Civil Engineering Commons^™

Understanding Travel Modes To Non-Work Destinations: Analysis Of An Establishment Survey In Portland, Oregon, Christopher D. Muhs

Dissertations and Theses

During the past three decades, research in travel behavior has generally proceeded from broad-level, aggregate analysis of mode share--the proportions of walking, bicycling, transit, and vehicle travel occurring in traffic analysis zones, census tracts, neighborhood, or other geographical units--to fine-grained, disaggregate analysis of mode choices and other trip-making attributes at the individual level. One potential issue is whether there are differences in the types of conclusions drawn from results of analyses performed at these different levels, as these results directly inform transportation planning and policy.

This thesis aims in part to confirm whether the types of conclusions drawn from different …

Measuring Walkability: Development Of An Automated Sidewalk Quality Assessment Tool, Alexandra Frackelton, Alice Grossman, Evangelos Palinginis, Felipe Castrillon, Vetri Elango, Randall Guensler

Suburban Sustainability

Sidewalks are a critical part of sustainable transportation systems, supporting pedestrian travel and healthy physical activity. Presence and quality of sidewalks is a significant predictor of perceived safety and quality of the pedestrian environment. Lack of adequate pedestrian infrastructure data has been identified as a major barrier to large-scale pedestrian planning. Sidewalk presence, width, and surface condition are identified as important indicators of facility quality and accessibility. Georgia Tech is deploying an Android tablet application to automatically generate spatial sidewalk inventories, automatically assess sidewalk quality, and prioritize sidewalk repairs. The research team has collected field data on sidewalk segments across …

Environmental Consequences Of A Power Plant Shut-Down: A Three-Dimensional Water Quality Model Of Dublin Bay, Zeinab Bedri, Michael Bruen, Aodh Dowley, Barthelomew Masterson

Articles

A hydro-environmental model is used to investigate the effect of cessation of thermal discharges from a power plant on the bathing water quality of Dublin Bay. Before closing down, cooling water from the plant was mixed with sewage effluent prior to its discharge, creating a warmer, less-saline buoyant pollutant plume that adversely affects the water quality of Dublin Bay. The model, calibrated to data from the period prior to the power-plant shut-down (Scenario 1), assessed the water quality following its shut-down under two scenarios; (i) Scenario 2: continued abstraction of water to dilute sewage effluents before discharge, and (ii) Scenario …

Bathing Water Quality Prediction Using An Integrated Catchment And 3-D Coastal Hydrodynamic Model, John O'Sullivan, Zeinab Bedri, Aisling Corkery, Louise Deering, Katalin Demeter, Wim Meijer, Barthelomew Masterson, Gregory O'Hare

Conference papers

Under the new European Union Bathing Water Directive (2006/7/EC) which comes into force in 2014, more stringent bathing water quality standards, defined in terms of Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Intestinal Enterococci (I.E.), will apply in Irish bathing waters. Compliance with these standards is ensured through a structured water quality monitoring programme that is published by Authorities with responsibility for bathing water areas in advance of each bathing season. The directive recognises that elevated levels of faecal coliform bacteria in bathing areas can derive from the overland transport of waste from livestock in the rural fraction of river catchments. On days …

The Effect Of Truck Permitting Policy On Us Bridge Loading, Eugene J. Obrien, Bernard Enright, Cathal Leahy

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

Another Look At The Collapse Of Skyline Plaza At Bailey’S Crossroads, Virginia, Jeffrey Schellhammer, Norbert Delatte, Paul A. Bosela

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

On March 2, 1973, the Skyline Plaza apartment building in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia collapsed while under construction. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) requested an investigation from the National Bureau of Standards [(NBS); now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)]. The NBS team concluded that the most likely cause of the collapse was a punching shear failure of the 23rd floor slab. The two factors that contributed to this were premature removal of shores below the 23rd floor slab, and the low strength of the 23rd floor concrete in the area supporting the weight of the 24th …

Settling Performance In Wastewater Fed High Rate Algae Ponds, Elliott Blake Ripley

