• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.539-558
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• 2016

Minarets are almost the inevitable part of Mosques in Islam and according to some, from a philosophical point of view, today they symbolize the spiritual elevation of man towards God. Due to slenderness, minarets are susceptible to earthquakes and wind loads. They are mostly built in a masonry style by using cut limestone blocks or occasionally by using bricks. In this study, one minaret (M1 Minaret) of one of the charmest mosques of Turkey, Sultan Ahmed Mosque, popularly known as Blue Mosque, built between 1609 and 1616 on the order of Sultan Ahmed by the architect Mehmet Agha is investigated under some registered earthquake loads. According to historical records, a great earthquake hit Istanbul and/or its close proximity approximately every 250 years. Ottomans tackled with the problem of building earthquake resistant, slender minarets by starting to use forged iron connectors with lead as a filler to fix them to the upper and lower and to adjacent stones instead of using traditional mortar only. Thus, the discrete stones are able to transfer tensile forces in some sense. This study investigates the contribution of lead to the energy absorption capacity of the minaret under extensive earthquakes occurred in the region. By using the software ANSYS/LS-DYNA in modelling and investigating the minaret nonlinearly, it is found out that under very big recorded earthquakes, the connectors of vertical cast iron-lead mechanism play very important role and help to keep the structure safe.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.509-514
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• 2010

A numerical simulation of passenger evacuation in a subway station was performed by coupling the passenger flow analysis and the fire simulation. The algorithm of the passenger flow analysis was based on a DEM (Discrete Element Method) using the potential map of the direction vector for each passenger. This algorithm was improved in the present study as to use finer grid smaller than a passenger in order to resolve detailed geometry of the station and to resolve the behavior of passengers in the bottleneck at the ticket gate considering the collision of passengers to a wall or with other passengers. In the fire simulation, the CO distribution predicted by using CFD was used to take into account the effect of toxic gases on the passengers' mobility. The methodology proposed in the present study could be used in designing safer subway station in case of fire occurrence.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.2 no.5
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• pp.345-366
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• 2005

This work presents an assessment of the computational performance of a vector-parallel implementation of probabilistic model for concrete cracking in 3D. This paper shows the continuing efforts towards code optimization as reported in earlier works Paz, et al. (2002a,b and 2003). The probabilistic crack approach is based on the direct Monte Carlo method. Cracking is accounted by means of 3D interface elements. This approach considers that all nonlinearities are restricted to interface elements modeling cracks. The heterogeneity governs the overall cracking behavior and related size effects on concrete fracture. Computational kernels in the implementation are the inexact Newton iterative driver to solve the non-linear problem and a preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) driver to solve linearized equations, using an element by element (EBE) strategy to compute matrix-vector products. In particular the paper analyzes code behavior using OpenMP directives in parallel vector processors (PVP), such as the CRAY SV1 and CRAY T94. The impact of the memory architecture on code performance, and also some strategies devised to circumvent this issue are addressed by numerical experiment.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.41-50
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• 2019

The stone pagoda continued to be damaged by weathering and corrosion over time, and natural disasters such as earthquake are accelerating the destruction of cultural properties. Stone pagoda has discontinuous structure behavior and is very vulnerable to the seismic load acting in lateral direction. It is necessary to analyze various design variables as the contact surface characteristics play an important role in the dynamic behavior of stone pagodas. For this purpose, contact surface characteristics of stone pagoda can be classified according to surface roughness and filler type, and representative model is selected and structural modeling and analysis are performed using the discrete element method. Also, the seismic load according to the repetition period is calculated and the dynamic analysis is performed considering the discontinuous characteristics of the stone pagoda. Finally, the seismic behavior characteristics can be analyzed by the evaluation of stresses, displacements and structural safety.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.1130-1141
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• 2010

Even though a number of historic structures in Korea need to be repaired, an intensive research on their engineering performance has rarely been investigated. Herein, we attempted to provide a methodological approach via the explicit finite element analysis to investigate geotechnical aspect of the performance of the dry-stone wall structures. To do so, we summarized relevant literature on the world-wide historic stone structures as well as its analysis in terms of modern geotechnical engineering. The method of the explicit finite element analysis has been briefly summarized. The numerical results on an idealized block structure show that the displacement of blocks and the distribution of earth pressure is different from the conventional theory of the retaining wall because of the discrete nature of the dry-stone wall structure.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.383-399
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• 2020

