Engineering Commons^™

Computationally Modeling The Human-Structure Interaction Response Of An Occupied Cantilevered Structure, Brennan Smith

Honors Theses

There is a limited understanding of the impact that passive human occupants have on a dynamic structural system, referred to as Human-Structure Interaction (HSI). Cantilevers are naturally prone to excessive vibrations due to their long unsupported spans, and cantilevered structures such as those commonly found in the seating area of a stadium facility or concert hall are designed to support a high density of occupancy.

This study determined that HSI in cantilevered structures can be modeled using a simple two-degree-of-freedom system. The results of the model were validated by data that was collected on a small-scale laboratory structure intentionally designed …

An Investigation Into The Common Problems Of Lagoon Wastewater Treatment In Kentucky, Kaylee A. Jones

Honors Theses

Lagoon wastewater treatment systems are commonly used in areas that do not have the available resources for typical mechanical wastewater treatment. Lagoon systems consist of multiple preliminary lagoons, but mainly rely on long-term facultative lagoons for most analyte removal. In this study, one particular lagoon wastewater treatment system (named Municipality A Wastewater Treatment Plant) is investigated due to noncompliance with governmental standards provided by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Samples were collected by researchers at 4 different instances inside of the treatment systems. These samples were sent to an analytical laboratory for testing. The readings from these samples …

Evaluation Of The Geotechnical And Foundation Components On Jud Site, Mirabel W. Nkanor

Honors Theses

This thesis is part of the senior design final project of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Mississippi. Geotechnical and foundation analyses were done on a proposed construction project for a multi-family home in Orlando, Florida. This evaluation done in this thesis follows the pre-existing geotechnical report on the side, USDA soil reports, ASCE Code 32-01 (Design of Foundations), and ASCE-7 Section 12.31.1 (Foundations and Superstructure-to-Foundation Connections).

A structural system was selected from the proposed location, on the corner of South Conway and Judge Road, and an evaluation of the Bearing Load capacity was completed to determine the …

Veterans Memorial Park In Colon, Mi, Madelyn Landry

Honors Theses

Located in St. Joseph County, MI, the Village of Colon offers a charming small-town feel and a close connection with nature. For this project, our team will be working to create a new design for a small community park located in the downtown area of Colon along the shores of Palmer Lake. The American Legion is seeking to re-imagine the park into a Veterans memorial to celebrate the service of village residents who have served in the armed forces. Elements requested to be incorporated into the memorial include granite stonework with etched displays, flags for each branch of the military, …

Subdivision Site Design In Antwerp Township, Peyton Smith

Honors Theses

Design and development of a subdivision on an empty plot of land off Red Arrow Highway in Antwerp Township, MI.

Subdivision Site Design In Antwerp Township, Alec Denbraber

Honors Theses

Design and development of a subdivision on an empty plot of land off Red Arrow Highway in Antwerp Township, MI.

Roundabout Design At Clare Ave And Us 127, Clare, Mi, Elise Olson

Honors Theses

For our senior design project, we conducted an intersection improvement in Clare Michigan. On the north end of Clare at the interchange of US-127 and Clare Avenue, the Michigan Department of Transportation has been working with the Clare County Road Commission in an effort to redo this interchange. The ideal interchange will be a roundabout that includes the entrance and exit ramps of NB US-127, NB and SB Clare Ave, and Colonville Road. With the assistance of AutoCAD, PTV Vistro, and Microsoft Project, our team conducted a full roundabout design and park & ride redesign. Our team then developed an …

Western Michigan University Main Campus Parking Garage, Brendan Graham

Honors Theses

Student parking when attending class seems to be an issue at most universities. At Western Michigan University, it is a particular issue near the Haworth College of Business and Rood Hall. Students regularly struggle to find parking spaces in a timely manner when attending class in this area. Parking in this area currently consists solely of asphalt parking lots. It was our goal to both increase parking capacity and green space in this area. We will do this by designing a multi-level parking garage that will provide a more efficient use of parking space. As you will see later on, …

