Civil Engineering Commons^™

Field Cycle Length Sweep To Evaluate Resonant Cycle Sensitivity, Howell Li, Christopher M. Day, Alex M. Hainen, Amanda L. Stevens, Steven Lavrenz, W Benjamin Smith, Hayley Summers, Rick Freije, Jim Sturdevant, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Other Publications and Reports

Cycle length selection in corridor timing is often dictated by critical intersections with the highest level of saturation. Along corridors with balanced volumes and favorable link distances, a resonant cycle length is often sought to provide good progression in both directions of travel. This paper discusses the search for a resonant cycle length at a 5-intersection corridor in Fishers, Indiana over a three month period. The software traffic model suggests a reasonable range of cycle lengths from 104 seconds to 124 seconds for the corridor. This cycle length range is consistent with analytical highway capacity manual delay minimization approaches.

A …

Impact Of Anthropogenic Activities On Hydro-Climatological Variables, Kuk Hyun Ahn

Open Access Dissertations

The natural environment has been significantly affected by anthropogenic activities. Between 1700s and 2000s, agricultural land area had quintupled and the extent of natural vegetation was globally reduced by half. Furthermore many scientists argue that the recent rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is mainly due to anthropogenic activities. Anthropogenic activities may also play a crucial role in the change of the hydro-climatologic variables. In this study, impact of anthropogenic activities on two representative hydro-climatologic variables, temperature and streamflow, is investigated. The variations in temperature occur over larger spatial and time scale, and hence the United States is adopted …

Integrating Pro-Environmental Behavior With Transportation Network Modeling: User And System Level Strategies, Implementation, And Evaluation, Husain M. Abdul Aziz

Open Access Dissertations

Personal transport is a leading contributor to fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse (GHG) emissions in the U.S. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that light-duty vehicles (LDV) are responsible for 61\% of all transportation related energy consumption in 2012, which is equivalent to 8.4 million barrels of oil (fossil fuel) per day. The carbon content in fossil fuels is the primary source of GHG emissions that links to the challenge associated with climate change. Evidently, it is high time to develop actionable and innovative strategies to reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions from the road transportation networks. This dissertation …

Nano-Modification For High Performance Cement Composites With Cellulose Nanocrystals And Carbon Nanotubes, Yizheng Cao

Open Access Dissertations

One of the new engineering frontiers is the exploration of infrastructure materials with novel combinations of properties that break traditional paradigms. The goal of this study is to utilize two different nano-fibers, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to modify the nanoscale structures of cement composites and thereby improve the performance at the macro-level. This study also evaluates the mechanism behind the modification, since fiber bridging, the most common reinforcing mechanism for fiber-reinforced composites, cannot be simply applied because CNCs are too short to bridge cracks in cement composites. ^ The mechanical tests show an increase in the flexural …

Strategies For The Replacement Of Historic Bridge Guardrails, Adam J. Clauss

Open Access Theses

Bridges that are designated historic present a special challenge to bridge engineers whenever rehabilitation work or improvements are made to the bridges. Federal and state laws protect historically significant bridges, and railings on these bridges can be subject to protection because of the role they play in aesthetics. Unfortunately, original railings on historic bridges do not typically meet current crash-test requirements and typically do not meet current standards for railing height and size of permitted openings. The objective of this study is to develop strategies that can be used to address existing railings on historic bridges and to develop solutions …

Heavy Vehicle Rollover Propensity At Roundabouts On Highspeed Roads, Thomas M. Hall

Open Access Theses

There is a recent trend of building roundabouts on high-speed roads, often with significant heavy vehicle traffic. With the increased presence of trucks on roundabouts, the issue of rollover has become a concern. Geometric features that allow excessive speed on the approach and entry have been connected to rollover, as well as sudden changes in crossfall and radius. However, the effect on the rollover threshold of changing the roundabout's circulatory superelevation is not fully understood. The impact of aggressive driving behaviors, as displayed by high driver speed far from the roundabout, as well as errors that are manifested by the …

