• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.571-585
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• 2023

The application of relatively low volumes of fibres in normal strength concrete has been shown to be of significant benefit when applied to composite slabs with profiled sheet decking. This paper reports on an experimental study aimed at quantifying further potential benefits that may arise from applying ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete. To assess performance six simply supported beams were tested under hogging and sagging loading configurations along with three two span continuous beams. Fibre contents are varied from 0% to 2% and changes in strength, deformation, crack width and moment redistribution are measured. At the serviceability limit state, it is shown that the addition of high fibre volumes can significantly enhance member stiffness and reduce crack widths in all beams. At the ultimate limit state it is observed that a transition from 0% to 1% fibres significantly increases strength but that there is a maximum fibre volume beyond which no further increases in strength are possible. Conversely, member ductility and moment redistribution are shown to be strongly proportional to fibre volume.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.3797-3822
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• 2020

The inspection of cracks on the surface of tunnel linings is a common method of evaluate the condition of the tunnel. In particular, determining the thickness and shape of a crack is important because it indicates the external forces applied to the tunnel and the current condition of the concrete structure. Recently, several automatic crack detection methods have been proposed to identify cracks using captured tunnel lining images. These methods apply an image-segmentation mechanism with well-annotated datasets. However, generating the ground truths requires many resources, and the small proportion of cracks in the images cause a class-imbalance problem. A weakly annotated dataset is generated to reduce resource consumption and avoid the class-imbalance problem. However, the use of the dataset results in a large number of false positives and requires post-processing for accurate crack detection. To overcome these issues, we propose a crack detection method using a ternary classifier. The proposed method significantly reduces the false positive rate, and the performance (as measured by the F1 score) is improved by 0.33 compared to previous methods. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.407-424
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• 2016

This study tests ten full-size simple-supported beam specimens with the high-strength reinforcing steel bars (SD685 and SD785) using the four-point loading. The measured compressive strength of the concrete is in the range of 70-100 MPa. The main variable considered in the study is the shear-span to depth ratio. Based on the experimental data that include maximum shear crack width, residual shear crack width, angle of the main crack and shear drift ratio, a simplified equation are proposed to predict the shear deformation of the high-strength reinforced concrete (HSRC) beam member. Besides the post-earthquake damage assessment, these results can also be used to build the performance-based design for HSRC structures. And using the allowable shear stress at the peak maximum shear crack width of 0.4 and 1.0 mm to suggest the design formulas that can ensure service-ability (long-term loading) and reparability (short-term loading) for shear-critical HSRC beam members.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.469-474
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• 1999

The object of study is analysis to joint crack behavior of cracked joint concrete pavement. In the new constructing concrete pavement, joint crack behavior was compared general joint depth D/4 with joint depth D/3 and D/5 that it's environmental effects changed temperature and humidity. After joint saw cutting joint section was predicted crack at joint depth D/5 test section from the result for monitoring development of crack. In the setting of data logger system of the joint section, it's data compared see with the naked eye. In the research, development of crack at the joint section should effect to joint saw timing latter than joint depth. This performance could be the minimum of deterioration to the early curing. In this research, At new constructing of joint concrete pavement of highway, the monitoring system be setting after finished paving and joint sawing. The system and see with the naked eye could be analysis to pavement behaviors from collecting data at the test section. This system could be monitoring shot term and long term. In this report, joint section of crack behavior analysis used to collected data during a month after paving and joint sawing.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.193-204
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• 2020

In the study, a new, simple and alternative formula is proposed to calculate numerically crack widths of concrete on a finite element (FE) model. By considering more general tension softening behavior of concrete, the proposed expression is derived irrespective of any tension softening model given in the literature or design codes. The test results of six reinforced concrete (RC) deep beams having different geometrical and material properties selected from a recent existing experimental study of the authors are used to verify the accuracy and reliability of the proposed formula and the created numerical FE models of the specimens. Moreover, the crack width results obtained from the FE models are compared with the test results to see the performance of the proposed formula. The results of the study demonstrate that the proposed formula gives very accurate results in a comparison with the test results. The ratios of errors on the results stay commonly at an acceptable level as well. Consequently, the proposed formula is quite simple, unique, and robust to determine crack widths of RC deep beams on an FE model.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.675-680
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• 2006

