• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.466-473
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• 2021

Fire protection is one of important issues to ensure safety and reduce risks of nuclear power plants (NPPs). While robust programs to shut down commercial reactors in any fires have been successfully maintained, the concept and associated regulatory requirements are constantly changing or strengthening by lessons learned from operating experiences and information all over the world. As part of this context, it is necessary not only to establish specific fire hazard assessment methods reflecting the characteristics of research reactors and educational reactors but also to make decisions based on advancement encompassing numerical analyses and experiments. The objectives of this study are to address fire simulation in the control room of an educational reactor and to discuss integrity of digital console in charge of main operation as well as analysis results through comparison. Three electrical fire scenarios were postulated and twenty-four thermal analyses were carried out taking into account two turbulence models, two cable materials and two ventilation conditions. Twelve supplementary thermal analyses and six subsequent structural analyses were also conducted for further examination on the temperature and heat flux of cable and von Mises stress of digital console, respectively. As consequences, effects of each parameter were quantified in detail and future applicability was briefly discussed. On the whole, higher profiles were obtained when Deardorff turbulence model was employed or polyvinyl chloride material and larger ventilation condition were considered. All the maximum values considered in this study met the allowable criteria so that safety action seems available by sustained integrity of the cable linked to digital console within operators' reaction time of 300 s.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.41-45
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• 2011

The fire event occurred in fire proof zone often causes serious electrical problems such as shorts, ground faults, or open circuits in nuclear power plants. These would be directed to the loss of safe shutdown capabilities performed by safety related systems and equipments The fire event can treat the basic design principle that safety systems should keep their functions with redundancy and independency. In case of a cable fire, operators can not perform their mission properly and can misjudge the situation because of spurious operation, wrong indication or instrument. These would deteriorate the plant capabilities of safety shutdown and make disastrous conditions. In this paper, the cables of the representative nuclear power plant in korea is selected and the cable functional failure temperature by exposed fire using Cable Response to Live Fire(CAROLFIRE) is studied. It is expected that the results are very useful to know the cable failure temperature by exposed fire. We confirmed the safety and integrity of the cable by exposed fire and those results will use the based data of cable exposed fire characteristics.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.7
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• pp.987-993
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• 2013

Integrity of the control and instrumental cables in nuclear power plant is important to maintain the stability of the nuclear power plants. In order to diagnose the integrity of the cables, the diagnostic methods based on reflectometry have been studied. The reflectometry is a non-destructive method and it is applicable to diagnose the live cables. We introduce a Gaussian enveloped linear chirp reflectometry to diagnose the cables in the nuclear power plants. In this paper, we estimate the instantaneous frequency of the Gaussian enveloped linear chirp signal by using the weighted robust least squares filtering to localize the impedance discontinuities in the class 1E instrumental cable.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.66-73
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• 2024

Stay-cable is one of the most important load carrying members in cable-stayed bridges. Monitoring structural integrity of stay-cables is crucial for evaluating the structural condition of the cable-stayed bridge. For stay-cables, tension and damping ratio are estimated based on modal properties as a measure of structural integrity. Since the monitoring system continuously measures the vibration for the long-term period, data acquisition systems should be stable and power-efficiency as the hardware system. In addition, massive signals from the data acquisition systems are continuously generated, so that automated analysis system should be indispensable. In order to fulfill these purpose simultaneously, this study presents an autonomous cable monitoring system based on domain-knowledge using IoT for continuous cable monitoring systems of cable-stayed bridges. An IoT system was developed to provide effective and power-efficient data acquisition and on-board processing capability for Edge-computing. Automated peak-picking algorithm using domain knowledge was embedded to the IoT system in order to analyze massive data from continuous monitoring automatically and reliably. To evaluate its operational performance in real fields, the developed autonomous monitoring system has been installed on a cable-stayed bridge in Korea. The operational performance are confirmed and validated by comparing with the existing system in terms of data transmission rates, accuracy and efficiency of tension estimation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.4
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• pp.403-411
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• 2021

Ties are mandated by many design guidelines and codes to prevent the progressive collapse of buildings initiated by local failures. This study develops a model to estimate catenary/cable action capacity and the required ties in continuous reinforced concrete beams to bridge above the potential failed interior columns. The developed model is derived based on virtual work method and verified using test results presented in the literature. Also, parametric investigations are conducted to estimate the required ties in continuous reinforced concrete beams supporting one-way slab systems. A comparison is conducted between the estimated tie reinforcement using the developed model and that provided by satisfying the integrity provisions of the ACI 318-14 (2014) code. It is shown that the required tie reinforcements to prevent progressive collapse using the developed model are obviously larger than that provided by the integrity requirements of the ACI 318-14 (2014) code. It has been demonstrated that the increases in the demanded tie reinforcements over that provided by satisfying ACI 318-14 (2014) integrity provisions are varied between 1.01 and 1.46.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.133-154
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• 2023

