• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.189-197
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• 2017

Background: Despite the recent efforts to prevent industrial accidents in the Republic of Korea, the industrial accident rate has not improved much. Industrial safety policies and safety management are also known to be inefficient. This study focused on dynamic characteristics of industrial safety systems and their effects on safety performance in the Republic of Korea. Such dynamic characteristics are particularly important for restructuring of the industrial safety system. Methods: The effects of damping and elastic characteristics of the industrial safety system model on safety performance were examined and feedback control performance was explained in view of cost and benefit. The implications on safety policies of restructuring the industrial safety system were also explored. Results: A strong correlation between the safety budget and the industrial accident rate enabled modeling of an industrial safety system with these variables as the input and the output, respectively. A more effective and efficient industrial safety system could be realized by having weaker elastic characteristics and stronger damping characteristics in it. A substantial decrease in total social cost is expected as the industrial safety system is restructured accordingly. Conclusion: A simple feedback control with proportional-integral action is effective in prevention of industrial accidents. Securing a lower level of elastic industrial accident-driving energy appears to have dominant effects on the control performance compared with the damping effort to dissipate such energy. More attention needs to be directed towards physical and social feedbacks that have prolonged cumulative effects. Suggestions for further improvement of the safety system including physical and social feedbacks are also made.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.756-759
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• 2014

DC/DC converters are commonly used to generate regulated DC output voltages with high-power efficiencies from different DC input sources. The converters can be applied in the regenerative braking of DC motors to return energy back to the supply, resulting in energy savings for the systems at periodic intervals. The fundamental converter studied here consists of an IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar mode Transistor), an inductor, a capacitor, a diode, a PWM-IC (Pulse Width Modulation Integrated Circuit) controller with oscillator, amplifier, and comparator. The PWM-IC is a core element and delivers the switching waveform to the gate of the IGBT in a stable manner. Display of the DC/DC converter output depends on the IGBT's changes in the threshold voltage and PWM-IC's pulse width. The simulation was conducted by PSIM software, and the hardware of the DC/DC converter was also implemented. It is necessary to study the fact that the output voltage depends on the duty rate of D, and to compare the output of experimental result with the theory and the simulation.

• Clean Technology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2013

The treatment of chemically stable perflourocompounds (PFCs) requires a large amount of energy. An energy efficient arc plasma system has been developed to overcome such disadvantage. $CF_4$, $SF_6$ and $NF_3$ were injected into the plasma torch directly, and net plasma power was estimated from the measurement of thermal efficiency of the system. Effects of net plasma power, waste gas flow rate and additive gases on the destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) of PFCs were examined. The calculation of thermodynamic equilibrium composition was also conducted to compare with experimental results. The average thermal efficiency was ranged from 60 to 66% with increasing waste gas flow rate, while DRE of PFCs was decreased with increasing gas flow rate. On the other hand, DRE of each PFCs was increased with the increasing input power. Maximum DREs of $CF_4$, $SF_6$ and $NF_3$ were 4%, 15% and 90%, respectively, without reaction gas at the fixed input power and waste gas flow rate of 3 kW and 70 L/min. A rapid increase of DRE was found using hydrogen or oxygen additional gases. Hydrogen was more effective than oxygen to decompose PFCs and to control by-products. The major by-product in the arc plasma process with hydrogen was hydrofluoric acid that is easy to be removed by a wet scrubber. DREs of $CF_4$, $SF_6$ and $NF_3$ were 25%, 39% and 99%, respectively, using hydrogen additional gas at the waste gas flow rate of 100 L/min and the input power of 3 kW.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.226-226
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• 2003

When an excessive voltage is applied to the discharge gap in ozone generator, the discharge room temperature becomes higher. As is well own, the efficiency of the ozone generation is deteriorated by the excessively hot temperature because of the decomposition reaction. In this paper, the simple small capacity ozone generating controller has been introduced, which provides effective and stable silent discharge characteristics over wide range input power. The proposed power controller has two important advantages, which imply that the production rate of ozone can be controlled linearly according to the delivered power and the surplus energy is recovered to the source. The experimental results are given to verify the performance of the pre proposed controller.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.226-230
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• 2003

When an excessive voltage is applied to the discharge gap in ozone generator, the discharge room temperature becomes higher. As is well own, the efficiency of the ozone generation is deteriorated by the excessively hot temperature because of the decomposition reaction. In this paper, the simple small capacity ozone generating controller has been introduced, which provides effective and stable silent discharge characteristics over wide range input power. The proposed power controller has two important advantages, which imply that the production rate of ozone can be controlled linearly according to the delivered power and the surplus energy is recovered to the source. The experimental results are given to verify the performance of the pre proposed controller.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.156-162
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• 2009

Cylinder-pressure based combustion analysis provides a mechanism through which a combustion researcher can understand the combustion process. This paper was to identify the most significant sources of cycle-to-cycle combustion variability in a spark ignition engine at idle. To analyse the cyclic variation in the test engine, the burn parameters are determined on a cycle-to-cycle basis through analysis of the engine pressure data. The burn rate analysis program was used in the analysis of the data. Burn parameters were used to determine the variations in the input parameter-i.e., fuel, air, residual mass, and so on.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 2021

