• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제22권2호
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• pp.201-207
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• 2018

This paper proposes a line laser thermography scanning (LLTS) system for multiple crack evaluation on a concrete structure, as the core technology for unmanned aerial vehicle-mounted crack inspection. The LLTS system consists of a line shape continuous-wave laser source, an infrared (IR) camera, a control computer and a scanning jig. The line laser generates thermal waves on a target concrete structure, and the IR camera simultaneously measures the corresponding thermal responses. By spatially scanning the LLTS system along a target concrete structure, multiple cracks even in a large scale concrete structure can be effectively visualized and evaluated. Since raw IR data obtained by scanning the LLTS system, however, includes timely- and spatially-varying IR images due to the limited field of view (FOV) of the LLTS system, a novel time-spatial-integrated (TSI) coordinate transform algorithm is developed for precise crack evaluation in a static condition. The proposed system has the following technical advantages: (1) the thermal wave propagation is effectively induced on a concrete structure with low thermal conductivity of approximately 0.8 W/m K; (2) the limited FOV issues can be solved by the TSI coordinate transform; and (3) multiple cracks are able to be visualized and evaluated by normalizing the responses based on phase mapping and spatial derivative processes. The proposed LLTS system is experimentally validated using a concrete specimen with various cracks. The experimental results reveal that the LLTS system successfully visualizes and evaluates multiple cracks without false alarms.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제22권2호
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• pp.139-150
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• 2018

A variable electromotive-force generator (VEG), which is a modified generator with an adjustable overlap between the rotor and the stator, is proposed to expand the operational range of a regular generator through a simple and robust active control strategy. It has a broad range of applications in hybrid vehicles, wind turbines, water turbines, and similar technologies. A mathematical model of the VEG is developed, and a novel prototype is designed and fabricated. The performance of the VEG with an active control system, which adjusts the overlap ratio based on the desired output power at different rotor speeds for a specific application, is theoretically and experimentally studied. The results show that reducing the overlap between the rotor and the stator of the generator results in reduced torque loss of the generator and an increased rotational speed of the generator rotor. A VEG can improve the fuel efficiency of hybrid vehicles; it can also expand operational ranges of wind turbines and water turbines and harness more power.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권5호
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• pp.631-641
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• 2020

To meet the urgent requirements of safety surveillance from civil engineering management authorities, this study proposes a refined and efficient approach to generate full-field high-resolution panorama of construction sites using camera-amounted UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). GPS (Global Position System) information extraction for pre-registration, feature points filtering for efficient registration and optimal seaming line seeking for fusion are performed in sequence to form the full-field panorama generation framework. Advantages of the proposed method are as follows. First, GPS information can sort images for pre-registration, avoiding inefficient repeated pairwise calculations and matching. Second, the feature points are filtered according to the characteristics of the construction site images to reduce the amount of calculation. The proposed framework is validated on a road construction site and results demonstrate that it can generate an accurate and high-quality full-site panorama for the safety supervision in a much efficient manner.

• 한국철도학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국철도학회 2007년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.30-34
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• 2007

Structural integrity of railway vehicles should last for a long period against various and continuous fatigue loadings, and the carbody structures of railway vehicle are manufactured by applying multiform welding types for each material. Since the most of cracks are occurred and proceeded at the vicinity of welding area during the lifetime of carbody structure, the fatigue strength evaluation for welding area of carbody structure should have been carried out. Rotem Company has evaluated lifetime and fatigue strength of carbody structure according to the fatigue analysis based on the international standard and/or inner-official regulation. This study introduces the fatigue analysis method that we have evaluated and calculated the damages for the welding areas of carbody structure under various fatigue loading conditions using cumulative fatigue damage rule(Miner's rule) to verify whether the cumulative damage does exceed unity. This study contains the fatigue test of specimens to derive stress-life relations(S-N curve), sub-modeling analysis and the calculation of cumulative damages under fatigue loading. The fatigue analysis verifies the welding area shall be capable of withstanding under fatigue loading, identifies how critical area shall be selected and presents the principles to be used for design verification.

• 한국해양공학회지
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• 제23권1호
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• pp.158-163
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• 2009

Many longitudinal pipes in ships are subject to considerable loads, caused by hull girder bending in the ships and/or thermal loads in some special pipes through which fluids with highly abnormal temperatures are conveyed. As these loads may cause failure in the pipes or their supporting structures, loops have been widely adopted to prevent such failure, based on the idea that they can lower the stress level in a pipe byabsorbing some portion of these loads. But as the loops also have some negative effects, such as causing extra manufacturing cost, deteriorating the function of the pipe, and occupying extra space, the number and dimensions of these loops need to be minimized. This research developed design formulas for pipe loops, modeling them as a spring element, for which the axial stiffness is calculated based on the beam theory, incorporating the flexibility effect of the straight portion of the pipe. The accuracy of the proposed design formulas was verified by comparing two results obtained from the proposed formulas and MSC/NASTRAN. This paper concludes with a sample application of the proposed formulas, showing their efficiency.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제11권5호
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• pp.841-859
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• 2016

