• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.371-380
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• 2019

Termites are pests that cause serious economic and cultural damage by digesting wood cellulose. Termites are arthropods and have an epidermis surrounded by a chitin layer. To maintain a healthy epidermis, termites have chitinase (${\beta}$-1,4-poly-N-acetyl glucosamidinase, EC 3.2.1.14), an enzyme that hydrolyzes the ${\beta}$-1,4 bond of chitin. In this study, the amino acid sequence of the gene, which is presumed to be termite chitinolytic enzyme (NCBI accession no. KC477099), was obtained from a transcriptomic analysis of Reticulitermes speratus KMT001 in Bukhan Mountain, Korea. An NCBI protein BLAST search confirmed that the protein is a glycoside hydrolase family 18 (GH18). The highest homology value found was 47%, with a chitinase from Araneus ventricosus. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the KC477099 protein has the same origins as those of arthropods but has a very low similarity with other arthropod chitinases, resulting in separation at an early stage of evolution. The KC477099 protein contains two conserved motifs, which encode the general enzymatic characteristics of the GH18 group. The amino acid sequences $Asp^{156}-Trp^{157}-Glu^{158}$, which play an important role in the enzymatic activity of the GH18 group, were also present. This study suggests that the termite KC477099 protein is a new type of chitinase, which is evolutionarily distant from other insect chitinases.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.515-526
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• 2020

Cold-mixed asphalt mixture is a widely recommended asphalt pavement materials with potentially economic and environmental benefits. Due to the reduction of natural non-renewable mineral resources, powder minerals with similar properties are considered as new mineral fillers in asphalt mixtures. This study explored the feasibility of using cement to replace natural limestone powder (LP) in emulsified asphalt concrete modified by styrene-butadiene styrene copolymer. The experimental tests, including compressive strength, Marshall stability as well as moisture susceptibility test, were used to investigate the mechanical properties, the Marshall stability, flow value, as well as the moisture damage. In addition, the influence of material composition on the performance of asphalt concrete is explained by the microstructure evolution of the pore structure, the interface transition zone (ITZ), and the micromorphology. Due to mineralogical reactivity of cement, its replacement part of LP improved the mechanical properties, Marshall stability, but it will reduce the moisture susceptibility and flow value. This is because with the increase of the cement substitution rate, the pore structure of the asphalt concrete is refined, the width of ITZ becomes smaller, and the microstructure is more compact. In addition, asphalt concrete with a larger nominal particle size (AC-16) has relatively better performance.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.27-44
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• 2022

Gravelly soil is a kind of special geotechnical material, which is widely used in the subgrade engineering of railway, highway and airport. Its mechanical properties are very complex, and will greatly influence the stability of subgrade engineering. To investigate the mechanical properties and failure mechanism of gravelly soils, this paper introduced and verified a new discrete element method (DEM) of gravelly soils in large scale direct shear test, which considers the actual shape and broken characteristics of gravels. Then, the stress and strain characteristics, particle interaction, particle contact force, crack development and energy conversion in gravelly soils during the shear process were analyzed using this method. Moreover, the effects of gravel content (GC) on the mechanical properties and failure characteristics were discussed. The results reveal that as GC increases, the shear stress becomes more fluctuating, the peak shear stress increases, the volumetric strain tends to dilate, the average particle contact force increases, the cumulative number of cracks increases, and the shear failure plane becomes coarser. Higher GC will change the friction angle with a trend of "stability", "increase", and "stability". Differently, it affects the cohesion with a law of "increase", "stability" and "increase".

