• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.231-242
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• 2012

This research work aims to develop an optimal design using Finite Element (FE) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) methods to replace the traditional concrete and timber material by a Synthetic Polyurethane fibre glass composite material in railway sleepers. The conventional timber railway sleeper technology is associated with several technical problems related to its durability and ability to resist cutting and abrading action of the bearing plate. The use of pre-stress concrete sleeper in railway industry has many disadvantages related to the concrete material behaviour to resist dynamic stress that may lead to a significant mechanical damage with feasible fissures and cracks. Scientific researchers have recently developed a new composite material such as Glass Fibre Reinforced Polyurethane (GFRP) foam to replace the conventional one. The mechanical properties of these materials are reliable enough to help solving structural problems such as durability, light weight, long life span (50-60 years), less water absorption, provide electric insulation, excellent resistance of fatigue and ability to recycle. This paper suggests appropriate sleeper design to reduce the volume of the material. The design optimization shows that the sleeper length is more sensitive to the loading type than the other parameters.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.378-384
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• 2003

Mesophilically-grown granular sludge seeded in thermophilic UASB reactor was monitored to better understand the start-up process of the reactor. The reactor was fed with a synthetic wastewater containing glucose. As COD loading rate increased stepwise, methane production rate increased. Maximum values of COD removal efficiency (95%) and methane production rate (5.3 l/day) were achieved by approximately day-80 and remained constant afterward. However, physicochemical and microbial properties of granules kept changing even after day-80. Specific methanogenic activity (SMA) was initially negligible, and increased continuously until day-153 and remained constant afterward, showing the maximum value of $1.51{\pm}0.13\;g\;CH_4-COD/g$ VSS/day. Deteriorated settling ability of granules recovered the initial value by day-98 and was maintained afterward, as determined by sludge volume index. Initially reduced granule size increased until day-126, reaching a plateau of 1.1 mm. Combined use of fluorescence in situ hybridization and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) allowed to localize families of Methanosaetaceae and Merhanosarcinaceae in granules with time Quantitative analyses of CLSM images of granule sections showed abundance patterns of the methanogens and numerical dominance of Methanosaeta spp. throughout the start-up period. The trend of SMA agreed well with abundance patterns of the methanogens.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.179-186
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• 2010

In biological wastewater treatment, high lipid concentrations can inhibit the activity of microorganisms critical to the treatment process and cause undesirable biomass flotation. To reduce the inhibitory effects of high lipid concentrations, a two-phase anaerobic system, consisting of an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor (ASBR) and an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor in series, was applied to synthetic dairy wastewater treatment. During 153 days of operation, the two-phase system showed stable performance in lipid degradation. In the ASBR, a 13% lipid removal efficiency and 10% double-bond removal efficiency were maintained. In the UASB, the chemical oxygen demand (COD), lipid, and volatile fatty acid (VFA) removal efficiencies were greater than 80%, 70%, and 95%, respectively, up to an organic loading rate of 6.5 g COD/l/day. No serious operational problems, such as significant scum formation or sludge washout, were observed. Protein degradation was found to occur prior to degradation during acidogenesis.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.46-54
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• 1997

The object of this paper is to evaluate SCC(stress corrosion cracking) susceptibility for parent metal and bond line region of weld joints which have the various weld heat input condtions in TMCP(thermo-mechanical control process) steel by SP-SSRT(small punch-slow strain rate test) method. And the SCC test results of TMCP steel are compared with those of the conventional HT50 steel which has te almost same tensile strength level like TMCP steel. The loading rate used was $3\times10^{-4}$mm/min and the corrosive environment was synthetic sea water. According to the test results, in the case of parent metal, TMCP steel showed higher SCC susceptibility than HT50 steel because of the high plastic strain level of ferrite microstructure obtained by accelerated cooling. And in the case of bond line, the both TMCP steel and HT50 steel showed low load-displacement behaviors and higher SCC susceptibility above 0.6. These results may be caused by theembrittled martensite structure on HT50 steel and by the coarsened grain and the proeutectoid ferrite structure obtained by the impart of accelerated cooling effect on TMCP steel.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.492-498
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• 1995

Net type polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) media and cillium type polyethlene polypropylene (PEPP) media were installed in the aereted submerged biofilm reactors. Synthetic phenol wastewater for feed were made to contain 1,480 mg of phenol per liter of water. The organic loading range of reactors were 0.439-0.456 kg COD/m$_{3}$, 0.882 - 0.919 kg COD/m$_{3}$ and 1.199-1.339 kg COD/m$_{3}$. Comparing PVDC to PEPP media, the bacterial number found in biofilm on PEPP were slightly higher. With the low temperature (10$\circ$C), the number of bacteria was some what deceered. Number of bacterial strains identified from PVDC were 23 and those from PEPP were 42. Genera identified in the PVDC media were Flavobacterium (47.8%), Unidentified (17.6%), Pseudomonas (13.0%), Micrococcus (8.7%) and Beggratoa (8.7%). Genera identified in the PEPP media reactor were Pseudomonas (35.7%), Alcaligenes (19.0%), Aeromonas (14.33%) and Micrococcus (11.9%), In the steady, state, a filamentous bacteria, type 1701 was identified in all of the reactors. Paramecium sp. and fungi were present in the PVDC media reactor. While, Difflugia sp, Paramecium sp. and fungi were found in the PEPP media reactor. The low diversity of protozoa was ascribed to high concentration of phenol.

