Architecture Commons^™

The Bridge Newsletter Spring 2022, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

The Bridge Newsletter

-CArEE faculty awarded Kummer Ignition Grants
-Geldert-Murphey poised to become ASCE’s 2023 president-elect
-Nine new members inducted during Academy of Civil Engineers 50^th anniversary celebration
-Steel Bridge Team wins fourth consecutive regional competition, will compete at nationals

For The Improvement Of Mechanical And Microstructural Properties Of Uhpc With Fiber Alignment Using Carbon Nanotube And Graphite Nanoplatelet, Huanghuang Huang, Le Teng, Kamal Khayat, Xiaojian Gao, Fazhou Wang, Zhichao Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper investigates the influence of carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphite nanoplatelet (GNP) on the microstructure and mechanical characteristics of UHPC with steel fiber alignment. The content of CNT and GNP ranged from 0 to 0.3%, by mass of binder. Predominant fiber alignment was manipulated using a flow-induced casting method during UHPC placement. Experiment results indicated that the increase of CNT and GNP content from 0 to 0.3% led to 15%, 40%, and 50% improvement in compressive strength, flexural strength, and T150 (dissipated energy) of UHPC, respectively. Fiber alignment was shown to increase flexural strength and T150 by 30% and …

Administering Change Orders In Highway Projects, Muaz O. Ahmed, Rayan H. Assaad, Islam H. El-Adaway, Emily Echele, Kyle Govro, John Watson

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Change orders continue to be one of the main challenges faced by the construction industry. Despite many previous research efforts related to managing change orders in the construction industry, there is still a lack of research that investigates the contractual aspects of change orders for transportation projects. This paper tackles this knowledge gap within the context of Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) highway projects. To this end, the authors used an integrated research method comprised of (1) selection and analysis of ODOT case studies; (2) identification of the main change orders aspects that lead to conflicts, claims, and/or disputes in …

Narrative Inquiry Of Opt Workers In Manufacturing Engineering Fields, Marietta Joleen Watson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Optional Practical Training (OPT) is a highly valued and highly underutilized program designed to offer international students an opportunity to work in the U.S. and train in their field of study. This qualitative study collected and analyzed the narratives of three alumni of a Midwest university who completed OPT in the manufacturing engineering field. Four themes were identified in the narratives. These themes were inextricable to the premise that OPT is a deeply appreciated opportunity for F-1 students. The first theme is viewing the OPT experience as a system which includes the university, USCIS, and the employer and moreover a …

Developing And Piloting A Design Guide For Outdoor Classrooms In Utah, Derek Jenson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Studies nationwide suggest that the use of outdoor classrooms in education benefits both students and teachers. In response, the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation (OOR) established a grant to help fund the implementation of outdoor classrooms across the state of Utah. Interested schools and non-profit organizations may apply for this grant to fund outdoor classroom projects that will help transform their properties into outdoor learning environments.

One requirement for the application is to submit a site plan for the proposed outdoor classroom space. However, many interested applicants have little to no experience with landscape design and may struggle knowing how …

Design Is A Social Process: A Survey On Inclusive Practice, Gabriel De Souza Silva

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This inquiry pivots the discussion on design practice toward process, and seeks to elucidate how inclusivity is achieved in it, and by what means it is maintained. The design process is interrogated through a series of case studies on contemporary practitioners that either describe themselves or are recognized by the wider design community as inclusive of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, and are sensitive to history of place. The case studies are selected to demonstrate a diversity of project types, management structures, and design tools, and they comprise the practices of LA Más, Assemble, and Bryony Roberts. The product …

The Evolution Of Place And Neighborhood Identity In Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, Isai Castaneda

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research paper examines the relationship between place and identity by looking at the evolution of both in the specificity of the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, in Los Angeles, California. The role of the built environment and its evolution is tied to socio-cultural evolution in Boyle Heights in a narrative that emphasizes the systems of power and control that emerge through the lenses of dwelling and transportation infrastructure. Historical review of secondary sources, images, and graphics (like maps) serve to support the arguments made. The research paper focuses on Boyle Heights and Los Angeles during its interwar years, primarily examining …

