Engineering Commons^™

Improved Protocols For Automated Wheelpath Crack Detection In Pavements, Daniel Patrick Byram

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Roadway pavement distress evaluations are vital to understanding the mechanics of pavement stability, determining the distribution of rehabilitation costs, and knowing the appropriate rehabilitation strategies. Advancements in technology over the past two decades have changed the way these surveys have been performed by means of automated data collection and interpretation. More and more state agencies have invested in automated road analyzing vehicles that are able to collect high resolution images of the pavement. Fewer have adopted automated data processing software with the ability to interpret road distresses due to the common discrepancies in distress classification algorithms.

In addition to automated …

Montana Flume Flow Corrections Under Submerged Flow, Ryan P. Willeitner, Steven L. Barfuss, Michael C. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A Montana flume is a Parshall flume without a diverging downstream section and is used to measure open channel flow. Under free-flow conditions, the Parshall flume and the Montana flume have the same calibration characteristics, but under submerge flows, their calibrations significantly differ. Tests were conducted at the Utah Water Research Laboratory on an acrylic 15.2-cm (6-in.) Montana flume to determine the effects of submergence on the flow readings. This type of investigation has not been previously analyzed. It was found that a standard Parshall flume rating curve overpredicted flow rates in the submerged Montana flume, up to 48%. Parshall …

Understanding Operating Speed Variation Of Multilane Highways With New Access Density Definition And Simulation Outputs, Bing Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traffic speed is generally considered a core issue in roadway safety. Previous studies show that faster travel is not necessarily associated with an increased risk of being involved in a crash. When vehicles travel at the same speed in the same direction (even high speeds, as on interstates), they are not passing one another and cannot collide as long as they maintain the same speed. Conversely, the frequency of crashes increases when vehicles are traveling at different rates of speed. There is no doubt that the greater speed variation is, the greater the number of interactions among vehicles is, resulting …