Design Of Load Bearing Wall For Low Rise Building With Partially Grouted Reinforced Masonry, Anil Bhatt

Honors Theses

The seismic and wind load acting on the 2-storeyed building of dimension 120 ft x 98 ft located in Oxford, MS, were calculated and the seismic load was considered for the design of the 120 ft long and 24 ft high load-bearing wall because it being critical. The maximum loading was computed using different load combinations. The masonry behavior and masonry specifications were considered to select the masonry unit, grout, and mortar for the load-bearing wall. The seismic design requirement for the shear and slender wall was fulfilled for the special reinforced masonry wall. The in-plane and out-of-plane loading scenarios …

Medical Service Facility Site Development, Sabrina Carvajal

Honors Theses

This report provides a clear description of a site development design project for a future medical service facility. The site is approximately 46,818 square feet and is located at 203 E. Centre Avenue Portage, Michigan 49002 United States. This is in a high traffic area that is surrounded by different public and academic institutions including Portage Central High School and Portage Public Library. The commercial buildings surrounding this area are Comerica Bank, Dairy Queen and a new Senior Center currently under construction. Our team is proposing two different site-layout options for the future development of this building. This medical service …

Impacts Of Using Tubular Sections In Open Web Steel Joists, Hollis (Cas) L. Caswell V

Honors Theses

Open web steel joists are lightweight structural trusses used in place of I-beams to support long-span floors and roofs of open space buildings. Their slender geometry makes them highly efficient in resisting flexure, but susceptible to out-of-plane buckling in a failure mode known as lateral-torsional buckling. This failure can be avoided by running lateral bracing between joists called bridging or potentially by using tubular sections to build up the joists rather than angle sections.

It is possible that a joist design using tubular cross-sections could require less bridging and prevent the need to use erection bridging for initial joist construction. …

Housing Pre-Fabrication And Resource Optimization, Emma Dubensky

Honors Theses

Enclosure during construction is often time-consuming, expensive, and at the mercy of the weather. By introducing methods for manufacturing prefabricated enclosure components such as wall panels and roof sections, the impact of the three major variables is reduced. Designs for trusses, roof sections, wall sections, and foundations were developed and selected using civil engineering principles; and manufacturing and logistical processes were optimized using engineering and project management skill sets. These multi-disciplinary efforts were combined to create an accessible and versatile set of designs and instructions that can improve the effectiveness of both a skilled and non-skilled volunteer workforce. By creating …

Housing Prefabrication And Resource Optimization, Megan Scherpereel

Honors Theses

Enclosure during construction is often time-consuming, expensive, and at the mercy of the weather. By introducing methods for manufacturing prefabricated enclosure components such as wall panels and roof sections, the impact of the three major variables is reduced. Designs for trusses, roof sections, wall sections, and foundations were developed and selected using civil engineering principles; and manufacturing and logistical processes were optimized using engineering and project management skill sets. These multi-disciplinary efforts were combined to create an accessible and versatile set of designs and instructions that can improve the effectiveness of both a skilled and non-skilled volunteer workforce. By creating …

Structural Health Monitoring Of Composite Parts: A Review, Jacob Pessin

Honors Theses

Structural health monitoring has the potential to allow composite structures to be more reliable and safer, then by using more traditional damage assessment techniques. Structural health monitoring (SHM) utilizes individual sensor units that are placed throughout the load bearing sections of a structure and gather data that is used for stress analysis and damage detection. Statistical time based algorithms are used to analyze collected data and determine both damage size and probable location from within the structure. While traditional calculations and life span analysis can be done for structures made of isotropic materials such as steel or other metals, composites …

The Critical Difference Seismic Design Can Make For A Reinforced Concrete Building Located In Oxford, Mississippi, Naim Daghmash

Honors Theses

The Senior Design course at the University of Mississippi requires the completion of a capstone project. One part of the capstone project is a complete structural design of the NOLA, an ongoing construction in the city of Oxford in Mississippi. The course requires the NOLA to be designed according to gravity loads, meaning the forces act in the downward direction towards the earth’s surface. Some loading mechanisms that could occur in a different direction than gravity are seismic loads, which are earthquake-generated loads. I was not required by my instructors to consider the effect of an earthquake on the structural …

