• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.4
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• pp.481-494
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• 2020

In this paper, a probability-based procedure to evaluate the performance of existing RC structures exposed to seismic and fire actions is presented. The procedure is demonstrated with reference to an existing old school building, located in Italy. The vulnerability assessment of the building highlights deficiencies under both static and seismic loads. Retrofit operations are designed to achieve the seismic safety. The idea of the work consists in assessing the performance of the existing and retrofitted building in terms of both the seismic and fire resistance. The seismic retrofit and fire resistance upgrading follow different paths, depending on the specific configuration of the building. A good seismic retrofit does not entail an improving of the fire resistance and vice versa. The goal of the current work is to study the variation of response due to the uncertainties considered in records/fire curves selection and to carry out the assessment of the studied RC structure by obtaining fragility curves under the effect of different records/temperature. The results show the fragility curves before and after retrofit operations and both in terms of seismic performance and fire resistance performance, measuring the percent improving for the different limit states.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.215-244
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• 2004

There is an ever-increasing demand for assessment of earthquake effects on transportation structures, emphasised by the crippling consequences of recent earthquakes hitting developed countries reliant on road transportation. In this work, vulnerability functions for RC bridges are derived analytically using advanced material characterisation, high quality earthquake records and adaptive inelastic dynamic analysis techniques. Four limit states are employed, all based on deformational quantities, in line with recent development of deformation-based seismic assessment. The analytically-derived vulnerability functions are then compared to a data set comprising observational damage data from the Northridge (California 1994) and Hyogo-ken Nanbu (Kobe 1995) earthquakes. The good agreement gives some confidence in the derived formulation that is recommended for use in seismic risk assessment. Furthermore, by varying the dimensions of the prototype bridge used in the study, and the span lengths supported by piers, three more bridges are obtained with different overstrength ratios (ratio of design-to-available base shear). The process of derivation of vulnerability functions is repeated and the ensuing relationships compared. The results point towards the feasibility of deriving scaling factors that may be used to obtain the set of vulnerability functions for a bridge with the knowledge of a 'generic' function and the overstrength ratio. It is demonstrated that this simple procedure gives satisfactory results for the case considered and may be used in the future to facilitate the process of deriving analytical vulnerability functions for classes of bridges once a generic relationship is established.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.179.1-179.1
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• 2014

Si nanowires have exhibited unique optical characteristics, including nano-antenna effects due to the guided mode resonance, significant optical absorption enhancement in wide wavelength and incident angle range due to resonant optical modes, graded refractive index, and scattering. Since Si poor optical absorption coefficient due to indirect bandgap, all such properties have stimulated proposal of new optoelectronic devices whose performance can surpass that of conventional planar devices. We have carried out finite-difference time-domain simulation studies to design optimal Si nanowire array for solar cell applications. Optical reflectance, transmission, and absorption can be calculated for nanowire arrays with various diameter, length, and period. From the absorption, maximum achievable photocurrent can be estimated. In real devices, serious recombination loss occurring at the surface states is known to limit the photovoltaic performance of the nanowire-based solar cells. In order to address such issue, we will discuss how the geometric parameters of the array can influence the spatial distribution of the optical field (resulting optical generation rate) in the nanowires.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.515-537
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• 2014

Current seismic codes (e.g. the NTC08 Italian code and the EC8 European code) adopt a performance-based approach for both the design of new buildings and the assessment of existing ones. Different limit states are considered by verifying structural members as well as non structural elements and facilities which have generally been neglected in practice. The key role of non structural elements on building performance has been shown by recent earthquakes (e.g. L'Aquila 2009) where, due to the extensive damage suffered by infills, partitions and ceilings, a lot of private and public buildings became unusable with consequent significant socio-economic effects. Furthermore, the collapse of infill panels, particularly in the case of out-of-plane failure, represented a serious source of risk to life safety. This paper puts forward an infill model capable of accounting for the effects arising from prior in-plane damage on the out-of-plane capacity of infill panels. It permits an assessment of the seismic performance of existing RC buildings with reference to both structural and non structural elements, as well as of their mutual interaction. The model is applied to a building type with RC framed structure designed only to vertical loads and representative of typical Italian buildings. The influence of infill on building performance and the role of the out-of-plane response on structural response are also discussed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.1337-1358
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• 2016

The current study focuses on the assessment and interface response of reinforced concrete elements with composite materials (carbon fiber reinforced polymers-CFRPs, glass fiber reinforced polymers-GFRPs, textile reinforced mortars-TRM's, near surface mounted bars-NSMs). A description of the transfer mechanisms from concrete elements to the strengthening materials is conducted through analytical models based on failure modes: plate end interfacial debonding and intermediate flexural crack induced interfacial debonding. A database of 55 in total reinforced concrete columns (scale 1:1) is assembled containing elements rehabilitated with various techniques (29 wrapped with CFRP's, 5 wrapped with GFRP's, 4 containing NSM and 4 strengthened with TRM). The failure modes are discussed together with the performance level of each technique as well as the efficiency level in terms of ductility and bearing/ bending capacity. The analytical models' results are in acceptable agreement with the experimental data and can predict the failure modes. Despite the heterogeneity of the elements contained in the aforementioned database the results are of high interest and point out the need to incorporate the analytical expressions in design codes in order to predict the failure mechanisms and the limit states of bearing capacities of each technique.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.427-432
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• 2018

