• Journal of Korea Trade
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• 제26권7호
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• pp.59-76
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• 2022

Purpose - As ahigher-order ability, improvisational capability is often employed to help a firm cope with unexpected or unanticipated issues. In light of the severe global business challenges and turbulent environmental changes, this study aimed to explore whether home-based network ties could shape the influence of improvisational capability on international entrepreneurship, alongside investigating the boundary conditions of competitive turbulence in their moderating effects. Design/methodology - The sample for the international entrepreneurship sector was obtained from the Industry and Information Technology Department of Jiangsu. In September 2021, the questionnaires were sent to the targeted ventures and required the top managers to complete the survey by email or telephone. The final research sample comprised 113 international new ventures. To test the hypotheses, moderated hierarchical regression analysis was conducted. Findings - Our empirical results suggested that (1) unlike some previous literature, a positive effect of improvisational capability on the performance of international new ventures was not found; (2) home country-based networks (both political ties and business ties) are contingent factors that may partially stimulate the value creation of improvisational capability; and (3) in a highly competitive environment, the moderating role of business ties at home may become much stronger, however, the contingent role of political ties at home was not found. Originality/value - This study mainly concentrates on the two important types of home country-based networks, political and business ties at home, that may help international new ventures access strategic resources necessary for supporting the performance implications of improvisational capability. Thus, it extends the existing improvisational theory to encompass international entrepreneurship.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제81권2호
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• pp.219-230
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• 2022

Due to the large number of railway bridges along China's high-speed railway (HSR) lines, which cover a wide area with many lines crossing the seismic zone, the possibility of a HSR train running over a bridge when an earthquake occurs is relatively high. Since the safety performance of the train will be threatened, it is necessary to study the safety of trains running over HSR bridges during earthquakes. However, ground motion (GM) is highly random and selecting the appropriate ground-motion intensity measures (IMs) for train running safety analysis is not trivial. To deal this problem, a model of a coupled train-bridge system under seismic excitation was established and 104 GM samples were selected to evaluate the correlation between 16 different IMs and train running safety over HSR bridges during earthquakes. The results show that spectral velocity (SvT₁) and displacement (SdT₁) at the fundamental period of the structure have good correlation with train running safety for medium-and long-period HSR bridges, and velocity spectrum intensity (VSI) and Housner intensity (HI) have good correlation for a wide range of structural periods. Overall, VSI and HI are the optimal IMs for safety analysis of trains running over HSR bridges during earthquakes. Finally, based on VSI and HI, the IM thresholds of an HSR bridge at different speed were analyzed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제87권4호
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• pp.297-304
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• 2023

Targeted introduction of explosion-resisting and energy-absorbing materials and optimization of explosion-resisting composite structural styles in underground engineering are the most important measures for modern engineering protection. They could also improve the survivability of underground engineering in wartime. In order to test explosion-resisting and energy-absorbing effects of high-performance equal-sized-aggregate (HPESA) concrete, the explosive loading tests were conducted on HPESA concrete composite plates by field simple explosion craters. Time-history curves of the explosion pressure at the interfaces were obtained under six conditions with different explosion ranges and different thicknesses of the HPESA concrete plate. Test results show that under the same explosion range, composite plate structures with different thicknesses of the HPESA concrete plate differ significantly in terms of the wave-absorbing ability. Under the three thicknesses in the tests, the wave-absorbing ability is enhanced with the growing thickness and the maximum pressure attenuation index reaches 83.4%. The energy attenuation coefficient of the HPESA concrete plate under different conditions was regressively fitted. The natural logarithm relations between the interlayer plate thickness and the energy attenuation coefficient under the two explosion ranges were attained.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제34권2호
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• pp.115-124
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• 2023

