• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.190-202
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• 2018

Maintaining the integrity of the major equipment in nuclear power plants is critical to the safety of the structures. In particular, the soundness of the piping is a critical matter that is directly linked to the safety of nuclear power plants. Currently, the limit state of the piping design standard is plastic collapse, and the actual pipe failure is leakage due to a penetration crack. Actual pipe failure, however, cannot be applied to the analysis of seismic fragility because it is difficult to quantify. This paper proposes methods of measuring the failure strain and deformation angle, which are necessary for evaluating the quantitative failure criteria of the steel pipe elbow using an image measurement system. Furthermore, the failure strain and deformation angle, which cannot be measured using the conventional sensors, were efficiently measured using the proposed methods.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.383-397
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• 2018

Traditional base isolation systems focus on isolating the seismic response of a structure in the horizontal direction. However, in regions where the vertical earthquake excitation is significant (such as near-fault region), a traditional base-isolated building exhibits a significant vertical vibration. To eliminate this shortcoming, a rocking-isolated system named Telescopic Column (TC) is proposed in this paper. Detailed rocking and isolation mechanism of the TC system is presented. The seismic performance of the TC is compared with the traditional elastomeric bearing (EB) and friction pendulum (FP) base-isolated systems. A 4-storey reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame (RC-MRF) is selected as the reference superstructure. The seismic response of the reference superstructure in terms of column axial forces, base shears, floor accelerations, inter-storey drift ratios (IDR) and collapse margin ratios (CMRs) are evaluated using OpenSees. The results of the nonlinear dynamic analysis subjected to multi-directional earthquake excitations show that the superstructure equipped with the newly proposed TC is more resilient and exhibits a superior response with higher margin of safety against collapse when compared with the same superstructure with the traditional base-isolation (BI) system.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.531-538
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• 2017

In this paper, the seismic behavior of BRBF structures is studied and compared with special concentric braced frames (SCBF). To this purpose, three BRBF and three SCBF structures with 3, 5 and 10 stories are designed based on AISC360-5 and modelled using OpenSees. These structures are loaded in accordance with ASCE/SEI 7-10. Incremental nonlinear dynamic analysis (IDA) are performed on these structures for 28 different accelerograms and the median IDA curves are used to compare seismic capacity of these two systems. Results obtained, indicates that BRBF systems provide higher capacity for the target performance level in comparison with SCBF systems. And structures with high altitude (in this study, 5 and 10 stories) with the possibility of exceeding the collapse prevention performance level, further than lower altitude (here 3 floors) structures.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.47-53
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• 2008

This research focuses on the issue of seismic retrofit prioritization based on the Caltrans' highway network serving Los Angeles and Orange counties. Retrofit prioritization is one of most important problems in earthquake engineering, and it is a problem that most decision makers face in the process of resource allocation. This study demonstrates the methods of prioritized resource allocation in the process of retrofitting a regional highway network. For the criteria of a retrofit ranking, seismic vulnerability and the importance of network link are first introduced. Subsequently, link-based seismic retrofit cases are simulated, investigating the effects of the seismic retrofit in terms of seismic performance, such as driver's delay. In this study, probabilistic scenario earthquakes are used to perform a probabilistic seismic risk analysis. The results show that the retrofit prioritization can be differently defined and ranked depending on the stakeholders. This study provides general guidelines for prioritization strategy for the effective retrofitting of a highway network system.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.10-27
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• 2014

HAZUS-MH is a GIS-based computer program that estimates potential losses from multi-hazard phenomena: earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. With respect to seismic disaster, characteristics of a hypothetical or actual earthquake are entered into HAZUS. Then HAZUS estimates the intensity of ground shaking and calculates the correspondent losses. In this study, HAZUS was used as a part of the preparations of the future seismic events at a coastal plant facility area. To reliably characterize the target facility area, many geotechnical characteristics data were synthesized from the existing site investigation reports. And the buildings and facilities were sorted by analyzing their material and structural characteristics. In particular, the study area was divided into 17 blocks taking into account the situation of both land development and facility distribution. The ground conditions of blocks were categorized according to the site classification scheme for earthquake-resistant design. Moreover, seismic fragility curves of a main facilities were derived based on the numerical modeling and were incorporated into the database in HAZUS. The results estimated in the study area using HAZUS showed various seismic damage and loss potentials depending on site conditions and structural categories. This case study verified the usefulness of the HAZUS for estimating earthquake losses in coastal facility areas.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.19-43
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• 2014