Bridge bearings are important connection elements between bridge superstructures and substructures, whose health states directly affect the performance of the bridges. This paper systematacially presents a new method to identify the bridge bearing damage based on the neural network theory. Firstly, based on the analysis of different damage types, a description of the bearing damage is introduced, and a uniform description for all the damage types is given. Then, the feasibility and sensitivity of identifying the bearing damage with bridge vibration modes are investigated. After that, a Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN) is built, whose input and output are the beam modal information and the damage information, respectively. Finally, trained by plenty of data samples formed by the numerical method, the network is employed to identify the bearing damage. Results show that the bridge bearing damage can be clearly reflected by the modal information of the bridge beam, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• 한국전산유체공학회지
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.41-46
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• 2014

The aerodynamic drag of high-speed train has been calculated and the effect of bogie side fairing on the aerodynamic drag has been investigated. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation based on steady-state 3 dimensional Navier-Stokes equation has been conducted employing FLUENT 12 and the aerodynamic model of HEMU-430x, the Korean next generation high-speed train under development has been built using GAMBIT 2.4.6. Three types of bogie side fairing configuration, the proto-type without fairing, half-covered fairing to avoid the interference with the bogie frame and full-covered fairing have been adopted to the train model to compare the drag reduction effects of the bogie side fairing configurations and the numerical results yields that the bogie side fairing can reduce the aerodynamic drag of the 6-car trainset up to 7.8%. The aerodynamic drag coefficient of each vehicle as well as the flow structures around the bogie system have also been examined to analyze the reason and mechanism of the drag reduction by bogie side fairing.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제21권5호
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• pp.669-675
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• 2018

Under braking forces of a freight train, there are great longitudinal structural responses of a large freight railway cable-stayed bridge. To alleviate such adverse reactions, viscous dampers are required, whose parametric selection is one of important and arduous researches. Based on the longitudinal dynamics vehicle model, responses of a cable-stayed bridge are investigated under various cases. It shows that there is a notable effect of initial braking speeds and locations of a freight train on the structural responses. Under the most unfavorable braking condition, the parameter sensitivity analyses of viscous dampers are systematically performed. Meanwhile, a mixing method called BPNN-NSGA-II, combining the Back Propagation neural network (BPNN) and Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm With Elitist Strategy (NSGA-II), is employed to optimize parameters of viscous dampers. The result shows that: 1. the relationships between the parameters of viscous dampers and the key longitudinal responses of the bridge are high nonlinear, which are completely different from each other; 2. the longitudinal displacement of the bridge main girder significantly decreases by the optimized viscous dampers.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제21권5호
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• pp.611-621
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• 2018

Compared with the highway bridges, the relatively higher requirement on the safety and comfort of vehicle makes the high-speed railway (HSR) bridges need to present enhanced dynamic performance. To this end, installing a health monitor system (HMS) on selected key HSR bridges has been widely applied. Typically, the HSR takes fully enclosed operation model and its skylight time is very short, which means that it is not easy to operate the acquisition devices and download data on site. However, current HMS usually involves manual operations, which makes it inconvenient to be used for the HSR. Hence, a HMS named DASP-MTS (Data Acquisition and Signal Processing - Monitoring Test System) that integrates the internet, cloud computing (CC) and virtual instrument (VI) techniques, is developed in this study. DASP-MTS can realize data acquisition and transmission automatically. Furthermore, the acquired data can be timely shared with experts from various locations to deal with the unexpected events. The system works in a Browser/Server frame so that users at any places can obtain real-time data and assess the health situation without installing any software. The developed integrated HMS has been applied to the Xijiang high-speed railway arch bridge. Preliminary analysis results are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the DASP-MTS as applied to the HSR bridges. This study will provide a reference to design the HMS for other similar bridges.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.654-665
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• 2016

The pumping of electric power from photovoltaic (PV) farms is normally carried out using transformers, which require heavy mounting structures and are thus costly, less efficient, and bulky. Therefore, transformerless schemes are developed for the injection of power into the grid. Compared with the H4 inverter topology, the H6 topology is a better choice for pumping PV power into the grid because of the reduced common mode current. This paper presents how the perturb and observe (P&O) algorithm for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) can be implemented in the H6 inverter topology along with the improved sinusoidal current injected to the grid at unity power factor with the average current mode control technique. On the basis of the P&O MPPT algorithm, a power reference for the present insolation level is first calculated. Maintaining this power reference and referring to the AC sine wave of bus bars, a sinusoidal current at unity power factor is injected to the grid. The proportional integral (PI) controller and fuzzy logic controller (FLC) are designed and implemented. The FLC outperforms the PI controller in terms of conversion efficiency and injected power quality. A simulation in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment is carried out. An experimental prototype is built to validate the proposed idea. The dynamic and steady-state performances of the FLC controller are found to be better than those of the PI controller. The results are presented in this paper.