Damage to gas and fire protection piping systems can lead to secondary disasters after an earthquake, so their seismic design is crucial. Accordingly, various types of seismic restraint installations are being devised, and a new suspended piping trapeze restraint installation has also recently been developed in Korea. In this study, a cyclic loading test was performed on the developed trapeze support system, and its performance was evaluated according to ASHRAE 171, the standard for seismic and wind restraint design established by the American Society of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). The three support system specimens did not break or fracture, causing only insignificant deformations until the end of the experiment. Based on the experimentally rated strength and displacement performance, this trapeze support system is expected to control the seismic movement of piping during an earthquake.

Recently, a novel cast-in specialty insert was developed in Korea as an anchor for lightweight pipe supports, including fire-protection pipes. As these pipe supports and anchors play a critical role in transferring loads of fire-protection pipes to structural members, it is crucial to evaluate their seismic performance before applying the newly developed insert. In this study, the seismic shear performance of the insert anchors was evaluated through cyclic loading tests based on the loading protocols of ACI 355.2 and FEMA 461. Initially, five monotonic loading tests were conducted on the insert anchors in cracked concrete, followed by cyclic loading tests based on the monotonic test results. The findings revealed that the insert anchors exhibited negligible decrease in shear strength even after cyclic loading. Furthermore, a comparison of the maximum load and displacement of the insert anchors obtained under the loading protocols of ACI 355.2 and FEMA 461 was performed to investigate the applicability of the FEMA 461 loading protocol for anchor performance evaluation.

This study aims to suggest the methodology to improve to estimate back-calculated fish growth parameters using weighted average. It is to contribute to correct errors in the calculation of back-calculated growth equation with unequal numbers of sample by age. If the numbers of sample were evenly collected by age, each back-calculated length at age was equal between arithmetic and weighted averages. However, most samples cannot be evenly collected by age in reality because of different catchability by fishing gear and limitation of environment condition. Therefore, the estimation of back-calculated length by weighted average method is essential to calculate growth parameters. There were some published growth equations from back-calculated length using a simple arithmetic average with different numbers of samples by age when searching for back-calculated growth equations from 91 relevant papers. In this study, the process of deriving growth equation was investigated and two different average calculations were applied to a fish growth equation, for example of Acheilognathus signifer. Growth parameters, such as L∞, k and t0, were estimated from two different back-calculated averages and the growth equations were compared with growth performance index. Based on the correction of back-calculated length using weighted average by age, the changes by female and male were -14.19% and -5.23% for L∞, and 59.28% and 18.91% for k, respectively. The corrected growth performance index by weighted average improved at 7.05% and 2.46% by female and male, respectively, compared to the arithmetic averages.

Species composition in the coastal waters off Ulleungdo of Korea were examined based on catches bimonthly collected by trammel net in 2013. A total of 711 individuals and 181.9 Kg were caught and catches were composed of 4 classes 15 orders 27 families 52 species including 44 Pisces, 4 Gastropoda, 3 Cephalopoda, and 1 Echinodermata. The dominant species in biomass were File fish (Thamnaconus modestus), Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus azonus), and Greenling (Hexagrammos otakii). Data were summarized using hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) to examine similarity in species composition for each month, and community structure in Ulleungdo was divided into two groups. Community structures in February, April and December with low temperature and well-mixed surface water were distinguished from those in June, August and October with high temperature and strong stratification, which could be attributed to temporal changes in dominant species. Atka mackerel and Spear squid mainly caught in February and April, disappearing in June, August and October, and File fish outburst was shown in October. Because the water off Ulleungdo has been under low human pressure, it could be a good case study to elucidate effects of climate change on community structure and ecosystem in the East sea. Continuous surveys and further studies are required to demonstrate migration route and distribution of dominant species and long-term changes in community structure in the water of Ulleungdo.