Civil Engineering Commons^™

Quantifying The Impact Of Truck Only Lanes On Vehicular Emissions On A Limited-Access Highway, Edward Chee Tang

Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to estimate CO₂ emissions on a portion of the U.S. 101 highway in San Luis Obispo County before and after construction of a truck only lane on the Cuesta Grade. Towards that aim, the microsimulation software, VISSIM, was used in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions model, MOVES. The microsimulation model was calibrated and validated against historical and present traffic volumes obtained from Caltrans with good results using several validation measures. It was found that CO₂ emissions did decrease between 1998 and 2012 (pre and post lane addition), but this effect was shown to …

Rca: Use And Future Possibilities, Bushra Marium Islam

Theses

Reuse and recycling of concrete is essential for construction purposes. There has been progressive development in construction projects but at the same time it has an inverse effect on the environment. Concrete structures are built and demolished continuously all over the world, generating tons of waste materials which are actually reusable in concrete production itself. This paper emphasis on recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) and many characteristics of RCA. This paper studies RCA’s different properties. RCA’s replacement in the place of natural aggregate is discussed. The proper amount and researches done on RCA improvement have also been discussed for further in …

Schedule And Cost Performance Analysis And Prediction In Louisiana Dotd, Mahmoud Hamide

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many construction projects in the United States are facing the risk of cost overrun and schedule delays. This is also happening here in the State of Louisiana. When these things happen, it causes cost overrun which can then be passed on to the tax payers and may also cause the state to take on less projects than they normal. Many researchers have studied the reasons behind both the cost overrun and the delays resulting in private firms, developing project management tools and best practices to prevent this risk. In this research, I aim to study the historical trend in 2912 …

Evaluating The Effect Of Temporary Casing On Drilled Shaft Rock Socket Capacity, Daniel J. Hagerman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect on side shear resistance in limestone when temporary casing is used. Due to testing in actual limestone being an unrealistic goal, simulated limestone mixes were prepared and cast into 6 – 42 in. diameter beds. Limestone throughout Florida can be quite varied (e.g. 50-5000 psi) but where stronger limestone is not likely to be penetrated by casing installation. Therefore, target unconfined compressive strengths of the study specimens ranged between 60 psi to 850 psi.

A simulated limestone material was developed based on over 200 cylinders cast for unconfined compression testing …

Children's Law Center Site Redevelopment, Caroline Olivia Haggard, Javonte Isaac, Joshua Joslin, E'Lexus Nelson, Ana Vieira, Adrien Williams, David Zalla

Senior Theses

Soda City Engineering and Consulting was contracted by the USC School of Law to redevelop the Children’s Law Center site in Columbia, SC. Currently, the site does not comply with current standards and specifications. The objective of this project is to completely redevelop the site with a new annex building and ensuring everything is up to code, while still allowing the historic structure to maintain its use throughout construction.

Fluid Isolator, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The reliability of concrete infrastructure is vital to ensuring daily life, as well as commerce, can progress without interruption. From the pavement of interstate highways to the driveways and sidewalks in a local neighborhood, concrete is expensive to install and often even more expensive, and intrusive, when it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, to maintain functionality in winter climates concrete is heavily exposed to deicing salts. This not only affects the roads, driveways, and sidewalks where salt is applied directly, but many other areas such as parking and residential garages where vehicles (and people) will track salt along with water …

Netpoint®, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The vast majority of construction scheduling software uses a combination of spreadsheets and Gantt charts for developing and depicting Critical Path Method (CPM) schedules. While this paradigm works for the expert scheduler, it is not conducive to collaboration, and it is prohibitively difficult for non-scheduling experts to understand.

NetPoint® provides a dynamic, visual interface conducive to touch and gestural input. Activities are drawn directly on a time-scale and may be placed on the same row or arranged automatically using codes or the WBS. Such control of the presentation makes it easier to communicate the plan to any type of audience. …

Vulnerability Of Coastal Connecticut To Sea Level Rise: Land Inundation And Impacts To Residential Property, Rebecca Andreucci, Can B. Aktas

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Vulnerability indices at the global or national scales require considerable data aggregation where local economic and social impacts remain unnoticed. The goal of this study was to analyze the extent of inundated land from sea level rise and its economic impacts to residential property in coastal communities. Geographic data were integrated with economic and social data at parcel level resolution through GIS. Cumulative land inundation in seven coastal municipalities was calculated as 15 and 25 km², while direct economic costs to residential property was estimated to be $1.3 billion and $2.2 billion for 1 and 2 m sea …

Gis Internship At Tighe And Bond, Yuanting Qu M.S.

