• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.303-317
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• 2011

A specially designed tendon, which is proposed by embedding an FBG sensor into the center king cable of a 7-wire strand tendon, was applied to monitor the prestress force and load transfer of ground anchor. A series of tensile tests and a model pullout test were performed to verify the feasibility of the proposed smart tendon as a measuring sensor of tension force and load transfer along the tendon. The smart tendon has proven to be very effective for monitoring prestress force and load transfer by measuring the strain change of the tendon at the free part and the fixed part of ground anchor, respectively. Two 11.5 m long proto-type ground anchors were made simply by replacing a tendon with the proposed smart tendon and prestress forces of each anchor were monitored during the loading-unloading step using both FBG sensor embedded in the smart tendon and the conventional load cell. By comparing the prestress forces measured by the smart tendon and load cell, it was found that the prestress force monitored from the FBG sensor located at the free part is comparable to that measured from the conventional load cell. Furthermore, the load transfer of prestressing force at the tendon-grout interface was clearly measured from the FBGs distributed along the fixed part. From these pullout tests, the proposed smart tendon is not only expected to be an alternative monitoring tool for measuring prestress force from the introducing stage to the long-term period for health monitoring of the ground anchor but also can be used to improve design practice through determining the economic fixed length by practically measuring the load transfer depth.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.31-40
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• 2000

This study aims to improve serviceability of concrete by inducing chemical prestress with the application of expansive additives for concrete. For this purpose, material tests and 4 point-bending tests of RC slabs were performed to verify the effect of expansive additives on the concrete. and the critical aspects of the structural behavior were investigated. The results of the material tests show that the optimal proportion of expansive additives is 13% of total cement weigth and the properties of expansive concrete in that proportion are the same as those of plain concrete. Both the experimental cracking load and service load of the expansive concrete slabs are increased in comparison with those of the plain concrete. In addition to the above results, the deflection of expansive concrete is smaller than that of plain concrete, and permanent strains resulting from cyclic load are decreased. It can be concluded that the use of expansive additives to induce chemical prestress in RC slabs greatly improves the serviceability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.523-534
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• 2010

A hybrid system of soil-nailing and compression anchor is proposed in this paper; the system is composed of an anchor bar (installed at the tip) with two PC strands and a steel bar. After drilling a hole, installing proposed hybrid systems, and filling the hole with grouting material, prestress is applied to the anchor bar to restrict the deformation at the head and/or to prevent shallow slope failures. However, since the elongation rate of PC strand is much larger than that of steel bar, yield at the steel bar will occur much earlier than the PC strand. It means that the yield load of the hybrid system will be overestimated if we simply add yield loads of the two - anchor bar and PC strands. It might be needed to try to match the yielding time of the two materials by applying the prestress to the anchor bar. It means that the main purpose of applying prestress to the anchor bar should be two-fold: to restrict the deformation at the nail head; and more importantly, to maximize the design load of the hybrid system by utilizing load transfer mechanism that transfers the prestress applied at the tip to the head through anchor bar. In order to study the load transfer mechanism in a systematic way, in-situ pullout tests were performed with the following conditions: soil-nailing only; hybrid system with the variation of prestress stresses from 0kN to 196kN. It was found that the prestress applied to the anchor system will induce the compressive stress to the steel bar; it will result in decrease in the slope of load-displacement curve of the steel bar. Then, the elongation at which the steel bar will reach yield stress might become similar to that of PC strands. By taking advantage of prestress to match elongations at yield, the pullout design load of the hybrid system can be increased up to twice that of the soil-nailing system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.917-933
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• 2016

In a prestressed concrete bridge, the magnitude of the prestress force (PF) decreases with time. This unexpected loss can cause failure of a bridge which makes prestress force identification (PFI) critical to evaluate bridge safety. However, it has been difficult to identify the PF non-destructively. Although some research has shown the feasibility of vibration based methods in PFI, the requirement of having a determinate exciting force in these methods hinders applications onto in-service bridges. Ideally, it will be efficient if the normal traffic could be treated as an excitation, but the load caused by vehicles is difficult to measure. Hence it prompts the need to investigate whether PF and moving load could be identified together. This paper presents a synergic identification method to determine PF and moving load applied on a simply supported prestressed concrete beam via the dynamic responses caused by this unknown moving load. This method consists of three parts: (i) the PF is transformed into an external pseudo-load localized in each beam element via virtual distortion method (VDM); (ii) then these pseudo-loads are identified simultaneously with the moving load via Duhamel Integral; (iii) the time consuming problem during the inversion of Duhamel Integral is overcome by the load-shape function (LSF). The method is examined against different cases of PFs, vehicle speeds and noise levels by means of simulations. Results show that this method attains a good degree of accuracy and efficiency, as well as robustness to noise.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.616-625
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• 2011