A risk assessment framework for evaluating building structures is implemented in this study. This framework allows considering sources of uncertainty both on structural capacity and seismic demand. In particular randomness on seismic load, incident angle, material properties, floor mass and structural damping are considered; in addition the choice of fibre modelling versus plastic hinge model is also considered as a source of uncertainty. The main objective of this work is to study the contribution of these sources of uncertainty on the fragilities of steel and steel-reinforced concrete composite 3D building structures. The fragility curves are expressed in the form of a two-parameter lognormal distribution where vertical statistics in conjunction with metaheuristic optimization are implemented for calculating the two parameters.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.115-116
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• 2010

To research the fragility of exterior joints of RC frame building which are not designed to seismic design code, four T shaped beam-column subassemblies are designed and tested with displacement control until to reach 3.5% story drift. From the results, the non-seismic detailed specimen failed in exterior joint before to reach to 1.0% drift, which is far less than the recommendation value of FEMA 356 and their strengths are less than 0.85 times of the nominal flexural strength.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.223-230
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• 1999

The seismic damage assessment to the postulated earthquake is attempted for the buildings in the model district of Seoul City. The capacity spectrum method is employed in which the vulnerability functions are expressed as functions of the spectral displacement. the database of the building stock is constructed and managed using Geographic Information System software. The model district is selected to represent the typical structural and residential characteristics of Seoul City The structural properties were collected from the design documents. The field inspections were carried out to find out the current status of the building. They are classified into 11 structural types. The fragility curves in HazUS are employed, The ground motions from the postulated earthquakes are simulated using the Boor's methods, The surface soil in the district is classified into 3 profiles using the depth as the parameter. The one-dimensional wave propagation method is used to calculate he filtered ground motion through surface soil layer. The average spectrum of this sample time histories is used as the demand curves. The calculated results are expressed in maps using GIS software ArcView 3.0a

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.1372-1386
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• 2018

Despite recent advances in multi-hazard analysis, the complexity and inherent nature of such problems make quantification of the landslide effect in a probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of NPPs challenging. Therefore, in this paper, a practical approach was presented for performing an earthquake-induced landslide PSA for NPPs subject to seismic hazard. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, it was applied to Korean typical NPP in Korea as a numerical example. The assessment result revealed the quantitative probabilistic effects of peripheral slope failure and subsequent run-out effect on the risk of core damage frequency (CDF) of a NPP during the earthquake event. Parametric studies were conducted to demonstrate how parameters for slope, and physical relation between the slope and NPP, changed the CDF risk of the NPP. Finally, based on these results, the effective strategies were suggested to mitigate the CDF risk to the NPP resulting from the vulnerabilities inherent in adjacent slopes. The proposed approach can be expected to provide an effective framework for performing the earthquake-induced landslide PSA and decision support to increase NPP safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.10
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• pp.4254-4262
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• 2024

Reinforced concrete structures are subject to exposure to chloride ions in the air, leading to chloride penetration, and carbonation attacks resulting from exposure to carbon dioxide. This chemical degradation process induces corrosion of reinforcing bars within concrete, significantly impacting durability. Structures situated in coastal areas, such as nuclear power plants, are particularly susceptible to rapid chloride penetration due to the high chloride concentration in the air. This study utilizes existing experimental data to forecast the chloride diffusion coefficient employing artificial neural network (ANN technology). The total number of experimental data was 535 gathered from 18 papers. Through analysis of the chloride coefficient and predicted degradation depth, the effective cross-sectional area of concrete is examined, and the deterioration of wall performance is forecasted.