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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Factors Affecting The Interface Shear Strength Of Pavement Layers, Nachiketa Bharat Patel Jan 2010

Factors Affecting The Interface Shear Strength Of Pavement Layers, Nachiketa Bharat Patel

LSU Master's Theses

Flexible pavement structures are built in layers with a certain degree of bonding at the interface, which is affected by several factors which could be either material related, or construction related. The tack coat material type, residual application rate, tack coat coverage, and pavement surface type are attributed as material related factors. On the other hand, cleanliness, moisture, and vertical confinement pressure could be classified as construction related factors. The objective of this study was to quantify the effects of these factors on the pavement interface bonding in terms of interface shear strength. Five types of tack coats, four of …


Estimated Impact Of Left Lane Truck Restriction On Louisiana Highway Pavement Using Mepdg, Mini Radhakrishnan Jan 2010

Estimated Impact Of Left Lane Truck Restriction On Louisiana Highway Pavement Using Mepdg, Mini Radhakrishnan

LSU Master's Theses

Truck lane restriction strategies (TLRS) are strategies used to manage truck traffic on highways by prohibiting trucks from using certain lanes in order to minimize interaction between trucks and other vehicles and currently it is under consideration for implementation in Louisiana’s multi-lane highways. One of the serious impacts of a truck lane restriction on highways is accelerated pavement damage on unrestricted lanes due to the increased truck traffic on them. The purpose of this study is to estimate the increased pavement damage on the right lane in terms of various distress caused by imposing left lane truck restriction on trucks …


Hydrodynamic Modeling Of San Elijo Lagoon, California, Mary Elizabeth Nee Friedmann Bourgoyne Jan 2010

Hydrodynamic Modeling Of San Elijo Lagoon, California, Mary Elizabeth Nee Friedmann Bourgoyne

LSU Master's Theses

Decisions on where to concentrate management efforts need to be guided by an ability to accurately simulate and predict physical and ecological changes. Many restoration projects experience difficulties due to a lack of understanding of the ecological response and evolution of wetland systems (Goodwin et al., 2001). There are several approaches that can be taken in analyzing a system. The appropriate selection should be based on the available data, the spatial scale of the wetland, and the physical processes governing the system (Goodwin and Kamman, 2001). Predictive tools are essential for good long-term management (Goodwin et al., 2001). The objective …


Identifying And Quantifying Factors Affecting Traffic Crash Severity In Louisiana, Hong Zhang Jan 2010

Identifying And Quantifying Factors Affecting Traffic Crash Severity In Louisiana, Hong Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study was conducted to identify and quantify the factors affecting highway crash severity in Louisiana. Three candidate models were fit to the crash data to compare their performance and the Ordered Mixed Logit (OML) model was selected as the crash severity prediction model of choice. The factors contributing to crash severity identified by the OML model are: age and gender of the driver, vehicle speed, whether alcohol played a role in the crash, whether seatbelts were used, whether the driver was ejected from the vehicle, whether the crash was a head-on collision, whether an airbag was deployed, and whether …


Probabilistic Models For Short Term Traffic Conditions Prediction, Yan Qi Jan 2010

Probabilistic Models For Short Term Traffic Conditions Prediction, Yan Qi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Accurate short-term prediction of traffic condition on freeways and major arterials has become increasingly important because of its vital role in traffic management functions and various trip decisions. Given the dynamic nature of freeway traffic, this study proposed two stochastic model approaches, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and One-Step Stochastic Model, for short-term traffic prediction during peak periods. The data used in the study are real-time traffic monitoring data gathered over 6 years on a 40-mile segment of Interstate-4 in Orlando, Florida. Both approaches are based on the traffic state transition probabilities. The HMM approach defines traffic states in a two …


Dynamic Trip Distribution Models For Hurricane Evacuation, Guangxiang Cheng Jan 2010

