• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.757-781
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• 2016

The results of diagnostics and analysis of an industrial hall located on the premises of a thermal power plant severely damaged by fire are presented in the paper. The comprehensive failure-related diagnostics, non-destructive and destructive tests of steel and concrete materials, geodetic surveying of selected structural members, numerical modelling, static analysis and reliability assessment were focused on two basic goals: The determination of the current technical condition of the load bearing structure and the assessment of its post fire resistance as well as assessing the degree of damage and subsequent design of reconstruction measures and arrangements which would enable the safe and reliable use of the building. The current mechanical properties of the steel material obtained from the tests and measured geometric characteristics of the structural members with imperfections were employed in finite element models to study the post-fire behaviour of the structure. In order to compare the behaviour of the numerically modelled steel roof truss, subjected to the effects of fire, with the real post-fire response of the damaged structure theoretically obtained resistance, critical temperature and the time at which the structure no longer meets the required reliability criteria under its given loading are compared with real values. A very good agreement between the simulated results and real characteristics of the structure after the fire was observed.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.122-131
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• 1995

Load test for newly introduced precast segmental bridge is carried out to experimentally evaluate load carrying capacity, Analysis accompanied with the test is also performed and the results are used in the evaluation. In addition to initial evaluation of the bridge by load test, remote dynamic monitoring system to perform realtime assessment of the bridge condition is also under development. In this paper the procedure and results of load test and evaluation are presented along with introduction of dynamic monitoring system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.257-289
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• 2015

Shear connectors are generally used to link the slab and girders together in slab-on-girder bridge structures. Damage of shear connectors in such structures will result in shear slippage between the slab and girders, which significantly reduces the load-carrying capacity of the bridge. Because shear connectors are buried inside the structure, routine visual inspection is not able to detect conditions of shear connectors. A few methods have been proposed in the literature to detect the condition of shear connectors based on vibration measurements. This paper proposes a different dynamic condition assessment approach to identify the damage of shear connectors in slab-on-girder bridge structures based on power spectral density transmissibility (PSDT). PSDT formulates the relationship between the auto-spectral densities of two responses in the frequency domain. It can be used to identify shear connector conditions with or without reference data of the undamaged structure (or the baseline). Measured impact force and acceleration responses from hammer tests are analyzed to obtain the frequency response functions at sensor locations by experimental modal analysis. PSDT from the slab response to the girder response is derived with the obtained frequency response functions. PSDT vectors in the undamaged and damaged states can be compared to identify the damage of shear connectors. When the baseline is not available, as in most practical cases, PSDT vectors from the measured response at a reference sensor to those of the slab and girder in the damaged state can be used to detect the damage of shear connectors. Numerical and experimental studies on a concrete slab supported by two steel girders are conducted to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach. Identification results demonstrate that damages of shear connectors are identified accurately and efficiently with and without the baseline. The proposed method is also used to evaluate the conditions of shear connectors in a real composite bridge with in-field testing data.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.312-320
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• 2017

This paper deals with the development of structural test facility for the strength assessment of marine leisure boat built from carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) materials. The structural test facility consists of test jig, load application and control system, and data acquisition system. Test jig, and load application and control system are designed to accommodate various size and short span to depth ratios of single skin, top-hat stiffened and sandwich constructions in plated structural format such as square and rectangular shapes. A lateral pressure load, typical and important applied load condition to the plates of the hull structure for marine leisure boat, is simulated by employing a number of hydraulic cylinders operated automatically and manually. To examine and operate the structural test facility, five carbon/epoxy based FRP square plates having the test section area of $1m^2$, which are part of CFRP marine leisure boat hull, are prepared and they are subjected to monotonically increasing lateral pressure loads. In the test preparation, considering the symmetry of the plates geometry, various strain gauges and linear variable displacement transformer are used in conjunction with data acquisition system utilizing LabVIEW. From the test observation, the responses of the CFRP hull structure of marine leisure boat are understood by obtaining load to deflection and strain to load curves.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.345-355
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• 2009

This article describes the development of a fiber optic accelerometer based on Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG). The accelerometer utilizes the stiffness of the optical fiber and a lumped mass in the design. Acceleration is measured by the FBG in response to the vibration of the fiber optic mass system. The wavelength shift of FBG is proportional to the change in acceleration, and the gauge factor pertains to the shift in wavelength as a function of acceleration. Low frequency version of the accelerometer was developed for applications in monitoring bridges. The accelerometer was first evaluated in laboratory settings and then employed in a demonstration project for condition assessment of a bridge. Laboratory experiments involved evaluation of the sensitivity and resolution of measurements under a series of low frequency low amplitude conditions. The main feature of this accelerometer is single channel multiplexing capability rendering the system highly practical for application in condition assessment of bridges. This feature of the accelerometer was evaluated by using the system during ambient vibration tests of a bridge. The Frequency Domain Decomposition method was employed to identify the mode shapes and natural frequencies of the bridge. Results were compared with the data acquired from the conventional accelerometers.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.557-569
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• 2022

