Engineering Commons^™

Experimental Investigation Of Steady Flows At A Breached Levee, Cyrus K. Riahi-Nezhad

Theses and Dissertations

Steady flow at a breached levee is studied in this dissertation through a generalized model and a case study. The generalized experimental set-up consists of a main channel with an opening in its side wall and an adjustable sluice gate at its downstream end. Water surface elevation and the three-dimensional velocity field are measured by a point gauge and an Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV), respectively. Time-averaged measured values of velocity field and free surface elevation are presented. In addition, Froude Number, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and bed shear stress are computed from the measured results. Results show that the flow …

Liquefaction Potential Of South Carolina Coastal Plain Soils Using Dilatometer Data, Joseph Ronald Williamson

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years much research has been focused on developing the flat plate dilatometer (DMT) as a tool to estimate the liquefaction potential of soils. Currently the DMT is over shadowed by the more accepted methods of estimating liquefaction potential which utilize test data from either the standard penetration test (SPT), cone penetration test (CPT), or shear wave velocity test (Vs). The SPT, CPT, and V_s tests are all well-developed methods of estimating liquefaction potential and are supported by extensive databases; however, the DMT is believed by many researchers to be the superior alternative. Due to the DMT's minimal …

Impact Of Curing Time And Curing Stress On The Mechanical Behavior Of Cement-Improved And Cement-Fiber-Improved Soft Soil, Ryan Daniel Starcher

Theses and Dissertations

In order to improve the engineering properties of soft soils, materials, such as cement and fiber, can be introduced to the soil mass. Currently, design criterion for a cement-soil mixture requires only the measurement of unconfined compressive strength. This simple measurement may not be adequate to describe the behavior that results from differing field loading conditions. A series of consolidation tests and unconfined compression tests were conducted with special attention being paid to the effects of curing time and vertical curing stress. It is shown that the introduction of cement into soft soils results in decreased compressibility and increased unconfined …

Quantifying Regional-Scale Water Storage Using Models And Observations: Application For Drought Assessment In South Carolina, Mirza Md Mozaddid Billah

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrologic models are widely used to determine the occurrence and severity of droughts, and to aid in the decision making process for reducing drought impacts. These models apply approaches including water and energy balance equations to determine water availability at field to continental scales. One challenge in implementing hydrologic models at larger scales (regional to continental) is the lack of data with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to represent actual conditions within the modeling domain. If such data is available, the challenge remains how best to find, access, and process the data so that it can be used within hydrologic …

Removal Of Synthetic Organic Compounds And Nom By Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes-Ultrafiltration And Forward Osmosis Membrane System, Jiyong Heo

Theses and Dissertations

This overall theme of this dissertation is to investigate the potential engineered application of low pressure membranes incorporated with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and forward osmosis (FO) membrane systems for the removal of synthetic organic compounds (SOCs) and natural organic matter (NOM) from drinking water sources. The focus is on the use of SWNTs-ultrafiltration (UF) and FO membrane systems to facilitate the removal of these compounds and potential applications of these membrane system designs for reducing the energy demands and membrane fouling in environmental water filtration process and seawater desalination. The SWNTs-UF results indicate that SOCs transport is influenced by …

Selection And Clustering For Disease Associated Genetic Variants, Yubo Zou

Theses and Dissertations

Epigenetics is the study of chemical reactions, which are orchestrated for the development and maintenance of an organism. Genetic or epigenetic variants (GEVs) encompass different types of genetic measures, such as Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation at different CpG sites, expression level of genes, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). With the development of technology, huge amount of genetic and epigenetic information is produced. However, the rich information potentially brings in challenges in data analyses. Thus it is necessary to reduce the dimension of data to improve efficiency. In my dissertation, I will focus on two directions of dimension reduction: variable selection …

Experimental Study On Piping Failure Of Earthen Levee And Dams, Yusuf Ahmed Sharif

Theses and Dissertations

Piping in an earthen levee, one of the main causes of failure, is a complex phenomenon. Most of the available research on piping failure has been on non-cohesive sandy soils. Jet Erosion Test and Hole Erosion Test have been conducted to study piping failure in an indirect manner. However, no general purpose formula is presently available to describe the erosion process due to complex erosion characteristics of cohesive soils in earthen levees.

Experimental investigations in a flume to understand the piping erosion process in an earthen levee are conducted in this research. One of the sidewalls and the bottom of …

Strength And Erodability Of South Carolina Soils For Embankment Construction, Ke Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

When a particular soil from a borrow pit is being used to construct a road embankment, it is important that the strength and erodibility characteristics are known to ensure the embankment has sufficient load capacity and is resistant to erosion by rain or flooding. To evaluate the borrow pit material’s strength and erodibility characteristics, forty five-gallon buckets of soils were collected from fourteen borrow pits in South Carolina. Three buckets were collected at three different locations within each pit.

Fifteen sets of direct shear tests were performed on the selected fifteen buckets of soils. There are six buckets of soils …