• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.153-159
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• 2018

Many researches have been carried out on carbonation, a representative deterioration in underground structure. The carbonation of RC (Reinforced Concrete) structure can cause steel corrosion through pH drop in concrete pore water. However extension of service life in RC structures can be obtained through simple surface protection. Unlike the conventional deterministic maintenance technique, probabilistic technique can consider a variation of service life but it deals with only normal distributions. In the work, life time-probability distributions considering not only normal but also log distributions are induced, and repair cost estimation technique is proposed based on the induced model. The proposed technique can evaluate the repair cost through probabilistic manner regardless of normal or log distribution from initial service life and extended service life with repair. When the extended service life through repair has log distribution, repair cost is effectively reduced. The more reasonable maintenance strategy can be set up though actual determination of life-probability distribution based on long term tests and field investigations.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.185-201
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• 2022

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is used to provide reliable information about the structure's integrity in near realtime following extreme incidents such as earthquakes, considering the inevitable aging and degradation that occurs in operating environments. This paper experimentally investigates an integrated wireless sensor network (Wi-SN) based monitoring technique for damage detection in concrete structures. An effective SHM technique can be used to detect potential structural damage based on post-earthquake data. Two novel methods are proposed for damage detection in reinforced concrete (RC) building structures including: (i) Jerk Energy Method (JEM), which is based on time-domain analysis, and (ii) Modal Contributing Parameter (MCP), which is based on frequency-domain analysis. Wireless accelerometer sensors are installed at each story level to monitor the dynamic responses from the building structure. Prior knowledge of the initial state (immediately after construction) of the structure is not required in these methods. Proposed methods only use responses recorded during ambient vibration state (i.e., operational state) to estimate the damage index. Herein, the experimental studies serve as an illustration of the procedures. In particular, (i) a 3-story shear-type steel frame model is analyzed for several damage scenarios and (ii) 2-story RC scaled down (at 1/6th) building models, simulated and verified under experimental tests on a shaking table. As a result, in addition to the usual benefits like system adaptability, and cost-effectiveness, the proposed sensing system does not require a cluster of sensors. The spatial information in the real-time recorded data is used in global damage identification stage of SHM. Whereas in next stage of SHM, the damage is detected at the story level. Experimental results also show the efficiency and superior performance of the proposed measuring techniques.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.477-488
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• 2022

Pile composite foundation (PCF) has been commonly applied in practice. Existing research has focused primarily on semi-infinite media having equal pile lengths with little attention given to the effects of inclined bedrock and dissimilar pile lengths. This investigation considers the effects of inclined bedrock on vertical loaded PCF with dissimilar pile lengths. The pile-soil system is decomposed into fictitious piles and extended soil. The Fredholm integral equation about the axial force along fictitious piles is then established based on the compatibility of axial strain between fictitious piles and extended soil. Then, an iterative procedure is induced to calculate the PCF characteristics with a rigid cap. The results agree well with two field load tests of a single pile and numerical simulation case. The settlement and load transfer behaviors of dissimilar 3-pile PCFs and the effects of inclined bedrock are analyzed, which shows that the embedded depth of the inclined bedrock significantly affects the pile-soil load sharing ratios, non-dimensional vertical stiffness N₀/wdE_s, and differential settlement for different length-diameter ratios of the pile l/d and pile-soil stiffness ratio k conditions. The differential settlement and pile-soil load sharing ratios are also influenced by the inclined angle of the bedrock for different k and l/d. The developed model helps better understand the PCF characteristics over inclined bedrock under vertical loading.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.53-65
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• 2007

When doing a blasting demolition on RC structures made of scale models, scale model members considering both a proper scale factor and mechanical characteristics of materials have to be similar to prototype RC members to analyze the collapse behavior of RC structures. In this study. a similitude law considering the density of prototype materials is calculated. Both mix of concrete and arrangement of reinforcement have been described referring to Concrete Standard Specification as well as Design Standard of Concrete Structure. The scale factor on scaled concrete models considering maximum size of coarse aggregate is about one-fifth of a cross section of prototype concrete members. A scale factor on staled steel bar models is about one-fifth of a nominal diameter of prototype steel bar. According to the mechanical test results of scale models, it can be concluded that the modified similitude law may be similar to compressive strength of prototype concrete and yield strength of prototype steel bar.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.407-412
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• 2020

Due to the influence of nonlinearity and time-variation, it is difficult to establish an accurate model of concrete frame structures that adopt active controllers. Fuzzy theory is a relatively appropriate method but susceptible to human subjective experience to decrease the performance. To guarantee the stability of multi-time delays complex system with multi-interconnections, a delay-dependent criterion of evolved design is proposed in this paper. Based on this criterion, the sector nonlinearity which converts the nonlinear model to multiple rule base of the linear model and a new sufficient condition to guarantee the asymptotic stability via Lyapunov function is implemented in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI). A numerical simulation for a three-layer reinforced concrete frame structure subjected to earthquakes is demonstrated that the proposed criterion is feasible for practical applications.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2009