Sustainability and Social Justice

I started working as GIS Intern at Tighe and Bond Worcester Office on May 11, 2016. I was given a multitude of civil engineering related projects to edit, verify, do analysis and process data. I was able to apply my computer programming skills to help the GIS team develop a useful script tool set that will improve efficiency work. This internship provided me insight into how GIS operate as a part of engineering project on a day-to-day basis. Working background, my responsibilities and what I have learned from this internship is discussed in this report.

Exploring Compaction Effects On Cold In-Place Recycling Mixtures Using Emulsified Asphalt, Erica Ann Yeung

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cold in-place recycling (CIR) is a process that takes three to four inches of existing pavement surface and reuses 100% of it by milling and crushing it, adding asphalt emulsions and/or additives to it, before placing and re-compacting it. There is currently very little research regarding the interaction between the crushed aggregate and asphalt emulsion during the CIR process. In this study, the interactions between the combinations of crushed aggregates and asphalt emulsions were investigated along with select compaction metrics and a raveling performance test. The three types of aggregates included coated limestone, recycled asphalt pavement (RAP), and coated syenite. …

Feasibility Of Additive Manufactured Materials For Use In Geotechnical Laboratory Testing Applications, Matthew P. Watters

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The factors affecting the positive volumetric strain, or dilatancy, typically observed in response to shearing of a dense granular material have long been investigated; however, there still lacks a direct relationship between particle shapes and the resulting dilatant response. The typical Mohr-Coulomb strength parameter associated with granular material is known as the effective friction angle (φ’). For a dense granular assemblage, the peak friction angle has been described as being comprised of a dilatant friction angle (φ’d) component and a critical state friction angle (φ’cv) component. While the topic of dilatancy and factors (both inherent and extrinsic) affecting its behavior …

Total N-Nitrosamine Precursor Adsorption With Carbon Nanotubes: Elucidating Controlling Physiochemical Properties And Developing A Size-Resolved Precursor Surrogate, Erin Needham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As drinking water sources become increasingly impaired with nutrients and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent, formation of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) – such as trihalomethanes (THMs), dihaloacetonitriles (DHANs), and N-nitrosamines – during water treatment may also increase. N-nitrosamines may comprise the bulk of the chronic toxicity in treated drinking waters despite forming at low ng/L levels. This research seeks to elucidate physicochemical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for removal of DBP precursors, with an emphasis on total N-nitrosamines (TONO).

Batch experiments with CNTs were completed to assess adsorption of THM, DHAN, and TONO precursors; physiochemical properties of CNTs were quantified through …

Trihalomethane, Dihaloacetonitrile, And Total N-Nitrosamine Precursor Adsorption By Carbon Nanotubes: The Importance Of Surface Oxides And Pore Volume, Erin Needham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As drinking water sources become increasingly impaired, enhanced removal of natural organic matter (NOM) may be required to curb formation of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) upon chlor(am)ination. While carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can adsorb NOM, their properties for DBP precursor adsorption have not been elucidated. Nine types of CNTs were assessed for trihalomethane (THM), dihaloacetonitrile (DHAN), and total N-nitrosamine (TONO) precursor adsorption. Batch isotherm experiments were completed with lake water and, to simulate an impaired condition, effluent from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Adsorption varied with CNT type and dose, with TONO precursors having the highest percent removals from WWTP effluent (up …

Effect Of Column Axial Load On Skewed Smf Rbs Connection Demands, Clovis Desrochers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Steel buildings in high seismic areas often require special structural systems to transfer large lateral forces induced by earthquake accelerations. The selection of an appropriate seismic steel system (braced frame, moment frame, shear wall, etc.) is often influenced by architectural considerations. Moment frame configurations offer the most architectural flexibility, but are limited by code prequalification requirements that limit the use of non-orthogonal (skewed) beam-column connection geometries. A recent study has investigated laterally skewed moment frame connections, indicating that skew increases the potential for column twist and column flange yielding; however, it is unclear how realistic column axial loads will affect …

