• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1638-1653
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• 2024

Given the unpredictability of the occurrence of the earthquake and other potential disasters into consideration, the nuclear power plant may be confronted with beyond design-basis earthquake load in the future. The containment structure may be severely damaged under such severe earthquake loading, increasing the risk of containment concrete cracking and potential radioactive materials leaking. Moreover, initial damage caused by the earthquake may significantly alter the pressure performance of the containment under follow-up internal pressure. To compromise the dangers of beyond design-basis earthquake to the containment, an alternative of replacing the conventional concrete with fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) to upgrade the seismic resistance capacity of the containment is attempted and thoroughly researched. In this study, the influence of various fiber types such as rigid fiber and mixed fiber is regarded to constitute fiber-reinforced PCCVs. The physical properties of traditional and fiber-reinforced PCCVs under earthquake ground motions are scientifically compared and identified by using traditional and proposed evaluation indices. The results indicate that both the traditional evaluation index (i.e. top displacement, stress, strain) and the proposed damage index are greatly reduced by the practice of fiber strengthening under earthquake ground motions.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.721-726
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• 1999

Diverse strengthening methods for reinforced concrete are applied to real structures with a variety of materials. On the other hand, only external prestressing is used for strengthening damaged prestressed concrete girders. But the end brackets for external prestressing are hard to design and to manufacture, the magnitude of prestressing is limited when applied to real structures. The current end brackets are not clearly understood in load transmitting mechanisms and they may damage the original girder by drilling during construction. And also the designed welding area of the current bracket is insufficient to support the high load. The problems of current end bracket are solved in this study. And a new and improved end bracket is proposed and tested. The tested end bracket is similar to the end bearing bracket, but many supportting plates are addded to increase its welding length of the weakest point of the bracket. The increased welding length finally increases its load carrying capacity significantly.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.729-744
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• 2010

There is world wide concern for safety of nuclear power installations after the terrorist attack on World Trade Center in 2001 and several other civilian structures in the last decade. The nuclear containment structure in many countries is a double shell structure (outer shell a RCC and inner a prestressed concrete). The outer reinforced concrete shell protects the inner shell and is designed for external loading like impact and blast. A comparative study of non-linear response of reinforced concrete nuclear containment cylindrical shell subjected to impact of an aircraft (Phantom) and explosion of different amounts of blast charges have been presented here. A material model which takes into account the strain rate sensitivity in dynamic loading situations, plastic and visco-plastic behavior in three dimensional stress state and cracking in tension has been developed earlier and implemented into a finite element code which has been validated with published literature. The analysis has been made using the developed software. Significant conclusions have been drawn for dissimilarity in response (deflections, stresses, cracks etc.) of the shell for impact and blast loading.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.15-27
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to investigate the seismic behavior of precast segmental PSC bridge columns. For the analysis of reinforced concrete structures, a computer program named RCAHEST (Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology) is used. To represent the interaction between tendon and concrete of a prestressed concrete member, a bonded or unbonded tendon element based on the finite element method is used. A joint element is modified to predict the inelastic behaviors of segmental joints. The solution of the equations of motion is obtained by numerical integration using Hilber-Hughes-Taylor (HHT) algorithm. The proposed numerical method gives a realistic prediction of seismic behavior throughout the input ground motions for numerical examples.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.175-183
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• 2008

Domestically, application of High Flowing Self-Compacting Concrete (HSCC) is limited to building structures and it is difficult to find examples of application in civil infrastructural constructions. However, in the case of North America and Europe, by introducing precast and prestressed system, HSCC is being used for high-density reinforced bridge members. Hence it is assessed that broadening the utilization of HSCC into areas such as bridges and civil construction is required. Therefore in this research, to apply HSCC to high-density reinforced bridge members, ground granulated blast-furnace slag and fly ash were mixed in binary and ternary systems. Also the dynamical characteristics of HSCC, following 1st class regulations of Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE), were assessed to enable application on high-density reinforced structures. The test results revealed ternary system mixture showed better mechanical characteristics than binary system mixture and the application on high-density reinforced precast bridge members seems possible.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.727-736
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• 2017

