Architecture Commons^™

Comparative Study: Reducing Cost To Manage Accessibility With Existing Data, Claire Chu, Bill Kerneckel, Eric C. Larson, Nathan Mowat, Christopher Woodard

SMU Data Science Review

“Project Sidewalk” is an existing research effort that focuses on mapping accessibility issues for handicapped persons to efficiently plan wheelchair and mobile scooter friendly routes around Washington D.C. As supporters of this project, we utilized the data “Project Sidewalk” collected and used it to confirm predictions about where problem sidewalks exist based on real estate and crime data. We present a study that identifies correlations found between accessibility data and crime and housing statistics in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. We identify the key reasons for increased accessibility and the issues with the current infrastructure management system. After a thorough …

Wetland Conservation Effects Result In Enhanced Playa Functionality In The Rainwater Basin, Nebraska, Hong Zhang

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

This study assessed the functionality level of wetland hydrology, hydrophyte and soil conditions, and then identified the restorable potential of conserved playas. The distribution of hydrology and hydrophyte were geospatially examined through annual tracking the quantity and quality of wetlands on historical hydric soil footprints under different conservation programs in the Rainwater Basin (RWB) in Nebraska, USA during 2004-2015. The results show that the historical hydric soil footprints with the conservation programs had significantly higher functionality of ponded water and hydrophyte than non-conserved wetlands. The yearly average of ponded water areas within footprints varies at 12.59% for the Waterfowl Production …

2018 - The Twenty-Third Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Twenty-third Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 19, 2018. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Ranking Of Human Senses In Relation To Different In-Flight Activities Contributing To The Comfort Experience Of Airplane Passengers, Joyce Bouwens, Suzanne Hiemstra-Van Mastrigt, Peter Vink

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Bubb, Bengler, Grünen, and Vollrath (2015) identified six environmental comfort factors and ordered them from most important to least important (smell, light, vibrations, sound, climate and anthropometry). This paper attempts to verify whether this suggested order of comfort-related factors also applies to the expectations of aircraft passengers. For this purpose, two studies were carried out. First, a survey was conducted among 183 aircraft passengers between 19 and 64 years old. In this survey, respondents were asked to rank six comfort factors by selecting the most important factor from 15 pairs of factors (e.g. light versus smell). The respondents indicated anthropometry …

A Methodological Framework For Quantifying Impacts Of Truck Traffic On Regional Network With Implications To Transport Policy, Chaitanya Narendra Pathak

Dissertations

Increased global trade has promoted the importance of shipping industry and the introduction of mega-ships has created an opportunity to be more cost-effective. Because of this, the expected change in freight transportation influences the operating regimes and schedules at the port terminals. Trucks being the predominant mode of transportation used to carry the freight transport, there is a growing concern about the impact of trucks in the region. The problems are further expected to grow as the improvements to resolve them are hindered by funding shortfalls. Public agencies are therefore involved in developing comprehensive state freight plans that outline immediate …

From Architectural Design To Structural Analysis: A Data-Driven Approach To Study Building Information Modeling (Bim) Interoperability, Mohammed Aldegeily

Masters Theses

BIM has been playing an essential role in building construction projects in recent years. It was used to automate many tasks such as clash detection, 4D planning, and quantity takeoff, among others. However, the interoperability of BIM still lacks in many fields across the architecture, engineering, and construction domains. This research studies the interoperability between architectural design and structural analysis. The goal is to explore structural analysis of BIM models through data transfer processes between different software platforms via three types of paths: (1) Application Programming Interface (API); (2) “immediately connect,” which is the direct link between software programs from …

Education Institutions Creation Of Partnerships, Iwasan D. Kejawa Ed.D

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

This issue is embracing the creation of partnerships with establishments worldwide for the provisions of life embodiments to graduates. At moment, there may be lack of friendship or partnership with establishments to create incentives for newly graduates of so many colleges and universities (Hirsh & Weber, 1999). Partnership with external companies will surely bring enormous grants to the colleges and universities and it will also encourage friendly establishments to provide incentives and perks to colleges, universities and alumni. It may be concluded that the advantages of creating rapport with external congruences is the comraderies and also compromises that will be …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Performance Control Of A Spray Passive Down-Draft Evaporative Cooling System, Daeho Kang, Richard K. Strand