Two types of piloti-type high-rise RC building structures having irregularity in the lower two stories were selected as prototypes, and nonlinear time history analysis was performed using OpenSees to verify the analysis technique and to investigate the seismic capacity of those buildings. One of the buildings studied had a symmetrical moment-resisting frame (BF), while the other had an infilled shear wall in only one of the exterior frames (ESW). A fiber model, consisting of concrete and reinforcing bar represented from the stress-strain relationship, was adapted and used to simulate the nonlinearity of members, and MVLEM (Multi Vertical Linear Element Model) was used to simulate the behavior of the wall. The analytical results simulate the behavior of piloti-type high-rise RC building structures well, including the stiffness and yield force of piloti stories, the rocking behavior of the upper structure and the variation of the axial stiffness of the column due to variation in loading condition. However, MVLEM has a limitation in simulating the abrupt increasing lateral stiffness of a wall, due to the torsional mode behavior of the building. The design force obtained from a nonlinear time history analysis was shown to be about $20{\sim}30%$ smaller than that obtained in the experiment. For this reason, further research is required to match the analytical results with real structures, in order to use nonlinear time history analysis in designing a piloti-type high-rise RC building.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2682-2695
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• 2021

This paper aims to evaluate the structural dynamic responses and damage/failure of the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant under the free drop impact of spent fuel cask (SFC) and fuel assembly (FA) during the on-site transportation. At the present Part I of this paper, the large-scale SFC model free drop test and the corresponding numerical simulations are performed. Firstly, a composite target which is composed of the protective structure, i.e., a thin RC plate (representing the inverted U-shaped slab in the loading shaft) and/or an autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks sacrificial layer, as well as a thick RC plate (representing the bottom slab in the loading shaft) is designed and fabricated. Then, based on the large dropping tower, the free drop test of large-scale SFC model with the mass of 3 t is carried out from the height of 7 m-11 m. It indicates that the bottom slab in the loading shaft could not resist the free drop impact of SFC. The composite protective structure can effectively reduce the damage and vibrations of the bottom slab, and the inverted U-shaped slab could relieve the damage of the AAC blocks layer dramatically. Furthermore, based on the finite element (FE) program LS-DYNA, the corresponding refined numerical simulations are performed. By comparing the experimental and numerical damage and vibration accelerations of the composite structures, the present adopted numerical algorithms, constitutive models and parameters are validated, which will be applied in the further assessment of drop impact effects of full-scale SFC and FA on prototype nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the next Part II of this paper.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.805-816
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• 2010

For earthquake simulation test it is essential to make sure the similitude in behaviors between the full scale prototype and the reduced scale model. This paper presents the test results obtained through the cyclic lateral-force test, on two-story RC wall subassemblages. A lower 2-story portion of the prototype structure was selected as subassemblages. The global behavior such as the strength and ductility, and the local behavior such as flexural, shear and uplift deformation were measured. The test results of the 3 : 5 scale specimens representing the prototype were compared with those of 1 : 7 scale models. Two types of subassemblages were used: One with lintel beams and one without lintel beams. The comparison shows that 1 : 7 scale model simulated in general successfully the global and local behaviors of the prototype.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.149-159
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• 2020

The present work proposes new engineering models for determining corrosion initiation time in concrete reinforcing steels in marine environment. The models are based on Fick's second law that is commonly used for chloride diffusion. The latter is based on deterministic analyses involving the most influencing parameters such as distance of the concrete structure from the seaside, depth of steel concrete cover, ambient temperature, relative humidity and the water-cement ratio. However, a realistic corrosion initiation time cannot be estimated because of the uncertainties associated to the different parameters of the models. Therefore a reliability approach using FORM/SORM method has been applied to develop the proposed engineering models integrating a limit state function and a reliability index β. As a result, the corrosion initiation time is expressed by new exponential engineering models where the uncertainties are associated to the model parameters. The main emerging result is a realistic decision tool for corrosion planning inspection.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.761-786
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• 2016

This paper proposes an automated procedure for optimum seismic design of reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures. This procedure combines a smart pre-processing using a Tree Classification Method (TCM) and a nonlinear optimization technique. First, the TCM automatically creates sections database and assigns sections to structural members. Subsequently, a real valued model of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed in solving the optimization problem. Numerical examples on design optimization of three low- to high-rise RC frame structures under earthquake loads are presented with and without considering strong column-weak beam (SCWB) constraint. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the TCMin seismic design optimization of the structures.