• KCI Concrete Journal
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2000

Once a structure fabricated with mass concrete is in a form of wall such as retaining wall, side walls of a concrete caisson and so on, cracks induced by hydration heat have been known to be governed by exterior restraints which are mainly related to the boundary conditions of the structure. However, it is thought that the degree of restraints can be alleviated considerably only if a lift height of concrete placement or a panel size of the wall is selected properly before construction. As a way of minimizing thermal cracking commonly observed in massive wall-typed structure, this study aimed at evaluating effects of geometrical configuration on the temperature rise and thermal stress through parametric study. Evaluation of the effect was also performed for cement types using anti-sulphate cement, blast furnace slag cement and cement blended with two mineral admixture and one ordinary Portland Cement. so called ternary blended cement. As a result of analytical study, it was found that a lift height of concrete placement is the most important factor in controlling thermal cracking in massive wall, and the increase of a lift height is not always positive to the crack occurrence as not expected.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.34-39
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• 2011

Nickel-based austenitic alloys such as Alloy 82 and 182 had been employed as the weld metals in nuclear power plants (NPPs) due to their high corrosion resistance as well as good mechanical properties. However, since the 2000s, the occurrence of primary water stress corrosion cracking has been reported in conjunction with these alloys in domestic and oversea NPPs. In the present work, we assumed an imaginary crack at the inner surface of a surge nozzle weld that had previously experienced the outside repair welding, and constructed its finite element model. Finite element analysis was performed with respect to the heat transfer, and then to the residual stress for obtaining the total applied stress distributions. These stress distributions were finally converted to the stress intensity factors for estimating crack growth rate. From the comparison of crack growth rate curves for the cases of no repair welding and outside repair welding, it was found that the outside repair welding did not exhibit negative effect on the crack growth for the surge nozzle under consideration in this work; in both cases, the cracks stopped growing before they became the through-wall cracks.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.401-411
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• 2005

The influence of cracks on the elastic deflection and ultimate bearing capacity of eccentric thin-walled columns with both ends pinned was studied in this paper. First, a method was developed and applied to determine the elastic deflection of the eccentric thin-walled columns containing some model-I cracks. A trigonometric series solution of the elastic deflection equation was obtained by the Rayleigh-Ritz energy method. Compared with the solution presented in Okamura (1981), this solution meets the needs of compatibility of deformation and is useful for thin-walled columns. Second, a two-criteria approach to determine the stability factor ${\varphi}$ has been suggested and its analytical formula has been derived. Finally, as an example, box columns with a center through-wall crack were analyzed and calculated. The effects of cracks on both the maximum deflection and the stability coefficient ${\varphi}$ for various crack lengths or eccentricities were illustrated and discussed. The analytical and numerical results of tests on the columns show that the deflection increment caused by the cracks increases with increased crack length or eccentricity, and the critical transition crack length from yielding failure to fracture failure ${\xi}_c$ is found to decrease with an increase of the slenderness ratio or eccentricity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.3112-3121
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• 2021

One of the major factors affecting the life span of a Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is the Pressurised Thermal Shock (PTS). PTS is a thermo-mechanical load on the RPV wall due to steep temperature gradients and structural load created by internal pressure of the fluid within the RPV. Safe operating life of a nuclear power plant is ensured by carrying out fracture analysis of the RPV against thermal shock. Carrying out fracture tests on RPV/large scale components is not always feasible. Hence, studies on laboratory level specimens are necessary to validate and supplement the prototype results. This paper aims to study the fracture behaviour of standard Compact Tension [C(T)] specimens, made of RPV steel 20MnMoNi55, subjected to thermal shock through experimental and numerical investigations. Fracture tests have been carried out on the C(T) specimens subjected to thermal transient load and tensile load to quantify the effect of thermal shock. Crack resistance curves are obtained from the fracture tests as per ASTM E1820 and compared with those obtained numerically using XFEM and a good agreement was found. A quantitative study on the crack tip plastic zone, computed using cohesive segment approach, from the numerical analyses justified the experimental crack initiation toughness.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.1528-1534
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• 2001

