• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Structure & Construction
• /
• v.35 no.8
• /
• pp.157-168
• /
• 2019

Modular Construction is regarded as having enhanced safety compared to traditional construction since most of modular manufacturing process in plants. Unlike general consideration for safety in modular construction, several industrial accident data and studies have pointed out that the accident rate of modular construction is not enough less as much as the practitioners have expected. It means that there is a clear need for improvement of safety management in modular construction. To enhance safety, it is necessary to identify the type and cause of accident through accident cases in order to prevent safety accident in advance. In this consideration, this study analyzed the types and causes of accidents through root cause analysis procedure with accident cases of U.S. OSHA. The classification was carried out in the order of process type, accident type and cause of accident. By following the classification criteria in this study, the causal factor was derived and the root cause map was created. Based on the analysis results, cross-analysis was conducted and it is shown that activity characteristics of modular construction are related to safety accidents. In addition, prevention methods to reduce safety accident by major activity are presented in terms of organizational, educational and technical aspects. This study contributes that the result can be used as the basic safety management in the manufacturing and construction process of modular construction.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2022.06a
• /
• pp.579-586
• /
• 2022

Modular building is a fast-growing construction method, mainly due to its ability to drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to construct a building and produce higher-quality buildings at a more consistent rate. However, while modular construction is relatively safer than traditional construction methods, workers are still exposed to hazards that lead to injuries and fatalities, and these hazards could be controlled using emerging smart technologies. Currently, limited information is available at the intersection of modular construction, safety risk, and smart safety technologies. This paper aims to investigate what aspects of modular construction are most dangerous for its workers, highlight specific risks in its processes, and propose ways to utilize smart technologies to mitigate these safety risks. Findings from the archival analysis of accident reports in Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Fatality and Catastrophe Investigation Summaries indicate that 114 significant injuries were reported between 2002 and 2021, of which 67 were fatalities. About 72% of fatalities occurred during the installation phase, while 57% were caused by crushing and 85% of crash-related incidents were caused by jack failure/slippage. IoT-enabled wearable sensing devices, computer vision, smart safety harness, and Augment and Virtual Reality were identified as potential solutions for mitigating identified safety risks. The present study contributes to knowledge by identifying important safety trends, critical safety risk factors and proposing practical emerging methods for controlling these risks.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.53 no.3
• /
• pp.741-751
• /
• 2021

There has been a deep interest in trying to find better-performing fuel clad motivated by the desire to decrease the likelihood of the reactor barrier failure like what happened in Fukushima in recent years. In this study, the effect of move towards accident tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding as the most attracting concept for improving reactor safety is investigated for SMART modular reactor. These reactors have less production cost, short construction time, better safety and higher power density. The SiC and FeCrAl materials are considered as the most potential candidate for ATF cladding, and the results are compared with Zircaloy cladding material from reactor physics point of view. In this paper, the calculations are performed by generating PMAX library by DRAGON lattice physics code to be used for further reactor core analysis by PARCS code. The differential and integral worth of control and safety rods, reactivity coefficient, power and temperature distributions, and boric acid concentration during the cycle are analyzed and compared from the conventional fuel cladding. The rod ejection accident (REA) is also performed to study how the power changed in response to presence of the ATF cladding in the reactor core. The key quantitative finding can be summarized as: 20 ℃ (3%) decrease in average fuel temperature, 33 pcm (3%) increase in integral rod worth and cycle length, 1.26 pcm/℃ (50%) and 1.05 pcm/℃ (16%) increase in reactivity coefficient of fuel and moderator, respectively.