• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.855-864
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• 2017

The control rod assembly controls reactor power by adjusting its position during normal operation and shuts down chain reactions by its free drop under scram conditions. Therefore, the drop performance of the control rod assembly is important for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In this study, the drop performance of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor that is being developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as a next-generation nuclear reactor was experimentally investigated. For the performance test, the test facility and test procedure were established first, and several free drop performance tests of the control rod assembly under different flow rate conditions were then carried out. Moreover, performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loading conditions were also conducted to investigate the effects of seismic loading on the drop performance of the control rod assembly. The drop time of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for 0% of the tentatively designed flow rate was measured to be 1.527 seconds, and this agrees well with the analytically calculated drop time. It was also observed that the effect of seismic loading on the drop time was not significant.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.138-147
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• 2018

With the recent series of damage caused by earthquakes in Korea, such as Gyeongju and Pohang, we know that Korea is no longer a safe zone for earthquakes and that we need to be prepared for them. In addition, bridges built prior to the introduction of seismic design concepts remain without adequate seismic reinforcement measures, and earthquake reinforcement should be performed efficiently considering economic and structural safety. Preliminary assessment of seismic performance of existing bridges is divided into four seismic groups, taking into account seismicity, vulnerability and Impact, considering the magnitude of the existing bridge's seismic, and prioritization for further evaluation of seismic performance. In this study, unlike the existing anti-seismic reinforcement priority method, scores are calculated based on the seismic design criteria applied to bridges, importance coefficient of the bridge including the zone coefficient and the Importance, vulnerability index of the bridge including the soil condition and the elapsed years, detail coefficient of the bridge including the superstructure form, the span length, the width, the height, the design load, and the daily traffic volume. The calculated score items will be weighted and grouped according to the results. Using this, a simpler and more efficient algorithm was proposed to determine the priority of seismic reinforcement on a bridge.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.291-299
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• 2014

There has been an increasing demand for introducing a base isolation system to secure the seismic safety of a nuclear power plant. However, the design criteria and the safety assessment methodology of a base isolated nuclear facility are still being developed. A performance based design concept for the base isolation system needs to be added to the general seismic design procedures. For the base isolation system, the displacement responses of isolators excited by the extended design basis earthquake are important as well as the design displacement. The possible displacement response by the extended design basis earthquake should be limited less than the failure displacement of the isolator. The failure of isolators were investigated by an experimental test to define the ultimate strain level of rubber bearings. The uncertainty analysis, considering the variations of the mechanical properties of isolators and input ground motions, was performed to estimate the probabilistic distribution of the isolator displacement. The relationship of the displacement response by each ground motion level was compared in view of a period elongation and a reduction of damping. Finally, several examples of isolator parameters are calculated and the considerations for an acceptable isolation design is discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.527-544
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• 2009

In this study, the periodic seismic performance evaluation scheme is proposed using a structural health monitoring system in terms of seismic fragility. An instrumented highway bridge is used to demonstrate the evaluation procedure involving (1) measuring ambient vibration of a bridge under general vehicle loadings, (2) identifying modal parameters from the measured acceleration data by applying output-only modal identification method, (3) updating a preliminary finite element model (obtained from structural design drawings) with the identified modal parameters using real-coded genetic algorithm, (4) analyzing nonlinear response time histories of the structure under earthquake excitations, and finally (5) developing fragility curves represented by a log-normal distribution function using maximum likelihood estimation. It is found that the seismic fragility of a highway bridge can be updated using extracted modal parameters and can also be monitored further by utilizing the instrumented structural health monitoring system.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.439-445
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• 2020

In this paper, the seismic performance evaluation was performed on 100 existing open-cut power cable tunnels, including ones that did not consider seismic design, in order to verify that the government's demand level (seismic special grade, 0.22 g). The results of the seismic performance evaluation show that most of the tunnels have seismic performance of 0.3 to 1 g, satisfying the level of the seismic special grade and securing the seismic safety. Meanwhile, the earthquake response analysis and structural test were performed to verify the validity of the method and the results of the seismic performance evaluation of the tunnels by the response displacement method, and to verify their seismic safety. As a result, the relative displacement due to the response displacement method under the 0.22 g earthquake was conservative than the results of the earthquake response analysis, and the results of load-displacement curves and response modification coefficient calculation by real scale structural tests showed the safety of the tunnels.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2010

