Civil Engineering Commons^™

Closure To The Discussion Of “Long-Term Performance Of A Highway Embankment Build With Lightweight Aggregates”, Anand J. Puppala, Sireesh Saride, Raja V. Yenigalla, Bhaskar C. S. Chittoori, Ekarut Archeewa

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The authors thank Dr. Diyaljee for his interest on the subject and providing assessments based on the two research articles (Saride et al. 2010 and Puppala et al. 2017). Authors appreciate the comprehensive analysis done in the discussion. Following the comments noted in the discussion, we would like to provide our explanations on the discussion.

Shuffled Complex-Self Adaptive Hybrid Evolution (Sc-Sahel) Optimization Framework, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Simplicity and flexibility of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms have attracted lots of attention in the field of optimization. Different optimization methods, however, hold algorithm-specific strengths and limitations, and selecting the best-performing algorithm for a specific problem is a tedious task. We introduce a new hybrid optimization framework, entitled Shuffled Complex-Self Adaptive Hybrid EvoLution (SC-SAHEL), which combines the strengths of different evolutionary algorithms (EAs) in a parallel computing scheme. SC-SAHEL explores performance of different EAs, such as the capability to escape local attractions, speed, convergence, etc., during population evolution as each individual EA suits differently to various response surfaces. The SC-SAHEL algorithm …

Characterization And Removal Efficiency Comparison Of Bioretention Soil Media Mixtures, Nathan T. Hanson

Master's Theses

Bioretention cells have become a commonly used green infrastructure technique to help infiltrate and remove contaminants from stormwater runoff. Bioretention cells are constructed from a layered or heterogeneous soil mixture designed to optimize their ability to infiltrate influent stormwater and remove contaminants carried by the water as it filters through the soil media. The soil mixture, composition, and planting vary depending the local regulatory agencies. As urbanization occurs across the United States, more natural land is converted from pervious surfaces, such as grasslands and forests, to impervious surfaces such as asphalt and concrete, to help reduce the impact of the …

Lateral Behavior Comparison Of Driven And Screw Piles In Stiff Clay, Sophie Moore

Architectural Engineering

This study is concerned with the comparison of driven and screw piles when exposed to lateral forces and the effects of gapping on stiffness and displacement. Stiffness contributions were determined from force-displacement profiles, gap depth formation curves, strain profiles, bending moment profiles, and P-Y curves. Driven piles were found to be about twice as stiff as screw piles at lower displacements. At larger displacements, the stiffness of the two pile types start to converge. When the piles are in full contact with the soil, stiffness contribution is derived from both the soil and the pile. When gapping is exhibited, the …

Biosolids-Derived Biochar For Triclosan Removal From Wastewater, Lee K. Kimbell, Yiran Tong, Brooke K. Mayer, Patrick J. Mcnamara

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Micropollutants, including antibiotics, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products, are discharged into the environment with liquid and solid effluent streams from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). The objective of this research was to determine whether biosolids-derived biochar (BS-biochar) could be used as a sorbent in continuous flow-through columns to remove micropollutants as a polishing step for wastewater treatment. Triclosan (TCS) was selected as a representative micropollutant due to frequent detection in liquid effluents, residual biosolids, and surface waters. Bench-scale column experiments were conducted to determine the effect of flow rate and competition due to the presence of other organic micropollutants …

Resilient Civil Infrastructure Under Dynamic Loadings, Xing Ma, Nawawi Chouw, Mohamed Elgawady, Songye Zhu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A resilient infrastructural system is an important component of a modern city. The main principles are safety, sustainability, functionality, maintainability, and fast recoverability following natural and/or man-made hazards. This special issue addresses new research developments in resilient infrastructural systems under dynamic loadings, for example, wind, traffic, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

Effects Of Using Clay Nanoparticles As A Soil Amendment To Remove Nitrate From Stormwater, Megan P. Abutin

