• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.135-147
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• 2016

This paper describes a smart structural system, which uses smart materials for real-time monitoring and active control of bolted-joints in steel structures. The goal of this research is to reduce the possibility of failure and the cost of maintenance of steel structures such as bridges, electricity pylons, steel lattice towers and so on. The concept of the smart structural system combines impedance based health monitoring techniques with a shape memory alloy (SMA) washer to restore the tension of the loosened bolt. The impedance-based structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques were used to detect loosened bolts in bolted-joints. By comparing electrical impedance signatures measured from a potentially damage structure with baseline data obtained from the pristine structure, the bolt loosening damage could be detected. An outlier analysis, using generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, providing optimal decision boundaries, has been carried out for more systematic damage detection. Once the loosening damage was detected in the bolted joint, the external heater, which was bonded to the SMA washer, actuated the washer. Then, the heated SMA washer expanded axially and adjusted the bolt tension to restore the lost torque. Additionally, temperature variation due to the heater was compensated by applying the effective frequency shift (EFS) algorithm to improve the performance of the diagnostic results. An experimental study was conducted by integrating the piezoelectric material based structural health monitoring and the SMA-based active control function on a bolted joint, after which the performance of the smart 'self-monitoring and self-healing bolted joint system' was demonstrated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제55권3호
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• pp.639-654
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• 2015

Bolted joints are essential elements of mechanical structures and metal constructions. Although their static behaviour is fairly well known, their dynamic behaviour due to shocks and vibrations has been less studied, because of the large size of the finite element models needed for a detailed simulation. This work presents four different simplified models suitable for studying the dynamic behaviour of an elementary bolted joint. Three of them include contact elements to allow sliding of the screw head and the nut on the assembled parts, and the last one allows rotation between screw and nut. A penalty approach based on the Coulomb friction model is used to model contact. The results show that these models effectively represent the dynamic behaviour, with different accuracy depending on the model details. The last model simulates the self loosening of a bolt subjected to transversal vibrations.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.1117-1121
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• 2011

전차에 전기를 공급하는 장치인 가동 브래킷 구조물은 전차가 통과할 때 반복적인 하중을 받는다. 이러한 반복하중은 가동 브래킷 구조물을 구성하는 나사들을 풀리게 하는 가진원이 되고 있다. 본 논문에서는 전산 시뮬레이션을 이용하여 반복적인 진동에 의한 볼트 풀림에 대한 원인과 대책에 대하여 연구하였다. 그 결과 전산 시뮬레이션 모델이 구축되어 가동브래킷 구조물의 동적응답 해석이 가능하게 되었다. 가동 브래킷 구조물의 볼트 풀림에 대한 주된 가진 주파수 영역이 200 Hz 미만임을 확인하였으며, H 빔의 강성을 증가함으로써 볼트풀림을 방지할 수 있음을 알 수 있었다. 아울러 볼트 풀림 원인이 되는 300, 600Hz 대역에서 발생하는 하부밴드 브라킷의 진동 모드를 확인 하였으며, 강성을 올리는 것은 200Hz 이상에서의 볼트 풀림을 방지할 수 있는 효과를 나타냄을 확인하였다.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권4호
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• pp.423-432
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• 2020

In this paper, a novel but practical approach named series/parallel multi-sensing technique was proposed to evaluate the bolt looseness in a bolt group. The smart washers (SWs), which were fabricated by embedding a Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) transducer into two flat metal rings, were installed to the bolts group. By series connection of SWs, the impedance signals of different bolts can be obtained through only one sweep. Therefore, once the loosening occurred, the shift of different peak frequencies can be used to locate which bolt has loosened. The proposed multi input single output (MISO) damage detection scheme is very suitable for the structural health monitoring (SHM) of joint with a large number of bolts connection. Another notable contribution of this paper is the proposal of 3-dB bandwidth root mean square deviation (3 dB-RMSD) which can quantitatively evaluate the severity of bolt looseness. Compared with the traditional naked-eye observation method, the equivalent circuit based 3-dB bandwidth can accurately define the calculation range of RMSD. An experiment with three bolted connection specimens that installed the SWs was carried out to validate our proposed approach. Experimental result shows that the proposed 3 dB-RMSD based multi-sensing technique can not only identify the loosened bolt but also monitor the severity of bolt looseness.