Dynamic Trip Distribution Models For Hurricane Evacuation, Guangxiang Cheng

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation presents several methods to estimate time-dependent origin-destination (O-D) trip tables for hurricane evacuation using survey data from hurricane Floyd in South Carolina in 1999. A static disaggregate destination choice model in multinomial logit form was developed considering household characteristics, hurricane threats, and destination socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Models were developed for persons evacuating to friends or relatives, and hotels or motels separately. None of the household characteristics of evacuees were found to be significant in distinguishing destination choice but destination characteristics were. The model was tested by comparing the observed destination choices with predicted values via trip length …


Friction And Wear At Elevated Velocities, Adam Lodygowski Jan 2010

Friction And Wear At Elevated Velocities, Adam Lodygowski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Severe contact stress problems generate high temperature and create thermomechanical gouging and wear due to high velocity sliding between contacting materials. The major consideration is to develop an experimental and theoretical model for the material constitutive behavior in order to better characterize and predict the internal failure surroundings the gouging and wear events and understand the physical behavior of high speed contact environment. An enhancement of an existing tribometer device developed by Philippon et al. [2004] is made up of a dynamometer ring and a load sensor that allows to apply an apparent normal force on specimens and measure frictional …


Influence Of Unstable Soil Movement On Pile-Founded Concrete Floodwalls And A Resulting Design Methodology, Richard James Varuso Jan 2010

Influence Of Unstable Soil Movement On Pile-Founded Concrete Floodwalls And A Resulting Design Methodology, Richard James Varuso

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Efforts are underway in the New Orleans area to raise the elevations of its levee system to combat the effects of hurricane storm surge. When complete, the majority of the system will be comprised of a combination of levees, sheet pile I-Walls, floodgates, and pile-supported concrete floodwalls, commonly referred to as T-Walls. Given the magnitude of the hydrostatic forces associated with storm surge, global instability is failure mechanism that must be considered in the design of T-Walls. In the past, it was assumed that these forces would be resisted by the T-Wall’s sheet pile cut-off wall. Recent literature review and …


Cost Effective Prevention Of Reflective Cracking In Composite Pavements, Rakesh Bandaru Jan 2010

Cost Effective Prevention Of Reflective Cracking In Composite Pavements, Rakesh Bandaru

LSU Master's Theses

Louisiana had experimented with various techniques and treatments to control reflection cracking since the 1970s; however, the cost-effectiveness and performance of these methods had not been reliably evaluated. In addition, scientific evaluation and testing of these treatment methods was not performed on many projects. To ensure successful control of this distress and effective allocation of maintenance funds, there is a critical need to assess the performance of pavement sections across the state built with various treatment methods and to determine the most cost-effective techniques to delay or to prevent reflection cracking in composite pavements. The objective of this study is …


Operational And Safety Assessment Of Joint And Conventional Lane Merge Configurations For Freeway Work Zones, Pradeep Rayaprolu Jan 2010

Operational And Safety Assessment Of Joint And Conventional Lane Merge Configurations For Freeway Work Zones, Pradeep Rayaprolu

LSU Master's Theses

Inefficient operation of traffic at work zone areas typically leads to increase in travel time delays, queue length, fuel consumption, number of forced merges, and roadway accidents. In order to improve the operational efficiency of work zones, research on freeway work zones constantly seeks to develop different lane merge control strategies, in addition to the conventional lane merge configuration, recommended by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This study evaluates the operational efficiency and safety benefits of a newly proposed configuration, joint lane merge (JLM), and compare its performance with the conventional lane merge (CLM) configuration. A simulation model …


Nanomechanics Of Muscovite Subjected To Nanoindentation And The Pertinent Indentation Size Effect, Hang Yin Jan 2010

Nanomechanics Of Muscovite Subjected To Nanoindentation And The Pertinent Indentation Size Effect, Hang Yin

LSU Master's Theses

Two groups of nanoindentation experiments, including repeated loading tests and monotonic loading tests, were performed on muscovite with a sharp indenter tip and loading direction normal to the basal plane. By varying the maximum load in the first group of repeated experiments, influences of the load level can be examined on the modes of nanoscale deformation and the resulting estimation of hardness and elastic modulus. The incipient kink band concept was employed to interpret the observed dispersed loading-unloading hysteresis loops by considering formation and annihilation of IKBs. Furthermore, the material’s contact stiffness behavior was characterized by comparing the normalized unloading …