Publications and Research

A spray passive down-draft evaporative cooling system has been regarded as a low-energy cooling system that leads significant energy savings in the cooling of buildings. While the energy saving capability of the system has been proven, the ability to control a comfortable indoor environment is still inadequate due to strong climatic dependency. This study seeks viable solutions to advance the control competence of the system by mitigating critical problems of the system to be a reliable cooling application in the cooling of buildings. It proposes potential control strategies for the system and alternative operations. It develops a control algorithm for …

Respirable Dust Monitoring In Construction Sites And Visualization In Building Information Modeling Using Real-Time Sensor Data, Nour Smaoui, Kyungki Kim, Omprakash Gnawali, Young-Joo Lee, Wonho Suh

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Construction activities, involving cutting, drilling, and grinding of materials, often produce toxic respirable dust that can cause fatal diseases and illnesses. To protect workers from breathing excessive amounts of respirable dust at job sites, superintendents should continuously monitor the level of respirable dust in workspaces and make timely interventions for overexposed workers. However, current practices of respirable dust monitoring have critical drawbacks, and superintendents cannot accurately estimate workers’ exposures to respirable dust or make prompt decisions to protect the workers. Therefore, there is a need for real-time air dust monitoring that can be deployed ubiquitously at a construction site and …

Analyses Of Crowd-Sourced Sound Levels Of Restaurants And Bars In New York City, Gregory S. Farber, Lily M. Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

For several decades, there has been a significant need to better educate the public about noise pollution. A small number of small-scale studies have focused on the sound levels of restaurants and their impact on health and hearing. There have also been an increasing number of media articles stating that eating and drinking venues are getting increasingly loud making it more difficult for people to connect with others in conversation. This study reports on an exploratory large-scale noise survey of sound levels of 2,376 restaurants and bars in New York City using a novel smart-phone application and categorized them based …

The Bridge Newsletter Spring 2018, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

The Bridge Newsletter

-Steel Bridge Design Team takes first at ASCE student conference
-Sneed helps lead study abroad course
-ACML gifts
-Schonberg named Fulbright Chair

University Of Nebraska At Omaha 2018-2019 Course Catalog, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Undergraduate Catalogs

Located in one of America’s best cities to live, work and learn, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is Nebraska’s premier metropolitan university. With more than 15,000 students enrolled in 200-plus programs of study, UNO is recognized nationally for its online education, graduate education, military friendliness, and community engagement efforts.Founded in 1908, UNO has served learners of all backgrounds for more than 100 years and is dedicated to another century of excellence both in the classroom and in the community.

Low-Carbon Building Skills Website, Faculty Of Applied Science And Technology Sheridan College

Books and Websites

Low-carbon building involves designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and removing buildings in ways that conserve natural resources and reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. To move towards a low-carbon economy, we need tradespeople who are educated in the design, construction maintenance and operation of buildings, who understand the industrial and constructions sectors, and are trained in low-carbon building skills.

Sheridan College’s participation in the Low Carbon Building Skills (LCBS) project involved developing and delivering low-carbon building skills curriculum across relevant disciplines and involving the full building cycle, from design to operations and optimization. The learning modules address what can be done to …

Using Virtual Reality And Photogrammetry To Enrich 3d Object Identity, Cole Juckette, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Hector Eluid Guerra Aldana, Norman Martinez

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The creation of digital 3D models for cultural heritage is commonplace. With the advent of efficient and cost effective technologies archaeologists are making a plethora of digital assets. This paper evaluates the identity of 3D digital assets and explores how to enhance or expand that identity by integrating photogrammetric models into VR. We propose that when a digital object acquires spatial context from its virtual surroundings, it gains an identity in relation to that virtual space, the same way that embedding the object with metadata gives it a specific identity through its relationship to other information. We explore this concept …

