• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.15-27
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• 2010

Geo-hazard shows a rapid increasing tendency with establishment of frequent great slopes in various construction sites, especially in the unfavorable topographic condition in which about 70% of the surface is covered by the mountainous area. An repeatedly taking place on the heavy rain season is accompanied by a large scale of rockfall, and causes great damage to an individual as well as a property. Even though lots of field studies and fundamental studies have been performed to reduce this hazard, however, an essential study on the mechanism of the rockfall should be limited to the conventional studies on the slope reinforcement and/or the rockfall risk analysis. In this study, the mechanism of rockfall depending on the morphologic characteristics of slope has been simulated numerically with the PFC2D, one of the discrete element programs. For analyzing its mechanism, the input parameters relating to the slope such as surface condition, gradient, number of benches, bench gradient, and the ratio of bench width to rockfall size were taken into consideration.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.15 no.4 s.57
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• pp.250-263
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• 2005

Progressive and localized brittle failures around an excavated opening by the overstressed condition can act as a serious obstacle to ensure the stability and the economical efficiency of construction work. In this paper, the characteristics of the brittle failure around an circular opening with stress level was studied by the biaxial compressive test using sealed specimen and by the numerical simulation with $PFC^{2D}$, one of the discrete element codes. The occurring pattern and shape of the brittle failure around a circular opening monitored during the biaxial loading were well coincided with those of the stress induced failures around the excavated openings observed in the brittle rock masses. The crack development stages with stress level were evaluated by the detailed analysis on the acoustic emission event properties. The microcrack development process around a circular opening was successfully visualized by the particle flow analysis. It indicated that the scaled test had a good feasibility in understanding the mechanism of the brittle failure around an opening with a high reliability.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.16 no.4 s.63
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• pp.334-346
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• 2006

The discrete element code in 2-D, PFC2D, has been used as a tool to simulate various phenomena in rock mechanics and rock engineering. However, the code has an disadvantage that procedure to determine micro-parameters, namely properties of particles and contacts is repetitive and time-consuming. In this study, we analyzed the effect of micro-parameters(for generation of a contact-bonded model) on macro-properties(that were measured numerically by uniaxial compressive test). Based on the analysis, also, the time-saving and reliable method was suggested to determine a complete set of micro-parameters. In order to verify the suggested method, numerical specimens were generated in PFC2D for 10 different rock types at home and abroad. By the two trials for each specimen, in the result, the Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio and uniaxial compressive strength could be reproduced with being in relative error by about 5% to the values obtained by laboratory tests.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.359-372
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• 2015

Rock masses include various rock discontinuities such as faults, joints, and bedding planes. These discontinuities appear as complex structures in geometry. In this study, growth patterns of fractures between two stepping shear fracture tips are numerically modeled using PFC2D (Particle Flow Code). The numerical model showed not only incipient growth of fractures at the tips of preexisting fractures but also subsequent growth of the new fractures. It is observed from all of the experiments that the incipient fractures are tensile cracks developed at $30{\sim}57^{\circ}$ to the preexisting fractures and the subsequent growth of these fractures were at low angles to the preexisting fractures this study.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.39-47
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• 2016

PURPOSES : Road subsidence occurs owing to road cavities, which cause many social and environmental problems, especially in cities. Recently, road cavities were detected by various ground radars and repair works were carried out against the detected cavities. The condition assessments related to the road cavities are necessary to understand the potential risk of the cavities. Therefore, in this study, a numerical study was performed to assess the various conditions of road cavities. METHODS : The numerical method adopted in this study is the discrete element approach, and it is suitable for analyzing the condition because it can consider the movement of the soil particles in the surrounded cavity areas. In addition, the triaxial test was modeled and performed under various cavity conditions inside the specimens. RESULTS : The conditions of different cavity locations and shapes were analyzed to identify the effect of cavity state. Three general cases of particle size distributions were formulated to identify the effect of surrounding ground conditions. As a result, the degree of decrement and volumetric strain were varied depending on the locations and shapes of the cavity. Only minor changes were observed when the particle size distributions were altered. CONCLUSIONS : The strength reduction was higher when the cavity formed was larger and located in the upper zone. Similar to the cavity shape, strength reduction and volume deformation are more influenced by the width than the length of the cavities. There is an influence from ground conditions such as the particle size distribution, especially on the wide cavity.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.129-142
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• 2016