The application of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) in steel structures primarily includes two categories, i.e., the bond-critical application and the contact-critical application. Debonding failure and buckling failure are the main failure modes for these two applications. Conventional electrometric techniques may not provide precise results because of the limitations associated with single-point contact measurements. A nondestructive full-field measurement technique is a valuable alternative to conventional methods. In this study, the digital image correlation (DIC) technique was adopted to investigate the bond behavior and buckling behavior of CFRP-steel composite members. The CFRP-to-steel bonded joint and the CFRP-strengthened square hollow section (SHS) steel column were tested to verify the suitability of the DIC technique. The stereo-DIC technique was utilized to measure continuous deformation. The bond-slip relationship of the CFRP-to-steel interface was derived using the DIC data. Additionally, a multi-camera DIC system consisting of four stereo-DIC subsystems was proposed and applied to the compressive test of CFRP-strengthened SHS steel column. The precise buckling location and CFRP delamination of the CFRP-strengthened SHS steel column were identified. The experimental results confirm that the stereo-DIC technique can provide effective measurements for investigating the behaviors of CFRP-steel composite members.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.673-683
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• 2016

In recent years, frequent terror or military attack by explosion, impact, fire accidents have occurred. Particularly, World Trade Center collapse and US Department of Defense Pentagon attack on Sept. 11 of 2001. Also, nuclear power plant incident on Mar. 11 of 2011. These attacks and incidents were raised public concerns and anxiety of potential terrorist attacks on major infrastructures and structures. Therefore, the extreme loading researches were performed of prestressed concrete (PSC) member, which widely used for nuclear containment vessel and gas tank. In this paper, to evaluate the blast resistance capacity and its protective performance of bi-directional unbonded prestressed concrete member, blast tests were carried out on $1,400{\times}1,000{\times}300mm$ for reinforced concrete (RC), prestressed concrete without rebar (PSC), prestressed concrete with rebar (PSRC) specimens. The applied blast load was generated by the detonation of 55 lbs ANFO explosive charge at 1.0 m standoff distance. The data acquisitions not only included blast waves of incident pressure, reflected pressure, and impulse, but also included displacement, acceleration, and strains at steel, concrete, PS tendon. The results can be used as basic research references for related research areas, which include protective design and blast simulation under blast loading.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.695-703
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• 2012

Recently, major infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels, PCCVs (Prestressed Concrete Containment Vessel), and gas tanks are Prestressed Concrete (PSC) structure types, which improve their safety by using confining effect from prestressing. Generally, concrete is known to be an outstanding fire resistant construction material. Because of this reason, researches related to extreme fire loaded PSC member behaviors are not often conducted even though PSC behavior under extreme fire loading is significantly different than that of ordinary reinforced concrete (RC) behavior. Therefore, in this study, RABT fire loading tests were performed on bi-directionally prestressed concrete panels with $1000{\times}1400{\times}300mm$ dimensions. The prestressed specimens were applied with 430 kN prestressing (PS) force using unbonded PS thread bars. Also, residual strength structural tests of fire tested PSC and ordinary RC structures were performed for comparison. The study results showed that PSC behavior under fire loading is significantly different than that of RC behavior.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.381-395
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• 2009

The paper presents a case study in which the structural condition assessment of the East Bay bridge in Gibsonton, Florida is evaluated with the help of remote health monitoring techniques. The bridge is a four-span, continuous, deck-type reinforced concrete structure supported on prestressed pile bents, and is instrumented with smart Fiber Optic Sensors. The sensors used for remote health monitoring are the newly emerged Fabry-Perot (FP), and are both surface-mounted and embedded in the deck. The sensing system can be accessed remotely through fast Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), which permits the evaluation of the bridge behavior under live traffic loads. The bridge was open to traffic since March 2005, and the collected structural data have been continuously analyzed since. The data revealed an increase in strain readings, which suggests a progression in damage. Recent visual observations also indicated the presence of longitudinal cracks along the bridge length. After the formation of these cracks, the sensors readings were analyzed and used to extrapolate the values of the maximum stresses at the crack location. The data obtained were also compared to initial design values of the bridge under factored gravity and live loads. The study showed that the proposed structural health monitoring technique proved to provide an efficient mean for condition assessment of bridge structures providing it is implemented and analyzed with care.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.18 no.6 s.96
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• pp.737-742
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• 2006

Strengthening concrete structures with fiber reinforced polymer materials have grown to be a widely used method over most parts of the world today, which FRP was developed in 1960. A method to apply prestressing force to FRP is developed newly in these days, which can use the maximum performance of FRP materials. This paper presents the results of a study on improvement in flexural capacities of RC beams strenthened with near surface mounted prestressed CFRP rod and plate. Experimental variables include type of CFRP, prestressing level. Tests show that prestressed beams exhibit a higher crack-load as well as a higher steel-yielding load compared to non-prestressed strengthened beams.