Design And Manufacture Of A Precast Pcm Enhanced Concrete Cladding Panel For Full Scale Performance Monitoring, Dervilla Niall, Roger West, Oliver Kinnane

Conference papers

The overall aim of this study is to develop innovative precast cladding panels for the renovation of Europe’s existing building stock thereby improving their energy performance. Using the mass of a building to store heat and/or cold can reduce the demand on the auxiliary heating and/or cooling systems and hence reduce the overall energy demand of the building. Previous laboratory research has shown that the incorporation of phase change materials (PCMs) into concrete enhances its thermal storage capacity by up to 50%. However in a real application where a PCM-concrete composite material is used in a building to store thermal …

Bs News January/February

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Numerical Analysis And Case Study On The Mitigation Of Mining Damage To The Floor Of No. 5 Coal Seam Of Taiyuan Group By Grouting, A. Li, Y. Liu, L. Mou, K. Li

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Based on the geological condition of panel 22507 of the no. 5 coal seam at Dongjiahe coal mine, numerical analysis of the stability and water permeability of the floor aquiclude before and after grouting was conducted using Rock Failure Process Analysis (F-RFPA2D). The dynamic development, extension, and distribution of the cracks in the aquiclude are discussed. It is shown that grouting can increase the effective thickness of the aquiclude, reduce the floor damage depth, and control the floor water inrush path, thus effectively improving the overall strength and water blocking capability of the aquiclude. These numerical study results were applied …

Simultaneous Electrical And Mechanical Resonance Drive For Large Signal Amplification Of Micro Resonators, M. H. Hasan, Fadi M. Alsaleem, N. Jaber, M. A. A. Hafiz, M. I. Younis

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Achieving large signal-noise ratio using low levels of excitation signal is key requirement for practical applications of micro and nano electromechanical resonators. In this work, we introduce the double electromechanical resonance drive concept to achieve an order-of-magnitude dynamic signal amplification in micro resonators. The concept relies on simultaneously activating the micro-resonator mechanical and electrical resonance frequencies. We report an input voltage amplification up to 15 times for a micro-resonator when its electrical resonance is tuned to match the mechanical resonance that leads to dynamic signal amplification in air (Quality factor enhancement). Furthermore, using a multi-frequency excitation technique, input voltage and …

Impact Of Owners’ Early Decisions On Project Performance And Dispute Occurrence In Public Highway Projects, Sogand Hasanzadeh, Behzad Esmaeili, Ghada M. Gad, Douglas D. Gransberg

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Disputes are common in the construction industry and lead to unnecessary cost and schedule overruns in projects. It is commonly believed that owners’ early decisions regarding the selection of delivery methods, procurement methods, and contract types impact the frequency and severity of project disputes; however, no previous study has empirically tested this hypothesis, particularly in highway public projects. Therefore, this study empirically investigated the impact of owners’ early decisions regarding project organization (i.e., delivery methods, procurement, and contract types) on performance measures (e.g., cost and schedule growth), specifically dispute performance metrics (e.g., frequency and severity of disputes), in public highway …

Numerical Simulation Of Fault Impacts For Commercial Walk-In Freezers, Alireza Behfar, David P. Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Refrigeration systems can undergo many faults that could negatively affect their operation and performance. This paper describes a modeling process to simulate the fault impacts on the operation of a commercial walk-in freezer using semi-empirical models. These models often require less modeling effort than full forward models and could be used in scenarios where detailed information is missing, such as in field-measured systems. An important characteristic of a typical walk-in refrigeration system is the existence of a liquid-line receiver after the condenser, which significantly changes the behavior of the cycle, in comparison to a receiver-less system. Component models described in …

Method For Radon Measurement In Residential Sewer Connections, David Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Radon gas is the most deadly indoor air pollutant. In the US, it is responsible for over 20,000 deaths per year. Residential exposure is typically the largest portion of a person’s annual exposure, so a great deal of research has been done to understand the pathways that radon can follow to enter a house. Since radon emanates from the ground, it is present in high concentration in soil gas. Recent research on the vapor intrusion of volatile organic compounds from subsurface sources into a test house concluded that the sewer line is an important preferential pathway. Despite the potential for …

