• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.35 no.11
• /
• pp.1471-1476
• /
• 2011

The catalytic converter in the front part of an automobile's exhaust system converts toxic exhaust gas into nontoxic gas. The substrate in the central part of the converter has a circular or oval-shaped cross section and fine lattice-shaped walls. In the canning process, the substrate is wrapped in mats and inserted into a can. During this process, mat pressure is induced, which may cause brittle fracturing in the substrate. In this paper, a finite element program for determining the mat pressure distribution was developed to avoid these fractures. The program was created in Microsoft EXCEL, so the input and output procedures are relatively simple. It was assumed that the substrate is rigid, the mat is material nonlinear, and the can is linear elastic. The can is modeled as a beam element to resist both bending and uniform tension/compression. The number of elements is fixed to 35, and the number of iterations, to 20. The solutions are compared to ABAQUS solutions and found to be in good agreement.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.59 no.3
• /
• pp.503-526
• /
• 2016

In-plane and out-of-plane free vibration analysis of Timoshenko curved beams is addressed based on the isogeometric method, and an effective scheme to avoid numerical locking in both of the two patterns is proposed in this paper. The isogeometric computational model takes into account the effects of shear deformation, rotary inertia and axis extensibility of curved beams, and is applicable for uniform circular beams, and more complicated variable curvature and cross-section beams as illustrated by numerical examples. Meanwhile, it is shown that, the $C^{p-1}$-continuous NURBS elements remarkably have higher accuracy than the finite elements with the same number of degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, for in-plane or out-of-plane vibration analysis of Timoshenko curved beams, the NURBS-based isogeometric method also exhibits locking effect to some extent. To eliminate numerical locking, the selective reduced one-point integration and $\bar{B}$ projection element based on stiffness ratio is devised to achieve locking free analysis for in-plane and out-of-plane models, respectively. The suggested integral schemes for moderately slender models obtain accurate results in both dominated and non-dominated regions of locking effect. Moreover, this strategy is effective for beam structures with different slenderness. Finally, the influence factors of structural parameters of curved beams on their natural frequency are scrutinized.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.19 no.5
• /
• pp.1115-1144
• /
• 2015

Current climate conditions along with advances in technology make further design and verification methods for structural strength and reliability of wind turbine towers imperative. Along with the growing interest for "green" energy, the wind energy sector has been developed tremendously the past decades. To this end, the improvement of wind turbine towers in terms of structural detailing and performance result in more efficient, durable and robust structures that facilitate their wider application, thus leading to energy harvesting increase. The wind tower industry is set to expand to greater heights than before and tapered steel towers with a circular cross-section are widely used as more capable of carrying heavier loads. The present study focuses on the improvement of the structural response of steel wind turbine towers, by means of internal stiffening. A thorough investigation of the contribution of stiffening rings to the overall structural behavior of the tower is being carried out. These stiffening rings are placed along the tower height to reduce local buckling phenomena, thus increasing the buckling strength of steel wind energy towers and leading the structure to a behavior closer to the one provided by the beam theory. Additionally to ring stiffeners, vertical stiffening schemes are studied to eliminate the presence of short wavelength buckles due to bending. For the purposes of this research, finite element analysis is applied in order to describe and predict in an accurate way the structural response of a model tower stiffened by internal stiffeners. Moreover, a parametric study is being performed in order to investigate the effect of the stiffeners' number to the functionality of the aforementioned stiffening systems and the improved structural behavior of the overall wind converter.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.11 no.6
• /
• pp.1006-1014
• /
• 2000

Hemisphere type Luneberg lens antenna with a reflector(frequency : 9.375 GHz, -3 dB beam width 6$^{\circ}$, diameter 30.3 cm(about 10 A), which is miniaturized and lightweightized by attaching a reflector on a section of half the Luneberg lens antenna, is designed and fabricated on the basis of Luneberg lens antenna from which easy beam pointing is acquired only by movement of 1st radiator. Measurement shows -3dB beamwidth is 6.1$^{\circ}$ in case of E-plane and 5.5$^{\circ}$ in case of H-plane. These are good agreements with expected value. Gain of this antenna is 26dBi(Aperture efficiency for uniform distribution : $\pi$ = 44.97%) which is greater than that of 1st radiator(Rectangular microstrip antenna) by 20.4 dB. And, after calculating the approximated pattern of the 1st radiator, far-field pattern, whose source is the second aperture source farmed from the approximated pattern of the 1st radiator is computed. Comparing this far-field pattern with the expected pattern, a (relatively) good agreement is observed. Circular polarization Luneberg lens antenna is also manufactured by making 1st radiator so that it has the characteristics of LHCP and RHCP radiation. The results are as followings : -3 dB beamwidth 5.8$^{\circ}$ , side lobe level -15.3 dB, isolation between LHCP and RHCP radiation 2543, axial ratio 2 dB bandwidth about 1.4 GHz(14.9%).