Engineering Commons^™

Modeling Nature-Based Solutions For Climate Resilience, Mason Saleeba

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Riparian wetlands can serve as nature-based infrastructure that slow the rapid movement of water during high flow events. As the recurrence of high flow events increases due to global climate change, an improved understanding of the potential of wetland landscapes to provide flood mitigation is needed. This research addresses both the impacts of climate change and land cover on extreme flow events in the Otter Creek watershed in Vermont. The upstream portion of the basin is modeled with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate the impacts of climate change on extreme flow events. A Hydrologic Engineering Center's …

Over-Citing Or Under-Citing? A Gis-Based Analysis Of The Relationship Between Crashes And Citations, Mitchell Page

Transportation Engineering Masters Projects

In July of 2017, the Boston Globe published an article titled “Driving Through These Towns in Mass.? Watch Your Speed” [1] that among other elements, included a series of maps and a brief summary identifying Massachusetts municipalities that had the most traffic violations issued between 2010 and 2016. The article stated that the Massachusetts State Police issued the most citations of any police agency in the state, and that many citations were given along major highways, especially Interstate 90 and major highways and routes that intersect it, such as Interstate 84 and Route 20. Despite the public attention-grabbing nature of …

Modelling The Surrogate Safety Of Various Left-Turn Phase Sequences, Rohith Prakash Panthangi

Transportation Engineering Masters Projects

Left-turns are the most complex maneuvers in a signalized intersection. Based on the flow of the traffic volume through a given intersection, the left-turn phasing may be controlled in various fashions such as: protected only, permissive only, and protected/permissive. Following the introduction of the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) to the 2009 Edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), many state agencies have implemented these indications for their left-turn permissive movements. Similar to the existing circular green (CG) permissive indication, the FYA requires drivers to yield to oncoming vehicles before making their left-turn. However, given the novelty of …

Driver Performance Due To Unmanned Aerial System Applications In The Vicinity Of Surface Transportation, Alyssa M. Ryan

Transportation Engineering Masters Projects

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, have become increasingly utilized for a myriad of applications in the vicinity of the roadway and can offer a low-cost alternative to many labor-intensive data collection techniques, including infrastructure inspection, roadway marking data collection, and more. To collect much of this data with a desired degree of accuracy, UAS must be flown near moving vehicles, pedestrians, and/or bicyclists. However, UAS, and their pilot/crew, have the potential to be a distraction to drivers. A study by Hurwitz et al. suggests that UAS operations are more distracting to drivers as the UAS traverses closer to the …

Driver Behaviour And Performances On In-Vehicle Display Based Speed Compliance, Aamani Ramanathan Parthasarthy

Transportation Engineering Masters Projects

Traffic Control Devices (TCDs) are integral to driver-to-infrastructure (D2I) and vehicleto- infrastructure (V2I) interactions. The non-conformation (or non-perception) with signage on the part of the driver leads to several compounded safety problems. The need exists for a more robust, low-cost, and user-centric mechanism of delivering information to the driver that can directly bear on the safety of the driver. Technology has now advanced to the point where we can deliver information from a real-world physical environment to the driver in a non-invasive manner using holographic display [1]. With this rapid advancement in-vehicle display (IVD) technology, the transportation industry must undergo …

Dissecting The Safety Benefits Of Protected Intersection Design Features, Nicholas Campelll

Transportation Engineering Masters Projects

Protected intersections are an integral component of Complete Street networks and are used to facilitate and delineate the route cyclists should take while traveling along a protected network. The separation from the travel lane of automobiles, however, causes a decrease in driver attentiveness to cyclists. Rates of incidents of cyclists, specifically with right turning vehicles, have increased in recent years, leading to a desire to improve the safety benefits of existing protected intersections to increase the visibility of cyclists and driver awareness. This research used a simulated environment to test the effectiveness of different pavement markings and intersection radii on …

Nonlinear Fastener-Based Modeling Of Cold-Formed Steel Shear Walls Under Lateral Loads, Fani Derveni

Structural Engineering Masters Projects

As cold-formed steel (CFS) has increasingly been used in low- and mid-rise construction across United States, it becomes necessary to capture and evaluate its lateral response in both, sub-system/member level and system level. The main lateral resisting system in cold-formed steel construction is shear walls; shear walls are the focus of this work. In particular, the present study aims to shed light on the response of wood sheathed coldformed steel (CFS) shear walls exposed to earthquake events through nonlinear high fidelity fastener-based modeling. The numerical approach is fastener-oriented including nonlinear experimental-determined connector elements for steel-to-sheathing connections, orthotropic oriented strand board …

Drawing The City, Sandy Litchfield

Sustainability Education Resources

How do we represent the spatial and social complexities of contemporary urban environments? And why is this important for artists, designers, planners, architects, and landscape architects?

Twenty-first century cities are complex, messy and wicked. They can be dazzling, magnificent and aweinspiring, full of diverse culture, creative activity, architectural marvels, and cutting-edge innovation. But they are also facing some of the most challenging problems in history– unprecedented economic inequality, sea level change, unpredictable weather events and severe pollution to name just a few. In trying to understand such a complicated system, we need to develop and hone new and distinctive methodsforrepresentation …

Designing Electrostatic Interactions Via Polyelectrolyte Monomer Sequence, Tyler K. Lytle, Li-Wei Chang, Natalia Markiewicz, Sarah L. Perry, Charles E. Sing

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Charged polymers are ubiquitous in biological systems because electrostatic interactions can drive complicated structure formation and respond to environmental parameters such as ionic strength and pH. In these systems, function emerges from sophisticated molecular design; for example, intrinsically disordered proteins leverage specific sequences of monomeric charges to control the formation and function of intracellular compartments known as membraneless organelles. The role of a charged monomer sequence in dictating the strength of electrostatic interactions remains poorly understood despite extensive evidence that sequence is a powerful tool biology uses to tune soft materials. In this article, we use a combination of theory, …

Design Rules For Encapsulating Proteins Into Complex Coacervates, Whitney Blocher Mctigue, Sarah L. Perry

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publication Series

We investigated the encapsulation of the model proteins bovine serum albumin (BSA), human hemoglobin (Hb), and hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) into two-polymer complex coacervates as a function of polymer and solution conditions. Electrostatic parameters such as pH, protein net charge, salt concentration, and polymer charge density can be used to modulate protein uptake. While the use of a two-polymer coacervation system enables the encapsulation of weakly charged proteins that would otherwise require chemical modification to facilitate electrostatic complexation, we observed significantly higher uptake for proteins whose structure includes a cluster of like-charged residues on the protein surface. In addition …