Engineering Commons^™

Modeling Distributed Source Control Infrastructure At Neighborhood Scale For Mitigating Flood Risk In Amite River Watershed, Ahmad Amin Shefai

LSU Master's Theses

Flooding has always been a major threat to mankind. This is particularly true in urban areas due to urbanization-induced increasing impervious areas and subsequent increasing urban surface runoff, causing an increasing flooding risk to urban areas in spite of the fact that extensive flood control infrastructure has been constructed. The overall goal of this thesis is to present a distributed source control infrastructure-based approach for mitigating the flood risk. The new flood mitigation approach is demonstrated through the model implementation of a series of distributed source control infrastructure systems in the city of Denham Springs at a neighborhood scale. The …

An Approach To Counting Vehicles From Pre-Recorded Video Using Computer Algorithms, Mishuk Majumder

LSU Master's Theses

One of the fundamental sources of data for traffic analysis is vehicle counts, which can be conducted either by the traditional manual method or by automated means. Different agencies have guidelines for manual counting, but they are typically prepared for particular conditions. In the case of automated counting, different methods have been applied, but You Only Look Once (YOLO), a recently developed object detection model, presents new potential in automated vehicle counting. The first objective of this study was to formulate general guidelines for manual counting based on experience gained in the field. Another goal of this study was to …

P-Cresol Biogenesis During Bioremediation Aimed At Stimulating Chlorinated Solvent Dehalogenation, Alexis Gathings

LSU Master's Theses

The broad goal of the research described in this thesis was to better understand the potential for biologically mediated production of p-cresol in groundwater at a Superfund site located in south Louisiana. Previous literature reports that microorganisms known to carry out the transformation from L-tyrosine to p-cresol occur in diverse environments.

In the research described in this thesis, studies were conducted utilizing groundwater from the Superfund site during the course of enhanced in situ bioremediation practices aimed at stimulating reductive dehalogenation of chlorinated solvent contamination. Microbial communities established with groundwater sampled from the Superfund site were observed to …

Historical Changes In Planform Geometry Of The Amite And Comite Rivers And Implications On Flood Routing, Kathleen E. Harris

LSU Master's Theses

The Amite River Basin is a 2,220 square-mile basin spanning from southwest Mississippi through southeast Louisiana, encompassing Baton Rouge and its suburbs. In response to historic flooding in August 2016 and other major flood events in the past several decades, the basin has been the subject of a number of studies to quantify the impacts of changes in land-use and reduction in river length and sinuosity. However, there have yet to be relationships defined between the changes in the historical river planform and the resulting flow, stages, and subsequent flood depths. River lengths and sinuosity were measured from the 1930s …

Development Of Artificial Intelligence Approach To Nowcasting And Forecasting Vibrio Prevalence In Coastal Waters, Peyman Hosseinzadeh Namadi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Vibrio parahaemolyticus (V.p) is an epidemiologically significant pathogen that poses high risks to the human health and shellfish industry, calling for predictive models for management interventions. This study presents an Artificial Intelligence(AI)-based approach to predicting and reducing the risks. The AI-based approach involves the identification of environmental indicators and their optimum variation ranges favoring V.p prevalence, the development of nowcasting and forecasting models for predicting V.p prevalence, and the creation of remote sensing algorithms for mapping concentrations of V.p and its environmental indicators by synergistically combining the Deep Neural Network (DNN) modeling technique, Genetic Programming (GP) method, R …

Hydraulic Effects Of The Lower Mississippi River Batture, David P. May

LSU Master's Theses

The Lower Mississippi River (LMR), since the creation of the Mississippi River and Tributaries (MR&T) project, has been extensively modified to support navigation and flood risk reduction. The components of the MR&T system, implemented to support the above missions, have performed successfully for many decades, but not without contention. Rising stages in recent years have led to the questioning of the hydraulic impact of navigation dikes and river training methodologies. Multiple studies have been performed (Biedenharn, 2000, May 2017, Mayne, 2018, and Simon, 2019) that indicate these river training structures have minimal impact to stage during flood conditions. It has …