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.167-198
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• 2022

In this paper we deal with classical instability problems of heterogeneous Euler beam under conservative loading. It is chosen as the model problem to systematically present several possible solution methods from simplest deterministic to more complex stochastic approach, both of which that can handle more complex engineering problems. We first present classical analytic solution along with rigorous definition of the classical Euler buckling problem starting from homogeneous beam with either simplified linearized theory or the most general geometrically exact beam theory. We then present the numerical solution to this problem by using reduced model constructed by discrete approximation based upon the weak form of the instability problem featuring von Karman (virtual) strain combined with the finite element method. We explain how such numerical approach can easily be adapted to solving instability problems much more complex than classical Euler's beam and in particular for heterogeneous beam, where analytic solution is not readily available. We finally present the stochastic approach making use of the Duffing oscillator, as the corresponding reduced model for heterogeneous Euler's beam within the dynamics framework. We show that such an approach allows computing probability density function quantifying all possible solutions to this instability problem. We conclude that increased computational cost of the stochastic framework is more than compensated by its ability to take into account beam material heterogeneities described in terms of fast oscillating stochastic process, which is typical of time evolution of internal variables describing plasticity and damage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.532-548
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• 2021

Nuclear power plants contain several monitoring systems that can identify the in-vessel phenomena of a severe accident (SA). Though a lot of analysis and research is carried out on SA, right from the development of the nuclear industry, not all the possible circumstances are taken into consideration. Therefore, to improve the efficacy of the safety of nuclear power plants, additional analytical studies are needed that can directly monitor severe accident phenomena. This paper presents an interacting multiple model (IMM) based fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) approach for the identification of in-vessel phenomena to provide the accident propagation information using reactor vessel (RV) out-wall temperature distribution during severe accidents in a nuclear power plant. The estimation of wall temperature is treated as a state estimation problem where the time-varying wall temperature is estimated using IMM employing three multiple models for temperature evolution. From the estimated RV out-wall temperature and rate of temperature, the in-vessel phenomena are identified such as core meltdown, corium relocation, reactor vessel damage, reflooding, etc. We tested the proposed method with five different types of SA scenarios and the results show that the proposed method has estimated the outer wall temperature with good accuracy.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.535-547
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• 2022

Failure patterns of rock specimens represent valuable information about the mechanical properties and crack evolution mechanism of rock. Several kinds of research have been conducted regarding the failure mechanism of brittle material, however; the influence of brittleness on the failure mechanism of rock specimens has not been precisely considered. In the present study, experimental and numerical examinations have been made to evaluate the physical and mechanical phenomena associated with rock failure mechanisms through the uniaxial compression test. In the experimental part, Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) tests equipped with Acoustic Emission (AE) have been conducted on rock samples with three different brittleness. Then, the numerical models have been calibrated based on experimental test results for further investigation and comparing the micro-cracking process in experimental and numerical models. It can be perceived that the failure mode of specimens with high brittleness is tensile axial splitting, based on the experimental evidence of rock specimens with different brittleness. Also, the crack growth mechanism of the rock specimens with various brittleness using discrete element modeling in the numerical part suggested that the specimens with more brittleness contain more tensile fracture during the loading sequences.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.1
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• pp.89-104
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• 2023

This work presents a proposal for employing reduced numerical integration in the formulation of the 4-node quadrilateral solid finite element. The use of these low-order integration rules leads to numerical instabilities such as those producing the hourglass effect. The proposed procedure allows evaluating a given constitutive model only in one integration point, achieving an attractive computational cost reduction and, also, successfully controls the hourglass effect. A validation of the proposal is included and discussed throughout the paper. To show the efficiency of the proposal, several application examples of masonry structures are studied and discussed. To represent the non-linear mechanical behaviour of masonry a plastic-damage model is implemented within the application of this sub-integration scheme. Also, in order to have a full and computationally efficient strategy to determine the behaviour of masonry structures, involving its evolution to collapse, a homogenization technique with a macro-modeling approach is used. The methodology discussed throughout this paper demonstrates a substantial computational cost reduction and an improved approximation of the non-linear problem evidenced by a reduction of up to 85% of the computational time for some cases.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.451-461
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• 2022