Architecture As Stress Relief: What Makes A Meditative Space?, Angela Brown

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Stress is a prevalent issue today. People can become stressed or overstimulated for various reasons, whether it be due to their physical environment, their physiological nature, psychological factors, or a combination. Although the causes of stress for our prehistoric ancestors were mostly periodic events such as predators or weather, modern-day stressors are often persistent and environmental, leading to chronic stress. Also, in today’s world of constant new information and stimulation, especially in urban locations, sensory overload is common. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic and its mental effects have brought new attention to the interaction between physical environment and well-being. The prevalence …

Spaces Of The Tragic: Modern Dramatic Tragedy And Contemporary Memorial Design, Shiloh Bemis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans use narrative to understand the world around us. At early ages we are exposed to storytelling with variable intent, from cautionary tales to the inspirational and everything in between. The dialectic strength of narrative mediums is well-known and well-studied. Theatre is one of the world’s oldest enduring forms of storytelling and has a strong ability to reflect and adapt with cultures as they develop, as a means of commentary and cultural reflection.

Architecture shares theatre’s ancient roots and has always been an important method of communication and expression. However, its tactics have historically been less narrative-centric than theatre and …

Urban Portraiture: Capturing The Personality Of Place, Hannah Gray

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone aims to develop a prototypical process using digital photography to document the essence of place. A final visual narrative element is created with the intent of being utilized by architectural designers to draw inspiration and understanding from the setting in which they are designing. The process involved four distinct phases that culminated in a single narrative montage. These four phases included the actual photographing of the city, evaluating and taxonomy of the photographs into categories that best embodied the spirit of the place, the altering of individual photographs into their essential parts and pieces, and the process of …

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Plastic Bottles In Architecture: A How To Guide On Life-Cycle Through Reuse, Crystallyne Landram

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This booklet is a collection of 6 case studies that utilize reused plastic bottles significantly within their design. Prior to working with the case studies, much time was dedicated to research that justified the need for such a project. In-depth research on the environmental crisis, waste management trends, stewardship, sustainability, and ethics was conducted and recorded in the introduction to contextualize the need for an accessible how-to guide such as this one. Time was also given to establishing background information on bottles, reprocessing, and architecture to elaborate further on each piece of the content matter. It is curated as a …

Fitness Anxiety: Redesigning The University Of Arkansas’ Health, Physical Education, And Recreation Building To Reduce Intimidation In The Fitness Centers, William Tack

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of the capstone was to redesign Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (from here on out referred to as the H.P.E.R.) building on the University of Arkansas Campus to make the space more friendly to new users. This redesign consisted of a reworked site plan for the overall building and some significant shifts in the program to accommodate more gym space. The redesign work was based on the following: prior academic research regarding what causes intimidation in gym settings, student opinions shared via questionnaires, spatial/ programmatic standards from the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association, a photographic journal documenting …

Evolution Prediction Of Hysteresis Behavior Of Sand Under Cyclic Loading, Pingxin Xia, Longtan Shao, Wen Deng, Chao Zeng

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Soil cyclic degradation is a serious issue that should be considered in engineering design and maintenance. The hysteretic response causes strength degradation and excessive settlement of soil structure in engineered and natural geosystems. Hysteresis is essentially the coupling deformation of elastic and plastic components during reloading and unloading processes. Conventional hysteretic models for sand in the elastoplastic framework rely highly on yield surface or potential surface evolution and fall short on complexity and inaccuracy. This study proposes a decoupling method to describe the hysteretic response of sand. In contrast to the conventional elastoplastic approach, this decoupling method can directly decouple …