Data-Driven And Model-Based Methods With Physics-Guided Machine Learning For Damage Identification, Zhiming Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has been widely used for structural damage diagnosis and prognosis of a wide range of civil, mechanical, and aerospace structures. SHM methods are generally divided into two categories: (1) model-based methods; (2) data-driven methods. Compared with data-driven SHM, model-based methods provide an updated physics-based numerical model that can be used for damage prognosis when long-term data is available. However, the performance of model-based methods is susceptible to modeling error in establishing the numerical model, which is usually unavoidable due to model simplification and omission. The major challenge of data-driven SHM methods lies in data insufficiency, e.g., …

Study Of The Effect Of Heating - Cooling Cycles On The Clay - Concrete Pile Interface Characteristics, Abedalqader Ahmad Idries

LSU Master's Theses

This study aimed at investigating the effect of heating-cooling cycles on the interface strength parameters of clay soil-concrete for potential applications to improve the side capacity of piles driven in clayey soil by the heating process, and also to assess the behavior of geothermal piles regarding interface shear strength parameters. A modified large-size direct shear test device with the dimensions 12” x 12” x 8”, was used in this study. A concrete block (12” x 12” x 4”) of similar texture and smoothness to the concrete piles was used to simulate the pile interface. The tested clays are low plasticity …

Identification Of Top-Down, Bottom-Up, And Cement-Treated Reflective Cracks Using Convolutional Neural Network And Artificial Neural Network, Nirmal Dhakal

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this study was to formulate a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) model and to develop a decision-making tool using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to identify top-down, bottom-up, and cement treated (CT) reflective cracking in in-service flexible pavements. The CNN’s architecture consisted of five convolutional layers with three max-pooling layers and three fully connected layers. Input variables for the ANN model were pavement age, asphalt concrete (AC) thickness, annual average daily traffic (AADT), type of base, crack orientation, and crack location. The ANN network architecture consisted of an input layer of six neurons, a hidden layer of ten neurons, …

Understanding Air Pollutants And Meteorology Interactions Using Chemical Transport Models, Pengfei Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Air pollution is a worldwide threat to human health and ecosystems, especially in developing countries. After being emitted to the atmosphere, air pollutant concentrations are determined by chemical and physical processes including transport, transformation, and deposition, which are largely affected by meteorological variations. In turn, pollutants such as fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) affect meteorology by impacting solar radiation and cloud condensation processes. Thus, it is important and necessary to understand the interactions between air pollutants and meteorology for better designing effective air pollution control strategies and forecasting weather. In this study, two chemical transport models (CTMs) are applied …

The Siltcatcher: A Sediment-Capture System For Wetland Creation And Coastal Protection In Western Lake Pontchartrain, Andrew M. Wright

LSU Master's Theses

The West Lake Pontchartrain region faces a number of long-term environmental challenges due to anthropogenic climate disturbance and landscape modification, including sea level rise, increased storm surge risk, shoreline erosion, and wetland degradation. In response, this thesis applies recent research in the fields of landscape architecture and civil engineering to propose a dynamic, natural-systems solution for wetland creation and shoreline protection. The project envisions a series of breakwater-like structures in western Lake Pontchartrain positioned to slow water released from the nearby Bonnet Carré Spillway, causing suspended sediment to settle and create self-building and self-sustaining wetlands capable of keeping pace with …

Physical And Biological Factors Controlling The Fate Of Nitrate In A Louisiana Coastal Deltaic Floodplain, Alexandra Christensen

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Mississippi River Delta is threatened by a growing pressure to support large human populations in the United States both with food production, navigation systems, and urban development in the Mississippi River Basin. Nitrate-nitrogen load in the Mississippi River, up to 100 Tg N yr^-1 from agricultural and urban runoff, leads to phytoplankton blooms and hypoxia across the Louisiana continental shelf, creating dead zones of low dissolved oxygen threatening a significant commercial fishery. Along the coast and river corridors, floodplain ecosystems have the capacity to retain and remove nitrate. This dissertation explores the role of productive, actively growing coastal …