A Comparison Of Force And Pressure Coefficients On Dome, Cube And Prism Shaped Buildings Due To Straight And Tornadic Wind Using Three Dimensional Computational Fluids Dynamics, Majdi A. A. Yousef

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tornadoes induce very different wind forces than a straight-line (SL) wind. A suitably designed building for a SL wind may fail when exposed to a tornado-wind of the same wind speed. It is necessary to design buildings that are more resistant to tornadoes. Most studies have been conducted to investigate tornado forces on cubic, gable-roof and cylinder buildings. However, little attention has been paid to investigate tornado force on dome buildings; hence, further research is conducted in this study. The forces on a dome, cube and prisms were analyzed and compared using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for tornadic and SL …

Response Of Unsaturated Soils Under Monotonic And Dynamic Loading Over Moderate Suction States, Aritra Banerjee

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The understanding of the mechanical behavior of the unsaturated soils has been significantly enhanced due to the recent advancement of technology and modifications to the conventional testing devices. However, the implementation of the concepts of unsaturated soil has lagged, mainly due to the risks associated with the development of civil infrastructure based on practically untested theories and the limited reliable prediction methods for compacted, expansive, residual, and collapsible soils, which requires reliable and comprehensive experimental data. Moreover, the tests on unsaturated soils are enormously time consuming and often exorbitantly expensive, which further hinders the use of unsaturated soil mechanics in …

Performance Of Cement Treated Recycled Aggregates Under Wetting-Drying Cycles In Pavement Base, Saif Bin Salah

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Resilient Modulus (MR) is one of the most important stiffness parameter to determine the thickness of a pavement layer (AASHTO 2003 pavement design guideline). Recent studies conducted by researchers on the variability of MR with wetting-drying (WD) and freeze-thaw (FT) cycles show that long-term durability is an important criterion to be considered in designing pavement base with recycled materials. At present, the design procedure does not consider the effect of deterioration of pavement layers due to seasonal variations and limited studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect of environmental deterioration on the reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and recycled crushed …

Effect Of Manure And Enzyme On The Degradation Of Organic Fraction Of Municipal Solid Waste In Biocell, Anuja Sapkota

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

More than half of total Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generated is composed of organic degradable waste for developed countries and the percentage is even higher for developing countries. Handling of organic fraction of MSW has always been challenging due to environmental and economic reasons. Among all the MSW management alternatives, Sustainable Biocell concept has potential to solve environmental and economic concerns related to organic waste. This potential of Sustainable Biocell can be enhanced by accelerated decomposition of waste. Accelerated decomposition of organic fraction of MSW can be achieved by the addition of nitrogen rich, macro and micro nutrients such as …

The Study Of Screws Under Bending For Curtain Wall Head And Sill Anchors, Humberto Madero Mcentee

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

The study of screws under bending is a very important topic for the solution of anchors (connections) of the vertical members of a Curtain Wall or Storefront that connects top and bottom thru Head and Sill anchors. When there are shims that create a gap between the connected anchor and the structure that connects to, the screws connecting the anchor to the structure would be under bending; very few or any tests are available showing the capacity of a screw under bending; this thesis would present tests and theory of screws under bending, and discussion/clarification of the behavior of these …

Applications Of Ultra-High Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete On Flexural Structural And Architectural Members, Venkatesh Babu Kaka

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis presents the test results of a study on flexural and shear behavior of Ultra-High-Performance Fiber-Reinforced concrete (UHP-FRC) beams, reinforced with Grade 60 steel (ASTM A615/A615M), Grade 100 steel (ASTM A1035/A1035M) and Basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP) bars. Ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHP-FRC) has high compressive strength (> 22 ksi (150 MPa)) and exceptional compressive ductility. The use of UHP-FRC provides new opportunities for future infrastructure. However, structural design criteria have not been developed to fully utilize UHP-FRC’s excellent mechanical properties. Maximum useable compressive strain, ecu, specified in the current design codes (ACI 318 Building Code and AASHTO LRFD Bridge …