Transit-Based Emergency Evacuation Modeling With Microscopic Simulation, Hana H. Naghawi Jan 2010

Transit-Based Emergency Evacuation Modeling With Microscopic Simulation, Hana H. Naghawi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Several recent mass evacuations, including those in advance of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Hurricane Rita in Houston, have demonstrated the effects of limited planning for carless populations. The lack of planning left a significant portion of the mobility-limited population of both these cities unable to flee in advance of the storms. Since 2005 however, both of these cities (as well as others across the United States) have developed transit assisted mass evacuation plans at various levels of detail. Since these plans are relatively recent and do not have a history of experience on which to base their performance, …


Thermal Conductivity And Its Effects On The Performance Of Pcc Pavements In Mepdg, Upender Kodide Jan 2010

Thermal Conductivity And Its Effects On The Performance Of Pcc Pavements In Mepdg, Upender Kodide

LSU Master's Theses

This study developed a standard thermal conductivity test procedure to test concrete specimens and studied factors influencing those specimens. The thermal conductivity of concrete is significantly affected by moisture content, type, and percentage of coarse aggregate; this finding was confirmed statistically by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The study also developed a model for predicting the thermal conductivity of concrete that varies with moisture content and the coarse aggregate percentage. To understand the effect of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), this study also measured thermal conductivity of control and ternary mixtures. An increase in thermal conductivity percentage due to increase in moisture …


Effect Of Management Awareness Of Safety Climate Concept On Organizational Safety Climate, Christopher Michael Holzner Jan 2010

Effect Of Management Awareness Of Safety Climate Concept On Organizational Safety Climate, Christopher Michael Holzner

LSU Master's Theses

Safety research and practice have shifted focus away from accident rates and accident causal information to a more proactive approach that may predict organizational safety trends. This proactive approach involves the concept of an organizational safety culture and the use of surveys to measure organizational safety climate or „snapshot‟ of the organizational safety culture. Surveys were administered to line workers, supervisors, and managers at a modular home manufacturing company before and after safety climate information was presented to supervisors and managers in an attempt to measure the effect of the supervisors‟ and managers‟ increased awareness of the factors that define …


Empirically Evaluating And Developing Alarm Rate Standards For Liquid Pipeline Control Room Operators, Glen David Uhack Ii Jan 2010

Empirically Evaluating And Developing Alarm Rate Standards For Liquid Pipeline Control Room Operators, Glen David Uhack Ii

LSU Master's Theses

The liquid and gas pipeline community has recently been faced with the challenge of new governmental regulations set forth by congress which are being implemented by PHMSA (an arm of the DOT). These new governmental regulations need to understand the role of the human in the loop as part of alarm management systems. To investigate alarm rate standards a repeated measures design was developed that included a series of ten (10) simulated liquid pipeline operator scenarios utilizing high fidelity liquid pipeline simulation software (Stoner Pipeline Simulator). A total of 39 participants volunteered for this study. Participants completed two subsets of …


Biomechanical Evaluation Of Modified Track Shoes, Marlon Alberetos Greensword Jan 2010

Biomechanical Evaluation Of Modified Track Shoes, Marlon Alberetos Greensword

LSU Master's Theses

Track and field runners, especially sprinters and mid-distance runners, face many problems due to walking in spike shoes. Due to the fact that track and field spike shoes are designed specifically for running, the runner’s feet remain in an uncomfortable, flexed position when walking between workouts and races. Problems caused by the dangerous foot-positioning include, but are not limited to, the following: back pain, shin splints, bone spurs, blisters, and overall decreased level of running performance. Over time, runners wearing improper footwear for walking may face chronic injuries such as plantar fasciitis, shin splints, Achilles tendinitis, chondromalacia, and iliotibial band …


Hydrogen Production From Molasses Using Chlorinated Alkane-Contaminated Groundwater As An Inoculum, Hector Narez Jan 2010

