Civil Engineering Commons^™

Trails As Transportation, Pete Fritz

Purdue Road School

With populations concentrating in urban areas and the push for healthier living, biking and walking to work and other destinations are becoming more acceptable in the United States. With the ever-expanding network of trails in Indiana, the public is realizing the benefit of utilizing trails for daily commuting. This session will show what it takes for a community to embrace non-motorized commuters. We’ll also discuss the health and financial benefits of leaving your vehicle at home. Finally, we’ll get a statewide trails update from the Department of Natural Resources.

The Importance Of Performing Route Surveys In The State Of Indiana, Rodney Kelly, Chester Parsons, Grant Niemeyer

Purdue Road School

This presentation provides an overview of Rule 12 and discuss what is involved in a Location Control Route Survey (LCRS). Details such as where they must be performed, why they are important, their benefits and best practices will be discussed.

Design And Construction Process Management, David Brown

Purdue Road School

New approaches for improving design and construction processes have been used recently. Innovative methods for managing the requirements and quality of these processes will be discussed. A systematic data centric approach will be discussed as well as the processes of separating progress from performance. It discusses the integration of these processes in the planning, risk analysis, design, submission, construction, inspection, quality control and documentation phases.

Toward Long Lasting Bridge Decks, Jason Weiss, Ron Walker, Neal Carboneau, Tony Zander, Tommy Nantung

Purdue Road School

No abstract provided.

Probe Vehicle Data To Assess Workzone Safety, Thomas M. Brennan Jr., Jim Poturalski

Purdue Road School

Historically, work zone maintenance of traffic (MOT) plans have been deployed without a scalable and systematic means to assess congestion and make comparisons between modeled and actual queue lengths observed during construction. This session will discuss how commercial probe data can be used to estimate queue lengths and fuse that information with crash data.

Implementation Of Ada Data Collection To An Active Transition Plan, Stephen G. Metzer Aicp, Pws

Purdue Road School

Collection of right-of-way (ROW) data for curb ramps and sidewalks to determine compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) can be a time consuming and labor intensive effort. To further complicate this, management and interpretation of the data, once collected, is an effort itself. This presentation will provide an example of how data was collected by DLZ Indiana, LLC for the City of Mishawaka. DLZ surveyed nearly 3,000 curb ramps and 250 miles of sidewalks in 2012 using Apple iPads and various software to manage the data. This presentation will document the parameters measured for curb ramps and sidewalks, …

Lincoln Highway: Nation's First Transcontinental Highway, Dennis E. Horvath

Purdue Road School

The centennial of the organizing meeting creating the nation’s first transcontinental highway will be celebrated in July 2013. This is generally considered to be the birth of the federal highway system. The Indiana Lincoln Highway Association will discuss the Lincoln Highway and its upcoming celebration.

Best Practices For Bridge Deck Overlays, Tommy E. Nantung, Robert J. Frosch

Purdue Road School

This presentation discusses recent research regarding alternative bridge deck overlay methods and best practices associated with their use.

Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project, Cindy M. Kowalski

Purdue Road School

This session provides an overview of best practices for utility coordination. A case study of the processes used on the Ohio River Bridges will be discussed.

Concrete Durability And The Value Of Electrical Testing, Robert Spragg, Tommy Nantung, Tony Zander, Jason Weiss

Purdue Road School

The electrical properties of concrete are being used to characterize the durability of concretes. Recently, the development of hand-held testing units has generated interest in taking these tests to the field. The resistivity, or conductivity, testing is rapid and can provide instant information on concrete quality. The concept of the testing will be discussed an d a hand-on demonstration of the equipment will be provided.

Effective Criteria For Seismic Rehabilitation Planning Of Road Transportation Infrastructures, Mohammadreza Yadollahi, Rosli Mohamad Zin, Sadegh Asgari

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

While seismic rehabilitation process for road infrastructures has been traditionally based on seismic factors, consideration of non-seismic factors is necessary for reliable project ranking. Non-seismic factors include socioeconomic criteria, determining the value of a project to its users’ community. Based on the information obtained from a questionnaire survey and literature review, this paper identifies a set of effective rehabilitation criteria (ERC) for seismic rehabilitation decision-making to develop a priority index that is applied to determine the rehabilitation priority. The identified RC will then be weighted for four types of road structures including bridges, tunnels, retaining walls, and buildings. The results …

Groundwater Levels In Northern Texas High Plains: Baseline For Existing Agricultural Management Practices, Jairo E. Hernández, Prasanna H. Gowda, Thomas H. Marek, Terry A. Howell, Wonsook Ha

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

New groundwater policies are being debated for the Northern Texas High Plains because of Ogallala Aquifer depletion. These policies should be evaluated using a calibrated groundwater model for assessing their impact on subsequent groundwater levels. The objective of this study was to calibrate and validate a regional groundwater model for predicting the impact of existing agricultural management practices on groundwater levels beneath 4 counties located in the Northern Texas High Plains. Results indicated that the MODFLOW-2000 groundwater model was calibrated and validated satisfactorily based on reproducing and comparing groundwater levels with coefficients of determination of 0.97 and 0.98, root mean …