Master's Theses

Although high rate algae ponds (HRAPs) are a proven wastewater treatment technology with numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits, their widespread use has been hindered by inconsistent and unreliable settling performance. Hence, the goal of this thesis is to investigate how specific operational parameters affect the settling performance of HRAPs. Nine HRAPs (30 m² surface area, 0.3 m depth) were operated as three triplicate sets, with each set run on either a 2, 3, or 4 day HRT continuously from January 25, 2012 through April 11, 2013. Settling performance was determined (i) by measuring the TSS of Imhoff cone …

Seismic Performance Comparison Of A Fixed-Base Versus A Base-Isolated Office Building, Nicholas Reidar Marrs

Master's Theses

The topic of this thesis is base isolation. The purpose of this thesis is to offer a relative understanding of the seismic performance enhancements that a typical 12-story steel office building can achieve through the implementation of base isolation technology. To reach this understanding, the structures of a fixed-base office building and a base-isolated office building of similar size and layout are designed, their seismic performance is compared, and a cost-benefit analysis is completed. The base isolation system that is utilized is composed of Triple Friction Pendulum (TFP) bearings.

The work of this thesis is divided into four phases. First, …

1976 Montreal Olympics: Case Study Of Project Management Failure, Ashish Patel, Paul A. Bosela, Norbert Delatte

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A successful engineering project must include its timely and economic completion. A project management failure can lead to delays and cost overruns. One example of a project that greatly exceeded its projected budget is the construction of the multiple facilities for the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. These included the Olympic Stadium, a velodrome for bicycle events, and the Olympic Village to house the athletes. This case study reviews the circumstances of the cost increases and the design decisions and other circumstances that led to them. The difficulties were brought on by an unrealistic schedule to complete the facilities before …

Use Of A Gateway In-Street Sign Treatment To Increase Yielding To Pedestrians At Crosswalks, Miles K. Bennett

Masters Theses

An important goal to reduce the number of collisions between motorists and pedestrians is to increase motorist’s yielding right-of-way to pedestrians in crosswalks. The current study addresses this goal. A Gateway installation of instreet signs (one in-street sign installed between the two travel lanes in each direction and one on both edges of the roadway in each direction) was evaluated on multilane roads. The first experiment compared the efficacy of adding multiple in-street signs used in a gateway configuration with a single sign between the two travel lanes in each direction. The second experiment compared the in-street sign gateway treatment …

Residential Fire Sprinkler Design For The Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity House, Nolan Frost

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This senior project discusses the design of a residential fire sprinkler system for a local fraternity house. The design follows NFPA 13D code, and contains design calculations, design drawings, material specifications, and cost analysis. The design was completed with the intention of being used for the installation of a fire sprinkler system in the house.

Exploring Factors Contributing To Injury Severity At Freeway Merging And Diverging Locations In Ohio, Worku Y. Mergia, Deogratias Eustace, Deo Chimba, Maher Butros Qumsiyeh

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Faculty Publications

Identifying factors that affect crash injury severity and understanding how these factors affect injury severity is critical in planning and implementing highway safety improvement programs. Factors such as driver-related, traffic-related, environment-related and geometric design-related were considered when developing statistical models to predict the effects of these factors on the severity of injuries sustained from motor vehicle crashes at merging and diverging locations. Police-reported crash data at selected freeway merging and diverging areas in the state of Ohio were used for the development of the models. A generalized ordinal logit model also known as partial proportional odds model was applied to …

Boundary Retracement Survey Of Cal Poly’S Serrano Ranch, John Lanfranki

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Spatial Factors Impacting Non-Motorized Exposures And Crash Risks, Farhad Abasahl

Masters Theses

This research investigates spatial factors, that impact non-motorized exposures and crashes, and examines the relationship between exposure at signalized intersections and crash frequencies involving pedestrians and bicycles at a census tract level. The four Michigan cities of Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Flint and Grand Rapids are examined. After completing an extensive literature review to provide a list of required data, 92 intersections are selected from the four cities to collect pedestrian and bicyclist counts. Five-year crash records, special attractions, non-motorized facilities and transportation infrastructure data for the four cities are gathered for the four cities. This data are later mapped …