The Urban Development Of Bronson Circle, Matthew Moulton

Honors Theses

Many suburban streets, and specifically Bronson Circle, in the city of Kalamazoo are in poor condition and in need of repair. Along with a new pavement design and additional drainage considerations, a complete redesign of the street’s cross-section with the concept of a “Complete Street” was created. A redesign of the site, traffic, pavement, drainage, and lighting were completed to lessen the street’s impact on the environment and make it more user friendly for all modes of transportation. This complete street design can be adjusted for terrain and used for any comparable urban street.

Included in this report is an …

Determination Of Shrinkage Of Fine-Grained Soils Using 3d Scanning Technology, Hemant R. Joshi

Honors Theses

Shrinkage Limit is the moisture content parameter in fine grained soil which is related to the volume stability of the soil. The conventional method, ASTM Standard D427-04 that uses mercury has been replaced by wax method, ASTM Standard D4943-02 that uses wax and water or MT-92 that uses spray coating. This modification has certainly minimized safety concerns of the laboratory technicians by avoiding the use of the health hazardous substance, mercury (Hg) but it is not really an economic and convenient method. This thesis proposes a 3D scanning method of determining the shrinkage limit of fine grained soils. The 3D …

The Nola Development: Stormwater Management And Green Alternative Designs, Davis P. Odle

Honors Theses

In the design for any development, the management of storm and wastewater is crucial in creating a viable product. The NOLA complex is a development in Oxford, MS that consists of residential as well as commercial units. The stormwater management systems designed for this facility include: an underground storage device, separate ductile iron pipes for the stormwater and wastewater outflows, a rain garden for green alternative storage. The underground storage system is designed for the 500-year storm and to fit under the southwest parking lot on the site. The stormwater outflow pipe will be designed for the 100-year storm, while …

Ceas Student Center Expansion, Turner Solterman

Honors Theses

Western Michigan University has had a long-standing tradition of engineering excellence. To keep up with the modern culture and to maintain that Western will be on the forefront of universities providing an excellent engineering education, an expansion to the current CEAS building on the Parkview campus is necessary. Aptly named the CEAS Student Center Expansion, this project will be a space exclusively for student engineering groups to work in a space where collaboration across different engineering disciplines will be as easy as walking across the floor to talk to someone else. Through the floor plans of the different alternatives …

Total Bridge Replacement Of M-13 Over Cheboyganing Creek, Daniel Burns

Honors Theses

The Michigan Department of Transportation sought a proposal consisting of design and construction engineering services for the total bridge replacement of M-13 over Cheboyganing Creek. The M-13 Bridge Project is located on M-13 over Cheboyganing Creek on the Saginaw River in Portsmouth Township, Bay County, Michigan.

Several components of the existing bridge have been rated in poor or serious condition on the National Bridge Inventory rating scale. A total bridge replacement is required and aligns with MDOT strategies to address critical infrastructure needs in the state as well as the Bay Region's five-year plan for managing bridge and culvert infrastructure. …

I-94 Advanced Bridge Replacement, Saleem Alsharari

Honors Theses

The Michigan Department of Transportation has always felt the need of improving and increasing the capacity of the most critical highway in the state of Michigan, I-94. Part of the improvement plan is to increase the capacity of a 6-mile segment along a corridor of I-94 from French Avenue to Trumbull Avenue which is in a suburban neighborhood of Detroit. There are eight bridges built in the 1950’s that need to be re-constructed for a capacity increase. Vehicular and non-motorized traffic must be accounted for in the design of these bridges. The project is intended to increase the service life …

An Experimental Investigation Of A Reinforced Steel Frame Via Structural Dynamics, Ethan Baker