By conducting three-dimensional simulation with consideration of small-strain characteristics of soil stiffness, the effects of excavation geometry and tunnel cover to diameter ratio on deformation mechanisms of an existing tunnel located either at a side of basement or directly underneath the basement were systematically studied. Field measurements were used to verify the numerical model and model parameters. For basement excavated at a side of an existing tunnel, the maximum settlement and horizontal displacement of the tunnel are always observed at the tunnel springline closer to basement and tunnel crown, respectively, regardless of basement geometry. By increasing basement length and width by five times, the maximum movements of tunnel located at the side of basement and directly underneath the basement increase by 450% and 186%, respectively. Obviously, tunnel movements are more sensitive to basement length rather than basement width. For basement excavated at a side of an existing tunnel, tunnel movements at basement centerline become stable when basement length reaches 10 H_e (i.e., final excavation depth). Moreover, tunnel heaves due to overlying basement excavation become stable when the normalized basement length (L/H_e) is larger than 8.0. As tunnel cover to diameter ratio varies from 2.5 to 3.0, the maximum heave and tensile strain of tunnel due to overlying basement excavation decrease by up to 41.0% and 44.5%, respectively. If basement length is less than 8 H_e, the assumption of plane strain condition of basement-tunnel interaction grossly overestimates tunnel movements, and ignores tensile strain of tunnel along its longitudinal direction. Thus, three-dimensional numerical analyses are required to obtain a reasonable estimation of tunnel responses due to adjacent and overlying basement excavations in clay.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제34권2호
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• pp.209-220
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• 2023

In this study, a series of three-dimensional numerical analyses were carried out to investigate the penetration performance of a dynamically installed Hall anchor. The advanced coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) technique was adopted to accurately simulate the large soil deformation during the vertical penetration of a Hall anchor. In total, 52 numerical analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between anchor penetration depth and the initial kinematic energy. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the effects of soil shear strength and soil type on the penetration mechanism of a drop anchor under self-weight. There is a monotonic increase in the penetration depth with an increasing anchor weight when the topsoil of the riverbed is not subjected to erosion. On the other hand, all the computed depths significantly increase when soil erosion is taken into consideration. This is mainly due to an enhanced initial kinematic energy from an increased dropping depth. Both depths increase exponentially with the initial kinematic energy. An enhanced shear strength can potentially increase the side resistance and end-bearing pressure around a drop anchor, thus significantly reducing the downward penetration of a hall anchor. Design charts are developed to directly estimate penetration depth and associated plastic zone due to dynamically installed anchor at arbitrary soil shear strength and anchor kinematic energy.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제45권2호
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• pp.205-218
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• 2022

Proper calculation of splitting tensile strength (STS) of concrete has been a crucial task, due to the wide use of concrete in the construction sector. Following many recent studies that have proposed various predictive models for this aim, this study suggests and tests the functionality of three hybrid models in predicting the STS from the characteristics of the mixture components including cement compressive strength, cement tensile strength, curing age, the maximum size of the crushed stone, stone powder content, sand fine modulus, water to binder ratio, and the ratio of sand. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network incorporates invasive weed optimization (IWO), cuttlefish optimization algorithm (CFOA), and electrostatic discharge algorithm (ESDA) which are among the newest optimization techniques. A dataset from the earlier literature is used for exploring and extrapolating the STS behavior. The results acquired from several accuracy criteria demonstrated a nice learning capability for all three hybrid models viz. IWO-MLP, CFOA-MLP, and ESDA-MLP. Also in the prediction phase, the prediction products were in a promising agreement (above 88%) with experimental results. However, a comparative look revealed the ESDA-MLP as the most accurate predictor. Considering mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) index, the error of ESDA-MLP was 9.05%, while the corresponding value for IWO-MLP and CFOA-MLP was 9.17 and 13.97%, respectively. Since the combination of MLP and ESDA can be an effective tool for optimizing the concrete mixture toward a desirable STS, the last part of this study is dedicated to extracting a predictive formula from this model.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.237-248
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• 2022

Nowadays, more and more subway tunnels were planed and constructed underneath the ground of urban cities to relieve the congested traffic. Potential damage may occur in existing tunnel if the new tunnel is constructed too close. So far, previous studies mainly focused on the tunnel-tunnel interactions with circular shape. The difference between circular and horseshoe shaped tunnel in terms of deformation mechanism is not fully investigated. In this study, three-dimensional numerical parametric studies were carried out to explore the effect of different tunnel shapes on the complicated tunnel-tunnel interaction problem. Parameters considered include volume loss, tunnel stiffness and relative density. It is found that the value of volume loss play the most important role in the multi-tunnel interactions. For a typical condition in this study, the maximum invert settlement and gradient along longitudinal direction of horseshoe shaped tunnel was 50% and 96% larger than those in circular case, respectively. This is because of the larger vertical soil displacement underneath existing tunnel. Due to the discontinuous hoop axial stress in horseshoe shaped tunnel, significant shear stress was mobilized around the axillary angles. This resulted in substantial bending moment at the bottom plate and side walls of horseshoe shaped tunnel. Consequently, vertical elongation and horizontal compression in circular existing tunnel were 45% and 33% smaller than those in horseshoe case (at monitored section X/D = 0), which in latter case was mainly attributed to the bending induced deflection. The radial deformation stiffness of circular tunnel is more sensitive to the Young's modulus compared with horseshoe shaped tunnel. This is because of that circular tunnel resisted the radial deformation mainly by its hoop axial stress while horseshoe shaped tunnel do so mainly by its flexural rigidity. In addition, the reduction of soil stiffness beneath the circular tunnel was larger than that in horseshoe shaped tunnel at each level of relative density, indicating that large portion of tunneling effect were undertaken by the ground itself in circular tunnel case.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제84권3호
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• pp.375-391
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• 2022