Protecting Bridges From Earthquake Damage, Peter Dusicka

TREC Project Briefs

Earthquake damage to bridges can have serious effects on a transportation network. When a bridge is out, the damage can go well beyond what is immediately visible: in addition to the cost of repairing it, the state must deal with short-term and long-term interruptions to traffic. These interruptions can delay repair and construction, as well as impacting post earthquake emergency response and causing the loss of valuable time for commuters and freight. To prevent this situation, older bridges (ones that are past an average construction life of about 50 years) should be retrofitted with stronger materials, especially in earthquake- prone …

Real Time Bridge Scour Monitoring With Magneto-Inductive Field Coupling, Andriy V. Radchenko, David Pommerenke, Genda Chen, Pratik Maheshwari, Satyajeet R. Shinde, Viswa Pilla, Y. Rosa Zheng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Scour was responsible for most of the U.S. bridges that collapsed during the past 40 years. The maximum scour depth is the most critical parameter in bridge design and maintenance. Due to scouring and refilling of river-bed deposits, existing technologies face a challenge in measuring the maximum scour depth during a strong flood. In this study, a new methodology is proposed for real time scour monitoring of bridges. Smart Rocks with embedded electronics are deployed around the foundation of a bridge as field agents. With wireless communications, these sensors can send their position change information to a nearby mobile station. …

Evaluation Of Geometric Design Needs Of Freeway Systems Based On Safety And Geometric Data, Eneliko Mujuni Mulokozi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Freeways are arterial highways characterized by high levels of safety and high speed vehicular traffic. Access to and from the freeways is provided through ramps. Geometric elements making up freeway facilities include the roadway, median shoulders, grades, and ramps to and from the traveled way at selected locations, shoulders, radius of curvature, lane width, and speed-change lanes. With the increase of traffic using the freeway systems, there arises more traffic weaving movements within the elements making up the freeway systems. This causes traffic flow to compete at the limited spaces available and reduces safety performance of freeway system.

In studies …

Development Of The Chinese Construction Industry After The Cultural Revolution: Administration Framework, Economic Growth, And Market Structure, Yilei Huang, Yi Lan, Yong Bai

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper presents the results of an investigation on the development of the Chinese construction industry after the Cultural Revolution in terms of administration framework, economic growth, and market structure, with the consideration of Chinese currency inflation. The development was divided into three stages based on Chinese government policy changes on the construction industry. In each stage, the reform of administration framework was reviewed, and the market size and market structure in both the domestic and the international markets were analyzed. Value added and gross output value of domestic market, the number of contracts, contracting value, total turnover, and turnover …

Performance Measures For Local Agency Traffic Signals, Jay Grossman, Darcy M. Bullock

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Technical Reports

The project focused on accelerating implementation of research recommendations emerging from traffic signal research projects conducted by the National Cooperative Research Program and Indiana Department of Transportation. This project developed specification language that was subsequently used in procurements in Elkhart County, IN; Lafayette, IN; and Morgantown, WV. The performance measures specified in Appendix A and subsequently deployed in Elkhart County, IN, and Lafayette, IN, were the first commercial deployment of real-time traffic signal performance measures recommended by NCHRP 3-79a. The deployment in Lafayette, IN, received an ACEC award in March 2012. In addition to accelerating implementation, this research project examined …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Adaptation Of Classical Tidal Harmonic Analysis To Nonstationary Tides, With Application To River Tides, Pascal Matte, David A. Jay, Edward D. Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

One of the most challenging areas in tidal analysis is the study of nonstationary signals with a tidal component, as they confront both current analysis methods and dynamical understanding. A new analysis tool has been developed, NS_TIDE, adapted to the study of nonstationary signals, in this case, river tides. It builds the nonstationary forcing directly into the tidal basis functions. It is implemented by modification of T_TIDE; however, certain concepts, particularly the meaning of a constituent and the Rayleigh criterion, are redefined to account for the smearing effects on the tidal spectral lines by nontidal energy. An error estimation procedure …

Modeling Flood Reduction Scenarios For A Small Coastal Community, Evan J. Perez

Master's Theses

The Arroyo Grande Creek Watershed, an approximately 170 mi² watershed located on the central coast of California, drains to the Pacific Ocean via the Arroyo Grande Creek that passes through several coastal cities including the community of Oceano. At the mouth of the Creek is the Arroyo Grande Lagoon, which is connected to another lagoon known as the Oceano Lagoon, by a tidal flap-gate whose hydraulics is a function of water levels in the two lagoons. Historically the Oceano Lagoon has played a part in floods that have occurred in the community of Oceano. The most recent flooding occurred …