• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.343-384
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• 2017

We assess the outcomes for the negotiating parties in the Trans-Pacific Partnership if the remaining eleven parties go ahead with the agreement as negotiated without the United States, as compared to the outcomes under the original twelve-member agreement signed in October 2016. We find that the eleven-party agreement, now renamed as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), is a much smaller deal than the twelve-party one, but that some parties do better without the United States in the deal, in particular those in the Western Hemisphere - Canada, Mexico, Chile, and Peru. For the politically relevant medium term, the United States stands to be less well-off outside the TPP than inside. Since provisional deals can be in place for a long time, the results of this study suggest that the eleven parties are better off to implement the CPTPP, leaving aside the controversial governance elements, the implications of which for national interests are unclear and which, in any event, may be substantially affected by parallel bilateral negotiations between individual CPTPP parties and the United States.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1113-1118
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• 2008

Strip layout design in progressive die is an important factor that determines the applicability of mass production. In this study, the layout design of bracket strips used fer automobiles was executed. The strip layout design was made in 3D with the use of Cimatron die design, an automation module rather than a 3D modeling module. Blank layout has been optimized through a layer arrangement of the wide run positioning inside carrier (double-row and two-pass type). The 3D CAD/CAM software used was Cimatron Die Design; the strip layout design was completed in ten processes.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2007

The purpose of this paper is the assessment of the capacity of the reinforced concrete (RC) elements of an arch bridge when they are subjected to contact and near-contact explosive charges of various amounts, and the estimation of the critical charges for these components. The bridge considered is the Tenza Viaduct, a decommissioned structure south of Naples, Italy. Its primary elements, deck, piers and arches were analyzed. The evaluation was accomplished via numerical analyses that made possible to obtain the elements dynamic response when they are exposed to blast loading conditions. To evaluate the member's capacities, failure criteria for deck, piers and arches were proposed based on concrete damage parameters. Additionally, curves relating the explosive charge to the residual capacity and to damage level of the elements were also developed. The results of this work were taken into account to investigate the progressive collapse of the global structure.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.442-449
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• 2013

The solenoid valve case of an 8-speed automatic transmission plays a role in maintaining the valve seal, which prevents an inflow of foreign substances into the transmission. The seal increases the reliability of the automatic transmission's performance. As a solution to pollution-related problems and to reduce fuel consumption, transmissions are being made with more gears to work more economically and have reduced fuel consumption. These newer transmission require greater dimensional tolerances and need to be manufactured with more precision. In the current study, the design of a multistage drawing considering both the product's height and limit draw ratio (LDR) of the material was performed using both a theoretical analysis and the expertise of industrial experts. The finite element modeling (FEM) simulation was performed using the commercial software, PAM-stamp, and tests of the dimensional measurements for a prototype were performed to verify the optimal progressive process.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.279-294
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• 2020

Foundation of a building is damaged under service loads during construction. First visit shows that the foundation has been punched at the 6 column's foot region led to building rotation. Foundation shear punching occurring has made some stresses and deflections in construction. In this study, progressing of damage caused by foundation shear punching and inverse loading in order to resolve the building rotation has been evaluated in the foundation and frame of building by finite element modeling in ABAQUS software. The stress values of bars in punched regions of foundation has been deeply exceeded from steel yielding strength and experienced large displacement based on software's results. On the other hand, the values of created stresses in the frame are not too big to make serious damage. In the beams and columns of ground floor, some partial cracks has been occurred and in other floors, the values of stresses are in the elastic zone of materials. Finally, by inverse loading to the frame, the horizontal displacement of floors has been resolved and the values of stresses in frame has been significantly reduced.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2018

In a recent tragic fire incident, the Plasco Tower collapsed after an intense outburst of fire lasting for three and a half hours and claiming the lives of 16 firefighters and 6 civilians. This paper will present continuing collaborative work between Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Queen's University in Canada to model the progressive collapse of the tower. The fire started at the 10th floor and was observed to have travelled along the floor horizontally and through the staircase and windows vertically. Plasco Tower was steel structure and all the steel sections were fabricated by welding standard European channel or angle profiles and no fire protection was applied. Four internal columns carried the loads transferred by the primary beams, and box columns were constructed along the perimeter of the building as a braced tube for resisting seismic loading. OpenSees fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used to model the frames, while shell elements are used for the reinforced concrete floor slabs. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. The results in this preliminarily analysis are based on rough estimations of the structure's configuration. The ongoing work looks at modeling the Plasco Tower based on the most accurate findings from reviewing many photographs and collected data.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2020