A Nonlinear Interface Formulation For Frictional Contact, Layla K Amaireh

Open Access Dissertations

Finite element simulations of contact problems often involve modeling the interaction of multiple bodies across a non-confirming interface. Non-Confirming Meshes (NCM) are typically associated with large sliding or adaptive refinement on one side of the interface to capture localized nonlinear behavior due to large deformations, damage and inelasticity. The use of NCMs, however, presents a number of numerical issues; the main challenge with such discretizations is to ensure compatibility of the kinematic and traction fields along the non-conforming interface. ^ The Enriched Discontinuous Galerkin Approach (EDGA) (Haikal and Hjelmstad,2010)addresses this challenge by implementing a local enrichment along with an interface …

A Stochastic Multi-Criteria Assessment Of Security Of Transportation Assets, Michelle Sophie Dojutrek

Open Access Dissertations

Transportation project evaluation and prioritization use traditional performance measures including travel time, safety, user costs, economic efficiency, and environmental quality. The project impacts in terms of enhancing the infrastructure resilience or mitigating the consequences of infrastructure damage in the event of disaster occurrence are rarely considered in project evaluation. This dissertation presents a methodology to address this issue so that in evaluating and prioritizing investments, infrastructure with low security can receive the attention they deserve. Secondly, the methodology can be used for evaluating and prioritizing candidate investments dedicated specifically to security enhancement. In defining security as a function of threat …

Experimental Database, Analysis And Design Of Noncompact And Slender Concrete-Filled Steel Tube (Cft) Members, Zhichao Lai

Open Access Dissertations

Concrete-filled steel tube beam-columns are categorized as compact, noncompact or slender depending on the governing tube slenderness ratio. AISC 360-10 specifies the provisions for designing noncompact and slender rectangular and circular CFT members under axial compression, flexure, and combined axial and flexural loading. This research presents the development and evaluation of these design provisions. Available experimental databases of CFT members are reviewed, and a new experimental database of tests conducted on noncompact and slender CFT members is compiled. Detailed 3D finite element method (FEM) models are developed for noncompact and slender CFT members, and benchmarked using experimental results. The AISC …

Effects Of Web Reinforcement Discontinuities On The Seismic Response Of Structural Walls, Ying Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Field evidence was interpreted to suggest that discontinuities in the longitudinal web reinforcement caused severe damage in structural walls during strong ground motion. To test this hypothesis, six small-scale reinforced concrete structural walls were tested under lateral displacement reversals. Test variables included the presence of web longitudinal reinforcement discontinuities and number of loading cycles. The test results indicated that unit tensile strains in longitudinal reinforcing bars in boundary elements were approximately 50% higher in structural walls with web longitudinal reinforcement cutoffs relative to walls without reinforcement cutoffs. Higher unit tensile strains caused an increase in permanent strain accumulation, increasing the …

Capacity-Related Driver Behavior On Modern Roundabouts Built On High-Speed Roads, Shaikh Ahmad

Open Access Theses

The objective of this thesis was to investigate the factors that affect capacity-related driver behavior on modern roundabouts built on high-speed roads. The capacity of roundabouts is strongly affected by the behavior of drivers as represented by critical headway (critical gap) and follow-up headway (follow-up time). The effects of heavy vehicles (single-unit truck, bus, and semi-trailer) and area type (rural or urban) on roundabout capacity were investigated by comparing the critical headways for roundabouts located on high-speed and low-speed roads. The effects of nighttime conditions (in the presence of street lighting) were also considered. Data were collected using the Purdue …

Evaluation Of Collapse Indicators For Seismically Vulnerable Reinforced Concrete Buildings, Nicholas R. Skok

Open Access Theses

Older reinforced concrete buildings can be prone to column shear and compression failures during earthquakes because of inadequate transverse reinforcement. Cities in seismic areas still have large inventories of older and potentially deficient buildings. To analyze every building and estimate its vulnerability in detail is costly. A simple method to rank quickly older buildings according to their seismic vulnerability is needed to help engineers prioritize the use of resources for rehabilitating the most vulnerable buildings.

