• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.131-141
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• 2019

Structural control systems have uncertainties in their structural parameters and control devices which by using reliability analysis, uncertainty can be modeled. In this paper, reliability of controlled structures equipped with semi-active Magneto-Rheological (MR) dampers is investigated. For this purpose, at first, the effect of the structural parameters and damper parameters on the reliability of the seismic responses are evaluated. Then, the reliability of MR damper force is considered for expected levels of performance. For sensitivity analysis of the parameters exist in Bouc- Wen model for predicting the damper force, the importance vector is utilized. The improved first-order reliability method (FORM), is used to reliability analysis. As a case study, an 11-story shear building equipped with 3 MR dampers is selected and numerically obtained experimental data of a 1000 kN MR damper is assumed to study the reliability of the MR damper performance for expected levels. The results show that the standard deviation of random variables affects structural reliability as an uncertainty factor. Thus, the effect of uncertainty existed in the structural model parameters on the reliability of the structure is more than the uncertainty in the damper parameters. Also, the reliability analysis of the MR damper performance show that to achieve the highest levels of nominal capacity of the damper, the probability of failure is greatly increased. Furthermore, by using sensitivity analysis, the Bouc-Wen model parameters which have great importance in predicting damper force can be identified.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.151-161
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• 1998

In this study, an attempt is made to apply the concept of fuzzy-bayesian theory to the integrity assessment of RC highway bridge, and uncertainty states are represented in terms of fuzzy sets which define several linguistic variables such as "very good", "good", "average", "poor", "very poor", etc. Especially, the concept of fuzzy conditional probability aids to derive a new reliability analysis which includes the subjective assessment of engineers without introducing any additional correction factors. The fuzzy concept are also used as reliability indexes for the condition assessment based on the proposed models, the proposed fuzzy theory-based approach with the results of visual inspection and extensive field load tests are applied to the integrity assessment of a new RC highway bridge, namely, Jichok bridge.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Industrial Safety Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.117-122
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• 1997

This paper presents a study on the fuzzy based approach for the safety assessment of human body under ELF electric and magnetic(EM) field considering power system states. The analysis of ELF EM field based on quasi-static method is introduced. UP to the present, the analysis of ELF EM field has been conducted with the consideration of one transmission line, or a power line model only In this paper, however, the power system is included to model the expected and/or unexpected uncertainty caused by the load fluctuation and parameter changes and the states are classified into two types, normal state resulting from normal operation and emergency state from outages. In order to analyze the uncertainty in the normal state, the Monte Carlo Simulation, a statistic approach was introduced and line current and bus voltage distribution are calculated by a contingency analysis method, in the emergency state. To access the safety of human body, the approach based on fuzzy linguistic variable is adopted to overcome the shortcomings of the assessment by a crisp set concept. In order to validate the usefulness of the approach suggested herein, the case study using a sample system with 765(kV) was done. The results are presented and discussed.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.30-36
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• 2014

BACKGROUND: Best management practices are often implemented to control nonpoint source pollutants. Best management practices need to be simulated and analyzed for effective Best management practices implementations. Filter strip is one of effective Best management practices in agricultural areas. METHODS AND RESULTS: Soil and Water Assessment Tool model was selected to explore the effectiveness of filter strip to control total phosphorous in Golji watershed. Soil and Water Assessment Tool model was calibrated for flow and total phosphorous by Sequential Uncertainty Fittin ver.2 algorithm provided in Soil and Water Assessment Tool-Calibration and Uncertainty Procedures. Three scenarios defined by filter strip width were applied. The filter strip width of 5 m was able to reduce the most amount of total phosphorous. In other words, the total phosphorous reduction by filter strip of 5 m was 28.0%, while the reduction was 17.5% by filter strip of 1 m. However, the reduction per unit filter strip width were 17.4%, 8.0%, and 4.5% for 1 m, 3 m, and 5 m of filter strips, respectively. CONCLUSION: Best management practices need to be simulated and analyzed so that the BMP scenario can be cost-effective. A large size of BMP might be able to control large amount of pollutants, however it would not be indicated as a cost-effective strategy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.455-468
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• 2006

Smart structural systems are defined as ones that demonstrate the ability to modify their characteristics and/or properties in order to respond favorably to unexpected severe loading conditions. The performance of such a task requires a set of additional components to be integrated within such systems. These components belong to three major categories, sensors, processors and actuators. It is wellknown that all structural systems entail some level of uncertainty, because of their extremely complex nature, lack of complete information, simplifications and modeling. Similarly, sensors, processors and actuators are expected to reflect a similar uncertain behavior. As it is imperative to be able to evaluate the impact of such components on the behavior of the system, it is as important to ensure, or at least evaluate, the reliability of such components. In this paper, a system model for reliability assessment of smart structural systems is outlined. The presented model is considered a necessary first step in the development of a reliability assessment algorithm for smart structural systems. The system model outlines the basic components of the system, in addition to, performance functions and inter-relations among individual components. A fault tree model is developed in order to aggregate the individual underlying component reliabilities into an overall system reliability measure. Identification of appropriate limit states for all underlying components are beyond the scope of this paper. However, it is the objective of this paper to set up the necessary framework for identifying such limit states. A sample model for a three-story single bay smart rigid frame, is developed in order to demonstrate the proposed framework.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.415-420
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• 2013

