic safety of the infrastructures are being carried out. Because of the characteristics of the underground structure buried in the ground, the electric power utility tunnels must be considered not only for the inertia and load capacity of the structure itself but also the characteristics of the surrounding soils. An extensive and accurate numerical analysis is inevitably required in order to consider the interaction with the ground, but it is difficult to apply the soil-structure interaction analyses, which generally requires high cost and extensive time, to all electric power utility tunnel structures. In this study, the major design variables including soil characteristics are considered as independent variables, and the seismic safety factor, which is the result of the numerical analysis, is considered as a dependent variable. Thus, a method is proposed to select vulnerable electric power utility tunnels with low seismic safety factor while excluding costly and time-consuming numerical analyses through the direct correlation analysis between independent and dependent variables. Equations of boundary limits were derived based on the distribution of the seismic safety factor and the cover depth and rebar amounts with high correlation relationship. Consequently, a very efficient and simple approach is proposed to select vulnerable electric power utility tunnels without intensive numerical analyses. Among the 108 electric power utility tunnels that were investigated in this paper, 30% were screened as fragile structures, and it is confirmed that the screening method is valid by checking the safety factors of the fragile structure. The approach is relatively very simple to use and easy to expand, and can be conveniently applied to additional data to be obtained in the future.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.404-412
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• 1997

The pipes and cables buried below ground, which may have helped to improve city landscape, is becoming direct and indirect causes for various kinds of disaster in Korea. Every advantage from the use of utility tunnel can not be converted in a dollar since there is associated huge contribution to safe urban environment. The Korean government has a certain role to play in helping promote utility tunnels for the past years. Most recently, many utility tunnels have been being checked to find out safety level, especially fire safety level, and main problems and shortcomings are checked out as a result of this survey. Because the fire safety level of existing tunnel is low, possible approaches and solutions are presented according to the analysis of fire safety level. In order for these approaches to be effective, existing tunnel should be supplemented appropriately and extra equipment must be installed according to the solutions. Hopefully, by performing both improvement of existing utility tunnel that provide a fire/disaster proof and introducing new types of tunnel which influence utility management and maintenance, the recent disaster rate in Korea can be diminished up to a desirable rate in a near future.