Optimizing the spacing of the disc cutter is a key element in the design of the TBM cutter head, which determines the drilling performance of the TBM. The full-scale linear cutting test is known as the most reliable and accurate test for calculating the spacing of the disc cutter, but it has the disadvantage of costly and time-consuming for the full-scale experiment. In this study, through the numerical analysis study based on the discrete element method, the tendency between Specific Energy-S/P ratio according to uniaxial compression strength and penetration depth of rock was analyzed, and the optimum spacing of 17-inch disc cutter was derived. To examine the appropriateness of the numerical analysis model, the rolling force acting on the disc cutter was compared and reviewed with the CSM model. As a result of numerical analysis for the linear cutting test, the rolling force acting on the disc cutter was analyzed to be similar to the rolling force derived from the theoretical formula of the CSM model. From the numerical analysis on 5 UCS cases (50 MPa, 70 MPa, 100 MPa, 150 MPa, 200 MPa), it is found that the range of the optimum spacing of the disc cutter decreases as the rock strength increases. And it can be concluded that 80~100 mm of disc cutter spacing is the optimum range having minimum specific energy regardless of rock strength. This tends to coincide with the optimal spacing of previously reported disk cutters, which underpins the disk cutter spacing calculated through this study.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.567-577
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• 2017

This study presents investigation of the behavior of moderately thick reinforced concrete slabs having hollow cores with different parameters. The experimental part of this investigation includes testing eight specimens of solid and hollow-core slab models having (2.05 m) length, (0.6 m) width and (25 cm) thickness under two monotonic line loads. Load versus deflection was recorded during test at mid span and under load. Numerically, the finite element method is used to study the behavior of these reinforced concrete slabs by using ANSYS computer program. The specimens of slab models are modeled by using (SOLID65) element to represent concrete slabs and (LINK180) element to represent the steel bars as discrete axial members between concrete nodes. The finite element analysis has showed good agreement with the experimental results with difference of (4.71%-8.68%) in ultimate loads. A parametric study have been carried out by using ANSYS program to investigate the effects of concrete compressive strength, size and shape of core, type of applied load and effect of removing top steel reinforcement.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.33-42
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• 2016

Discrete Element Method was conducted for rock and coarse-grained materials in development of granular mechanics and related numerical model due to analyze and apply micromechanical property. And it was verified that the analysis to consider bonding effect was insufficient. In this study, to overcome limits of existing method, it was conducted to analyze difference between indoor test result and bonding effect using $PFC^{3D)}$. For indoor test of mixed soil, uniaxial compression tests by curing time and by cement content were performed. And, DEM to suitable for each condition of indoor test was conducted. In the result of this study, in terms of geotechnics, it was verified that DEM can be used for application as numerical laboratory as well as prediction of micro and macro behavior about bonding effect of mixed soil.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.11-21
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• 2017

Ground subsidence mainly occurs due to the soil wash-away caused by cracked sewer pipes. It is necessary to understand the behavior surrounding soils with the formation of cavity and relaxation zone to set up counterplan. In this paper, a series of laboratory model tests and numerical analyses (Discrete Element Method) were performed to investigate the ground subsidence mechanism due to sewer pipe damage. For model tests, aluminum rod and trap door were used to simulate the behavior of model ground. Test results were compared with the numerical analyses conducted under the same boundary conditions with model tests. From this study, it was investigated the shape and size of cavity and relaxation zone due to the soil wash-away and a void ratio distribution of surrounding soils with relaxation properties.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2020

In this study, a procedure was introduced to estimate strength and deformation modulus of the 3-D discrete fracture network(DFN) systems using the distinct element method(DEM). Fracture entities were treated as non-persistent square planes in the DFN systems. Systematically generated fictitious fractures having similar mechanical characteristics of intact rock were combined with non-persistent real fractures to create polyhedral blocks in the analysis domain. Strength and deformation modulus for 10 m cube domain of various deterministic and stochastic 3-D DFN systems were estimated using the DEM to explore the applicability of suggested method and to examine the effect of fracture geometry on strength and deformability of DFN systems. The suggested procedures were found to effective in estimating anisotropic strength and deformability of the 3-D DFN systems.