Calibration capabilities for thermometer calibration by comparison method were assessed using high-precision industrial platinum resistance thermometers (IPRT). It was found in the performance assessment that out of 31 laboratories who participated, 28 laboratories resulted magnitude of En number less than 1 at every calibration points they submitted results in the range from 50 to $500^{\circ}C$. The results of about 75% of the laboratories showed the difference from the assigned values less than 1/10 of the tolerance level of the class B IPRT. This indicates that the participating calibration laboratories performed with satisfactory level that was enough to calibrate IPRTs to significant precision. The sensors used in this work were manufactured and chosen by the criteria of long-term instability less than 4 mK and hysteresis less than 8 mK in the temperature range used in this work. Furthermore, the change in the resistance of the sensors in the calibration temperature range were less than the uncertainty of the calibration, 25 mK (k=2).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.11-26
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• 2014

The analyses carried out within the Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessments (SPRAs) of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) are affected by significant aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. These uncertainties have to be represented and quantified coherently with the data, information and knowledge available, to provide reasonable assurance that related decisions can be taken robustly and with confidence. The amount of data, information and knowledge available for seismic risk assessment is typically limited, so that the analysis must strongly rely on expert judgments. In this paper, a Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) framework for handling uncertainties in NPP SPRAs is proposed and applied to an example case study. The main contributions of this paper are two: (i) applying the complete DST framework to SPRA models, showing how to build the Dempster-Shafer structures of the uncertainty parameters based on industry generic data, and (ii) embedding Bayesian updating based on plant specific data into the framework. The results of the application to a case study show that the approach is feasible and effective in (i) describing and jointly propagating aleatory and epistemic uncertainties in SPRA models and (ii) providing 'conservative' bounds on the safety quantities of interest (i.e. Core Damage Frequency, CDF) that reflect the (limited) state of knowledge of the experts about the system of interest.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.281-293
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• 2021

Uncertainties in geomechanical input parameters which mainly related to inappropriate data acquisition and estimation due to lack of sufficient calibration information, have led wellbore instability not yet to be fully understood or addressed. This paper demonstrates a workflow of employing Quantitative Risk Assessment technique, considering these uncertainties in terms of rock properties, pore pressure and in-situ stresses to makes it possible to survey not just the likelihood of accomplishing a desired level of wellbore stability at a specific mud pressure, but also the influence of the uncertainty in each input parameter on the wellbore stability. This probabilistic methodology in conjunction with Monte Carlo numerical modeling techniques was applied to a case study of a well. The response surfaces analysis provides a measure of the effects of uncertainties in each input parameter on the predicted mud pressure from three widely used failure criteria, thereby provides a key measurement for data acquisition in the future wells to reduce the uncertainty. The results pointed out that the mud pressure is tremendously sensitive to UCS and SHmax which emphasize the significance of reliable determinations of these two parameters for safe drilling. On the other hand, the predicted safe mud window from Mogi-Coulomb is the widest while the Hoek-Brown is the narrowest and comparing the anticipated collapse failures from the failure criteria and breakouts observations from caliper data, indicates that Hoek-Brown overestimate the minimum mud weight to avoid breakouts while Mogi-Coulomb criterion give better forecast according to real observations.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.111-121
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• 2017

Verification of dose distribution is an essential part of ensuring the treatment planning system's (TPS) calculated dose will achieve the desired outcome in radiation therapy. Each measurement have uncertainty associated with it. It is desirable to reduce the measurement uncertainty. A best approach is to reduce the uncertainty associated with each step of the process to keep the total uncertainty under acceptable limits. Point dose patient specific quality assurance (QA) is recommended by American Association of Medical Physicists (AAPM) and European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) for all the complex radiation therapy treatment techniques. Relative and absolute point dose measurement methods are used to verify the TPS computed dose. Relative and absolute point dose measurement techniques have a number of steps to measure the point dose which includes chamber cross calibration, electrometer reading, chamber calibration coefficient, beam quality correction factor, reference conditions, influences quantities, machine stability, nominal calibration factor (for relative method) and absolute dose calibration of machine. Keeping these parameters in mind, the estimated relative percentage uncertainty associated with the absolute point dose measurement is 2.1% (k=1). On the other hand, the relative percentage uncertainty associated with the relative point dose verification method is estimated to 1.0% (k=1). To compare both point dose measurement methods, 13 head and neck (H&N) IMRT patients were selected. A point dose for each patient was measured with both methods. The average percentage difference between TPS computed dose and measured absolute relative point dose was 1.4% and 1% respectively. The results of this comparative study show that while choosing the relative or absolute point dose measurement technique, both techniques can produce similar results for H&N IMRT treatment plans. There is no statistically significant difference between both point dose verification methods based upon the t-test for comparing two means.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.125-135
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• 2013

Analysis and evaluation of uncertainty is adopting the advanced methodology among the methods for greenhouse gas emission assessment that was defined in GPS2000 (Good practice guideline 2000) and GPG-LULUCF (GPG Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry). In 2006 IPCC guideline, two approaches are suggested to explain the uncertainty for each section with a national net emission and a prediction value on uncertainty as follows; 1) Spread sheet calculation based on the error propagation algorithm that was simplified with some assumptions, and 2) Monte carlo simulation that can be utilized in general purposes. There are few researches on the agricultural field including greenhouse gas emission that is generated from livestock and cultivation lands due to lack of information for statistic data, emission coefficient, and complicated emission formula. The main objective of this study is to suggest an evaluation method for the uncertainty of greenhouse gas emission in agricultural field by means of intercomparison of the prediction value on uncertainties which were estimated by spread sheet calculation and monte carlo simulation. A statistic analysis for probability density function for uncertainty of emission rate was carried out by targeting livestock intestinal fermentation, excrements treatment, and direct/indirect emission from agricultural lands and rice cultivation. It was suggested to minimize uncertainty by means of extraction of emission coefficient according to each targeting section.