The Long-Term Outlook Of The Mississippi-Atchafalaya Bifurcation: A Convergence Of Engineering, Economics, And Deltaic Evolution, Thomas Mitchell Andrus

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The most recent and currently active delta lobe of the Mississippi River (MR) is the Atchafalaya-Wax Lake lobe, which was initiated approximately 400 years ago as a result of MR stream capture by the Atchafalaya River (AR). This capture process accelerated in the early to mid-1900s but further progress was prevented by construction and operation of the Old River Control Structure (ORCS) Complex. Many recent studies indicate that MR system below the ORCS is on a retreating geologic trajectory due to contributing factors such as sea level rise, subsidence, faulting, and declining hydraulic stream power. Diversions along the Lower MR …

Model Development To Assess Groundwater Flooding And Levee Underseepage In New Orleans, Louisiana, Shuo Yang

LSU Master's Theses

Flooding is a major threat to New Orleans due to its geographic location and geologic condition. However, potential groundwater flooding is seldom studied and poorly understood even though groundwater level is expected high in the city. High groundwater level might result in groundwater flooding in low-lying areas. High uplift pore water pressures may cause strong underseepage and risk levee safety. The objective of this study is to assess the impacts of hydrogeology on groundwater flooding and evaluate potential underseepage-induced hazards along levees in New Orleans. In this study, a groundwater flow model development which involves stratigraphy modeling, groundwater flow model …

Contextual Adjustment Of The Ite Trip Generation Rates Using Wi-Fi And Bluetooth Technologies, Saba Doulabi

LSU Master's Theses

The ITE Trip Generation Handbook has been in common use for about half a century to estimate vehicle trips generated by more than 172 land use categories as a function of establishment size (floor area) only. However, observed trip rates display a huge error range across different sites. Although contextual adjustment factors can ameliorate the error in the ITE trip generation estimates considerably, local site-specific trip generation rates should be collected for this purpose. Due to the huge time and monetary costs of data collection, adjusting the ITE trip generation rate is ignored by many jurisdictions. The primary contribution of …

Over Height Impact Avoidance And Incident Detection System, Suvash Chapain, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

During the construction and repair of bridges, work platforms or construction-related containment may result in restricted vertical clearances at a work location. Some tractor-trailer combinations are prone to over-height collisions at these locations. Collisions are a hazard to all drivers, and repair of the damage typically causes traffic delays. Appropriate solutions to this problem will focus on the prevention of collisions by detecting over-height vehicles and directing the drivers to take an alternate safe route. This presentation addresses the design and functionality of smart detection/alert systems that can be set up well in advance of a known vertical clearance restriction …

Automatic Shoreline Digitization And Mesh Element Sizing For Hydrodynamic Modeling, Henok Kefelegn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The first and most critical step in any coastal hydrodynamics and transport process modeling is identifying land-water boundaries. In a coastal wetland, this has always been a challenge due to the complexity of the wetland and lack of efficient methods, calling for efficient and effective methods to extract and digitize the shorelines. While coastline feature extraction has been increasingly researched, its application in hydrodynamic and environmental modeling, without morphological adjustment, remains limited and suboptimal. Further, there has been a paucity of cost-effective, contextually adaptive and high-quality methods to generate meshes, especially for coastal hydrodynamic modeling. This study has developed and …

Peak Pressures On Low Rise Buildings: Cfd With Les Versus Full Scale And Wind Tunnel Measurements, Aly Mousaad Aly, Hamzeh Gol-Zaroudi

Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the processes of wind flow in the atmospheric boundary layer, to produce realistic full-scale pressures for the design of low-rise buildings. CFD with LES turbulence closure is implemented on a scale 1:1 prototype building. A proximity study was executed computationally in CFD with LES that suggests new recommendations on the computational domain size, in front of a building model, apart from common RANS-based guidelines (e.g. COST and AIJ). Our findings suggest a location of the test building, different from existing guidelines, and the inflow boundary proximity influences pressure correlation and reproduction of peak loads. The CFD …