• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.6
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• pp.713-724
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• 2022

Effects of coal tensile strength and plow configuration on the coal fragmentation process was modeled by two-dimensional particles flow code (PFC2D). Three tensile strength values, 0.5, 1,5 and 3.5 MPa were considered in this numerical study. The cutters of plow penetrated in the coal for 4 mm at a rate of 0.016 m/s. According to the PFC manual, the local damping factor was 0.7. Three failure mechanism of coal during the fragmentation process by plow were modelled. The coal material beneath the cutters showed the elastic, plastic and fracturing behaviors in this analysis. In all the models, the plastic zone was fractured and some micro-cracks were induced but the elastic zone remained undamaged. It was observed that the tensile strength affected the failure mechanism of coal significantly and as it increased the extent of the fractured zone underneath the plow cutter decreased during the fragmentation process.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.45-56
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• 2005

In this study, fracture formation and fracture volume by blasting demolition of model reinforced concrete pillars were compared with various vertical load and influence of reinforced steel bar. The more vertical load increased, the more tensile cracks and vertical direction cracks produced. In vertical load of 2.0ton, tensile cracks on vertical direction were predominantly produced. Generally, the more vertical load increased, the more bending deformation of concrete steel bar decreased. As a result, vertical load was influenced fracture formation of concrete and bending deformation of reinforced steel bar. Reinforced steel bar was influenced fracture volume of concrete. According to vertical load and influence of reinforce steel bar by blasting demolition of reinforced concrete pillars, drilling and blasting pattern may be modified.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.507-521
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• 1997

The ultimate behavior of a reinforced concrete hyperbolic paraboloid saddle shell under uniformly distributed vertical load is investigated using an inelastic, large displacement finite-element program originally developed at North Carolina State University. Unlike with the author's previous study which shows that the saddle shell possesses a tremendous capacity to redistribute the stresses, introducing tension stiffening in the model the cracks developed are no longer through cracks and formed as primarily bending cracks. Even though with small tension stiffening effect, the behavior of the shell is changed markedly from the one without tension stiffening effect. The load-deflection curves are straight and the slope of the curves is quite steep and remains unchanged with varying the tension stiffening parameters. The failure of the shell took place quite suddenly in a cantilever mode initiated by a formation of yield lines in a direction parallel to the support-to-support diagonal. The higher the tension stiffening parameters the higher is the ultimate load. The present study shows that the ultimate behavior of the shell primarily depends on the concrete tensile characteristics, such as tensile strength (before cracking) and the effective tension stiffening (after cracking). As the concrete characteristics would vary over the life of the shell, a degree of uncertainty is involved in deciding a specified ultimate strength of the saddle shell studied. By the present study, however, the overload factors based on ACI 318-95 are larger than unity for all the cases studied except that the tension stiffening parameter is weak by 3 with and without the large displacement effect, which shows that the Lin-Scordelis saddle shell studied here is at least safe.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.761-768
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• 2010

When cracks occur in reinforced concrete structures, a steel carries all tensile force at crack section, while the concrete between cracks carries a part of the tensile force due to bond, so that the steel is less elongated. This is called the tension-stiffening effect, that plays an important role in verification of a serviceability limit state. But it is a complicated work to use a complex strain distribution between cracks, therefore an average strain is used to calculate deflection and crack width. In Eurocode 2, tension-stiffening effect expressed in the first order form or the second order form is used in calculating an average curvature for deflection. In this study for a flexural member deflection and crack width are calculated using various models for the tension-stiffening effect and the results are compared with the values of Eurocode 2 and KCI provisions. As results, the predicted values using the second order form are appeared to be well agreed with the experimental values and it could secure more analytical consistency.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.756-763
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• 2001

In the process of integrity evaluation for nuclear power plant components, a series of fracture mechanics evaluation on surface cracks in reactor pressure vessel(RPV) must be conducted. These fracture mechanics evaluation are based on stress intensity factor, K. However, under pressurized thermal shock(PTS) conditions, the combination of thermal and mechanical stress by steep temperature gradient and internal pressure causes considerably high tensile stress at the inside of RPV wall. Besides, the internal pressure during the normal operation produces high tensile stress at the RPV wall. As a result, cracks on inner surface of RPVs may experience elastic-plastic behavior which can be explained with J-integral. In such a case, however, J-integral may possibly lose its validity due to constraint effect. In this paper, in order to verify the suitability of J-integral, tow dimensional finite element analyses were applied for various surface cracks. A total of 18 crack geometries were analyzed, and $\Omega$ stresses were obtained by comparing resulting HRR stress distribution with corresponding actual stress distributions. In conclusion, HRR stress fields were found to overestimate the actual crack-tip stress field due to constraint effect.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.623-635
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• 2018

In order to research the influence of different recycled aggregate contents on the mechanical properties of pervious concrete, the experimental study and numerical simulation analysis of the mechanical properties of pervious concrete with five kinds of recycled aggregates contents (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%) are carried out in this paper. The experimental test were first performed on concrete specimens of different sizes in order to determine the influence of recycled aggregate on the compressive strength and splitting tensile strength, direct tension strength and bending strength. Then, the development of the internal cracks of pervious concrete under different working conditions is studied more intuitively by $PFC^{3D}$. The experimental results show that the concrete compressive strength, tensile strength and bending strength decrease with the increase of the recycled aggregate contents. This trend of reduction is not only related to the brittleness of recycled aggregate concrete, but also to the weak viscosity of recycled aggregate and cement paste. It is found that the fracture surface of pervious concrete with recycled aggregate is smoother than that of natural aggregate pervious concrete by $PFC^{3D}$, which means that the bridging effect is weakened in the stress transfer between the left and right sides of the crack. Through the analysis of the development of the internal cracks, the recycled aggregate concrete generated more cracks than the natural aggregate concrete, which means that the recycled aggregate concrete is easier to form a coalescence fracture surface and eventually break.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.139-162
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• 1995