This is a study of fatigue strength of weld deposits with transverse cracks in plate up to 50 mm thick. It is concerned with the fatigue properties of welds already with transverse cracks. A previous study of transverse crack occurrence, location and microstructure in accordance with welding conditions was published in the Welding Journal (Lee et al., 1998). A fatigue crack develops as a result of stress concentration and extends with each load cycle until fatigue occurs, or until the cyclic loads are transferred to redundant members. The fatigue performance of a member is more dependent on the localized state of stress than the static strength of the base metal or the weld metal. Fatigue specimens were machined to have transverse cracks located on the surface and inside the specimen. Evaluation of fatigue strength depending on location of transverse cracks was then performed. When transverse cracks were propagated in a quarter-or half-circle shape, the specimen broke at low cycle in the presence of a surface crack. However, when the crack was inside the specimen, it propagated in a circular or elliptical shape and the specimen showed high fatigue strength, enough to reach the fatigue limit within tolerance of design stresses.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.89-92
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• 2012

Effective notch stress, as an approach to evaluate the local stress at a notch (weld toe or root), is defined as the total stress assuming linear-elastic material behavior. This method can be effectively used to evaluate the fatigue performance of welded joints. In this study, finite element analysis results using the effective notch stress method were correlated with fatigue test results of rib-to-deck welded joints in a steel orthotropic bridge deck. Effective notch stress approach provided a good correlation with the crack pattern observed in the full-scale fatigue test. A higher effective notch stress at the critical weld toe than at the weld root was consistent with the dominant crack pattern observed at the weld toe during testing. The effective notch stress at the toe on the deck plate was about 80% higher than that on the rib; no cracks at the weld toe on the rib in the testing were observed. Maximum effective notch stress at the weld root occurred on the upper side of the root notch, which indicates that cracks are more likely to propagate into the deck plate, not into the weld metal. This is also consistent with the observed crack pattern in which the crack from the root propagated upward into the deck plate. No such crack pattern, propagating into the weld metal, was observed in the testing.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.301-310
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• 2020

The laser ultrasonic technique is gaining popularity for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) applications because it is a noncontact and couplant-free method and can inspect a target from a remote distance. For the conventional laser ultrasonic techniques, a pulsed laser is often used to generate broadband ultrasonic waves in a target structure. However, for crack detection using nonlinear ultrasonic modulation, it is necessary to generate narrowband ultrasonic waves. In this study, a pulsed laser is shaped into dual-line arrays using a spatial mask and used to simultaneously excite narrowband ultrasonic waves in the target structure at two distinct frequencies. Nonlinear ultrasonic modulation will occur between the two input frequencies when they encounter a fatigue crack existing in the target structure. Then, a nonlinear damage index (DI) is defined as a function of the magnitude of the modulation components and computed over the target structure by taking advantage of laser scanning. Finally, the fatigue crack is detected and localized by visualizing the nonlinear DI over the target structure. Numerical simulations and experimental tests are performed to examine the possibility of generating narrowband ultrasonic waves using the spatial mask. The performance of the proposed fatigue crack localization technique is validated by conducting an experiment with aluminum plates containing real fatigue cracks.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1681-1688
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• 2019

In accordance with ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel (B&PV) Code Sec.XI Appendix. G, a postulated crack is located at the beltline of a reactor pressure vessel because the neutron flux at the beltline is higher than elsewhere. This means that the distance between the core and the semi-spherical bottom head is longer than the distance between the core and the cylindrical beltline. However, several Small and Medium sized Reactors have bottom heads with diverse shapes, including dished or semi-elliptical shapes, to satisfy the requirement and performance. So, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of crack location on Pressure-Temperature limit curve. To do this, two types of postulated crack location, such as beltline and semi-elliptical bottom head, were adopted to derive the Pressure-Temperature limit curve. Also, parametric studies for neutron flux, crack shape and so on were performed. As a result, core critical temperature of semi-elliptical bottom head is found to higher than that of beltline even when they have same values of thickness and neutron flux. This result will be useful to enhance the understanding of Pressure-Temperature limit curve.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.153-166
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• 2022

Identifying fine cracks in steel bridge facilities is a challenging task of structural health monitoring (SHM). This study proposed an end-to-end crack image segmentation framework based on a one-step Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for pixel-level object recognition with high accuracy. To particularly address the challenges arising from small object detection in complex background, efforts were made in loss function selection aiming at sample imbalance and module modification in order to improve the generalization ability on complicated images. Specifically, loss functions were compared among alternatives including the Binary Cross Entropy (BCE), Focal, Tversky and Dice loss, with the last three specialized for biased sample distribution. Structural modifications with dilated convolution, Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP) and Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) were also performed to form a new backbone termed CrackDet. Models of various loss functions and feature extraction modules were trained on crack images and tested on full-scale images collected on steel box girders. The CNN model incorporated the classic U-Net as its backbone, and Dice loss as its loss function achieved the highest mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) of 0.7571 on full-scale pictures. In contrast, the best performance on cropped crack images was achieved by integrating CrackDet with Dice loss at a mIoU of 0.7670.