The roadways surrounded by rock and coal will lose their stability or even collapse under rock burst. Rock burst mainly involves an evolution of dynamic loading which behaves quite differently from static or quasi-static loading. To compare the dynamic response of coal and rocks with different static strengths, three different rocks and bituminous coal were selected for testing at three different dynamic loadings. It's found that the dynamic compression strength of rocks and bituminous coal is much greater than the static compression strength. The dynamic compression strength and dynamic increase factor of the rocks both increase linearly with the increase of the strain rate, while those of the bituminous coal are irregular due to the characteristics of multi-fracture and heterogeneity. Moreover, the absorbed energy of the rocks and bituminous coal both increase linearly with an increase in the strain rate. And the ratio of absorbed energy to the total energy of bituminous coal is greater than that of rocks. With the increase of dynamic loading, the failure degree of the sample increases, with the increase of the static compressive strength, the damage degree also increases. The static compassion strength of the bituminous coal is lower than that of rocks, so the number of small-scale fragments was the largest after bituminous coal rupture.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1480-1489
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• 2024

Displacement cascade behaviors of Ti-6Al-4V alloys are investigated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The embedded atom method (EAM) potential including Ti, Al and V elements is modified by adding Ziegler-Biersack-Littmark (ZBL) potential to describe the short-range interaction among different atoms. The time evolution of displacement cascades at the atomic scale is quantitatively evaluated with the energy of primary knock-on atom (PKA) ranging from 0.5 keV to 15 keV, and that for pure Ti is also computed as a comparison. The effects of temperature and incident direction of PKA are studied in detail. The results show that the temperature reduces the number of surviving Frenkel pairs (FPs), and the incident direction of PKA shows little correlation with them. Furthermore, the increasing temperature promotes the point defects to form clusters but reduces the number of defects due to the accelerated recombination of vacancies and interstitial atoms at relatively high temperature. The cluster fractions of interstitials and vacancies both increase with the PKA energy, whereas the increase of interstitial cluster is slightly larger due to their higher mobility. Compared to pure Ti, the presence of Al and V is beneficial to the formation of interstitial clusters and indirectly hinders the production of vacancy clusters.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.605-619
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• 2024

The increase of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) content in recycled asphalt concrete (RAC) is accompanied by the degradation of low-temperature cracking resistance, which has become an obstacle to the development of RAC. This paper aims to reveal the meso-scale mechanisms of the low-temperature fracture behavior of RAC and provide a theoretical basis for the economical recycling of RAP. For this purpose, micromechanical heterogeneous peridynamic model of RAC was established and validated by comparing three-point bending (TPB) test results against corresponding numerical simulation results of RAC with 50% RAP content. Furthermore, the models with different aggregate shapes (i.e., average aggregates circularity (${\bar{C_r}}=1.00$, 0.75, and 0.50) and RAP content (i.e., 0%, 15%, 30%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) were constructed to investigate the effect of aggregate shape and RAP content on the low-temperature cracking resistance. The results show that peridynamic models can accurately simulate the low-temperature fracture behavior of RAC, with only 2.9% and 13.9% differences from the TPB test in flexural strength and failure strain, respectively. On the meso-scale, the damage in the RAC is mainly controlled by horizontal tensile stress and the stress concentration appears in the interface transition zone (ITZ). Aggregate shape has a significant effect on the low-temperature fracture resistance, i.e., higher aggregate circularity leads to better low-temperature performance. The large number of microcracks generated during the damage evolution process for the peridynamic model with circular aggregates contributes to slowing down the fracture, whereas the severe stress concentration at the corners leads to the fracture of the aggregates with low circularity under lower stress levels. The effect of RAP content below 30% or above 50% is not significant, but a substantial reduction (16.9% in flexural strength and 16.4% in failure strain) is observed between the RAP content of 30% and 50%. This reduction is mainly attributed to the fact that the damage in the ITZ region transfers significantly to the aggregates, especially the RAP aggregates, when the RAP content ranges from 30% to 50%.