The possibility of the development of gas driven hydrofractures at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant(WIPP) is investigated through analytical and numerical calculations and through laboratory experiments. First, an investigation of the chemical reactions involved shows that a large volume of gas could potentially be generated through the oxidation of iron in the waste. Simple ground water'flow calculations then show that unless regions of high permeability has been created, this gas volume will build up the pressure high enough to cause tensile damage in the horizontal planes of weakness or in the halite itself. The analytical calculations were performed using the concepts of linear elastic fracture mechanics and the numerical calculations were done using the finite element method. Also, laboratory tests were conducted to illustrate possible failure mechanisms. It is possible that after growing horizontal crack in the weaker anhydride layer, the crack could break out of this layer and propagate upward into the halite and toward the ground surface at an inclined argle of around 53$^{\circ}$ above horizontal. To prevent this latter phenomenon the anhydrite must have a fracture toughness less than 0.5590 times than that of the halite. Through the tests, three types of crack(radial vertical cracks, horizontal circular cracks and cone -shaped cracks) were observed.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.93-100
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• 2018

It is seldom possible that geotechnical materials like rocks and concretes found without joints, cracks, or discontinuities. Thereby, the impact of micro-cracks on the mechanical properties of them is to be considered. In the present study, the effect of micro-crack on the failure mechanism of rock specimens under uniaxial compression was investigated experimentally. For this purpose, thermal stress was used to induce micro-cracks in the specimens. Several cylindrical and disk shape specimens were drilled from granite collected from Zanjan granite mine, Iran. Some of the prepared specimens were kept in room temperature and the others were heated by a laboratory furnace to different temperature levels (200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 degree Celsius). During the experimental tests, Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors were used to monitor specimen failure at the different loading sequences. Also, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was used to distinguish the induced micro-crack by heating in the specimens. The fractographic analysis revealed that the thin sections heated to $800^{\circ}C$ and $1000^{\circ}C$ contain some induced micro-fractures, but in the thin sections heated to $200^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$ and $600^{\circ}C$ have not been observed any micro-fracture. In the next, a comprehensive experimental investigation was made to evaluate mechanical properties of heated and unheated specimens. Results of experimental tests showed that induced micro-cracks significantly influence on the failure mode of specimens. The specimens kept at room temperature failed in the splitting mode, while the failure mode of specimens heated to $800^{\circ}C$ are shearing and the specimens heated to $1000^{\circ}C$ failed in the spalling mode. On the basis of AE monitoring, it is found that with increasing of the micro-crack density, the ratio of the number of shear cracks to the number of tensile cracks increases, under loading sequences.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.343-351
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• 2018

Brazilian disc test is one of the most widely used experiments in the literature of geo-mechanics. In this work, the pre-holed concrete Brazilian disc specimens are numerically modelled by a two-dimensional discrete element approach. The cracks initiations, propagations and coalescences in the numerically simulated Brazilian discs (each containing a single cylindrical hole and or multiple holes) are studied. The pre-holed Brazilian discs are numerically tested under Brazilian test conditions. The single-holed Brazilian discs with different ratios of the diameter of the holes to that of the disc radius are modelled first. The breakage load in the ring type disc specimens containing an internal hole with varying diameters is measured and the crack propagation mechanism around the wall of the ring is investigated. The crack propagation and coalescence mechanisms are also studied for the case of multi-holes' concrete Brazilian discs. The numerical and experimental results show that the breaking mechanism of the pre-holed disc specimens is mainly due to the initiation of the radially induced tensile cracks which are growth from the surface of the central hole. Radially cracks propagated toward the direction of diametrical loading. It has been observed that for the case of disc specimens with multiple holes under diametrical compressive loading, the breaking process of the modelled specimens may occur due to the simultaneous cracks propagation and cracks coalescence phenomena. These results also show that as the hole diameter and the number of the holes increases both the failure stress and the crack initiation stress decreases. The experimental results already exist in the literature are quit agree with the proposed numerical simulation results which validates this simulation procedure.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.675-687
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• 2018

In the previous studies on the porous rock strength the effect of pore number and its diameter is not explicitly defined. In this paper crack initiation, propagation and coalescence in Brazilian model disc containing a single cylindrical hole and or multiple holes have been studied numerically using PFC3D. In model with internal hole, the ratio of hole diameter to model diameter was varied between 0.03, 0.17, 0.25, 0.33, and 0.42. In model with multiple hole number of holes was different in various model, i.e., one hole, two holes, three holes, four holes, five holes, six holes, seven holes, eight holes and nine holes. Diameter of these holes was 5 mm, 10 mm and 12 mm. The pre-holed Brazilian discs are numerically tested under Brazilian test. The breakage load in the ring type disc specimens containing an internal hole with varying diameters is measured. The mechanism of cracks propagation in the wall of the ring type specimens is also studied. In the case of multi-hole Brazilian disc, the cracks propagation and b cracks coalescence are also investigated. The results shows that breaking of the pre-holed disc specimens is due to the propagation of radially induced tensile cracks initiated from the surface of the central hole and propagating toward the direction of diametrical loading. In the case of disc specimens with multiple holes, the cracks propagation and cracks coalescence may occur simultaneously in the breaking process of model under diametrical compressive loading. Finally the results shows that the failure stress and crack initiation stress decreases by increasing the hole diameter. Also, the failure stress decreases by increasing the number of hole which mobilized in failure. The results of these simulations were comprised with other experimental and numerical test results. It has been shown that the numerical and experimental results are in good agreement with each other.