• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.46-54
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• 2015

Nitrous oxide is known as green and safe propellant, and can be supplied by its own vapor pressure. So, many liquid propulsion research institutes and university laboratories use nitrous oxide as oxidizer of experimental liquid rocket engine. However, the unknown explosions occurred twice during hot fire experiments using subscale ethanol/nitrous oxide thruster. In this paper, we surmised that the explosions were caused by the decomposition of nitrous oxide in the injector body and the recondensation of nitrous oxide. Improvement and the safe handling methods are suggested.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.289-292
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• 2013

A total of 2,080 forensic autopsies in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi province were performed by the National Forensic Service (NFS) in 2010. After analysing blood samples collected at autopsies by GC-MS and LC-MS/MS, the types and prevalence of drugs and poisons in blood were investigated using our laboratory information management system. Among 2,080 cases, 1,061 cases (51%) were positive for drugs and poisons. Surprisingly, antidepressants were identified in 137 cases which comprised 13% of the positive cases. Twelve different kinds of antidepressants were determined: Amitriptyline, fluoxetine, nortriptyline, trazodone, imipramine, mirtazapine, citalopram, venlafaxin, clomipramine, paroxetine, sertraline and bupropion. Amitriptyline was the most frequently detected antidepressant and was identified in 39 cases. Moreover, amitriptyline, fluoxetine, and nortriptyline were included in the list of the 20 most commonly encountered drugs or poisons in the analysis of blood collected at autopsies from 2007 to 2009, indicating the prevalence of their use. In this study, the 137 antidepressant-related deaths were classified by the mode of death to predict the prevalence of these drugs. As a result, those deaths were divided into four groups based on the cause and mode of death: 56 cases of suicide with fatal concentrations of antidepressant drugs in blood, 6 homicidal cases directly or indirectly related to antidepressants, 59 natural deaths with antidepressants detected in blood and 16 deaths caused by fire or other accidents with antidepressants detected in blood. Because incidents involving antidepressants have been increasing, especially in suicides or homicides, it is necessary for the health authorities and law enforcement administrations to cooperate and share the statistical data for curbing the abuse of antidepressants. This report is expected to provide the reference data related with antidepressants for the investigation of the deaths.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.251-257
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• 2011

When designing a ship, ergonomic considerations are crucial when minimizing a navigator's fatigue due to the burden of work, and to appropriately operate the navigational equipment for each given situation by helping the operator to understand the surroundings as well as the physical functions of the ship. However, insufficient consideration of ergonomic elements in the actual design of ship Bridges is lowering the performance of safe navigation and allows for the possibility of operation or readout errors. Consequently, these errors lead to an increase in maritime accidents. Therefore, this study conducted a usability evaluation on the importance of and the usage frequency of navigational equipment, their influence on actual navigation, and the possibility of error upon operation or readout between training ship officers, to derive an optimized layout that includes the consideration of ergonomic factors for on-Bridge navigational equipment, which are currently arranged differently according to their type or size. The optimized layout of on-Bridge navigational equipment was carried out based on the evaluation results, using the Lingo program. Through the process of optimization, revised layouts of on-Bridge navigational equipments(control and display device) were suggested, considering emergency situations(ship collision, stranding, fire and explosion, sinking, etc.) during navigation.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.605-610
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• 2016

The ELCB(: Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker) is the only way being used to prevent accidents from happening caused by electrical disaster. However, the existing ELCB has a limit to prevent damages to life and property due to a electric fire and a human body electric shock caused by the resistive leakage current, because of detecting the total leakage current in the block range of 15mA~30mA. It also has problems such as reduced productivity and reliability due to malfunctions by capacitive leakage currents. In this study, we have implemented the algorithm for the resistive leakage current detection technique and developed the resistive leakage current detection module based on a MSP430 processor, 16bit signal processor and this module can be operated in a desired block threshold within 0.03 seconds as specified in KS C 4613.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.7 no.1 s.18
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• pp.33-40
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• 2003

In this work, a novel approach was introduced to assess cost of loss resulting from risk as well as to help deciding inspection period through quantifying risk. In order to quantifying risk of city gas pipeline, frequency and consequence analysis were required. The main causes of city gas accident were analyzed to be digging, external corrosion, ground movement, and equipment failure. Tools to evaluate frequency of each cause was also suggested. Among city gas accidents, fire damage is the dominant one and mainly discussed; fatality, burning injury, and damage to building were estimated using the consequence model suggested. By combining frequency and consequence analysis, evaluating cost of risk management together with calculating example. This work could be applicable for city gas companies to plan how to manage risk most effectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 2018