High-capacity secondary batteries can cause explosion hazards owing to microcurrent variations or current surges that occur in short circuits. Consequently, complete safety cannot be achieved with general protection that is limited to a mere current fuse. Hence, in the case of secondary batteries, it is necessary for the protector to limit the inrush current in a short circuit, and to detect the current during microcurrent variations. To serve this purpose, a fuse can be employed for the secondary battery protection circuit with current detection. This study aims at designing a protection device that can stably operate in the hazardous circumstances associated with high-capacity secondary batteries. To achieve the said objective, a detecting fuse was designed from an alloy of low melting point elements for securing stability in abnormal current states. Experimental results show that the operating I-T and V-T characteristic constraints can be satisfied by employing the proposed current detecting self-contained low melting point fuse, and through the resistance of the heating resistor. These results thus verify that the proposed protection device can prevent the hazards of short circuit current surges and microcurrent variations of secondary batteries.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.458-465
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• 2018

Ice-going ships such as icebreakers, icebreaking tankers, and icebreaking LNG carriers are subjected to wave loads in open water and ice loads in ice-covered water. In terms of the ship's structural design, the local ice load is important. The fatigue failure due to repeated ice loads is also important. ISO 19906 specifies the assessment of the fatigue limit for a polar offshore structures. In addition, Lloyd's Register refers to fatigue damage based on ShipRight FDA ICE. In ShipRight FDA ICE, the fatigue damage indices due to wave and ice loads are simply presented as 0.5 for each load. It also states that the sum of the two fatigue damage indices should not exceed one. This study calculated and analyzed the fatigue damage index and fatigue life considering ARAON's voyage schedules and the assumed Antarctic voyage based on data measured during the Arctic voyage of ARAON in 2010.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.119-124
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• 2021

In a situation where Moore's law, which states that the performance of semiconductor integrated circuits doubles every two years, is showing a limit from a certain point, and it is difficult to increase the performance due to the limitations of exposure technology.In this study, a wafer hybrid method that can increase the degree of integration Various research on bonding technology is currently in progress. In this study, in order to achieve rotational precision between wafers in wafer hybrid bonding technology, modeling of θ_z alignment stage and VCM actuator modeling used for rotational alignment, magnetic field analysis and desgin, control, and evaluation are performed. The system of this study was controlled by VCM actuator, capactive sensor, and dspace, and the working range was ±7200 arcsec, and the in-position and resoultion were ±0.01 arcsec. The results of this study confirmed that safety and precise control are possible, and it is expected to be applied to the process to increase the integration.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4A
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• pp.323-329
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• 2011

Most current design codes of concrete structures adopt the partial safety factor format to assure the proper safety margin or reliability against various limit states as a practical design tool. The safety factors, load and resistance factors and so on, are determined based on the theory of structural reliability, which takes into account the statistical uncertainties of both loads and resistances. The establishment of statistical models for load and resistance should be preceded the application of reliability theory. In this paper, especially the influence of the statistical variations of resistance models, which are described in terms of strength of concrete, strength of reinforcements and sectional dimensions and so on, are examined and the probabilistic models for resistance of reinforced concrete members were developed. The statistical data were collected on local tests and experiments in Korea and the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) technique was used. The results of this paper may be useful and valuable in calibration of design code in this country.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.5
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• pp.595-609
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• 2022

Prestressed composite steel-concrete beams are still a technology restricted to repair sites of large-scale structures and spans. One of the reasons for that is the absence of standard frameworks and publications regarding their design and implementation. In addition, the primary normative codes do not address this subject directly, which might be related to a scarcity of papers indicating methods of design that would align the two technics, composite beams and external prestressing. In this context, this paper proposes methods to analyze the sizing of prestressed composite beams submitted to pre-tension and post-tension with a straight or polynomial layout cable. This inquiry inspected a hundred and twenty models of prestressed composite beams according to its prestressing technology and the eccentricity and value of the prestressing force. The evaluation also included the ratio between span and height of the steel profile, thickness and typology of the concrete slab, and layout of the prestressing cables. As for the results, it was observed that the eccentricity of the prestressing force doesn't significantly influence the bending resistance. In prestressed composite beams subjected to a sagging moment, the ratio L/d can reach 35 and 30 for steel-concrete composite slabs and solid concrete slabs, respectively. Considering the negative bending moment resistance, the value of the L/d ratio must be less than or equal to 25, regardless of the type of slab. When it comes to the value of the prestressing force, a variation greater than 10% causes a 2.6% increase in the positive bending moment resistance and a 4% decrease in the negative bending moment resistance. The pre-tensioned composite beams showed a superior response to flexural-compression and excessive compression limit states than the post-tensioned ones.