In order to improve Leak-Be(ore-Break methodology, more precisely the crack growth evaluation, a round robin analysis was proposed by the CEA Saclay. The aim of this analysis was to evaluate the crack initiation life, penetration life and shape of through wall crack under cyclic bending loads. The proposed round robin analysis is composed of three main topic; fatigue crack initiation, crack propagation and crack penetration. This paper deals with the first topic, crack initiation in a notched pipe under four point bending. Both elastic-plastic finite element analysis and Neuber's rule were used to estimate the crack initiation life and the finite element models were verified by mesh-refinement, stress distribution and global deflection. In elastic-plastic finite element analysis, crack initiation life was determined by strain amplitude at the notch tip and strain-life curve of the material. In the analytical method, Neuber's rule with the consideration of load history and mean stress effect, was used for the life estimation. The effect of notch tip radius, strain range, cyclic hardening rule were examined in this study. When these results were compared with the experimental ones, the global deformation was a good agreement but the crack initiation cycle was higher than the experimental result.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.442-448
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• 2007

The ultrasonic inspection system for the expansion/transition area of steam generator tube was successfully developed. Variety of artificial flaw and real track specimen was tested using the UT system to verify the performance of the system. All artificial flaws of which through-wall depth larger than 10% was clearly detected by UT system. Measurement results of through-wall depth of flaws larger than 20% had good linearity and reproducibility with 3.27 of standard deviation. Results of real crack specimen test suggested that the detection limit of real crack strongly depends on the track morphology. A potential for measurement of PRL(percentage of remaining ligament) was recognized by the real crack specimen test.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.593-604
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• 2021

In this study, a comparative test was conducted on a specially developed elastic waterproof paint and general water-based paint for the purpose of responding to cracks occurring on the outer wall of concrete structures and improving watertightness. Through the comparative experiment, it was confirmed that the watertightness could be improved by securing the crack shielding property, and it was also confirmed that about 10 times more crack responsiveness was secured compared to general water-based paint. In addition, it was confirmed that the adhesion performance of at least 1.3MPa and resistance to a water permeation pressure of 0.1MPa were possible, confirming that stability was secured from a waterproofing perspective.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.586-593
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• 2007

This paper proposes closed-form plastic limit load solutions for elbow with local wall thinning at extrados under internal pressure. This work was performed using 3-dimensional, small strain FE analyses based on elastic-perfectly plastic materials. The wide range of elbow and local wall thinning geometries are considered. For systematic analyses for effect of axial thinning extent on limit loads, two limiting cases are considered; a sufficiently long thinning, and the circumferential part-through surface crack. Then, the closed-form plastic limit load solutions for intermediate thinning are obtained by using result of two limiting cases. The effect of axial thinning extent for elbow on plastic limit load is highlighted by comparing with that for straight pipes. Although the proposed limit load solutions are developed for the case when local wall thinning exist in the center of elbow, it is also shown that they can be applied to the case when local wall thinning exists anywhere within elbow.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2022

It is necessary to better understand the effect of age-related degradation on the performance of reinforced concrete shear walls in nuclear power plants in order to ensure their structural safety in the event of earthquakes. Therefore, this paper studies seismic fragility of the typical shear wall in nuclear power plants under earthquake excitation Reinforced concrete shear wall is composed of wall, horizontal and vertical flanges. Due to characteristics of its geometry, it is difficult to predict the ultimate behavior of shear wall under earthquake excitation. In this study, for more realistic numerical simulation, the Latin Hyper-Cube (LHC) simulation technique was used to generate uncertain variables for the material properties of concrete shear walls. The effects of crack, characteristics of inelastic behavior of concrete, and loss of cross section were considered in the nonlinear finite element analysis. The effects of aging-related deterioration were investigated on the performance of reinforced concrete shear walls through analysis of undegraded concrete shear walls and degraded concrete shear walls. The resulting seismic fragility curves present the change of performance of concrete shear wall due to age-related degradation.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.180-187
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to investigate the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete shear wall subjected to earthquake motions. A computer program, named RCAHEST(Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology), was used for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures. A 4-node flat shell element with drilling rotational stiffness is used for spatial discretization. The layered approach is used to discretize behavior of concrete and reinforcement through the thickness. Material nonlinearity is taken into account by comprising tensile, compressive and shear models of cracked concrete and a model of reinforcing steel. The smeared crack approach is incorporated. Solution of the equations of motion is obtained by numerical integration using Hither-Hughes-Taylor(HHT) algorithm. The proposed numerical method for the seismic analysis of reinforced concrete shear wall is verified by comparison of analysis results with reliable experimental results.