Four indicators of building damage or collapse were evaluated using numerical analysis and prior data from building surveys: column index (Hassan & Sozen, 1997), R …

Fire Behavior Of Bolted Connections, Qiaqia Zhu

Open Access Theses

Bolted connection failures have been observed in building fires and large-scale structural fire tests. Limited information is available on plate bearing behavior at elevated temperatures. The failure mode of a shear-tab connection could change from plate bearing failure to bolt shear failure between 400 (degree Celsius) °C to 600°C. Component-based models have been used to predict the behavior of bolted connections. Earlier researchers have developed simple mathematical models to represent the force-displacement relationships of bolt shear and plate bearing components of bolted connections. However, these models need to be verified experimentally for US building construction and materials. Therefore, eleven single-bolted …

Evaluation Of Methods For Estimating Prestress Losses In High-Strength Structural Concrete, Mayren Yelitza Mata Carrillo

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the applicability of several current approaches used to estimate losses in prestressed concrete members with compressive strengths greater than 15ksi. The scope of the study focused on time-dependent losses for normal weight concrete bonded applications. The approaches evaluated were the PCI Design Handbook (2010) method, the AASHTO Specifications (2012) refined method, the PCI Bridge Design Manual (2003) time-dependent analysis using both the AASHTO (2012) and the PCI-BDM (2003) creep and shrinkage models, and a time-step method developed by Swartz (2010). The methods were compared to existing data on prestress losses from twenty-two …

The Influence Of Lightweight Aggregate On Internal Curing And Its Impact On Autogenous Shrinkage Of High-Performance Concrete, Neil J. Hartman, Timothy J. Barrett, Jason Weiss

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In bridge deck construction high performance concrete is often desirable, however in practice it is generally susceptible to early-age shrinkage cracking resulting in an overall reduction in service life. This research seeks to assess the potential for reducing early-age shrinkage in new bridge deck construction through the use of internal curing, a process in which internal reservoirs supply water to the hydrating cement paste during the early stages of cement hydration. In North America, internal curing is typically achieved by replacing a portion of the normal fine aggregate with an expanded fine lightweight aggregate (LWA). For this study, the free …

Roundabout Maintenance Manual, Emily A. Bonini, Pat Conner P.E., John Haddock Phd, P.E., Yu Tian

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In recent years, roundabouts have been rapidly growing in popularity. As a result, many communities are installing them in their roadways; however, they are encountering difficulties in maintaining them. Uneducated workers can cause damage to roundabouts and to themselves, costing cities time and money. This project aims to create a guide for communities new to roundabouts in order to reduce damages and unnecessary maintenance costs. Data was gathered by determining the most common maintenance questions and problems along with what information was already available on roundabout maintenance. Next, agencies most experienced with roundabouts were surveyed on the best maintenance practices. …

A Wind-Derived Upwelling Index For Lake Michigan, Stephen B. Davis, Rebecca Essig, Cary Troy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coastal upwelling is a phenomenon that occurs along coastlines throughout the world, and has been shown to be strongly correlated with large fish populations in these areas. Coastal upwelling occurs when strong coastal winds drive water transport away from the coast, causing colder, often nutrient-rich water to upwell in its place. While coastal upwellings can be detected with satellite imagery or in situ temperature measurements, these datasets are neither continuous nor long-term. A wind-derived upwelling index was created for Lake Michigan to continuously quantify upwellings over multiple decades, and to allow for further understanding of the impact of upwelling in …

Comparison Of The Accuracy Of Traffic Counting Devices, Rodrigo Netto De Souza, Laura Slusher ,P.E.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Traffic counting devices are commonly used by governmental agencies and private companies in order to assess traffic patterns and the level of occupancy of roadway networks. The data provided by these devices normally encompasses traffic volumes, vehicle classes and vehicle speeds, and are used by traffic engineers in the planning, design and operations of transportation systems. An evaluation of the accuracy of these devices is of great importance because traffic management decisions are compromised without qualified data. This research evaluated the performance of two different models of traffic counters, Jamar Technologies’ Radar Recorder and Vaisala’s Traffic Analyzer NC-200, both commonly …

Learning From Earthquakes: 2014 Napa Valley Earthquake Reconnaissance Report, Erica Fischer