This paper discussed and analyzed the interfacial stress distribution characteristic of adjacent cracks in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) plate strengthened concrete slabs. One un-strengthened concrete test beam and four CFRP plate-strengthened concrete test beams were designed to carry out four-point flexural tests. The test data shows that the interfacial shear stress between the interface of CFRP plate and concrete can effectively reduce the crack shrinkage of the tensile concrete and reduces the width of crack. The maximum main crack flexural height in pure bending section of the strengthened specimen is smaller than that of the un-strengthened specimen, the CFRP plate improves the rigidity of specimens without brittle failure. The average ultimate bearing capacity of the CFRP-strengthened specimens was increased by 64.3% compared to that without CFRP-strengthen. This indicites that CFRP enhancement measures can effectively improve the ultimate bearing capacity and delay the occurrence of debonding damage. Based on the derivation of mechanical analysis model, the calculation formula of interfacial shear stress between adjacent cracks is proposed. The distributions characteristics of interfacial shear stress between certain crack widths were given. In the intermediate cracking region of pure bending sections, the length of the interfacial softening near the mid-span cracking position gradually increases as the load increases. The CFRP-concrete interface debonding capacity with the larger adjacent crack spacing is lower than that with the smaller adjacent crack spacing. The theoretical calculation results of interfacial bonding shear stress between adjacent cracks have good agreement with the experimental results. The interfacial debonding failure between adjacent cracks in the intermediate cracking region was mainly caused by the root of the main crack. The larger the spacing between adjacent cracks exists, the easier the interfacial debonding failure occurs.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제48권1호
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• pp.103-111
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• 2023

The caving property of top coal is a key factor to the success of top coal caving mining. The influence law of cyclic loading and unloading of hydraulic support on top coal caving is of great significance to improve the recovery rate of top coal. The similar simulation methods were used to study the dynamic evolution of the top coal cracks under the multi-cycle action of the support, and the parameters of top coal cracks were analyzed quantitatively in this paper. The results show that the top coal cracks can be divided into horizontal cracks and vertical cracks under the cyclic loading and unloading of the support. With the increase of the times of the support cycles loading and unloading, the load on the support decreases, the fractal dimension of the cracks increases, the number and total length of the top coal cracks increases, and the top coal caving is getting better. With the increase of the times of multi-cycle loading and unloading, the fractal dimension, total crack length and crack rate of top coal show a trend of rapid increase first and then increase slowly. Both the total length of the top coal cracks and the crack rate basically show linear growth with the change of the fractal dimension. The top coal caving can be well improved and the coal resource recovery rate increased through the multi-cycle loading and unloading.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제33권11호
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• pp.1521-1530
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• 2023

An α-L-rhamnosidase gene from Thermoclostridium. stercorarium subsp. thermolacticum DSM 2910 (TstRhaA) was cloned and expressed. The maximum TstRhaA activity of the protein reached 25.2 U/ml, and the molecular mass was approximately 106.6 kDa. The protein was purified 8.0-fold by Ni-TED affinity with an overall recovery of 16.6% and a specific activity of 187.9 U/mg. TstRhaA activity was the highest at 65℃ and pH 6.5. In addition, it exhibited excellent thermal stability, better pH stability, good tolerance to low concentrations of organic reagents, and high catalytic activity for p-nitrophenyl-α-L-rhamnopyranoside (pNPR). Substrate specificity studies showed that TstRhaA exhibited a high specific activity for rutin. At 60℃, pH 6.5, and 0.3 U/ml enzyme dosage, 60 g/l rutin was converted to 45.55 g/l isoquercitrin within 150 min. The molar conversion rate of rutin and the yield of isoquercitrin were 99.8% and 12.22 g/l/h, respectively. The results suggested that TstRhaA could be used for mass production of isoquercitrin.