The underground cavity known as one of the reasons of ground surface settlement is a discontinuous character. Therefore, it is limited to analyze with continuum analysis. In this research, The spherical underground cavity affecting the ground surface settlement is studied with Discrete Element Method. Ground properties, depth and diameter of the spherical underground cavity are chosen as factors of the spherical underground cavity and the effect of the each factor variations on the ground surface settlement is analyzed. Relative depth to the diameter of the spherical underground cavity is also studied. The result of the research suggests the basis of underground cavity collapse prediction and standard of support.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.1-12
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• 2011

In order to analyze the influence of particle bonding and crushing on the characteristics of shear behavior, especially residual shear behavior of granular soil, ring shear test was simulated by using DEM(Discrete Element Method)-based software program PFC(Particle Flow Code). Total four models including two non-crushing models and two crushing models were created in this study by using clump or cluster model built in PFC. The applicability of Lobo-crushing model proposed by Lobo-Guerrero and Vallejo(2005) was investigated. In addition, the results of ring shear test were analyzed and compared with those of direct shear test. The results showed that the modelling of ring shear test should be conducted to investigate the residual shear behavior. The Lobo-crushing model cannot be applied to investigate the residual shear strength. Finally, it can be concluded that the numerical models excluding Lobo-crushing model suggested in this study can be used extensively for other studies concerning the residual shear behavior of granular soil including soil crushing.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.77-86
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• 2011

The stress condition mainly dominates the thermal conductivity of soils whereas governing factors such as unit weight and porosity suggested by empirical correlations are still valid. The 3D thermal network model enables evaluation of the stress-dependent thermal conductivity of particulate materials generated by discrete element method (DEM). The relationship among dominant factors is analyzed based on the coordination number and porosity determined by stress condition and thermal conductivity of pore fluid. Results show that the variation of thermal conductivity is strongly attributed to the enlargement of inter-particle contact area by loading history and pore fluid conductivity. This study highlights that the anisotropic evolution of thermal conductivity depends on the directional load and that the particle-scale mechanism mainly dictates the heat transfer in soils.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.444-450
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• 1999

This paper deals with several methods: the clustering method that uses k-means algorithm to abstract the area of characters on the image document and the distance function that suits for the HIS coordinate system to cluster the image. For the prepossessing step to recognize this, or the method of characters segmentate, the algorithm to abstract a discrete character is also proposed, using the linking picture element. This algorithm provides the feature that separates any character such as the touching or overlapped character. The methods of projecting and tracking the edge have so far been used to segment them. However, with the new method proposed here, the picture element extracts a discrete character with only one-time projection after abstracting the character string. it is possible to pull out it. dividing the area into the character and the rest (non-character). This has great significance in terms of processing color documents, not the simple binary image, and already received verification that it is more advanced than the previous document processing system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.373-375
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• 2002

4D CT is a dynamic volume imaging system of moving organs with an image quality comparable to conventional CT, and is realized with continuous and high-speed cone-beam CT. In order to realize 4D CT, we have developed a novel 2D detector on the basis of the present CT technology, and mounted it on the gantry frame of the state-of-the-art CT-scanner. In the present report we describe the design of the first model of 4D CT-scanner as well as the early results of performance test. The x-ray detector for the 4D CT-scanner is a discrete pixel detector in which pixel data are measured by an independent detector element. The numbers of elements are 912 (channels) ${\times}$ 256 (segments) and the element size is approximately 1mm ${\times}$ 1mm. Data sampling rate is 900views(frames)/sec, and dynamic range of A/D converter is 16bits. The rotation speed of the gantry is l.0sec/rotation. Data transfer system between rotating and stationary parts in the gantry consists of laser diode and photodiode pairs, and achieves net transfer speed of 5Gbps. Volume data of 512${\times}$512${\times}$256 voxels are reconstructed with FDK algorithm by parallel use of 128 microprocessors. Normal volunteers and several phantoms were scanned with the scanner to demonstrate high image quality.