• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.877-880
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• 2006

The stochastic nature of the tensile strength of concrete is investigated theoretically and experimentally. The tensile strength of concrete was modeled by a theory based on the failure probability of a crack arbitrarily oriented within a concrete body. According to this model, the stochastic nature of the tensile strength depend on the current stress state. This aspect was checked experimentally using a classical three point bend specimen and a rectangular plate specimen loaded at the center. It has been known that the biaxial strength is no different from the uniaxial strength. However, if the region where the tensile strength is constant gets small, the biaxial tensile strength increases and its stochastical variation decreases.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.175-185
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• 2017

As the gas is manufactured, handled and used more often due to the continuous increase of gas, the related facility gets expanded and more complex causing small and big accident which causes economic loss including damage for humans and materials. The gas pipeline, the most common gas facility, has the biggest risk of accidents. Especially in the urban area and densely populated areas, the accident due to the high pressure pipeline may cause even more serious damages. To prevent the accident caused by the buried pipeline, it is required for the relevant authorities to evaluate the damage and risk of the whole pipeline system effectively. A risk is usually defined as a possibility or probability of an undesired event happening, and there is always a risk even when the probability of failure is set low once the pipeline is installed or under operation. It is reported that the accident caused by the failure of the pipeline rarely happens, however, it is important to minimize the rate of accidents by analyzing the reason of failure as it could cause a huge damage of humans and property. Therefore, the paper rated the risk of pipelines with quantitative numbers using the qualitative risk analysis method of the Scoring Model. It is assumed that the result could be effectively used for practical maintenance and management of pipelines securing the safety of the pipes.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.457-471
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• 2009

This study investigates the role of accidental torsion in seismic reliability assessment. The analyzed structures are regular 6-story and 20-story steel office buildings. The eccentricity in a floor plan was simulated by shifting the mass from the centroid by 5% of the dimension normal to earthquake shaking. The eccentricity along building heights was replicated by Latin hypercube sampling. The fragilities for immediate occupancy and life safety were evaluated using 0.7% and 2.5% inter-story drift limits. Two limit-state probabilities and the corresponding earthquake intensities were compared. The effect of ignoring accidental torsion and the use of code accidental eccentricity were also assessed. The results show that accidental torsion may influence differently the structural reliability and limit-state PGAs. In terms of structural reliability, significant differences in the probability of failure are obtained depending on whether accidental torsion is considered or not. In terms of limit-state PGAs, accidental torsion does not have a significant effect. In detail, ignoring accidental torsion leads to underestimates in low-rise buildings and at small drift limits. On the other hand, the use of code accidental eccentricity gives conservative estimates, especially in high-rise buildings at small drift limits.

• International Journal of Reliability and Applications
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.129-145
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• 2004

We use a novel, forced censoring technique that closer fits the lower tails of strenth distributions to better estimate extremly smaller percentiles for measuring progress in continuous improvement initiatives. These percentiles are of greater interest for companies, government oversight organizations, and consumers concerned with safely and preventing accidents for many products in general, but specifically for medium density fiberboard (MDF). The international industrial standard for MDF for measuring highest quality is internal bond (IB, also called tensile strengh) and its smaller percentiles are crucial, especially the first percentile and lower ones. We induce censoring at a value just above the median to weight lower observations more. Using this approach, we have better fits in the lower tails of the distribution, where these samller percentiles are impacted most. Finally, bootstrap estimates of the small percentiles are used to demonstrate improved intervals by our forced censoring approach and the fitted model. There was evidence from the study to suggest that MDF has potentially different failure modes for early failures. Overall, our approach is parsimonious and is suitable for real time manufacturing settings. The approach works for either strengths distributions or lifetime distributions.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.4A
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• pp.647-657
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• 2006

Probabilistic Risk Assessment considering statistically random variables is performed for the preliminary design of a Cable Stayed Bridge, which is Prestressed Concrete Bridge consisted of cable and plate girders, based on the method of Working Stress Design and Strength Design. Component reliabilities of cables and girders have been evaluated using the response surface of the design variables at the selected critical sections based on the maximum shear, positive and negative moment locations. Response Surface Method (RSM) is successfully applied for reliability analyses for this relatively small probability of failure of the complex structure, which is hard to obtain through Monte-Carlo Simulations. or through First Order Second Moment Method that can not easily calculate the derivative terms of implicit limit state functions. For the analysis of system reliability, parallel resistance system consisting of cables and plate girder is changed into series connection system and the result of system reliability of total structure is presented. As a system reliability, the upper and lower probabilities of failure for the structural system have been evaluated and compared with the suggested prediction method for the combination of failure modes. The suggested prediction method for the combination of failure modes reveals the unexpected combinations of element failures in significantly reduced time and efforts compared with the previous permutation method or system reliability analysis method, which calculates upper and lower bound failure probabilities.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.10
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• pp.97-107
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• 2007