Utilizing Wearable Devices To Design Personal Thermal Comfort Model, Mostafa Rafaie, Mehari Tesfay, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

have confirmed that thermal comfort significantly depends on internal personal parameters such as metabolic rate, age, and health status. This is manifested as a difference in comfort levels between people residing under the same roof, and hence no general comprehensive comfort model satisfying everyone. Current and newly emerging advancements in state of the art wearable technology have made it possible to continuously acquired biometric information. This work proposes to access and exploit this data to build personal thermal comfort model. Relying on various supervised machine-learning methods, a personal thermal comfort model will be produced and compared to a general model …

Localized Indoor Temperature Estimation Using Smartphone And Laptop Internal Sensors, Mostafa Rafaie, Mehari Tesfay, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

This paper investigates a mechanism in which indoor air temperature can be predicted using the temperature sensor on the battery and the CPU of smartphones or laptops, where data is easily accessible and ubiquitous. As a case study, several machine-learning methods were used to build models from a laptop data and the measured surrounding air temperature. The effects of the machine learning type and input feature size (by including other parameters such as CPU processing usage and battery charge percentage) on the model accuracy were investigated. The goal is to determine a set of feature combinations that can be used …

Evaluation The Effect Of Washing On The Heat Transfer Capacity And Air-Side Flow Resistance Of Air Cooled Condensers, Mehdi Mehrabi, David Yuill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

17th International Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Conference at Purdue, July 9-12, 2018

Comfort-Based Optimal Temperature Setpoint Calculation, Andrew Holthaus, Mostafa Rafaie, Fadi Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

General practice in current building HVAC control is to select building temperature setpoints that comply with ASHRAE Standard 55. By meeting this standard, based on the PMV comfort model, 80% of building occupants should be satisfied with their thermal environment. However, unfortunately, this is rarely the case. One possible reason for this is the variation in occupant activity and clothing that are usually assumed default values using this standard. In this work, we present an iterative-based algorithm to solve this problem. The algorithm solves the PMV inverse model equation to determine the optimal temperature setpoint while inferring human activity level …

Sdnet2018: An Annotated Image Data Set For Non-Contact Concrete Crack Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

SDNET2018 is an annotated image data set for training, validation, and benchmarking of artificial intelligence based crack detection algorithms for concrete. SDNET2018 contains over 56,000 images of cracked and non-cracked concrete bridge decks, walls, and pavements. The dataset includes cracks as narrow as 0.06 mm and as wide as 25 mm. The data set also includes images with a variety of obstructions, including shadows, surface roughness, scaling, edges, holes, and background debris. SDNET2018 will be useful for the continued development of concrete crack detection algorithms based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), which are a subject of continued research in …

Infrared Thermography For Weld Inspection: Feasibility And Application, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire, William Collins

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Traditional ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques have been widely used to detect surface and sub-surface defects of welds. UT inspection is a contact method which burdens the manufacturer by storing hot specimens for inspection when the material is cool. Additionally, UT is only valid for 5 mm specimens or thicker and requires a highly skilled operator to perform the inspections and interpret the signals. Infrared thermography (IRT) has the potential to be implemented for weld inspections due to its non-contact nature. In this study, the feasibility of using IRT to overcome the limitations of UT inspection is investigated to detect inclusion, …

Hvac System Remote Monitoring And Diagnosis Of Refrigerant Line Obstruction, Fadi M. Alsaleem

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system of a building includes a refrigerant loop. A monitoring system for the HVAC system includes a monitoring device installed at the building. The monitoring device is configured to measure a first temperature of refrigerant in a refrigerant line located between a filter - drier of the refrigerant loop and an expansion valve of the refrigerant loop. The monitoring system includes a monitoring server, located remotely from the building. The monitoring server is con figured to receive the first temperature and, in response to the first temperature being less than a threshold, generate …

The Need For Enhanced Physical Infrastructure In The United States, Tanvi Gandham

CMC Senior Theses

An examination of necessary infrastructure improvements in the United States.