• 자동차안전학회지
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.20-26
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• 2015

In vehicle development process, durability test should be carried out in field condition. Nowadays there are many customer live there multiple conditions. It makes change of the car's material. Such change causes to lose a bolt. Diversifications of climatic conditions are also a matter of loosening the bolt. To avoid this problem, to identify the cause of the problem, and the solution should be applied. To avoid problems during the durability development test should be measured by the clamping force. Ultrasonic instruments clamping force without affecting the torque can be measured. This instrument is part of the problem by monitoring the clamping force required to obtain objective data.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.523-528
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• 2015

As the sizes of mobile phones and watch phones decrease, the joining bolt for the products should also be decreased to a miniature size. However, the miniature-sized bolt has to support sufficient joining and anti-releasing torque to keep the product fastened. In this study, the thread shapes are designed to improve anti-releasing performance of bolts. Especially, when bolt materials is stronger than nut materials, the design of thread shapes is needed, like bolt for wood, to improve the fastening capability. Through the joining and releasing analyses of bolts, the thread shapes for SUS302 bolt and Mg alloy nut are newly designed. It was shown that the newly designed bolt has 20 % higher anti-releasing torque and 35% lower torque loosening slope compared to the standard bolt.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제24권4호
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• pp.385-403
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• 2017

In recent years, the wind energy has played an increasingly important role in national energy sector of many countries. To harvest more electric power, the wind turbine (WT) tower structure becomes physically larger, which may cause more risks during long-term operation. Associated with the great development of WT projects, the number of accidents related to large-scaled WT has also been increased. Therefore, a structural health monitoring (SHM) system for WT structures is needed to ensure their safety and serviceability during operational time. The objective of this study is to develop a hybrid damage detection method for WT tower structures by measuring vibration and impedance responses. To achieve the objective, the following approaches are implemented. Firstly, a hybrid damage detection scheme which combines vibration-based and impedance-based methods is proposed as a sequential process in three stages. Secondly, a series of vibration and impedance tests are conducted on a lab-scaled model of the WT structure in which a set of bolt-loosening cases is simulated for the segmental joints. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed hybrid damage detection method is experimentally evaluated via its performance during the damage detection process in the tested model.

• 한국가스학회지
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.7-13
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• 2021

재액화 드럼은 과냉각된 LNG를 증발가스에 직접 분사하기 위해 상부에 스프레이 노즐을 설치하고, 기액 분리가 용이하도록 데미스터를 설치한 제품으로, 소형 재액화 설비의 재액화 효율을 높이기 위해 개발한 제품이다. 드럼의 상온 내압기밀시험에서는 설계압력의 1.5배 이상의 압력에서도 누설(Leak)이 없었으나, 단열성능시험 중 온도변화에 따른 수축/팽창으로 인해 볼트풀림 현상이 발생하였다. 제품의 지속적인 사용을 위해 플랜지 결합부의 단열 시공은 탈부착이 가능하도록 개발하였으며, 기존 단열과의 열침입량 비교 결과 드럼 내 유입 유량 대비 매우 미미함을 확인하였다.

• 융복합기술연구소 논문집
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.20-24
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• 2012

In this paper, we perform a ANSYS simulation of assembly structure composed of three parts, bolt, nut, and coil spring, under the loading of a screw torque 640~800 ($N{\cdot}m$) derived from the given bolt tensile strength 10.9, which allows us to investigate a lock-nut mechanism for the prevention of bolt-loosening after three parts are fastened. And also we investigate the safety factor of each component with effective stress distribution obtained from the simulation, which enables us to estimate the structural safety of a new lock-nut structure. Both simulation and investigation shown in this paper will contribute to the development of a new lock nut structure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.23-35
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• 2023

Steel bolted joint is an important part of steel structure, and its damage directly affects the bearing capacity and durability of steel structure. Currently, the existing research mainly focuses on the identification of corroded bolts and corroded bolts respectively, and there are few studies on multiple states. A detection framework of corroded and loosened bolts is proposed in this study, and the innovations can be summarized as follows: (i) Vision Transformer (ViT) is introduced to replace the third and fourth C3 module of you-only-look-once version 5s (YOLOv5s) algorithm, which increases the attention weights of feature channels and the feature extraction capability. (ii) Three states of the steel bolts are considered, including corroded bolt, bolt missing and clean bolt. (iii) Line segment detector (LSD) is introduced for bolt rotation angle calculation, which realizes bolt looseness detection. The improved YOLOv5s model was validated on the dataset, and the mean average precision (mAP) was increased from 0.902 to 0.952. In terms of a lab-scale joint, the performance of the LSD algorithm and the Hough transform was compared from different perspective angles. The error value of bolt loosening angle of the LSD algorithm is controlled within 1.09%, less than 8.91% of the Hough transform. Furthermore, the proposed framework was applied to fullscale joints of a steel bridge in China. Synthetic images of loosened bolts were successfully identified and the multiple states were well detected. Therefore, the proposed framework can be alternative of monitoring steel bolted joints for management department.