By means of installing sloped rolling-type seismic isolators (SRI), the horizontal acceleration transmitted to the to-be-protected object above can be effectively and significantly reduced under external disturbance. To prevent the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI from reaching a threshold, designing large and conservative damping force for SRI might be required, which will also enlarge the transmitted acceleration response. In a word, when adopting seismic isolation, minimizing acceleration or displacement responses is always a trade-off. Therefore, this paper proposes that by exploiting the possible information provided by an earthquake early warning system, the damping force applied to SRI which can better control both acceleration and displacement responses might be determined in advance and accordingly adjusted in a semi-active control manner. By using a large number of ground motion records with peak ground acceleration not less than 80 gal, the numerical results present that the maximum horizontal displacement response of SRI is highly correlated with and proportional to some important parameters of input excitations, the velocity pulse energy rate and peak velocity in particular. A control law employing the basic form of hyperbolic tangent function and two objective functions are considered in this study for conceptually developing suitable control algorithms. Compared with the numerical results of simply designing a constant, large damping factor to prevent SRI from pounding, adopting the recommended control algorithms can have more than 60% reduction of acceleration responses in average under the excitations. More importantly, it is effective in reducing acceleration responses under approximately 98% of the excitations.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.11
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• pp.897-903
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• 2015

In this paper, the contrast therapy of skin was numerically investigated by solving the conjugate heat transfer problem. A finite volume method based on the SIMPLE algorithm was adopted to solve the axisymmetric incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, coupled with an energy equation. These equations are strongly coupled with the Pennes bio-heat equation in order to consider the effect of blood perfusion rate. We investigated the thermal response of skin at some selected depths for various input temperature profiles of a stimulator for contrast therapy. From the numerical simulations, the regions with cold/hot threshold temperatures were found for five input temperature profiles. It was shown that the temperature varies mildly for different input profiles as the depth increases, owing to the Pennes effect. The input temperatures for effective hot/cold stimulation of dermis layer were found to be $47^{\circ}C$ and $7^{\circ}C$, respectively. The present numerical results will be used for finding an optimal temperature profile of a stimulator for contrast therapy.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1167-1184
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• 2015

Despite considerable life casualty and financial loss resulting from past earthquakes, many existing steel buildings are still seismically vulnerable as they have no lateral resistance or at least need some sort of retrofitting. Passive control methods with decreasing seismic demand and increasing ductility reduce rate of vulnerability of structures against earthquakes. One of the most effective and practical passive control methods is to use a shear panel system working as a ductile fuse in the structure. The shear Panel System, SPS, is located vertically between apex of two chevron braces and the flange of the floor beam. Seismic energy is highly dissipated through shear yielding of shear panel web while other elements of the structure remain almost elastic. In this paper, lateral behavior and related benefits of this system with narrow-flange link beams is experimentally investigated in chevron braced simple steel frames. For this purpose, five specimens with IPE (narrow-flange I section) shear panels were examined. All of the specimens showed high ductility and dissipated almost all input energy imposed to the structure. For example, maximum SPS shear distortion of 0.128-0.156 rad, overall ductility of 5.3-7.2, response modification factor of 7.1-11.2, and finally maximum equivalent viscous damping ratio of 35.5-40.2% in the last loading cycle corresponding to an average damping ratio of 26.7-30.6% were obtained. It was also shown that the beam, columns and braces remained elastic as expected. Considering this fact, by just changing the probably damaged shear panel pieces after earthquake, the structure can still be continuously used as another benefit of this proposed retrofitting system without the need to change the floor beam.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.815-824
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• 2011

In this study, a non-thermal plasma system was employed to simultaneously remove odorous compounds and organic sludge. The system consisted of two reactors; the first one was the non-thermal plasma reactor where ozone was produced by the plasma reaction and the ozone oxidized hydrogen sulfide, the model odorous compound, and then the ozone-laden gas stream was introduced to the second reactor where wasted sludge was disintegrated and solubilized by ozone oxidation. In this study, the gas retention time (GRT) and the hydraulic retention time (HRT) were changed in the two-reactor system, and the effects of GRT and HRT on reduction efficiencies of odor and sludge were determined. As the GRT increased, the ozone concentration increased resulting in an increasing efficiency of hydrogen sulfide removal. However, the overall ozone loading rate to the second sludge reactor was the same at any GRT, which resulted in an insignificant change in sludge reduction rate. When HRTs in the sludge reactor were 1, 2, 4 hours, the sludge reduction rates were approximately 30% during the four-hour operation, while the rate increased to 70% at the HRT of 6 hours. Nevertheless, at HRTs greater than 4 hours, the solubilization efficiency was not proportionally increased with increasing specific input energy, indicating that an appropriate sludge retention time needs to be applied to achieve effective solubilization efficiencies at a minimal power consumption for the non-thermal plasma reaction.