• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.429-434
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• 2017

Failure of basic structures material is usually accompanied by expansion of interior cracks due to stress concentration at the cracks tip. This phenomenon shows the importance of examination of the failure behavior of concrete structures. To this end, 4 types of mortar samples with different amounts of nano-silica (0%, 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5%) were made to prepare twelve $50{\times}50{\times}50mm$ cubic samples. The goal of this study was to describe the failure and micro-crack growth behavior of the cement mortars in presence of nano-silica particles and control mortars during different curing days. Failure of mortar samples under compressive strength were sensed with acoustic emission technique (AET) at different curing days. It was concluded that the addition of nano-silica particles could modify failure and micro-crack growth behavior of mortar samples. Also, monitoring of acoustic emission parameters exposed differences in failure behavior due to the addition of the nanoparticles. Mortar samples of nano-silica particles revealed stronger shear mode characteristics than those without nanoparticles, which revealed high acoustic activity due to heterogeneous matrix. It is worth mentioning that the highest compressive strength for 3 and 7 test ages obtained from samples with the addition of 1.5% nano-silica particles. On the other hand maximum compressive strength of 28 curing days obtained from samples with 1% combination of nano-silica particles.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.651-662
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• 2022

The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy(EIS) method was used to evaluate the concrete deterioration process related to chloride-induced steel corrosion with various corrosion levels(initiation, rust propagation and acceleration periods). The impressed current technique, with four total current levels of 0C, 13C, 65C and 130C, was used to accelerate steel corrosion in concrete cylinder samples with w/c ratio of 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6, immersed in a 0.5M NaCl solution. A series of EIS measurements was performed to monitor concrete deterioration during the accelerated corrosion test in this study. Some critical parameters of the equivalent circuit were obtained through the EIS analysis. It was observed that the charge transfer resistance(R_c) dropped sharply as the impressed current increased from 0C to 13C, indicating a value of approximately 10kΩcm². However, the sensitivity of R_c significantly decreased when the impressed current was further increased from 13C to 130C after corrosion of steel had been initiated. Meanwhile, the double-layer capacitance value(C_dl) linearly increased from 50×10^-6μF/cm² to 250×10^-6μF/cm² as the impressed current in creased from 0C to 130C. The results in this study showed that monitoring C_dl is an effective measurement parameter for evaluating the progress of internal concrete damages(de-bonding between steel and concrete, micro-cracks, and surface-breaking cracks) induced by steel corrosion. The findings of this study provide a fundamental basis for developing an embedded sensor and signal interpretation method for monitoring concrete deterioration due to steel corrosion at various corrosion levels.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1543-1567
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• 2015

In this study, a wireless crack sensor is developed for monitoring cracks propagating in two dimensions. This sensor is developed by incorporating a laser-based optical navigation sensor board (ADNS-9500) into a smart wireless platform (Imote2). To measure crack propagation, the Imote2 sends a signal to the ADNS-9500 to collect a sequence of images reflected from the concrete surface. These acquired images can be processed in the ADNS-9500 directly (the navigation mode) or sent to Imote2 for processing (the frame capture mode). The computed crack displacement can then be transmitted wirelessly to a base station. The design and the construction of this sensor are reported herein followed by some calibration tests on one prototype sensor. Test results show that the sensor can provide sub-millimeter accuracy under sinusoidal and step movement. Also, the two modes of operation offer complementary performance as the navigation mode is more accurate in tracking large amplitude and fast crack movement while the frame capture mode is more accurate for small and slow crack movement. These results illustrate the feasibility of developing such a crack sensor as well as point out directions of further research before its actual implementation.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.325-334
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• 2023

Computer vision-based damage detection enables non-contact, efficient and low-cost bridge health monitoring, which reduces the need for labor-intensive manual inspection or that for a large number of on-site sensing instruments. By leveraging recent semantic segmentation approaches, we can detect regions of critical structural components and identify damages at pixel level on images. However, existing methods perform poorly when detecting small and thin damages (e.g., cracks); the problem is exacerbated by imbalanced samples. To this end, we incorporate domain knowledge to introduce a hierarchical semantic segmentation framework that imposes a hierarchical semantic relationship between component categories and damage types. For instance, certain types of concrete cracks are only present on bridge columns, and therefore the noncolumn region may be masked out when detecting such damages. In this way, the damage detection model focuses on extracting features from relevant structural components and avoid those from irrelevant regions. We also utilize multi-scale augmentation to preserve contextual information of each image, without losing the ability to handle small and/or thin damages. In addition, our framework employs an importance sampling, where images with rare components are sampled more often, to address sample imbalance. We evaluated our framework on a public synthetic dataset that consists of 2,000 railway bridges. Our framework achieves a 0.836 mean intersection over union (IoU) for structural component segmentation and a 0.483 mean IoU for damage segmentation. Our results have in total 5% and 18% improvements for the structural component segmentation and damage segmentation tasks, respectively, compared to the best-performing baseline model.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.18 no.3 s.93
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• pp.439-445
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• 2006

For investigating self-diagnosis applicability, a method based on monitoring the changes in the electrical resistance of hybrid FRP(having electrical property) reinforced concrete has been tested. Then after examining change in the value of electrical resistance of carbon fiber in CFRP(non-hybrid type), CFGFRP and CFAFRP(hybrid type) before and after the occurrence of cracks and fracture in non-hybrid and hybrid FRP reinforced concrete at each flexural weight-stage, the correlations of each factors(the changes in electrical resistance and load as a function of strain, deflection) were analyzed. As the results, it is clarified that when the carbon fiber tows fracture, the electrical resistance of it increase largely, and afterwards hybrid FRP composites can be resist the load due to the presence of the reinforced fiber, for example, glass fiber or aramid fiber tows. Therefore, it can be recognized that hybrid FRP(including carbon fiber) reinforcing bar could be applied for self-diagnosis of fracture in reinforced FRP concrete fracture.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.129-137
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• 2017

