Engineering Commons^™

The Current State Of Practice Of Building Information Modeling, Kevin P. Brooks

Masters Theses

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has become extremely prominent in the construction industry in the past twenty years. It serves as a digital repository that can, when used to its fullest potential, combine all aspects of designing, building, and managing a structure in one place, alongside all the data produced in those processes. The construction industry has to date struggled to increase productivity alongside similar fields, such as the manufacturing industry, though the construction industry generally has far more stakeholders on one project than the manufacturing industry. Further, building designs are becoming more complex while project schedules are becoming tighter. As …

The Effects Of Hurricane Wind Field Characteristics On Wind Blade Loads, Michael S. Tsai

Masters Theses

Over recent years, offshore wind energy has been growing around the world. This necessitates placing wind turbines directly in or near the oceans where hurricanes can be. Previous research has suggested that hurricane wind veer and direction change can have adverse loading effects on the turbine. Such effects can create damage to the blade or worsen existing ones. Currently, there is no known design standard for addressing wind veer and direction change specifically from hurricanes. Quantifying the loading contribution from these phenomena is not abundant either.

This thesis seeks to demonstrate a proposed procedure for defining design veer profiles and …

Post-Fire Damage Inspection Of Concrete Tunnel Structures, James Viglas

Masters Theses

In general, tunnels are designed with an abundance of safety regarding structural integrity, however, there can be uncertainty related to structural performance after a fire event. The residual condition of a tunnel after a fire is dependent on fire intensity and duration. The goal of this study is to correlate visual and material characteristics of structural and non-structural components of tunnels with fire temperature and exposure time. This can be further related to the residual capacity of structural members in a tunnel, providing insight into safety and overall functionality. Experimental results show that the visual response of materials with heat …

Comparison Of Scaling Performance Between Sidewalks Placed Using Hot And Cold Weather Concreting Procedures, Likhitha Rudraraju

Masters Theses

This study investigates the performance of concrete sidewalks placed using hot and cold weather concreting practices. The effect that curing methods, types of deicers, and supplementary cementitious material content have on the scaling resistance of concrete is examined in the laboratory and the field. After one winter, petrographic analysis was conducted on the cores from the sidewalk panels.

The results from field evaluation indicate that the concrete sidewalks placed using hot weather concreting showed better resistance against scaling than those placed using cold weather concreting. The results also suggest that the effect of curing method depends on the concreting procedure …