Master's Theses

Development of urban areas continues to increase, disrupting the natural ecosystem and the pathways for water to drain into downstream water bodies. As the amount of impervious area increases, pollutants can accumulate on the surface and enter the water cycle by stormwater. In most cities, the stormwater flows into a storm drain that is discharged into a water body. Low Impact Development technology has been developed to treat stormwater prior to discharge downstream. A bioretention cell is used to treat stormwater pollutants such as nitrate, phosphorus, total suspended solids, and metals. Past research has indicated that the removal efficiency of …

Integration Of Remote Sensing And Proximal Sensing For Improvement Of Field Scale Water Management, Foad Foolad

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Water is one of the most precious natural resources, and sustainable water resources development ‎‎is a significant challenge facing water managers over the coming decades. Accurate estimation of ‎‎the different components of the hydrologic cycle is key for water managers and planners in order ‎‎to achieve sustainable water resources development. The primary goal of this dissertation was to ‎investigate techniques to combine datasets acquired by remote and proximal sensing and in-situ ‎sensors for the improvement of monitoring near surface water fluxes. This dissertation is ‎separated into three site-specific case studies. First study, investigated the feasibility of using ‎inverse vadose zone …

Deterioration Prediction Modeling For The Condition Assessment Of Concrete Bridge Decks, Aqeed Moshin Chyad

Dissertations

Bridges are key elements in the US transportation system. There are more than six hundred thousand bridges on the highway system in the United States. Approximately one third of these bridges are in need of maintenance and will cost more than $120 billion to rehabilitate or repair. Several factors affect the performance of bridges over their life spans. Identifying these factors and accurately assessing the condition of bridges are critical in the development of an effective maintenance program. While there are several methods available for condition assessment, selecting the best technique remains a challenge. Therefore, developing an accurate and reliable …

Decontamination Of The Passaic River Sediments Using Ultrasound With Ozone Nano-Bubbles, Janitha Hewa Batagoda

Dissertations

The Passaic River is 129km long and flows through the northern New Jersey. During the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. census indicated that there were approximately 2,900 industries along the river bank. The amount of industries established next to the river indicated the inevitable river pollution, which was compounded by lenient environmental protection laws. One of the major contributors of the river pollution was Diamond Alkali Co., which started production of chemicals around 1951 at the 4km marker in the Passaic River.

In 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) identified the Passaic River as the second most polluted …

Intense Ultrasonic Waves In Fluids: Nonlinear Behaviour, Jitendra Kewalramani

Theses

High-intensity ultrasonic wave has several engineering, biological, medical and chemical applications. High intensity acoustic waves can lead to a desired change in a medium by initiating one or more diverse mechanisms such as acoustic cavitation, heating, radiation pressure, or chemical reactions. Nonlinear nature of intense acoustic waves opens an entire new spectrum of applications. Hence there is need to understand and model the mechanism of nonlinear wave motion for practical applications of intense acoustic waves.

In this research, one-dimensional motion of shock waves in an ideal fluid is studied to include nonlinearity. In nonlinear acoustics, the propagation velocity of different …

Ltpp Data Analysis: Factors Affecting Pavement Roughness For The State Of California, Pedro Zavanga, Alisha Khanal, Mena I. Souliman

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The contributions of pavement structure and features, rehabilitation techniques, climatic conditions, traffic levels, layer materials and properties, pavement distress, and other factors causing changes in pavement smoothness are not well documented. As a result, it becomes difficult to select the appropriate pavement structure, design features and rehabilitation strategies to ensure pavement smoothness. This study focuses on analysing the available LTPP data for asphalt pavements in California by investigating the correlation between the pavement roughness and the effect of pavement temperature, precipitation, fatigue, age of pavement, rutting, and the average annual daily truck traffic. IRI has been identified as the factor …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Water-Energy Nexus Approaches For Solar Development And Water Treatment In The Southwestern United States, Syeda Saria Bukhary

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Water is crucial for energy production and conversion, and energy is crucial for various water related processes including water conveyance, treatment and distribution. Sustainability of water and energy are inextricably linked with each other. Over-utilization/ degradation of these resources may occur due to limited availability of water under the changing climate scenario, growing population, and increasing pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels. The goal of the current research was to study the water-energy nexus of the Southwestern U.S. and develop approaches for solar development and treatment of drinking water. To achieve the overall objective, the work was divided …

