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By 2026, Korea is expected to surpass the UN's definition of an aged society and reach the level of a superaged society. With an aging population come increased disorders involving the spine. To prevent unnecessary spinal surgery and support scientific diagnosis of spinal disease and systematic prediction of treatment outcomes, we have been developing e-Spine, which is a computer simulation model of the human spine. In this paper, we present the Korean spine database and automatic surface mesh intersection algorithm to construct e-Spine. To date, the Korean spine database has collected spine data from 77 cadavers and 298 patients. The spine data consists of 2D images from CT, MRI, or X-ray, 3D shapes, geometry data, and property data. The volume and quality of the Korean spine database are now the world's highest ones. In addition, our triangular surface mesh intersection algorithm automatically remeshes the spine-implant intersection model to make it valid for finite element analysis (FEA).This makes it possible to run the FEA using the spine-implant mesh model without any manual effort. Our database and surface mesh intersection algorithm will offer great value and utility in the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of patients suffering from spinal diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For railway bridges subjected to high-speed trains, excessive vibration may occur due to a resonance phenomenon caused by periodic wheel-loads of the trains. In Korea, much attention has been paid to reduce the vibration level of railway bridges constructed for Korean high-speed trains (Korean Train eXpress: KTX). The railway bridges make up about 37% of the entire KTX railroads, and the severe vibration of the bridges could cause their maintenance and repair costs to be high. Much work has been done in the past few years to avoid excessive vibration. However, the majority of the work focuses on the alternation and modification of bridges. In this paper, a new vibration reduction scheme has been proposed by inserting size-adjusted vehicle(s) in the existing KTX train arrangement. The added vehicle(s) with adjusted size may produce out-of-phase loading and suppress the resonance phenomenon. Validation of the proposed scheme has been carried out by a series of numerical simulations and experiments using a 1/100 scaled train-bridge model. In the numerical simulations, vertical deflections, accelerations, and bending moments at the mid-span of the bridge model are computed with two parameters being varied: the size and the locations of the inserted vehicle unit(s). The experiments conducted with 1/2 sized vehicle(s), of which locations vary in the same manner as the numerical simulations, show that the general trends in the vibration reduction agree reasonably well with the numerical simulations and confirm the vibration reduction effects found in the numerical simulations. The numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce vibrations of the high-speed railway bridges and subsequently reduce the repair and maintenance costs associated with the vibration induced damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]