This study aims to explore a purely mechanistic pavement analysis approach where viscoelasticity and fracture of asphalt mixtures are considered to accurately predict deformation and damage behavior of flexible pavements. To do so, the viscoelastic and fracture properties of designated pavement materials are obtained through experiments and a fully mechanistic damage analysis is carried out using a finite element method (FEM). While modeling crack development can be done in various ways, this study uses the cohesive zone approach, which is a well-known fracture mechanics approach to efficiently model crack initiation and propagation. Different pavement configurations and traffic loads are considered based on three main functional classes of roads suggested by FHWA i.e., arterial, collector and local. For each road type, three different material combinations for asphalt concrete (AC) and base layers are considered to study damage behavior of pavement. A concept of the approach is presented and a case study where three different material combinations for AC and base layers are considered is exemplified to investigate progressive damage behavior of pavements when mixture properties and layer configurations were altered. Overall, it can be concluded that mechanistic pavement modeling attempted in this study could differentiate the performance of pavement sections due to varying design inputs. The promising results, although limited yet to be considered a fully practical method, infer that a few mixture tests can be integrated with the finite element modeling of the mixture tests and subsequent structural modeling of pavements to better design mixtures and pavements in a purely mechanistic manner.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.49-62
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• 2023

Background: Over the past three decades, gradual eustatic sea-level rise has been considered a primary exogenous factor in the increased frequency of flooding and biological changes in several salt marshes. Under this paradigm, the potential importance of short-term events, such as ocean storminess, in coastal hydrology and ecology is underrepresented in the literature. In this study, a simulation was developed to evaluate the influence of wind waves driven by atmospheric oscillations on sedimentary and vegetation dynamics at the Skallingen salt marsh in southwestern Denmark. The model was built based on long-term data of mean sea level, sediment accretion, and plant species composition collected at the Skallingen salt marsh from 1933-2006. In the model, the submergence frequency (number yr^-1) was estimated as a combined function of wind-driven high water level (HWL) events (> 80 cm Danish Ordnance Datum) affected by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and changes in surface elevation (cm yr^-1). Vegetation dynamics were represented as transitions between successional stages controlled by flooding effects. Two types of simulations were performed: (1) baseline modeling, which assumed no effect of wind-driven sea-level change, and (2) experimental modeling, which considered both normal tidal activity and wind-driven sea-level change. Results: Experimental modeling successfully represented the patterns of vegetation change observed in the field. It realistically simulated a retarded or retrogressive successional state dominated by early- to mid-successional species, despite a continuous increase in surface elevation at Skallingen. This situation is believed to be caused by an increase in extreme HWL events that cannot occur without meteorological ocean storms. In contrast, baseline modeling showed progressive succession towards the predominance of late-successional species, which was not the then-current state in the marsh. Conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that variations in the NAO index toward its positive phase have increased storminess and wind tides on the North Sea surface (especially since the 1980s). This led to an increased frequency and duration of submergence and delayed ecological succession. Researchers should therefore employ a multitemporal perspective, recognizing the importance of short-term sea-level changes nested within long-term gradual trends.

• Composites Research
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.303-309
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• 2023

In this paper, a Progressive Damage and Failure Analysis (PDFA) modeling method was developed using ABAQUS/EXPLICIT to predict in-plane damage and delamination for Open-Hole Compression (OHC) testing. The proposed PDFA model was constructed based on Hashin criteria and cohesive behavior. The strength and stiffness of OHC specimens with three types of stacking sequences [(45/-45/0₂)₃]_s , [(45/0/-45/90)₃]_s and [45/-45/0/45/-45/90/(45/-45)₂]_s were compared to comprehensively evaluate the validity of the Finite Element(FE) model of PDFA. The strength and stiffness of the OHC specimens were predicted relatively well, with less than a percentage error 10.0 %. For the numerical simulation case for each layup, the damage initiation/evolution of OHC specimens were evaluated for delamination and tension/compression matrix damage before and after failure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.285-305
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• 2014

This study employs a novel beam-type wavelet finite element model (WFEM) to fulfill an adaptive-scale damage detection strategy in which structural modeling scales are not only spatially varying but also dynamically changed according to actual needs. Dynamical equations of beam structures are derived in the context of WFEM by using the second-generation cubic Hermite multiwavelets as interpolation functions. Based on the concept of modal strain energy, damage in beam structures can be detected in a progressive manner: the suspected region is first identified using a low-scale structural model and the more accurate location and severity of the damage can be estimated using a multi-scale model with local refinement in the suspected region. Although this strategy can be implemented using traditional finite element methods, the multi-scale and localization properties of the WFEM considerably facilitate the adaptive change of modeling scales in a multi-stage process. The numerical examples in this study clearly demonstrate that the proposed damage detection strategy can progressively and efficiently locate and quantify damage with minimal computation effort and a limited number of sensors.