Lyles School of Civil Engineering Graduate Student Reports

Structural damage was observed during reconnaissance after the 2014 South Napa Earthquake, and included damage to wine storage and fermentation tanks, collapse of wine storage barrel racks, unreinforced masonry building partial or full collapse, and residential building damage. This type of damage is not unique to the South Napa Earthquake, and was observed after other earthquakes such as the 1977 San Juan Earthquake, and the 2010 Maule Earthquake. Previous research and earthquakes have demonstrated the seismic performance of cylindrical fluid-filled tanks is controlled by both the tank and the sloshing motion of the liquid inside. Unlike building structures, steel tanks …

Water–Binder Ratio Monitoring As A Quality Control Tool For The High-Performance Concrete Used In The Construction Of The Submerged Tunnel, Junjie Zeng, Shengnian Wang, Weiqing Lv, Quanke Su, Zhonghe Shui

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

The designed service life of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is 120 years. Concrete quality control for the submerged tunnel of the project is an important work to assure the designed service life. This article is to present an advanced concrete performance prediction method based on water–binder ratio (w/b) monitoring, which is used to serve for concrete quality control. During experiments in the lab, the w/b of submerged tunnel concrete mix proportion was designed to fluctuate up and down, while the other compositions were kept constant. Concretes with different w/b were prepared. The w/b of fresh concrete was tested, followed by preparation …

Effects Of Stirrups On Bond Behavior Between Concrete And Corroded Steel Bars, Hongwei Lin, Yuxi Zhao, Ming Sun

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

Steel corrosion leads to the deterioration of bond between concrete and steel bars. The serviceability and ultimate strength of concrete elements within RC structures are hence affected. Many researchers have studied the bond behavior of corroded steel bars. However, very few studies have investigated the effects of confinements on the degradation of bond strength. The present paper proposed a new kind of beam specimen based on which the effects of stirrups on degradation of bond were investigated. The test results proved that stirrups can effectively increase the bond strength between concrete and corroded steel bars.

Influence Of Fly Ash On Surface Chloride Concentration Under Shallow Immersion Condition, Jun Liu, Xiaodong Wang, Feng Xing, Ningxu Han

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

In this paper, the influence of fly ash content on concrete surface chloride concentration was investigated through periodical tests of surface chloride concentration of concrete by immersing three kinds of concrete specimens in 5.0 wt.% sodium chloride solution. One kind of specimen is common concrete without fly ash, whereas the other two kinds of specimens are mixed with fly ash. The results show that the surface chloride ion concentration ranges from 0.295 to 0.777 wt.% for the immersed concrete samples in this study; in the initial stage of immersion, the concrete surface chloride ion concentration is affected by added fly …

Research On Chloride Penetration Resistance Of Phosphoaluminate Cement Concrete, Wu-Jian Long, Ning Xu Han, Da Wang Li, Feng Xing, Ya-Man Zhao

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

The chloride penetration resistance of phosphoaluminate cement (PAC) concrete was investigated in this study. The effects of mixture proportioning parameters, including cement content, water–cement ratio (w/c), and superplasticizer content on chloride ion penetration resistance of PAC concrete were investigated by the rapid chloride migration test (RCM). The result shows that the increase of cement content and the decrease of w/c can reduce the coefficient of chloride ion penetration of PAC concrete at a certain range. Moreover, the penetration of chloride ion can be declined effectively when polycarboxylate superplasticizer is employed. The PAC concrete exhibited better chloride penetration resistance compared with …

Effect Of Aggregate Gradation With Fuller Distribution On Properties Of Sulfoaluminate Cement Concrete, Chenchen Gong, Jie Zhang, Shoude Wang, Wen Zong, Lingchao Lu

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

Aggregate, the main ingredient of concrete, has a great effect on mechanical property and durability of concrete. Sulfoaluminate cement has lots of special properties such as high early-age compressive strength, fast hydration and setting rate, and hydration with slight swelling. But effect of aggregate gradation with Fuller distribution on properties of sulfoaluminate cement concrete was seldom studied. Hence, in this paper, experimental investigations on mechanical property and durability of sulfoaluminate cement concrete with aggregate gradations according to Fuller distribution were presented. Fuller distribution of aggregates was beneficial to the close packing of aggregates, and the packing density was changed by …

Study On Variable Action Value Standard For Harbor Infrastructures, Xiaoping Zhong, Qianyi Zhao, Weiliang Jin