• Archives of Pharmacal Research
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.928-933
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• 2006

Percutaneous delivery of NSAIDs has advantages of avoiding hepatic first pass effect and delivering the drug for extended period of time at a sustained, concentrated level at the inflammation site that mainly acts at the joint and the related regions. To develop the new topical formulations of pranoprofen that have suitable bioadhesion, the gel was formulated using hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) and poloxamer 407. The effects of temperature on drug release was performed at $32^{\circ}C$, $37^{\circ}C$ and $42^{\circ}C$ according to drug concentration of 0.04%, 0.08%, 0.12%, 0.16%, and 0.2% (w/w) using synthetic cellulose membrane at $37{\pm}0.5^{\circ}C$. The increase of temperature showed the increased drug release. The activation energy (Ea), which were calculated from the slope of lop P versus 1000/T plots was 11.22 kcal/ mol for 0.04%, 10.79 kcal/mol for 0.08%, 10.41 kcal/mol for 0.12% and 8.88 kcal/mol for 0.16% loading dose from the pranoprofen gel. To increase the drug permeation, some kinds of penetration enhancers such as the ethylene glycols, the propylene glycols, the glycerides, the non-ionic surfactants and the fatty acids were incorporated in the gel formulation. Among the various enhancers used, propylene glycol mono laurate showed the highest enhancing effects with the enhancement factor of 2.74. The results of this study suggest that development of topical gel formulation of pranoprofen containing an enhancer is feasible.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.253-258
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• 2004

Synthetic organic polyelectrolytes can be used to condition sludges to enhance their dewaterability. Intermittent aerobic digestion is an useful digestion technology and has many advantages like neutral pH, low installation cost and easiness to operation. The objectives of this study were to investigate the dewaterability of intemittent aerobic digestion sludge and to find the relationship between dewaterability and particle size distribution change under the conditioning of intermittent aerobic digestion sludge by cationic polyelectrolyte. Digested sludge from intermittent aerobic digestion was used and cationic polyacrylamide polymer was added as a conditioner. CST(capillary suction time), TTF(time-to-filtration) were tested as a dewaterability index and the number of particle distribution was analyzed using particle size analyzer. The results indicate that cationic polyelectrolytes is useful to enhance dewaterability of intermittent aerobic digestion sludge. Mean particle diameter was increased as polymer dosage increased and its value was reached up to 100 mm on the condition of optimal cationic polymer dosage. CST and TTF are well correlated with mean particle diameter when the weighting order is 1.7. By the optimal conditioning with cationic polymer, particles in the filtrate are also reduced significantly and this means that conditioning is helpful to main stream by reducing SS loading from return flow.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.461-487
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• 2015

In recent years, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has become a competitive computing technology in comparison with the standard Central Processing Unit (CPU) technology due to reduced unit cost, energy and computing time. This paper describes the derivation and implementation of GPU-based algorithms for the analysis of wind loading uncertainty on high-rise systems, in line with the research field of probability-based wind engineering. The study begins by presenting an application of the GPU technology to basic linear algebra problems to demonstrate advantages and limitations. Subsequently, Monte-Carlo integration and synthetic generation of wind turbulence are examined. Finally, the GPU architecture is used for the dynamic analysis of three high-rise structural systems under uncertain wind loads. In the first example the fragility analysis of a single degree-of-freedom structure is illustrated. Since fragility analysis employs sampling-based Monte Carlo simulation, it is feasible to distribute the evaluation of different random parameters among different GPU threads and to compute the results in parallel. In the second case the fragility analysis is carried out on a continuum structure, i.e., a tall building, in which double integration is required to evaluate the generalized turbulent wind load and the dynamic response in the frequency domain. The third example examines the computation of the generalized coupled wind load and response on a tall building in both along-wind and cross-wind directions. It is concluded that the GPU can perform computational tasks on average 10 times faster than the CPU.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.115-121
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• 1991

A number of experiments were conducted in order to investigate the COD removal rate according to the biofilm thickness in a Fluidized-Bed Biofilm Reactor(FBBR). The following conditions were fixed during the experiments: superficial upflow velocity was 0.47cm/sec, operating temperature was $22{\pm}1{\circ}C$ and pH was about $7{\pm}0.1$. The synthetic wastewater based on glucose was used as a substrate. The COD removal efficiencies were shown as 73% and 95%, respectively, when organic loading rate was increased from $10kgCOD\;/\;{\textrm{m}^3}$.day to $80kgCOD\;/\;{\textrm{m}^3}$.day. Andrew's model of substrate removal rate which was commonly used in fixed-biofilm reactor was transformed and applied in this FBBR experiment to predict substrate removal rate and gave 85% agreement with the experimental values.

• Textile Coloration and Finishing
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.84-89
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• 1996

This study carried out batch and continuous experiments using calcium hydroxide as neutralization agent and immobilization media for removing the ethylene glycol in the pretreated polyester weight loss wastewater. The $TCOD_{Mn}$ concentration in the treated wastewater using culture of iramobilization and suspension for the synthetic wastewater were found as 650mg/l and 1,250mg/l after 48hours, respectively. SVI(Sludge Volume Index) and $TCOD_{Mn}$ concentration were 74 and 73mg/l at optimum F/M ratio, 1.32kg-TCO $D_{Mn}$ /day. kg-MLVSS. The $TCOD_{Mn}$ concentration and removal efficiency were 213mg/l and 93.5% by continuous experiments in the air-lift bioreactor, respectively. The $TCOD_{Mn}$ concentration was 82mg/l, and also the MLVSS concentration was 2,550mg/l, when the volumetric loading rate was 3.04kg-$TCOD_{Mn}/m^{2}$ day for real polyester weight loss wastewater.