Obscured structural members are mostly under-evaluated during condition assessment due to lack of visual inspection capability. Insufficient information about the integrity of these structural members poses a significant risk for public safety. Time domain reflectometry (TDR) is a novel approach in structural health monitoring (SHM). Ordinary coaxial cables "as is" without a major modification are not suitable for SHM with TDR. The objective of this study is to propose a practical and cost-effective modification approach to commercially available coaxial cables in order to use them as a "cable sensor" for damage detection with the TDR equipment for obscured structural members. The experimental validation and assessment of the proposed modification approach was achieved by conducting 3-point bending tests of the model piles as a representative obscured structural member. It can be noted that the RG59/U-6 and RG6/U-4 cable sensors expose higher strain sensitivity in comparison with non-modified "as is" versions of the cables used. As a result, the cable sensors have the capability of sensing both the presence and the location of a structural damage with a maximum aberration of 3 cm. Furthermore, the crack development can be monitored by the RG59/U-6 cable sensor with a simple calibration.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.13 no.3 s.55
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• pp.135-144
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• 2009

The cable system of suspension bridges is a very important non-elastic element which caries an external load by a tension force of the cable, such that creates the integrity of a structure. It is not easy to find if cable system have been changed by the maintenance activities such as repairs or reinforcement. Sometimes the maintenance can cause structural deformations and changes of the tension force in cables. In most cases, the cable stayed bridges are managed by health monitering system, however, the main cable of suspension bridges need to develop more accurate and efficient monitoring system. The Namhee Bridge was constructed 35 years ago and it has been continually repaired and reinforced after then. This study describes the behavior of the cable system by analysing many of inspective reports and by using the results of hanger rope test and for the shape of main cables surveys.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.8
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• pp.1632-1638
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• 2011

Electric cables are one of the most important components in a nuclear power plant since they provide the power needed to operate electrical equipment. Despite their importance, cables typically receive little attention since they are considered passive, long-lived components that have been very reliable over the years when subjected to the environmental conditions for which they were designed. The operating experience reveals that a defect of the insulator or poor construction causes the initial failure of cable. However, the number of cable failures increase with plant aging, and these cable failures are occurring within the plants' 40-year licensed period. These cable failures have resulted in plant transients, shutdown, loss of safety functions or redundancy, entries into limiting conditions for operation, and challenges for plant operators. Therefore, diagnosis of MV cable installed in NPPs has become one of the most urgent issues in recent years. In accordance with PSR, condition maintenance for cables is also continuously required. Recently, HFPD tests have been widely performed to diagnose cable in the transmission and distribution cable system. However, on-line HFPD wasn't used in the NPPs because of the danger of plant shutdown, measurement sensitivity and application problems, etc. In this paper, HFPD measurement with portable device was performed to evaluate the integrity of the 4.16kV & 13.8kV cable lines. The test results show that HFPD is highly attractive to the diagnosis of MV cables in NPP by high detection sensitivity on-site.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.695-702
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• 2019

The number of cable-stayed bridges has been increasing worldwide, causing issues in maintaining the structural safety and integrity of bridges. The stay cable, one of the most critical members in cable-stayed bridges, is vulnerable to wind-induced vibrations owing to its inherent low damping capacity. Thus, vibration mitigation of stay cables has been an important issue both in academia and practice. While a semi-active control scheme shows effective vibration reduction compared to a passive control scheme, real-world applications are quite limited because it requires complicated equipment, including for data acquisition, and power supply. This study aims to develop an Arduino-based integrated cable vibration control system implementing a semi-active control algorithm. The integrated control system is built on the low-cost, low-power Arduino platform, embedding a semi-active control algorithm. A MEMS accelerometer is installed in the platform to conduct a state feedback for the semi-active control. The Linear Quadratic Gaussian control is applied to estimate a cable state and obtain a control gain, and the clipped optimal algorithm is implemented to control the damping device. This study selects the magnetorheological damper as a semi-active damping device, controlled by the proposed control system. The developed integrated system is applied to a laboratory size cable with a series of experimental studies for identifying the effect of the system on cable vibration reduction. The semi-active control embedded in the integrated system is compared with free and passive mode cases and is shown to reduce the vibration of stay-cables effectively.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.1369-1374
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• 2014

Most accidents of medium-voltage cables installed in nuclear power plants result from the initial defect of internal insulators or the initial failure due to poor construction. However, as the service years of plants increase, the possibility of cable accidents is also rapidly increases. This is primarily caused by electric, mechanical, thermal, and radiation stresses. Recently, much attention is paid to the study of cable diagnoses. To date, partial discharge and Tan${\delta}$ measurements are known as reliable methods to diagnose the aging of medium-voltage cables. High frequency partial discharge measurement techniques have been widely used to diagnose cables in transmission and distribution systems. However, the on-line high frequency partial discharge technique has not been used in the nuclear power plants because of the plant shutdown risk, degraded measurement sensitivity, and application problems. In this paper, the partial discharge measurement with a portable device was tried to evaluate the integrity of the 4.16kV and 13.8kV cable lines. The test results show that the high detection sensitivity can be achieved by the high frequency partial discharge technique. The present technique is highly attractive to diagnose medium voltage cables in nuclear power plants.