Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Perspectives On Environmental Management System Requirements, Raquel Taveras

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report offers perspectives on effective environmental management procedures gained through field experience with the Peace Corps in Peru and with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The work in Peru focused on case studies of rural water supply management within the context of local legislation and development strategies and environmental management principles. The objective of this study was to lay out a framework for future development workers and governmental agencies aiming to improve the administration and operation of rural water system. UNOPS on the other hand, as the operational arm of the UN for …

Comprehensive Benefits Of Green Roofs, Madison R. Gibler

Masters Theses

"Green infrastructure uses vegetation, soils, and natural processes to manage water and create healthier urban environments, providing traditional roof services and alternative stormwater management technologies. Other benefits and impacts are not yet fully understood or valued. Research conducted assesses specific stormwater benefits of green roofs, providing information on nutrient leaching from media; and analyzes potential energy benefits through side-by-side comparisons of full-scale white, traditional black rubber, and green roofs in the mid-continent Missouri climate. Roofing media selection impacted leaching of nutrients, suspended solids, and organic carbon from the tested green roof media. Thermal properties were investigated at the building level, …

Shear-Friction Of Sand-Lightweight Clay And Slate Aggregate Concretes With Varied Reinforcement Ratios, Samantha Lynn Wermager

Masters Theses

"This thesis focuses on the structural properties of sand-lightweight aggregate concrete in terms of shear transfer strength at cold-joint interfaces. This type of interface is common for precast concrete connections which are typically designed using the shear-friction concept. This testing program was meant to expand the shear-friction database and evaluate the appropriateness of current shear-friction design provisions with respect to sand-lightweight concrete. This study builds on the work done by Shaw (2013) who studied lightweight expanded shale aggregate concrete. The current study included thirty-two push-off specimens constructed from sand-lightweight concrete with a target compressive strength of 5,000 psi. Either expanded …

Uncertainty Considerations In Calibration And Validation Of Hydrologic And Water Quality Models, J. Hernandez

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Hydrologic and water quality models (HWQMs) are increasingly used to support decisions on various environmental issues and policy directions for present and future scenarios, at scales varying from watershed to continental levels. Uncertainty associated with such models may affect the ability of the models to accurately evaluate the response of complex systems, leading to misguided assessments and risk management decisions. Current well-known HWQMs contain numerous input parameters, many of which are not known with certainty, and in other cases model users can hardly recognize the genesis of uncertainty. Uncertainty in data, model structure, and model parameters can propagate throughout model …

Counting And Classification Of Highway Vehicles By Regression Analysis, Mingpei Liang, Xinyu Huang, Chung-Hao Chen, Alade Tokuta

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe a novel algorithm that counts and classifies highway vehicles based on regression analysis. This algorithm requires no explicit segmentation or tracking of individual vehicles, which is usually an important part of many existing algorithms. Therefore, this algorithm is particularly useful when there are severe occlusions or vehicle resolution is low, in which extracted features are highly unreliable. There are mainly two contributions in our proposed algorithm. First, a warping method is developed to detect the foreground segments that contain unclassified vehicles. The common used modeling and tracking (e.g., Kalman filtering) of individual vehicles are not …

Vibration Of Steel-Framed Floors Supporting Sensitive Equipment In Hospitals, Research Facilities, And Manufacturing Facilities, Di Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Floors have traditionally been designed only for strength and deflection serviceability. As technological advances have been made in medical, scientific and micro-electronics manufacturing, many types of equipment have become sensitive to vibration of the supporting floor. Thus, vibration serviceability has become a routinely evaluated limit state for floors supporting sensitive equipment. Equipment vibration tolerance limits are sometimes expressed as waveform peak acceleration, and are more often expressed as narrowband spectral acceleration, or one-third octave spectral velocity.

Current floor vibration prediction methods, such as those found in the American Institute of Steel Construction Design Guide 11, Floor Vibrations Due to Human …

Characterization Of Biopolymer Using Swcc And Microfluidic Models: Implication On Eor, Jungyeon Jang

LSU Master's Theses

The objective of this study is to investigate the characteristics of biopolymers and to examine their application for soil stabilization and oil production. Biopolymers, the composite of multi-living organisms, are one of the most promising materials in the field of geotechnical engineering. The application of biopolymer is more efficient than water for soil stabilization and oil production due to its higher viscosity as a fill material of pores in the soil. This thesis begins with a definition of Agar and Polyacrylamide (PAM) as the measurement of viscosity, contact angle, and surface tension. The application of microfluidic models are applied to …