Vibration-based structural health monitoring (SHM) is crucial for the dynamic maintenance of civil building structures to protect property security and the lives of the public. Analyzing these vibrations with modern artificial intelligence and deep learning (DL) methods is a new trend. This paper proposed an unsupervised deep learning method based on a convolutional autoencoder (CAE), which can overcome the limitations of conventional supervised deep learning. With the convolutional core applied to the DL network, the method can extract features self-adaptively and efficiently. The effectiveness of the method in detecting damage is then tested using a benchmark model. Thereafter, this method is used to detect damage and instant disaster events in a rubber bearing-isolated gymnasium structure. The results indicate that the method enables the CAE network to learn the intact vibrations, so as to distinguish between different damage states of the benchmark model, and the outcome meets the high-dimensional data distribution characteristics visualized by the t-SNE method. Besides, the CAE-based network trained with daily vibrations of the isolating layer in the gymnasium can precisely recover newly collected vibration and detect the occurrence of the ground motion. The proposed method is effective at identifying nonlinear variations in the dynamic responses and has the potential to be used for structural condition assessment and safety warning.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.83-92
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• 2020

In South Korea, problems caused by material deterioration of time-worn concrete structures have been increased recently. Because severe material deterioration could damage the structure's safety, it's important to evaluate the old structure's condition and structural capacity regularly to keep its proper performance. The safety evaluation of concrete structures has been initiated and performed periodically since 1995 according to a guideline in accordance with a law in Korea. The guideline prescribes the evaluation types, intervals and methods of the target structure. A lot of cost and labor have been invested every year to carry out the regular safety evaluation. However, it's not clear that the current manual could inspect the old structure's condition and assess the structural capacity precisely. Thus, the verification study initiated to figure out the Korean safety evaluation manual's practicalness. First, the Korean manual was analyzed and then compared with that of other countries for concrete bridges which are representative concrete structure. After that, the previously written evaluation reports were collected and analyzed to find out how the safety evaluation has been carried out. Based on the study results, the parts requiring verification of the manual were drawn. A research program is in progress in order to verify the parts by performing tests with actual structural members from decommissioned concrete bridges.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 1997

콘크리트 교량을 저렴하고 신속하게 상태 평가를 하기 위하여 성능 지수(Performance Index)를 제안한다. 이 기법은 육안 검사에 의하여 발견된 결함의 범위와 심각도를 사용하여 콘크리트 교량의 전반적인 상태를 신속하게 등급화 하고 콘크리트 교량의 노출 조건을 고려하여 콘크리트 성능을 정량적으로 평가한다. 또한 본 연구에서는 상기한 성능 지수 기법의 타당성을 증명할 수 있는 정밀 안전 진단 시험결과를 활용하여 6개의 주요 노후화 원인을 고려하는 또 다른 성능 지수를 제안한다. 이러한 두 상태 평가 방법이 영국의 실제 교량 상태 평가 자료를 바탕으로 한 상태 평가 결과를 퍼지 집합 이론(fuzzy set theory)으로 분석한 결과와 비교하여 방법의 정당성 및 신뢰성을 논의한다.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.16-39
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• 2017

This paper reviewed and summarized the experimental studies conducted during last three decades to evaluate the structural integrity and to establish the acceptance criteria for piping system of nuclear power plants (NPPs) under seismic loading condition. These experimental studies contain the results of large-scale piping system tests under excessive seismic loading as well as standard specimen tests, simplified piping specimen tests, and piping components tests under simplified dynamic and cyclic loading. These would be useful as a basis for establishing integrity assessment procedure and acceptance criteria for piping systems of NPPs under beyond design basis earthquake (BDBE) conditions, and also could be used in planing the scope and direction of further related researches.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2022

Cables are critical components of cable-stayed bridges. A structural health monitoring system provides real-time cable tension recording for cable health monitoring. However, the measurement data involve multiple sources of variability, i.e., varying environmental and operational factors, which increase the complexity of cable condition monitoring. In this study, a one-class classification method is developed for cable condition assessment using Bayesian factor analysis (FA). The single-peaked vehicle-induced cable tension is assumed to be relevant to vehicle positions and weights. The Bayesian FA is adopted to establish the correlation model between cable tensions and vehicles. Vehicle weights are assumed to be latent variables and the influences of different transverse positions are quantified by coefficient parameters. The Bayesian theorem is employed to estimate the parameters and variables automatically, and the damage index is defined on the basis of the well-trained model. The proposed method is applied to one cable-stayed bridge for cable damage detection. Significant deviations of the damage indices of Cable SJS11 were observed, indicating a damaged condition in 2011. This study develops a novel method to evaluate the health condition of individual cable using the FA in the Bayesian framework. Only vehicle-induced cable tensions are used and there is no need to monitor the vehicles. The entire process, including the data pre-processing, model training and damage index calculation of one cable, takes only 35 s, which is highly efficient.