Implementation Of The Linear Amplitude Sweep Test To Evaluate Fatigue Resistance Of Highly Polymerized Asphalt Binders, Jun Liu, Yizhuang David Wang, Jenny Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Highly polymerized asphalt binders (HPABs) such as PG 64-40 have been increasingly used in cold regions such as Alaska in recent years. However, there are currently considerable data gaps when it comes to the characterizations of the HPABs, especially their fatigue behaviors. The objective of this study is to apply the linear amplitude sweep (LAS) test with the viscoelastic continuum damage (VECD) model to assess the fatigue resistance of HPABs. Three HPABs (PG 52-40, PG 64-40, and PG 52-46) and one unmodified binder (PG 52-28) were used in the study. The fatigue failure during LAS tests on HPABs was defined, …

Better Leveraging Of Processies And Internal Procedures For Public Forms Used By Planning Departments, William J. Munson

City and Regional Planning

A survey was sent to 517 planning and community development departments across California inquiring about how they use interactive PDF files for forms and applications. 139 cities and counties responded, providing invaluable feedback, with 98% stating that their online forms and applications are in PDF format, 62% confirmed that some or all their PDF's are interactive, and over 72% retype the information in the completed PDF forms they receive in a database or spreadsheet program. Why retype data that has already been typed into an interactive PDF in order to enter it into their tracking systems?

Based on the survey …

Hydration Of High-Alumina Calcium Aluminate Cements With Carbonate And Sulfate Additives, Jonathan Lapeyre, Sai Akshay Ponduru, Monday Uchenna Okoronkwo, Hongyan Ma, Aditya Kumar

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study investigated the influence of limestone (LS) and calcium sulfate (C$) mineral additives on the hydration kinetics of high-α-Al₂O₃ calcium aluminate cement (CAC) utilizing experimental techniques and thermodynamic simulations. Increasing the replacement level of limestone or calcium sulfate increased the cumulative heat of the hydration reaction. The limestone exhibited limited acceleratory effects to the CAC hydration kinetics due to the coarseness of the powder. The coarse particle size distribution limited any heterogenous nucleation that would have occurred with a finer particle size as well as the intrinsic insolubility kinetically limits the formation of monocarboaluminate phases. Conversely, …

Use Of Saturated Lightweight Sand To Improve The Mechanical And Microstructural Properties Of Uhpc With Fiber Alignment, Huanghuang Huang, Le Teng, Xiaojian Gao, Kamal Khayat, Fazhou Wang, Zhichao Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper studied the influence of pre-saturated lightweight sand (LWS) on the mechanical and microstructural properties of UHPC cast with steel fiber alignment. The changes in hydration kinetics, porosity, nano-mechanical, and mechanical properties were studied. The LWS was used at 0–50% replacement volumes of total sand. Predominant fiber alignment was favored through a flow-induced casting method during casting of flexural prisms. Experiment results showed that the 28-d autogenous shrinkage was decreased from 450 to 275 μm/m with the LWS content increasing from 0 to 50%. The addition of 20% LWS led to maximum increases of 15%, 15%, and 20% in …

Quantitative Holistic Assessment Of Implementing Collaborative Planning Practices, Amr Elsayegh, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Practices of collaborative planning - as related to novel project delivery methods, information technologies, lean construction, and supply chain practices - can impact the cost and schedule performance of projects in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. However, there is a lack of research providing a quantitative holistic assessment of implementing collaborative planning practices. This paper fills this knowledge gap. Using an interdependent multistep research methodology, the authors (1) analyzed a holistic literature-based list of collaborative planning risks using 46 responses from industry expert surveys; (2) calculated the criticality of these risks and compared the obtained results using Spearman …

Development Of An Instructional Course On Fire-Protective And Low-Water Landscaping In Utah, Jordan Goff

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Because of climate change, population expansion, and other factors, both wildfire and drought are becoming pressing concerns in Utah. Home landscaping can reduce risk of damage from wildfire (fire-protective landscaping) and contribute to lower water use (low-water landscaping). While it is important for homes in the wildland-urban interface in Utah to have landscaping that is both fire-protective and low-water, best practices for the two are often taught in ways that make them seem mutually exclusive. This project used existing research and best practices to develop a learning experience to teach homeowners how to implement landscaping that is both fire-protective and …