In Korea, The number of installed LPG Charging stations is about 2000, increasing by 26 every year. In these, about 500 charging stations are older above 15 year, accounting about 25% of total stations. About 86% of them are located in the city, which is causing serious damage if accident occurs. In this paper, we developed a duel gas sensor module and integrated control system software that can prevent and correspondence to gas leaks and fire accidents at LPG/CNG charging stations. The dual type sensor module has the function of collecting and transmitting the measured data to the sensors of methane, butane and hydrogen through RF433Mhz communication. In addition, each sensor is attached with two to improve stability and accuracy. The integrated control system software detects real-time data of the devices measured by the sensors and it send to the PC and smart phone of manager. Therefore, if accident occurs, the manager can check the status of the charging station regardless of time and place.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2007

A voltage drop in the electrical circuit must be unavoidable. The voltage drop in the electrical circuit means a loss of heat. The heat lost would change the characteristics of the insulator and thus, the insulating performance would be towered resulting in electric leakage, electric shock, power failure, fire and other accidents. Hence, an optimized design against the voltage drop in the electrical circuit must be an important factor determining safety and economy of electrical facilities. This study analyzed the effects of voltage drop on the electrical circuit for such low-voltage electrical facilities requiring the public safety foremost and subject to multi-distributed random loads as street lamps, buildings and subway stations, and thereupon, developed an optimized voltage drop computation program to enhance safety and economy of those electrical facilities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2013

In the chemical process industries, accidents have a high potential and large effects on catastrophic results. Therefore the safety management for accident prevention plays a crucial role to guarantee the process safety. For these reasons, many systematic methods for safety management system have been widely employed in the fields of chemical processes. PSM (Process safety management) is one of most representative methods. The audit system, which is one of PSM system components, evaluates the performance of PMS system. However, most existing safety audit systems are not systematic and these are performed based on knowledges and experiences of various specialist. Moreover, the safety audit is only performed based on each independent technical component. So, the results of safety audit are not a quantitative index but only a series of commentaries. Finally, it is very difficult to obtain the comparison with other plants or industries. In this study, the novel systematic method and index-based accident database of auditing safety management systems for quantitative assessment are proposed. First, the elements of safety audit replace technical methods to categories of accident database. The F-N curve of each category for accident database is employed to derive the index for quantitative assessment. The Accidental Factor Risk Index (AFRI) is suggested for evaluating the effect of each element in accident database and safety audit system. The safety audit can be modified according to the proposed index.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.569-574
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• 2018

This paper proposes and implements a LoRa-based emergency exit guide system which can direct the optimal refuge path accounting for the real state of the fires. Each 4-way emergency exit guide sign presents a right direction through one of four LED signs toward the possible exit dynamically calculated by the shortest path algorithm. We constructed a simulation environment with 8 spots of the emergency exit guide signs and 2 exits, which can simulate variant cases of fire accidents, and showed that the proposed algorithm can presents the right guidance for each emergency exit guide sign. We also evaluated the performances of LoRa-based wireless communications using a self developed communication module in the various indoor and outdoor environments. The proposed system can be applied to small and medium sized buildings as well as larger ones in terms of cost efficiency, in which there's no needs to invest for the complex equipments except only sensors and emergency exit guide signs.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.41 no.9
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• pp.1120-1131
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a smoker recognition algorithm, detecting smokers in a video sequence in order to prevent fire accidents. We use description-based method in hierarchical approaches to recognize smoker's activity, the algorithm consists of background subtraction, object detection, event search, event judgement. Background subtraction generates slow-motion and fast-motion foreground image from input image using Gaussian mixture model with two different learning-rate. Then, it extracts object locations in the slow-motion image using chain-rule based contour detection. For each object, face is detected by using Haar-like feature and smoke is detected by reflecting frequency and direction of smoke in fast-motion foreground. Hand movements are detected by motion estimation. The algorithm examines the features in a certain interval and infers that whether the object is a smoker. It robustly can detect a smoker among different objects while achieving real-time performance.