Hydrogen Production From Molasses Using Chlorinated Alkane-Contaminated Groundwater As An Inoculum, Hector Narez

LSU Master's Theses

The Scenic Highway area of the PetroProcessors of Louisiana, Inc. (PPI) Superfund site located near Baton Rouge, LA, has groundwater contaminated with a variety of chlorinated alkanes (e.g., 1,2-dichloroethane, 1,2-dichloropropane) and alkenes (e.g., trichloroethene and vinyl chloride). In March 2009, a field-scale pilot test was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of injecting diluted agricultural feed grade molasses into the groundwater in an effort to stimulate in-situ reductive dechlorination of these chlorinated contaminants. Because H2 plays an important role as an electron donor in the metabolism of reductively dechlorinating bacteria, in support of the pilot-scale effort, experiments described in this thesis …


An Operational Policy For A Single Vendor Multi Buyer Integrated Inventory Supply Chain System Considering Shipping Time, Chiranjit Saha Jan 2010

An Operational Policy For A Single Vendor Multi Buyer Integrated Inventory Supply Chain System Considering Shipping Time, Chiranjit Saha

LSU Master's Theses

Since its introduction, the concept of integrated inventory supply chain has received a considerable amount of attention. The majority of studies in the last three decades revealed an increase in holding cost as product moves further down the chain or up the chain. A recent study Hoque (2008) considered vendor’s setup cost and inventory holding cost. Some research also considered fixed transportation cost, which is unrealistic. This study focuses on a single-vendor, multi-buyer scenario and presents three models. First, two models illustrate the transferring of equally-sized batches. Then, a third model considers the transferring of unequally-sized batches in a lot. …


A Study Of Hough Transform For Weld Extraction, Rakesh Gunaseelan Jan 2010

A Study Of Hough Transform For Weld Extraction, Rakesh Gunaseelan

LSU Master's Theses

The process of joining metals is called welding. At times, selecting a poor quality material or improper usage of welding technologies may cause defects in welded joints. Some of these welded joints have to be tested nondestructively, because their failure can cause lot of damage, for instance in power plants. Radiography is a very common method for non-destructive testing of welds. It is done by certified weld inspectors who have knowledge about weld flaws, looking at the radiograph of the welded joint with naked eye. The judgment of the weld inspector can be biased; subjective, because it is dependent on …


The Effects Of Lean On Employees' Affective Attitude In A Modular Homebuilding Manufacturer, Digvesh Khot Jan 2010

The Effects Of Lean On Employees' Affective Attitude In A Modular Homebuilding Manufacturer, Digvesh Khot

LSU Master's Theses

Many organizational problems are related to job dissatisfaction, job-related stress, and lack of commitment in workers. Employees’ Affective Attitude (EAA) involves these three factors: job satisfaction, job stress, and commitment. This research is aimed at measuring the impact of Lean concepts on EAA factors. While providing an overview of Lean production and construction, this study focuses on one fundamental Lean concept, Kaizen. This thesis describes a case study showcasing the application of Lean concepts through Kaizen events and its impact on EAA for a modular homebuilder company. Based on previous literature a conceptual model was developed describing the potential links …


Studies Of Hydrophobic Organic Pollutant Interactions With Cyclodextrin: Implication For Groundwater Remediation, Heng Gao Jan 2010

Studies Of Hydrophobic Organic Pollutant Interactions With Cyclodextrin: Implication For Groundwater Remediation, Heng Gao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Henry’s Law constants of several common, subsurface hydrophobic organic pollutants (HOPs) including trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE) and benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and o-xylene (BTEX), were measured over a range of temperatures (35, 45, 55 and 65°C) and cyclodextrin (CD) concentrations (0, 10, 20, 50 and 100 g L-1). In aqueous CD solutions, Henry’s constant values decrease by a power law relationship with increasing CD concentration due to an apparent solubility enhancement caused by HOP partitioning to the hydrophobic cavity of CD molecules. The temperature dependence of air-water partitioning under the influence of CD was well described by the van’t Hoff equation …