Accurate evaluation of the slope stability by assuming failure block as the entire slope is considered to be apposite for the small scale slope, whereas it is not the case for the large scale slope. Hence, appropriate estimation of a failure block size is required since the safety factor and the joint strength parameters are the function of the failure block size. In this paper, the size of failure block was investigated by generating 3-dimensional rock joint system based on statistical data of joints obtained from research slope, such as joint orientation, spacing and 3-dimensional joint intensity. The result indicates that 33 potential failure blocks exist in research slope, as large as 1.4 meters at least and 38.7 meters at most, and average block height is 15.2 meters. In addition, the data obtained from 3 dimensional joint system were directly applicable to the probability analysis and 2 and 3 dimensional discontinuity analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.11
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• pp.1055-1064
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• 2017

Since a device such as a rocket motor requires very high reliability, a reasonable reliability design process is essential. However, Korea has implemented a design method for applying a safety factor to each component. In classic reliability analysis, input variables such as mean and standard deviation, used in the limit state function, are treated as deterministic values. Because the mean and standard deviation are determined by a small amount of data, this approach could lead to inaccurate results. In this study, reliability analysis is performed for bolted joints and o-ring seals, and the Bayesian approach is used to statistically estimate the input variables. The estimated variables and failure probability, calculated by the reliability analysis, are derived in the form of probability distributions.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.197-209
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• 2018

Fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) is a material with increasing application in civil engineering. Here it is assumed that the material consists of a great number of rather small fibers embedded into the concrete matrix. It would be advantageous to predict the mechanical properties of FRC using nondestructive testing; unfortunately, many testing methods for concrete are not applicable to FRC. In addition, design methods for FRC are either inaccurate or complicated. In three-point bending tests of FRC prisms, it has been observed that fiber reinforcement does not break but simply pulls out during specimen failure. Following that observation, this work is based on an assumption that the main components of a simple and rather accurate FRC model are mechanical properties of the concrete matrix and fiber pullout force. Properties of the concrete matrix could be determined from measurements on samples taken during concrete production, and fiber pullout force could be measured on samples with individual fibers embedded into concrete. However, there is no clear relationship between measurements on individual samples of concrete matrix with a single fiber and properties of the produced FRC. This work presents an inverse model for FRC that establishes a relation between parameters measured on individual material samples and properties of a structure made of the composite material. However, a deterministic relationship is clearly not possible since only a single beam specimen of 60 cm could easily contain over 100000 fibers. Our inverse model assumes that the probability density function of individual fiber properties is known, and that the global sample load-displacement curve is obtained from the experiment. Thus, each fiber is stochastically characterized and accordingly parameterized. A relationship between fiber parameters and global load-displacement response, the so-called forward model, is established. From the forward model, based on Levenberg-Marquardt procedure, the inverse model is formulated and successfully applied.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.119-126
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• 1993

We study a manufacturing process that is quite common in semiconductor wafer fabrication of semiconductor chip production. A machine is used to process a job consisting of J wafers. Each job requires a setup, and the i$_{th}$ setup for a job is sucessful with probability P$_{i}$. The setup is prone to failure, which results in the loss of expensive wafers. Therefore, a tiral run is first conducted on a small batch. If the set up is successful, the test is passed and the balance of the job can be processed. If the setup is unsuccessful, the exposed wafers are lost to scrap and the mask is realigned. The process then repeats on the balance of the job. We call this as send-ahead policy and consider general policies in which the number of wafers that are sent shead depend on the cost of the raw wafer, the sequence of success probabilities, and the balance of the job. We model this process and determine the expected number of good wafers per job,the expected time to process a job, and the long run average throughput. An algorithm to minimize the cost per good wafer subject to a demand constraint is provided.d.d.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.527-542
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• 2002

Wind-excited vibrations of slender structures can induce fatigue damage and cause structural failure without exceeding ultimate limit state. Unfortunately, the growing importance of this problem is coupled with an evident lack of simple calculation criteria. This paper proposes a mathematical method for evaluating the crosswind fatigue of slender vertical structures, which represents the dual formulation of a parallel method that the authors recently developed with regard to alongwind vibrations. It takes into account the probability distribution of the mean wind velocity at the structural site. The aerodynamic crosswind actions on the stationary structure are caused by the vortex shedding and by the lateral turbulence, both schematised by spectral models. The structural response in the small displacement regime is expressed in closed form by considering only the contribution of the first vibration mode. The stress cycle counting is based on a probabilistic method for narrow-band processes and leads to analytical formulae of the stress cycles histogram, of the accumulated damage and of the fatigue life. The extension of this procedure to take into account aeroelastic vibrations due to lock-in is carried out by means of ESDU method. The examples point out the great importance of vortex shedding and especially of lock-in concerning fatigue.