Concrete Static Stress Estimation Using Computer Vision-Based Digital Image Processing

Department of Urban and Environmental Engineering (Urban Infrastructure Engineering)As increasing interests about structural safety due to occasionally occurring collapse of structures and social infrastructures, efforts to identify and monitor the current state of structure are also increasing. Recently, most structures have been built of concrete, so identification of safety level of concrete structures becomes a critical issue. One of such techniques is to evaluate the current stress state in concrete. This technique is essential in various fields involved in an investigation of tensile stress of tendons in pre- and post-tensioned structures, building remodeling which needs to remove bearing walls and adds other foundations, and identification of load distribution in enlarged concrete structures. In other words, current stress level in concrete is an important factor to check the safety level of the structures in service. Although it is obvious that a technique for estimating the static stress level of concrete is essential, the method to identify the stress state of the currently used concrete structure is definitely limited. Several efforts for estimating the current stress state have been developed in previous research, including a stress-strain relationship based on elastic theory and a stress relaxation method (SRM) for concrete. These methods in the previous researches have made a certain contribution in this field but practical use in real structures is still inadequate. Therefore, an objective of this study is to develop a static stress estimation technique which can be applied to real concrete structures. This study proposes a method that can measure the static stress level of concrete by incorporating SRM and computer vision-based image processing. Applying a small damage to concrete specimen can release the current stress state and induce stress field change inside concrete around the damage. Computer vision-based measurement can measure the deformation due to this stress field change. This deformation measurement is used in the static stress estimation algorithm developed in this study. The proposed method is validated using several concrete specimens and consequently demonstrates the performance.clos

System and rapidity dependence of baryon to meson ratios at RHIC

The rapidity and centrality dependence of baryon to meson ratios in Au$+$Au, Cu$+$Cu and p$+$p collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV at RHIC is presented. The $\bar{p}/\pi^{-}$ ratios are founded to be independent of collision system at a fixed $$ at mid- and forward rapidities.Comment: Talk at Quark Matter 2005 Conference in Budapest, Hungary. 4 pages, 4 figure

Estimating the Survival Distribution for Right-Censored Data with Delayed Ascertainment

In many clinical trials, patients are not followed continuously. This means their vital status may not be immediately recorded. In such cases, the results from the Kaplan-Meier estimator or the log rank test, popular methods used for survival analysis, may be biased or inconsistent. Hu and Tsiatis first produced a new estimator to estimate survival distribution for right-censored data with delayed ascertainment, Van der Laan and Hubbard modified their estimator. We investigate each of these proposed estimators and their properties. Using simulations, we compare these new estimators to each other and to the Kaplan-Meier estimator using different sample sizes, different failure rates, and different maximum delay times. The public health importance of this thesis is that we can partially alleviate the problem caused by delayed ascertainment in the analysis of right-censored time to event data by choosing the most accurate and consistent estimator that accounts for the delayed ascertainment. The reduction of bias in analyses of public health data ensures that such studies are reliable so that proper inference can be made and hence, potential public health policy can be based on an accurate decision making process

Parton energy loss, saturation, and recombination at BRAHMS

Particle production as observed with the BRAHMS experiment at RHIC is presented. Preliminary baryon/meson ratios and nuclear modification factors at different rapidities will be discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Lake Louise Winter Institute 2005 proceedin

Technology innovation & green policy in Korea

The new growth engine in the 21stcentury depends on an innovative system to create, distribute and apply knowledge to industrialization processes. The industrial technology has been developed rapidly with the progress of knowledge based information in the last decade. In this point of view a cooperative partnership between industry and academy becomes much more important and necessary. Strategically fostering such cooperations and promoting rapid technology development have been reached with industrial clusterization in the last 20 years in Korea. --

Information length as a new diagnostic of stochastic resonance

Stochastic resonance is a subtle, yet powerful phenomenon in which noise plays an interesting role of amplifying a signal instead of attenuating it. It has attracted great attention with a vast number of applications in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Popular measures to study stochastic resonance include signal-to-noise ratios, residence time distributions, and different information theoretic measures. Here, we show that the information length provides a novel method to capture stochastic resonance. The information length measures the total number of statistically different states along the path of a system. Specifically, we consider the classical double-well model of stochastic resonance in which a particle in a potential V ( x , t ) = [ - x 2 / 2 + x 4 / 4 - A sin ( ω t ) x ] is subject to an additional stochastic forcing that causes it to occasionally jump between the two wells at x ≈ ± 1 . We present direct numerical solutions of the Fokker–Planck equation for the probability density function p ( x , t ) for ω = 10 - 2 to 10 - 6 , and A ∈ [ 0 , 0 . 2 ] and show that the information length shows a very clear signal of the resonance. That is, stochastic resonance is reflected in the total number of different statistical states that a system passes through

On a long-term dynamics of the magnetised solar tachocline

We investigate the confinement and long-term dynamics of the magnetised solar tachocline. Starting from first principles, we derive the values of turbulent transport coefficients and then explore the implications for the confinement and long-term dynamics of the tachocline. For reasonable parameter values, the turbulent eddy viscosity is found to be negative, with turbulence enhancing the radial shear in the tachocline. Both magnetic diffusivity and thermal diffusivity are severely quenched, with the values much smaller than the magnitude of the eddy viscosity. The effect of the meridional circulation on momentum transport via the hyperviscosity becomes important when the radial shear becomes large (larger than the presently inferred value) due to the negative viscosity