Reliability-Based Bridge Assessment Using Enhanced Monte Carlo To Simulate Extreme Traffic Loading, Bernard Enright, Donya Hajializadeh, Eugene J. Obrien

Conference papers

A framework is presented for the assessment of the safety of a bridge deck under actual traffic loading using an enhanced Monte Carlo method which attempts to reduce computational cost while preserving the advantages of more conventional, computationally intensive, simulation. To generate the bridge loading scenarios, an extensive Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) database is used to calibrate a sophisticated simulation model of two-directional traffic. Traffic and vehicle characteristics are generated from statistical distributions derived from measured traffic data. Two examples are used in this study to assess the usefulness and accuracy of the enhanced method. In the first, a simple example is …

Performance Of Reinforced Concrete Beams Strengthened With Mechanically-Fastened Composite System Under Corrosive Environment, Amna Zaid Suwaid Al Nassibi

Theses

This study examines the effects of corrosion exposure on the flexural response of reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened with a powder-actuated fastened (PAF) composite system. Twenty-one RC beams were constructed and tested to failure under four-point bending. The corroded beams were subjected to 30, 60, and 100 days of accelerated corrosion that corresponded to measure tensile steel mass losses of 6, 11 and 18% respectively. Other test parameters included width of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite strip, fastener length, and number of fasteners rows.

For the non-corroded beams, the PAF-FRP system resulted in up to 24% increase in beam flexural …

An Innovative Protective Jacket For Structures Subject To Blast Loads: A Comprehensive Experimental And Simulation Study, Nicholas J. Carlson

Dissertations

As the importance of protective engineering and multi-hazard mitigation design has grown in recent years, the development of an effective structural protection system that aids in the preservation of life safety during blast events is an important topic of research in structural engineering. This protection is especially vital for blast and explosion mitigation, where a vehicle-borne bomb or an improvised explosive device can readily cause an under-designed structure with insufficient redundancy to undergo progressive collapse due to the removal of its first-floor columns. An especially pressing research need is the consideration of structures that require blast protection, but—due to time …

Urban Parking Economics And Land Consumption: A Case Study Of New Haven, Connecticut And Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bryan P. Blanc

Honors Scholar Theses

It has become increasingly apparent that providing copious off-street parking has deleterious effects on urban form and function. This study compares parking policy in New Haven, Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts that have pursued very different types of parking policies that have resulted in different outcomes in terms of land use. Since 1951, off-street parking provision has increased by nearly 400% in New Haven, meanwhile both employment and residential population have declined in the city. In contrast, off-street parking provision in Cambridge has risen around 140% since 1952, while employment and residential populations in the city have increased by 50% and …

Partners On Campus: Open Access Transportation Research At Purdue University, David Scherer

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

In the third community webinar presentation on regional and community partnerships, David Scherer, the Scholarly Repository Specialist at Purdue University, described how institutional repositories can support community engagement through the rewards of the partnership between Purdue's institutional repository, Purdue e-Pubs, and Indiana's Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP). The Purdue Libraries and the Purdue University Press have worked to archive and showcase the fruits of over 75 years of strong collaboration between Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation on research that has a significant impact on the safe and efficient operation of transportation systems throughout Indiana, the United States, …

Return To Traffic Of Full Depth Reclamation Pavements, Robert Benjamin Hill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Full-Depth Reclamation (FDR) is a cost-effective rehabilitation treatment for deteriorated pavements. However, when using asphalt emulsion based rehabilitation techniques one of the most challenging aspects of FDR is determining when traffic can be returned to the rehabilitated pavement surface. Since asphalt emulsion mixtures need ample time for curing, they cannot be sealed with a surface layer until the water has evaporated from the rehabilitated layer. It is often not possible to keep the road closed until all of the water has evaporated and the surface layer is placed, therefore, at some point the traffic needs to be returned to the …