A Sustainable Slashing Industry Using Biodegradable Sizes From Modified Soy Protein To Replace Petro-Based Poly(Vinyl Alcohol), Yi Zhao, Yuzhu Zhao, Helan Xu, Yiqi Yang

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Biodegradable sizing agents from triethanolamine (TEA) modified soy protein could substitute poly(vinyl alcohol)(PVA) sizes for high-speed weaving of polyester and polyester/cotton yarns to substantially decrease environmental pollution and impel sustainability of textile industry. Nonbiodegradable PVA sizes are widely used and mainly contribute to high chemical oxygen demand (COD) in textile effluents. It has not been possible to effectively degrade, reuse or replace PVA sizes so far. Soy protein with good biodegradability showed potential as warp sizes in our previous studies. However, soy protein sizes lacked film flexibility and adhesion for required high-speed weaving. Additives with multiple hydroxyl groups, nonlinear molecule, …

Vulnerability Of Crops And Native Grasses To Summer Drying In The U.S. Southern Great Plains, Naama Raz-Yaseef, Dave P. Billesbach, Marc L. Fischer, Sebastien C. Biraud, Stacey A. Gunter, James A. Bradford, Margaret S. Torn

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

The Southern Great Plains are characterized by a fine-scale mixture of different land-cover types, predominantly winter-wheat and grazed pasture, with relatively small areas of other crops, native prairie, and switchgrass. Recent droughts and predictions of increased drought in the Southern Great Plains, especially during the summer months, raise concern for these ecosystems. We measured ecosystem carbon and water fluxes with eddy-covariance systems over cultivated cropland for 10 years, and over lightly grazed prairie and new switchgrass fields for 2 years each. Growing-season precipitation showed the strongest control over net carbon uptake for all ecosystems, but with a variable effect: grasses …

Bionanotechnology And The Future Of Glioma, Peter A. Chiarelli, Forrest M. Kievit, Miqin Zhang, Richard G. Ellenbogen

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Designer nanoscaled materials have the potential to revolutionize diagnosis and treatment for glioma. This review summarizes current progress in nanoparticle‑based therapies for glioma treatment including targeting, drug delivery, gene delivery, and direct tumor ablation. Preclinical and current human clinical trials are discussed. Although progress in the field has been significant over the past decade, many successful strategies demonstrated in the laboratory have yet to be implemented in human clinical trials. Looking forward, we provide examples of combined treatment strategies, which harness the potential for nanoparticles to interact with their biochemical environment, and simultaneously with externally applied photons or magnetic fields. …

Surface Energy Balance, Evapotranspiration, And Surface Coefficients During Non-Growing Season In A Maize-Soybean Cropping System, Lameck O. Odhiambo, Suat Irmak

Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Surface energy balance components, including actual evapotranspiration (ET), were measured in a reducedtill maize-soybean field in south central Nebraska during three consecutive non-growing seasons (2006/2007, 2007/2008, and 2008/2009). The relative fractions of the energy balance components were compared across the non-growing seasons, and surface coefficients (K_c) were determined as a ratio of measured ET to estimated alfalfa (ET_r) and grass (ET_o) reference ET (ET_ref). The non-growing season following a maize crop had 25% to 35% more field surface covered with crop residue as compared to the non-growing seasons following soybean crops. Net …

The Role Of Shrinkage Strains Causing Early-Age Cracking In Cast-In-Place Concrete Bridge Decks, Tayyebeh Mohammadi, Baolin Wan, Christopher M. Foley

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Early-age cracking in cast-in-place reinforced concrete bridge decks is occurring more frequently now than three decades ago and principle factors that lead to early-age deck cracking are not fully understood. A finite element (FE) simulation methodology for assessing the role of shrinkage-induced strains in generating early-age bridge deck cracking is described. The simulations conducted indicate that drying shrinkage appears to be capable of causing transverse (and possibly longitudinal) bridge deck cracks as early as 9 to II days after bridge deck placement. The drying-shrinkage induced stresses would result in transverse cracking over interior pier supports in a typical bridge superstructure …

Girder Load Distribution For Seismic Design Of Integral Bridges, Justin Vander Werff, Sri Sritharan

