• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2006

This is the second of a two-part paper which describes comparison of reliability design methods by application to Donghae Harbor Breakwaters. In this paper, Part 2, we deal with sliding of caissons. The failure modes of a vertical breakwater, which consists of a caisson mounted on a rubble mound, include the sliding and overturning of the caisson and the failure of the rubble mound or subsoil, among which most frequently occurs the sliding of the caisson. The traditional deterministic design method for sliding failure of a caisson uses the concept of a safety factor that the resistance should be greater than the load by a certain factor (e.g. 1.2). However, the safety of a structure cannot be quantitatively evaluated by the concept of a safety factor. On the other hand, the reliability design method, for which active research is being performed recently, enables one to quantitatively evaluate the safety of a structure by calculating the probability of failure of the structure. The reliability design method is classified into three categories depending on the level of probabilistic concepts being employed, i.e., Level 1, 2, and 3. In this study, we apply the reliability design methods to the sliding of the caisson of the breakwaters of Donghae Harbor, which was constructed by traditional deterministic design methods to be damaged in 1987. Analyses are made for the breakwaters before the damage and after reinforcement. The probability of failure before the damage is much higher than the allowable value, indicating that the breakwater was under-designed. The probability of failure after reinforcement, however, is close to the allowable value, indicating that the breakwater is no longer in danger. On the other hand, the results of the different reliability design methods are in fairly good agreement, confirming that there is not much difference among different methods.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2005

Purpose: We wanted to improve the setup reproducibility of breast cancer patients when utilizing a commercially available breast board for radiation therapy. The breast board was modified by using a new head rest and 2 types of board fixation devices. Materials and Methods: A conventional head/neck rest was modified to be positioned in various slots of the breast board, and it was fabricated 1 cm thinner to provide more comfort to a patient when the patient's neck was rotated. This rest improves the uncertainty of the daily setup. Also, the sagging problems at the left and right sides became negligible with the two types of board fixation devices: (1) the stair type, and (2) the arm type. The first device consists of an upper/lower holder with 4 stair-types of grooves and 4 rectangular Inserts. In order to cover the whole range of vertical setup of the breast board, 4 rectangular inserts were needed, and each covered 10 steps. The arm-type fixation device was also fabricated and attached to the breast board, It had two aluminum bars that were fixed by utilizing a lock-type of screw. These devises were evaluated with two volunteers in order to prove the effectiveness of the improved setup accuracy. Results; The developed cranio-caudal fixation device demonstrated that it could reduce the cranio-caudal error by nearly $55\%$ compared to the old device. As for left-and-right inclination, the stair-type and arm-type fixation devices can reduce the relative inclination by nearly $80\%$ and $90\%$, respectively, compared to the breast board without the fixation device. Conclusion: It was verified that the developed devices were effective for positioning the patients and for avoiding inclination of the breast board.