PURPOSES : The purpose of this study is to develop bridge deck concrete materials based on ordinary Portland cement concrete, and to evaluate the applicability of the developed materials through material properties tests. METHODS : For field implementation, raw material (cement, fine aggregate, and coarse aggregate) properties, fresh concrete properties (slump and air content), strength (compressive, flexural and bond strength) gain, and durability (freeze-thaw resistance, scaling resistance, and rapid chloride penetrating resistance) performance were evaluated in the laboratory. RESULTS : For the selected binder content of $410kg/m^3$, W/B = 0.42, and S/a = 0.48, the following material performance results were obtained. Considering the capacity of the deck finisher, a minimum slump of 150 mm was required. At least 6 % of air content was obtained to resist freeze-thaw damage. In terms of strength, 51.28 MPa of compressive strength, 7.41 MPa of flexural strength, and 2.56 MPa of bond strength at 28 days after construction were obtained. A total of 94.9 % of the relative dynamic modulus of elasticity after 300 cycles of freeze-thaw resistance testing and $0.0056kg/m^2$ of weight loss in a scaling resistance test were measured. However, in a chloride ion penetration resistance test, the result of 3,356 Coulomb, which exceeds the threshold value of the standard specification (1000 Coulomb at 56 days) was observed. CONCLUSIONS : Instead of using high-performance modified bridge deck materials such as latex or silica fume, we developed an optimum mix design based on ordinary Portland cement concrete. A test construction was carried out at ramp bridge B (bridge length = 111 m) in Gim Jai City. Immediately after the concrete was poured, the curing compound was applied, and then wet mat curing was applied for 28 days. Considering the fact that cracks did not occur during the monitoring period, the applicability of the developed material is considered to be high.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.385-404
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• 2005

The paper presents a model to calculate reinforcement strain using measured crack width in members under applied tension, flexure, and/or shear stress. Crack mapping using a new type of distributed coaxial cable sensors for health monitoring of large-scale civil engineering infrastructure was recently proposed and developed by the authors. This paper shows the results and performance of such sensors mounted on near surface of two flexural beams and a large scale reinforced concrete box girder that was subjected to cyclic combined shear and torsion. The main objectives of this health monitoring study was to correlate the sensor's response to strain in the member, and show that magnitude of the signal's reflection coefficient is related to increases in applied load, repeated cycles, cracking, and reinforcement yielding. The effect of multiple adjacent cracks, and signal loss was also investigated. The results shown in this paper are an important step in using the sensors for crack mapping and determining reinforcement strain for in-situ structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.133-139
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• 2003

In order to extend the life time of building and civil infra-structure, nowadays, patch type fibrous composite materials are widely used. Repaired concrete columns and beams gain the stiffness and strength, but they lose toughness and show brittle failure. Usually, the cracks of concrete structures are visible with naked eyes and the status of the structure in the life cycle is estimated with visible inspection. After repairing of the structure, crack visibility is blocked by repaired carbon sheets. Therefore, structural monitoring after repairing is indispensible and self diagnosis method with optical fiber sensor is very useful. In this paper, peel-out effects is detected with optical fiber sensors and the strain difference between main structure and repaired carbon sheets when they separate each other.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.8-16
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• 2018

This study examined the long-term behavior of a roadbed using high-speed railway concrete track and roadbed measurement data and evaluated the long-term performance of the track and roadbed. Recently, high-speed railway track type has been adopted as a concrete slab. On the other hand, the concrete track is vulnerable to roadbed settlement. In the case of gravel tracks, it is easy to restore the original state by maintenance even if the roadbed settles. On the other hand, in the case of the concrete track, if excessive settlement of the roadbed occurs, cracks are generated continuously on the slabs and sleepers, resulting in greatly reduced usability. For this reason, it is difficult to restore the original state only by partial maintenance. In this paper, a long-term performance evaluation was carried out on a concrete track during operation by monitoring the measurement data of sensors buried from the beginning of construction for approximately 3 years after the high-speed railway opened. Performance evaluation methods include a performance evaluation of track/roadbed when the train passes, long-term track and roadbed performance evaluation, analysis of the track/roadbed effect on long-term settlement and analysis of the factors influencing long-term settlement. The trail response of KTX-Sancheon was greatest in the track/roadbed performance evaluation by train. The results of the long-term track and roadbed performance evaluation were measured within the standard values. The track and roadbed performance impact assessment with long-term settlement was strongly related to TCL settlement. The influences of the water content and groundwater level were verified by analyzing the external factors of long-term settlement. Through such a method, the stability of a track/roadbed can be secured.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2012

Reinforced concrete buildings will be deteriorated as passed time or effect of an earthquake, etc in main elements. In order to manage such cracks, time and efforts, expense, etc, are required. So micro lead switch sensors are embedding or bonding in flexible specimens, and these are smart elements for diagnostic crack damages by external force such as physical load, dynamic load, etc in this study. The monitoring to crack damages are studied using radio frequency system. If load is received on the center of flexible specimens, embedded and bonded lead switch sensors will be destroyed, and these become to send signals of damages at radio frequency system connected with lead switch sensors. This study is fundamental research of the diagnostic system for architectural elements using radio frequency.