Honors Theses

With the current decaying condition of America's infrastructure, a need for a more efficient inspection method is evident. The combination of Structural Health Monitoring data and data analysis tools could be a solution. In this study, laboratory data was captured for both a baseline bare-frame and a wooden wall reinforced steel structure. A MATLAB®-based computer program, the in-house SHE™ accomplishes an array of tasks, including signal processing and modal decomposition among others. A SAP2000® model contextualized the experimental data by producing trend behaviors, such as mode order or common mode shapes. Both sequential and cumulative reinforcement detection was performed on …

Evaluation Of The Use Of High Frequency Acoustic Cavitation To Improve Water Quality In Commercial Catfish Operations, Bennett Elizabeth Barr

Honors Theses

Catfish processing plants must chill the water used for their fillet wash and flush and refill their piping systems frequently, requiring a pause in operations until the piping flush is complete. There is a need for a (preferably non-chemical) solution that enables the plants to chill the water less and flush their systems less often to mitigate high energy and water consumption. High amplitude acoustic waves (sonication) were introduced into water samples from catfish ponds to determine if they could be used as a replacement for chemical treatments to improve the water quality in the plant piping systems. Preliminary tests …

Site Development At The Corner Of Drake And Stadium, Ahmad Sear Rahimi

Honors Theses

This report presents the site layout alternatives for the development located at the corner of Drake and Stadium in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In the report four different layouts are suggested and followed by best management practices for grading and earthwork plans, porous asphalt pavement design, storm water retention design for the proposed site, and storm sewer pipe design. The redesign of the Costco Development Site aims to maximize efficiency of the development area through the warehouse and gas station location, parking lot layout, and trucking routes. Grading design is developed based on the existing site conditions before construction took place. The …

Pervious Vs. Impervious Pavement: An Engineering Approach To Cost Efficiency, William Vanlandeghem

Honors Theses

This research attempts to make a comprehensive comparison between the relatively new breed of pavement, pervious concrete, and asphalt, a more popular and accepted pavement type. Pervious concrete is mainly used as a pavement surface for green purposes; however, this thesis delves into the possibility that pervious concrete may be able to offer benefits that allow the green alternative to be cost efficient as well. The comparison will be made over the entirety of the surface life including each pavement design and the materials used, the surface drainage, and the maintenance of each. The pavements were analyzed from a real …

Design Considerations For A Rotating Retractable Stadium Roof, Charles S. Jenkins

Honors Theses

This thesis presents a novel type of retractable roof, adapting the pivot-based retraction system used in Miller Park to a stadium without a circular geometry. Existing stadiums with retractable roofs are reviewed, and lessons learned are used to present theoretical structural engineering design for a roof truss and recommendations for carriers. The presented concept likely requires light-weight structural systems and closely-spaced roof trusses to minimize loads on roof carriers. Actual mechanical designs of the roof carriers are quite complex as they must be able to roll in two directions and pivot about a third. The design herein is incomplete for …

Study Of The Compressive Strength Of Aluminum Curved Elements, Christine M. Shepherd

Honors Theses

Currently, the Specification for Aluminum Structures (Aluminum Association, 2010) shows thin-walled aluminum plate sections with radii greater than eight inches have a lower compressive strength capacity than a flat plate with the same width and thickness. This inconsistency with intuition, which suggests any degree of folding a plate should increase its elastic buckling strength, inspired this study. A wide range of curvatures are studied—from a nearly flat plate to semi-circular. To quantify the curvature, a single non-dimensional parameter is used to represent all combinations of width, thickness and radius. Using the finite strip method (CU-FSM), elastic local buckling stresses are …

Investigating The Effects Of Various Crowd Characteristics On The Dynamic Properties Of An Occupied Structure, Robert Joseph Firman Iii

Honors Theses

One of the challenges for structural engineers during design is considering how the structure will respond to crowd-induced dynamic loading. It has been shown that human occupants of a structure do not simply add mass to the system when considering the overall dynamic response of the system, but interact with it and may induce changes of the dynamic properties from those of the empty structure. This study presents an investigation into the human-structure interaction based on several crowd characteristics and their effect on the dynamic properties of an empty structure. The dynamic properties including frequency, damping, and mode shapes were …