This paper proposes an optimal design method for the nonlinear seismic isolated bridge. The probabilities of failure at the pier and the seismic isolator are considered as objective functions for optimal design, and a multi-objective optimization technique is employed to efficiently explore a set of multiple solutions optimizing mutually-conflicting objective functions at the same time. In addition, a stochastic linearization method is incorporated into the multi-objective optimization framework in order to effectively estimate the stochastic responses of the bridge without performing numerous nonlinear time history analyses during the optimization process. As a numerical example to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, the Nam-Han river bridge is taken into account, and the proposed method and the existing life-cycle-cost based design method are both applied for the purpose of comparing their seismic performances. The comparative results demonstrate that the proposed method not only shows better seismic performance but also is more economical than the existing cost-based design method. The proposed method is also proven to guarantee improved performance under variations in seismic intensity, in bandwidth and in the predominant frequency of the seismic event.

• The Journal of Sustainable Design and Educational Environment Research
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to develop the evaluation model of school facilities in terms of seismic performance during safety education in the school field. This study is composed of four stages with a view to developing user oriented evaluation models that can be utilized during earthquake safety education on ceiling system. and First stage analyze the evaluation guidelines to find evaluation methods and items. Based on the items, site survey was conducted to derive the characteristics of seismic performance of domestic school buildings in terms of ceiling system. Third stage analyzes the seismic performance of ceiling system. Final stage is to derive recommendations based on the results.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.293-303
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• 2020

Seismic fragility was assessed for non-seismic reinforced concrete shear walls in Korean high-rise apartment buildings in order to implement an earthquake damage prediction system. Seismic hazard was defined with an earthquake scenario, in which ground motion intensity was varied with respect to prescribed seismic center distances given an earthquake magnitude. Ground motion response spectra were computed using Korean ground motion attenuation equations to match accelerograms. Seismic fragility functions were developed using nonlinear static and dynamic analysis for comparison. Differences in seismic fragility between damage state criteria including inter-story drifts and the performance of individual structural members were investigated. The analyzed building had an exceptionally long period for the fundamental mode in the longitudinal direction and corresponding contribution of higher modes because of a prominently insufficient wall quantity in such direction. The results showed that nonlinear static analyses based on a single mode tend to underestimate structural damage. Moreover, detailed assessments of structural members are recommended for seismic fragility assessment of a relatively low performance level such as collapse prevention. On the other hand, inter-story drift is a more appropriate criterion for a relatively high performance level such as immediate occupancy.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.251-262
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• 2023

In response to China's "Regulations on the Management of Earthquake Resistance of Building Constructions" on the provision of eight types of important buildings to maintain functional after fortified earthquakes occur, "Guidelines for Seismic Design of post-quake functional buildings (Draft for Review)" distinguishes Class I and Class II buildings, and gives the performance objectives and seismic verification requirements for design earthquakes and severe earthquakes respectively. In this paper, a hospital and a school building are selected as examples to design according to the requirements of fortification of Intensity 8 and 7 respectively. Two design strategies, the seismic isolation scheme and energy dissipation scheme, are considered which are evaluated through elastic-plastic dynamic time-history analysis to meet the requirement of post-quake functional buildings. The results show that the seismic isolation design can meet the requirements in the above cases, and the energy dissipation scheme is difficult to meet the requirements of the "Guidelines" on floor acceleration in some cases, for which the scheme shall be made valid through the seismic resilience assessment. The research in this paper can provide a reference for designers to choose schemes for post-quake functional buildings.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.74-81
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• 2009

In this study, the seismic performance of RC school buildings which were not designed according to earthquake-resistance design code were evaluated by using response spectrum and push-over analyses. The torsional amplification effect due to plan irregularity is considered and then the efficiency of seismic retrofitting methods such as RC shear wall, steel frame, RC frame and PC wing wall was investigated. The analysis result indicate that the inter-story drift concentrated in the first floor and most plastic hinge forms at the column of the first story. Among the retrofitting methods, the PC wing wall has the highest seismic performance in strength and story drift aspect. Especially, it can make building ductile behavior due to the concentrated inter-story drift at the first column hinge is distributed overall stories. The axial force, shear force and moment magnitude of existing elements significantly decreased after retrofitting. However, the axial and shear force of the elements connected to the additional retrofitting elements increased, and especially the boundary columns at the end of the retrofitting shear wall should be reinforced for assuring the enhancement of seismic performance.