• Composites Research
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.10-25
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• 1999

A new evaluation method for the interfacial properties of fibrous composites based on a fragmentation technique is proposed by using the gradual multi-fiber composite, in which the inter-fiber spacing is gradually changed. The results showed that as the inter-fiber distance increased, the aspect ratio of broken fibers decreased while the interfacial shear strength between the fiber and matrix increased. When the reciprocal of the inter-fiber destance was taken for the above relations, both the aspect ratio and interfacial shear strength showed a saturated value. This means that the gradual multi-fiber composite indicates an upper bound in aspect ratio and an upper bound in interfacial shear strength. It was concluded that this fragmentation test could be a new method for composite evaluation, since reducing a difference between these two bounds is effective for composite strengthening. In addition an elastoplastic finite element analysis was carried out to relate the above results with fiber stress a distribution around fiber breaks. It was proved that the bound obtained in the gradual multi-fiber composite test is closely related to stress concentrations caused by a group of multi-fiber breaks.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.413-422
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• 2011

An improved split-beam transducer for a 50 kHz fish-sizing echo sounder was developed. The main objective of this study was to minimize the side lobe level in the beam pattern and the distance between acoustic centers for adjacent transducer quadrants in the geometrical arrangement of array elements while maintaining a given number of transducer elements and beam width. To achieve these goals, a 32-element planar array transducer ($6{\times}6$ array with one element in each corner missing) was designed using the Dolph-Chebyshev shading function to suppress side lobes in the array beam pattern and fabricated by arranging the inter-element spacing to be substantially equal to half the wavelength using the transducer element of 0.4 times the wavelength in diameter. The performance characteristics of this split-beam transducer were evaluated in the experimental water tank of $5m{\times}5m{\times}6m$ (length${\times}$height${\times}$width). In this study, the design goal of the beam width and side lobe level for transmitting a beam pattern was initially set at $21^{\circ}$ and -30 dB, respectively. However, the measured beam width at 3 dB was $21^{\circ}$ in both directions with side lobe levels of -24.7 dB in the horizontal plane and -25.6 dB in the vertical plane. The averaged beam width at -3 dB of the receiving beam patterns for four receiving quadrants was $31.4^{\circ}$. The transmitting voltage response was 161.5 dB (re $1{\mu}Pa$/V at 1 m) at 50.23 kHz with a bandwidth of 2.16 kHz, and the averaged receiving sensitivity for four receiving quadrants was -178.13 dB (re 1 V/${\mu}Pa$) at 49.8 kHz with a bandwidth of 2.64 kHz.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.207-216
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• 1999

A phased array is a multi-element piezoelectric device whose elements are individually excited by electric pulses at programmed delay time. One of the advantages of using phased array in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) application over conventional ultrasonic transducers is their great maneuverability of ultrasonic beam. There are some parameters such as the number and the size of the piezoelectric elements and the inter-element spacing of the elements to design phased array transducer. In this study, the characteristic of ultrasonic beam for phased array transducer due to the variation of the number of elements has been simulated for ultrasonic SH-wave on the basis of Huygen's principle. Ultrasonic beam directivity and focusing due to the change of time delay of each element were discussed due to the change of the number of piezoelectric elements. It was found that ultrasonic beam was much more spreaded and hence its sound pressure was decreased as steering angle of ultrasonic beam was increased. In addition, the ability of ultrasonic bean focusing decreased gradually with the increase of focal length at the same piezoelectric elements. However, the ability of beam focusing was improved as the number of consisting elements was increased.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.11-19
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• 2008

The layer technique is to produce many memorable scenes by generating layers of new experiences on the existing ones as it is adding the cognitive layers on to the visually seen landscape. Its need is high for places whose landscape itself influences perception, value or expression and which determines the spatial and quality standards. The existing floor plan-based design methods have failed to be useful in generating complex visual experiences. In order to maximize the aesthetical landscape experiences in landscape planning, cognitive layers are needed which complement the input of adequate cognitive elements and the inter-element relationships. Here, layers are utilized to change the arrangement of the landscape elements and coordinate the cognitive flow so that the images could be connected and imagination could occur. A case in point is Anhyun Village in Gochang where physically distinctive layers are additionally set to make a visual experience enriching. The new landscape layers discover the fact that it provides diversity in experiencing the village landscape and forming the sense of beauty and that it is deeply immersed into the daily life of the village. Meanwhile, Guwau Village in Taebaek is an example showing the usefulness of various-layer setting in landscape planning in setting effective circulation planning. That is, the bottom line is the spacing-starting where and making it stay where for a few seconds, and the visual layers. It is also critical to encourage inducing circulation so that layers of the senses stimulating five senses could intervene. Lastly, Mulgeon-ri in Namhae is a case which directly made a parallel of the physical layers of the landscape composition and the cognitive layers of the landscape experience. Artificial landscape planning is mostly about manipulating of visual traits that people feel beautiful, but the layer technique is linked to how to make experiences enriching and renewed.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.351-364
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• 2002

Conventional 3D ultrasound imaging using mechanical ID arrays suffers from poor elevation resolution due to the limited depth-of-focus (DOF). On the other hand, 3D imaging systems using 2D phased arrays have a large number of active channels and hence require a very expensive and bulky beamforming hardware. To overcome these limitations, a new real-time volumetric imaging method using curved 2-D arrays is presented, in which a small subaperture, consisting of 256 elements, moves across the array surface to scan a volume of interest. For this purpose, a 2-D curved array is designed which consists of 90$\times$46 elements with 1.5λ inter-element spacing and has the same view angles along both the lateral and elevation directions as those of a commercial mechanical 1-D array. In the proposed method, transmit and receive subapertures are constructed by cutting the four corners of a rectangular aperture to obtain a required image qualify with a small number of active channels. In addition the receive subaperture size is increased by using a sparse array scheme that uses every other elements in both directions. To suppress the grating lobes elevated due to the increase in clement spacing, fold-over array scheme is adopted in transmit, which doubles the effective size of a transmit aperture in each direction. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method can provide almost the same and greatly improved resolutions in the lateral and elevation directions, respectively compared with the conventional 3D imaging with a mechanical 1-D array.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.42 no.4 s.304
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• pp.111-118
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• 2005

In this paper, we employ the modulation technique for improving the characteristics of beamformer in the low frequencies and thus improving the overall noise reduction performance. In the 1-dimensional uniform linear microphone arrays, we can suppress the narrowband noise component using the delay-and-sum beamforming. But, for the wideband noise signal, the delay-and-sum beamformer does not work well for the reduction of low frequency component because the inter-element spacing is usually set to avoid spatial aliasing at high frequencies. Hence, the beamwidth is not uniform with respect to each frequency and it is usually wider at the low frequencies. In order to obtain the beamwidth independent of frequencies, subarray systems[1][2][3][4] and multi-beamforming[5] have been proposed. However these algorithms need large space and more microphones since they are based on the theory that the size of the array is proportional to the wavelength of the input signal. In the proposed beamformer, we reduce the low frequency noise by using modulation technique that does not need additional sensors or non-uniform spacing. More Precisely, the array signals are split into subbands, and the low frequency components are shifted to high frequencies by modulation and reduced by the delay-and-sum beamforming techniques with small size microphone array. Experimental results show that the proposed technique Provides better performance than the conventional ones, especially in the low frequency band.