• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.29-45
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• 2024

PURPOSE: This study aimed to compare the effects of pain level, lower back pain dysfunction level, psychosocial level, hip abductor strength (HAS), number of positive lumbar instability tests, and dynamic balance (DB) by applying lumbar stabilization exercises according to the presence or absence of gluteus medius muscle weakness in chronic lower back pain (CLBP) patients with lumbar instability. METHODS: Thirty-five CLBP patients with lumbar instability were divided into the gluteus medius weakness (n = 18) and gluteus medius non-weakened (n = 17) groups using the gluteus medius manual muscle test. Intervention applied conservative physical therapy and lumbar stabilization exercises to both groups that lasted three times a week for four weeks. To compare the intervention effects, the quadruple visual analog scale (QVAS), the Korean version of the Oswestry disability index (K-ODI), fear-avoidance beliefs questionnaire (FABQ), HAS, lumbar instability tests positive response counter (LIC), and DB were measured. RESULTS: Significant differences were shown for QVAS, K-ODI, FABQ, HAS, LIC, and DB for both groups pre- and post-intervention (p < .05). Compared to the gluteus medius weakness group, the gluteus medius non-weakened group showed a significant difference (p < .05) in the changes in QVAS, K-ODI, FABQ-W, FABQ-total, and HAS. CONCLUSION: In CLBP patients with lumbar instability, having gluteus medius weakness was less effective in improving lumbar stabilization exercise than gluteus medius non-weakness regarding pain level, lower back pain dysfunction level, psychosocial level excluding physical activity, and hip abductor strength. Therefore, additional gluteus medius strengthening exercises are necessary for patients with lumbar instability and gluteus medius muscle weakness.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.41-49
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• 1997

This paper presents the result of an international cooperative research on the post-correlation analysis of forced vibration tests and the prediction of earthquake responses of a large-scale seismic test structure. The dynamic analysis is carried out using the axisymmetric finite element method incorporating in finite elements for the for field soil region. Through the post-correlation analysis, the properties of the soil layers are revised so that the best correlation in the responses may be obtained compared with the measured force vibration test data. Utilizing the revised soil properties as the initial linear values, the seismic responses are predicted for an earthquake using the equivalent linearlization technique. It has been found that the predicted responses by the equivalent nonlinear procedure are in excellent agreement with the observed responses, while those using the linear properties are fairly off from the measured results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.579-582
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• 2012

Removing residual water in a fuel cell is a critical operational process for managing its performance and controlling its lifetime. Understanding the mechanism of water transport in fuel cells is essential for the design of the water removal process. In this study, an experimental method for measuring the water evaporation rate through a gas diffusion layer, which is a porous medium, under steady-state conditions was developed. Experimental bench tests were conducted to apply the developed method. Then, the effects of various parameters of the drying gas and the gas diffusion layer were experimentally measured. The water evaporation rate increased as the humidity of the drying gas decreased and the flow rate of the drying gas increased. In addition, a thinner gas diffusion layer yielded a higher water evaporation rate.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.933-939
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• 1994

This paper has primarily been directed to evaluate the beneficial effects of geogrid reinforcement in a medium sand on the ultimate bearing capacity (UBC) of a surface foundation. Also, this study was conducted to investigate the permanent settlement of a shallow square foundation in improving the cyclic load-settlement characteristics of reinforced sand deposits by conducting a series of laboratory model tests. Use of geogrids provides an economical and time efficient method for improving load-settlement and strength characteristics of weak soils. Especially the geogrid reinforced soil will be necessary in the case of foundation supporting machines, embankments for railroads, and foundations of structures in earthquake-prone areas. Finally, the test results indicate that the use of geogrid reinforcement in sand subgrades improves their performance under dynamic loads which shows promise for future work.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.149-160
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• 2018

This study experimentally and analytically examines the seismic vulnerability of steel rack storage frames subjected to Korea earthquakes (2016 Gyeongju earthquake and 2017 Pohang earthquake). To achieve this aim, this study selects a three-story, one-bay steel rack frame with a typical configuration of rack frame in Korea. Firstly, the local behavior for frame components is examined by performing monotonic and/or cyclic load tests and the global response and dynamic characteristics of the subject rack frame are investigated by conducting a shaking table test. The analytical model of the rack frame is then created based on the experimental results and is used to perform nonlinear time history analyses with recorded Korea earthquakes. The seismic demand of the rack frame is considerably affected by the spectral acceleration response, instead of peak ground accelerations (peak floor accelerations). Moreover, the collapse fragility curve of the rack frame is developed using incremental dynamic analyses for the Gyeongju and Pohang earthquakes. Fragility results indicate that the ground motion characteristics of these earthquakes do not significantly affect the frame vulnerability at the collapse state.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.387-395
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• 2014

In this paper, a numerical analysis for an internal turret moored vessel located at a 400-m water depth is conducted. The target vessel has an internal turret that is located at the 0.2 Lpp position from the fore-side, with $3{\times}4$ complex mooring lines installed around the turret circumference. To investigate the motion response of the vessel and the structural reliability of the lines, model tests were conducted. The KRISO ocean basin has a water depth of 3.2 m, which represents 192m using a scaling of 1:60. In order to precisely represent the real-scale condition, equivalent mooring lines needed to be designed. Truncated mooring lines were designed to supplement the restriction of the flume's water depth and increase the reliability of the model testing. These truncated mooring lines were composed of two different chains in order to match the pre-tension, simultaneously restoring the curve and variation in the effective line tension. The static similarities were compared using a static pull-out test and free decaying test, and the dynamic similarities were matched via a regular wave test and combined environments test. Consequently, the designed truncated mooring system could represent the prototype mooring system relatively well in the aspects of kinematics and dynamics.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.6
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• pp.735-742
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• 2017