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

To meet with different levels of requirements from proprietors and users and to offer a basis for variable action value to the designers, associated with the standards, this dissertation studied the value standard of load effect and environmental effect. For load effect, on the foundation of analyzing variable load effect model, we used equal exceeding probability principle to calculate the load adjustment coefficient for the cargo loading in harbor and river port under different designing service life. For environmental effect, according to the ranks of marine chloride environment in standards GB/T 50476-2008, after analyzing and comparing the research achievements on …

Nondestructive Integrated Ct-Xrd Method For Research On Hydrated Cement System, Takafumi Sugiyama, T. Hitomi, K. Kajiwara

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

A nondestructive integrated CT-XRD method has been developed and used to study hydrated cement system. In this research, a beam line (BL) at the third-generation synchrotron radiation facility, SPring-8, in Japan, was used. First, X-ray computed tomography (CT) was employed to obtain three-dimensional (3D) images and select a region of interest (ROI) in a given plane section of the hardened cement paste. Then, X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) was conducted on the specified region. These operations were implemented in situ without the removal of specimen from the stage inside the BL. The hardened cement paste was precracked and then leached by …

Visualization And Quantification Of Solute Diffusivity In Cracked Concrete By X-Ray Ct, Michael Henry, T. Sugiyama, I. S. Darma

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

This paper explores the usage of microfocus X-ray computed tomography (CT) for visualization and quantification of diffusion phenomena in cracked concrete. Mortar specimens of varying shapes (prismatic and cylindrical), crack types (artificial and splitting tensile), and binder compositions (OPC and fly ash) were prepared. Cesium carbonate (Cs₂CO₃) was used as a tracer in the diffusion test because it has high X-ray absorption due to its high atomic number and thus contrasts with mortar and air voids in the CT images. Image processing and analysis was carried out to visualize and quantify the diffusion behavior in 3D …

Research On Embedded Sensors For Concrete Health Monitoring Based On Ultrasonic Testing, Shifeng Huang, Mimi Li, Yuesheng Xu, Dongyu Xu, Xinchun Xie, Xin Cheng

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

In this article, embedded ultrasonic sensors were prepared using 1–3-type piezoelectric composite and piezoelectric ceramic as the piezoelectric elements, respectively. The frequency bandwidth of the novel embedded ultrasonic sensors was investigated. To obtain the relationship between the receiving ultrasonic velocity and compressive strength, as well as their response signals to crack damage, the sensors were fabricated and embedded into the cement mortar before testing. The results demonstrated that the piezoelectric composite sensor had wider frequency bandwidth than the piezoelectric ceramic sensor. The compressive strength and ultrasonic velocity had a positive linear relationship, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9216. The head …

Surface Treatment Of Cement-Based Materials With Nanosio2, Pengkun Hou, Xin Cheng, Jueshi Qian, Surendra P. Shah

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

A dense surface structure of cement-based material is favorable for its resistance to the impacts of environment. In this work, effectiveness and mechanisms of the surface treatment of cement-based materials with nanoSiO₂ of different states, that is, colloidal nanoSiO₂ (CNS) and the in situ formed nanoSiO₂ gel through the hydrolysis of its precursor of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), by brushing and soaking techniques, were investigated. Results showed that both CNS and TEOS are capable of reducing the liquid and gaseous transport properties of hardened cement-based materials, although at a different extent. It revealed that the pozzolanic reactivity and the …

Application Of Nanomechanical Methods In Investigation Of C–S–H Gel/Cement Grain Interface, Jing Xu, David J. Corr, Surendra P. Shah

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

Investigation on the mechanical properties of cement-based materials at micron and submicron scales is important for understanding the overall performance, particularly of high-performance concrete (HPC). Due to low water-tocement ratio of HPC, a large amount of unhydrated cement grains remain in matrix, and a significant impact of the interface between C–S–H gel and cement grains on concrete behavior could be expected. Recent progress in experimental nanomechanics opens new access to nanoengineering of cement-based composites. In this paper, nanoindentation and viscoelastic modulus mapping were used to study the interfacial properties. The interface width measured by modulus mapping was around 200 nm …