Preliminary Investigation Of Tensile Strength And Impact Characterization Of Cementitious Composite Incorporating Carbon Nanotubes, Robabeh Jazaei

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Cement has been largely used in the construction industry, specifically as a matrix for concrete. Recently, a new generation of cement-based composite that greatly increases mechanical properties is replacing conventional concrete. With periodic advances in the field, researchers considered particles with high-aspect ratios such as Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) to reinforce cement matrices. Although there is not much literature to draw upon in research, some research on improving the tensile strength of cementitious composite incorporating with CNTs does exist. However, there had been no evidence of investigation into impact strength until this study.

Most papers presented examined the effect of multi-walled …

Driver Responses To Graphic-Aided Portable Changeable Message Signs In Highway Work Zones, Yilei Huang, Yong Bai

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Portable changeable message signs (PCMSs) have been employed in highway work zones as temporary traffic control devices. Various studies showed that adding graphics to PCMS messages can provide advantages to traditional text messages, such as increasing legibility and improving the understanding of elderly drivers. This article synthesizes the findings of a two-phase research project aimed to investigate driver responses to graphic-aided PCMSs. Different text and graphic-aided PCMSs representing roadwork and flagger were set up in the upstream of highway work zones, and speed data of more than 2,700 vehicles were collected with a series of five speed sensors to determine …

City Of Tyler Hub-And-Spoke Bicycle Lane Network, Pedro A. Zavagna

Civil Engineering Theses

The purpose of this study is to showcase the up-to-date development of a Bicycle Lane Engineered Scoring System (BLESS) that will be utilized to map and identify the optimum feasible locations for bicycle lanes. The project was initiated for the City of Tyler, Texas where a Hub-and-Spoke bicycle lane will be designed around the city utilizing the BLESS. The design process is comprised of attentive planning, progressive development and a collective effort by the transportation engineering research team at the University of Texas at Tyler to design an exceptional bicycle lane network. The BLESS consisted of traffic analysis, lane configuration, …

Utah Salt Storage Facilities Guidelines And Best Management Practices, Weston Bellon

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

An environmental analysis was conducted at the Utah Water Research Laboratory of samples gathered from Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) salt storage facilities retention ponds across the state. The analysis indicated high levels of TSS largely made up of minerals directly associated with the deicing solution currently used by UDOT in roadway applications. As a companion to that analysis, best management practices have been identified and compiled to provide a resource for the proper management of salt storage facilities in the state of Utah. Topics included as best management practices include locating new storage facilities, proper salt storage, proper salt …

Solar And Rain Catching Canopy. Urban Oasis, Afolabi Ibitoye, Langston Clark, Elena Zimareva, Evan Banks, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Urban Oasis is designed to work within existing “pocket parks” in New York City as a combined rainwater collector, personal electronics charging station and resting designation for New Yorkers. Intended to not only lessen the demand on the city power grid by using renewable energy to charge devices, the urban oasis is also intended to mitigate grey water overfill in New York’s combined sewer system and, in general, serve as a model for responsible environmental stewardship in urban areas.

The important technical aspects of the canopy specifically analyzed were:

a) how much rainwater could the canopy be expected to …

Liquefaction-Induced Dragload And/Or Downdrag On Deep Foundations Within The New Madrid Seismic Zone, Ishimwe Elvis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Deep foundation elements are typically used to transfer structural loads for multi-story buildings and large-span bridges to a competent soil layer when 1) the soil close to the ground surface has no sufficient bearing capacity, and when 2) liquefiable soils are encountered. The majority of the bridges constructed within seismic zones rely upon the stability of earthen embankments and deep foundation that are installed above or within liquefiable soil deposits. Despite large factor of safety values or different load and resistance factors being used to adequately design deep foundations within seismic areas, soil liquefaction may cause extensive damage to the …