Steel cables as the most important components are widely used in the certain types of structures such as cable-supported bridges, but the long-span structures may result in an increase in fatigue under high stress and corrosion of steel cables. The traditional steel cable is becoming a more evident hindrance. Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) cables with lightweight, high-strength are widely used in civil engineering, but there is little research in vibrational characteristics of FRP cables, especially on the damping characteristic. This article studied the two methods to evaluate dynamical damping characteristic of basalt FRP(BFRP) and glass FRP(GFRP) cables. First, the vibration tests of the B/G FRP cables with different diameter and different cable force were executed. Second, the cables forces were calculated using dynamic strain, static strain and dynamic acceleration respectively, which were further compared with the measured force. Third, experimental modal damping of each cables was calculated by the half power point method, and was compared with the calculation by Rayleigh damping theory and energy dissipation damping theory. The results indicate that (1) The experimental damping of FRP cables decreases with the increase of cable force, and the trend of experimental damping changes is roughly similar with the theoretical damping. (2) The distribution of modal damping calculated by Rayleigh damping theory is closer to the experimental results, and the damping performance of GFRP cables is better than BFRP cables.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.433-457
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• 2017

As a novel typical wind-sensitive structure, the wind load and wind-induced structural behaviors of super-large straight-cone cooling towers are in an urgent need to be addressed and studied. A super large straight-cone steel cooling tower (189 m high, the highest in Asia) that is under construction in Shanxi Power Plant in China was taken as an example, for which four finite element models corresponding to four structural types: the main drum; main drum + stiffening rings; main drum + stiffening rings + auxiliary rings (auxiliary rings are hinged with the main drum and the ground respectively); and main drum + stiffening rings + auxiliary rings (auxiliary rings are fixed onto the main drum and the ground respectively), were established to compare and analyze the dynamic properties and force transferring paths of different models. After that, CFD method was used to conduct numerical simulation of flow field and mean wind load around the cooling tower. Through field measurements and wind tunnel tests at home and abroad, the reliability of using CFD method for numerical simulation was confirmed. On the basis of this, the surface flow and trail characteristics of the tower at different heights were derived and the wind pressure distribution curves for the internal and external surfaces at different heights of the tower were studied. Finally, based on the calculation results of wind-induced responses of the four models, the effects of stiffening rings, auxiliary rings, and different connecting modes on the dynamic properties and wind-induced responses of the tower structure were derived and analyzed; meanwhile, the effect mechanism of internal suction on such kind of cooling tower was discussed. The study results could provide references to the structure selection and wind resistance design of such type of steel cooling towers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.547-556
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• 2018

Based on the shaking table tests of a 1:3.52 scale one-bay and one-story ancient wooden structure, a simplified structural mechanics model was established, and the structural state equation and observation equation were deduced. Under the action of seismic waves, the damage rule of initial stiffness and yield stiffness of the joint was obtained. The force hammer percussion test and finite element calculations were carried out, and the structural response was obtained. Considering the 5% noise disturbance in the laboratory environment, the stiffness parameters of the mortise-tenon joint were identified by the partial least squares of singular value decomposition (PLS-SVD) and the Extended Kalman filter (EKF) method. The results show that dynamic and static cohesion method, PLS-SVD, and EKF method can be used to identify the damage degree of structures, and the stiffness of the mortise-tenon joints under strong earthquakes is reduced step by step. Using the proposed model, the identified error of the initial stiffness is about 0.58%-1.28%, and the error of the yield stiffness is about 0.44%-1.21%. This method has high accuracy and good applicability for identifying the initial stiffness and yield stiffness of the joints. The identification method and research results can provide a reference for monitoring and evaluating actual engineering structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.227-237
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• 2017

This paper presents optimization of a long-span portal steel frame under dynamic wind loads using a surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithm. Long-span portal steel frames are often used in low-rise industrial and commercial buildings. The structure needs be able to resist the wind loads, and at the same time it should be as light as possible in order to be cost-effective. In this work, numerical model of a portal steel frame is constructed using structural analysis program (SAP2000), with the web-heights at five locations of I-sections of the columns and rafters as the decision variables. In order to evaluate the performance of a given design under dynamic wind loading, the equivalent static wind load (ESWL) is obtained from a database of wind pressures measured in wind tunnel tests. A modified formulation of the problem compared to the one available in the literature is also presented, considering additional design constraints for practicality. Evolutionary algorithms (EA) are often used to solve such non-linear, black-box problems, but when each design evaluation is computationally expensive (e.g., in this case a SAP2000 simulation), the time taken for optimization using EAs becomes untenable. To overcome this challenge, we employ a surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithm (SAEA) to expedite the convergence towards the optimum design. The presented SAEA uses multiple spatially distributed surrogate models to approximate the simulations more accurately in lieu of commonly used single global surrogate models. Through rigorous numerical experiments, improvements in results and time savings obtained using SAEA over EA are demonstrated.