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Current seismic design practice related to integral bridge girder-to-cap beam connections allows little or no lateral seismic load to be distributed beyond the girders immediately adjacent to the column. However, distribution results from several large-scale tests have shown that the distribution of column seismic moment typically engages all the girders. An approach utilizing simple stiffness models to predict distribution in integral bridge structures is presented in detail; distribution predictions based on grillage analyses also are compared. The experimental results and the analytical results from the stiffness and grillage models show that current design methods related to vertical load distribution are …

Data-Enabled Field Experiment Planning, Management, And Research Using Cyberinfrastructure, Ibrahim Demir, Helen Conover, Witold F. Krajewski, Bong Chul Seo, Radosław Goska, Yubin He, Michael F. Mceniry, Sara J. Graves, Walter Petersen

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the spring of 2013, NASA conducted a field campaign known as Iowa Flood Studies (IFloodS) as part of the Ground Validation (GV) program for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The purpose of IFloodS was to enhance the understanding of flood-related, space-based observations of precipitation processes in events that transpire worldwide. NASA used a number of scientific instruments such as ground based weather radars, rain and soil moisture gauges, stream gauges, and disdrometers to monitor rainfall events in Iowa. This article presents the cyberinfrastructure tools and systems that supported the planning, reporting, and management of the field campaign and …

Lidar Scanning With Supplementary Uav Captured Images For Structural Inspections, Richard L. Wood, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Structural assessment using remote sensing technologies can be performed efficiently and effectively using such technologies as LiDAR (light detection and ranging). LiDAR can be employed for various structural assessments, such as as-built conditions for a newly constructed facility, routine inspection during its service life, or structural collapse evaluation after a natural hazard or extreme event. However, the main disadvantage of LiDAR is that it is a line-of-sight technology that can result in significant occlusions. Architectural or structural components can be partially or fully occluded by another object with respect to the location of the laser scanner. Supplemental photogrammetry techniques, such …

Assessing The Impact Of Climate Change On Proposed Restoration Of The Lynnhaven River Ecosystem, Emily E. Skeehan

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Environmental degradation of the Chesapeake Bay (CB) and its sub-estuaries has been linked to population growth in the surrounding coastal zone, rapid development in the watershed and resultant nutrient loading into the Bay. Consequently, the federal government and its partners have developed restoration plans to mitigate the effects of eutrophication and improve essential ecosystem functions, though few restoration plans have considered the interactive effects of climate change. Climate change and other anthropogenic drivers are causing changes in ecosystem structure and function, thereby impacting the beneficial services ecosystems provide. While some studies have attempted to quantitatively predict the benefits of ecosystem …

Determination Of Explosive Energy Partition Values In Rock Blasting Through Small-Scale Testing, Joshua Calnan

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Blasting is a critical part of most mining operations. The primary function of blasting is to fragment and move rock. For decades, attempts have been made at increasing the efficiency of blasting to reduce costs and increase production. Most of these attempts involve trial and error techniques that focus on changing a single output. These techniques are costly and time consuming and it has been shown that as one output is optimized other outputs move away from their optimum level. To truly optimize a blasting program, the transfer of explosive energy into individual components must be quantified. Explosive energy is …

Nebraska Water Center Annual Report 2015, Nebraska Water Center

Literature from The Nebraska Water Center

Contents

Foreword 4

The Nebraska Water Center: Leadership in Research, Education and Communication 6

Director’s Letter 8

For More Than 50 years: The Nebraska Water Center 10

Helping Build the Future 11

Nebraska Water Center Advisory Board 14

Water Resources Advisory Panel: A key to success 15

Information for Our Clients and the Public 16

Primary Goals 18

USGS 104b Projects 20

Dvorak, Ray Aim at Improving Water Quality for Small Communities 20

October Retreat at UNK 24

Public Water Lectures 25

2015 Special Seminars 26

2015 Water Symposium and Water Law Conference 28

Water Tour Visits Republican River Basin …

2015 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Ryan Chapman

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain high quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on nearly 17,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, more than 134,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, as well as the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

Data-Driven Simulation Modeling Of Construction And Infrastructure Operations Using Process Knowledge Discovery, Reza Akhavian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain, simulation modeling is mainly used to facilitate decision-making by enabling the assessment of different operational plans and resource arrangements, that are otherwise difficult (if not impossible), expensive, or time consuming to be evaluated in real world settings. The accuracy of such models directly affects their reliability to serve as a basis for important decisions such as project completion time estimation and resource allocation. Compared to other industries, this is particularly important in construction and infrastructure projects due to the high resource costs and the societal impacts of these projects. Discrete event simulation …