Ensuring the designed prestress force is very important for the safety of prestressed concrete bridge. The loss of prestress force in tendon could significantly reduce load carrying capacity of the structure. In this study, an automated prestress-loss monitoring system for prestressed concrete girder using PZT-interface and wireless impedance sensor node is presented. The following approaches are carried out to achieve the objective. Firstly, wireless impedance sensor nodes are designed for automated impedance-based monitoring technique. The sensor node is mounted on the high-performance Imote2 sensor platform to fulfill high operating speed, low power requirement and large storage memory. Secondly, a smart PZT-interface designed for monitoring prestress force is described. A linear regression model is established to predict prestress-loss. Finally, a system of the PZT-interface interacted with the wireless sensor node is evaluated from a lab-scale tendon-anchorage connection of a prestressed concrete girder.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.489-504
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• 2012

For the safety of prestressed structures such as cable-stayed bridges and prestressed concrete bridges, it is very important to ensure the prestress force of cable or tendon. The loss of prestress force could significantly reduce load carrying capacity of the structure and even result in structural collapse. The objective of this study is to present a smart PZT-interface for wireless impedance-based prestress-loss monitoring in tendon-anchorage connection. Firstly, a smart PZT-interface is newly designed for sensitively monitoring of electro-mechanical impedance changes in tendon-anchorage subsystem. To analyze the effect of prestress force, an analytical model of tendon-anchorage is described regarding to the relationship between prestress force and structural parameters of the anchorage contact region. Based on the analytical model, an impedance-based method for monitoring of prestress-loss is conducted using the impedance-sensitive PZT-interface. Secondly, wireless impedance sensor node working on Imote2 platforms, which is interacted with the smart PZT-interface, is outlined. Finally, experiment on a lab-scale tendon-anchorage of a prestressed concrete girder is conducted to evaluate the performance of the smart PZT-interface along with the wireless impedance sensor node on prestress-loss detection. Frequency shift and cross correlation deviation of impedance signature are utilized to estimate impedance variation due to prestress-loss.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.21-29
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• 2008

To evaluate the structural integrity of the NPP containment building more rigorously, the effective prestress, which is one of the most affecting elements, needs to be estimated exactly. This paper presents the results of an experimental study to determine the effective prestress force in prestressed concrete beams. It is possible to improve the effective prestress measuring method by test beam, which is being applied for the investigation of the nuclear power plant in operation. If experimentally evaluated Lift-Off method in this study can be coupled with test beam test currently being used in in-service nuclear power plant, it is possible to measure prestress loss of the tendon and the level of the effective prestress load.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.257-264
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• 2022

The analysis of the progressive collapse resistance of structures is a well-known issue among structural engineers. Large-span reticulated dome structures are commonly utilized in large public buildings, necessitating research into their progressive collapse resistance to assure user safety. The most significant part of improving the structural resilience of reticulated domes is to evaluate their key elements. Based on a stiffness-based evaluation approach, this work offers a calculating procedure for element importance coefficient. For both original and damaged structures, evaluations are carried out using the global stiffness matrix and the determinant. The Kiewitt, Schwedler, and Sunflower reticulated domes are investigated to explore the distribution characteristic of element importance coefficients in the single-layer dome structures. Moreover, the influences of the load levels, load distributions, geometric parameters and topological features are also discussed. The results can be regarded as the initial concept design reference for single-layer reticulated domes.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.1275-1280
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• 2009

In recent bridge design, studies on application of external prestress have actively been conducted. When prestress is applied to steel structures, the limit value of elastic strain with large load increases with reduction of steels, this method is economic in cost. According to study by Brodka (1969), steel plate bridges with prestress has an effect on cost saving of about 15% compared with structures without prestress. For that reason, our country recently adopted this method in construction of temporary bridges and various engineering technologies have been developed which made stress correction, droop correction and long-span construction possible with relatively small cross sections. This study verifies the method of application of prestress in temporary steel structures, the influence of high-strength tendon arrangement and the effects of composite structures of steel plates and high-strength tendons based on existing method.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.375-380
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• 1999

It is required efficient section shape like bulb-tee girders with high strength concrete to construct long span bridges economically. However, the trpical design method for PSC I-girders include bulb-tees, the concrete girder prestressed only one time at same time. But in this paper, new design method prestress increases as each load-stress stage. The incrementally prestressed concrete (IPC) girders can reduce the required area of grider section and extend span length by additional prestress. So it is able to construct long span bridges economically by using IPC girders.