Civil Engineering Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Predicting Landslides In Real Time, Michael J. Olsen

TREC Project Briefs

The Oregon Department of Transportation, or ODOT, has an ongoing struggle to maintain public highways against earth movements such as erosion, earthquakes and landslides. An earthquake or landslide can close down a road for days, while highway workers fight to keep supply lines open and repair the damage. Particularly along Oregon’s coastal roads with high sea cliffs, these natural processes are a constant threat to transportation infrastructure. The damage caused by gradual erosion is typically not detectable until there is a landslide or other disaster, costing the state considerable time and money to repair. New technology has the potential to …

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 …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

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. …

Influenza Forecasting With Google Flu Trends, Andrea Freyer Dugas, Mehdi Jalalpour, Yulia Gel, Scott Levin, Fred Torcaso, Takeru Igusa, Richard E. Rothman

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Background: We developed a practical influenza forecast model based on real-time, geographically focused, and easy to access data, designed to provide individual medical centers with advanced warning of the expected number of influenza cases, thus allowing for sufficient time to implement interventions. Secondly, we evaluated the effects of incorporating a real-time influenza surveillance system, Google Flu Trends, and meteorological and temporal information on forecast accuracy.

Methods: Forecast models designed to predict one week in advance were developed from weekly counts of confirmed influenza cases over seven seasons (2004–2011) divided into seven training and out-of-sample verification sets. Forecasting procedures …

Analysis Of Coal Combustion By-Products Disposal Practices At The San Juan Mine: Hydrologic And Water Quality Issues, Bruce Thomson

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Coal Combustion By-Products (CCBs) are generated by the burning of coal for electric power generation and as waste streams from emissions control systems. They consist of bottom ash from the furnaces, fly ash from electrostatic precipitators, and flue gas desulfurization sludge from air pollution scrubbers. Depending on the characteristics of the coal, CCBs may contain high concentrations of metals or other constituents that present a threat to ground or surface water resources if not properly managed. This report describes results of an investigation of CCBs generated by a power plant in northwestern New Mexico. Coal Combustion By-Products from this plant …

Evaluation Of The Complementary Relationship Using Noah Land Surface Model And North American Regional Reanalysis (Narr) Data To Estimate Evapotranspiration In Semiarid Ecosystems, W. Thilini Jaksa, Venkataramana Sridhar, Justin L. Huntington, Mandar Khanal

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Estimating evapotranspiration using the complementary relationship can serve as a proxy to more sophisticated physically based approaches and can be used to better understand water and energy budget feedbacks. The authors investigated the existence of complementarity between actual evapotranspiration (ET) and potential ET (ET_p) over natural vegetation in semiarid desert ecosystems of southern Idaho using only the forcing data and simulated fluxes obtained from Noah land surface model (LSM) and North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data. To mitigate the paucity of long-term meteorological data, the Noah LSM-simulated fluxes and the NARR forcing data were used in the advection–aridity …

Examining Consumer Behavior And Travel Choices, Kelly J. Clifton, Christopher Devlin Muhs, Sara Morrissey, Tomás Morrissey, Kristina Marie Currans, Chloe Ritter

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study represents a first attempt to answer a few of the questions that have arisen concerning multimodal transportation investments and the impacts of mode shifts on the business community. This research aims to merge the long history of scholarly work that examines the impacts of the built environment on non-work travel with the relatively new interest in consumer spending by mode of travel. This empirical study of travel choices and consumer spending across 89 businesses in the Portland metropolitan area shows there are important differences between the amounts customers spend on average at various businesses by their mode of …

Pore Geometry Effects On Intrapore Viscous To Inertial Flows And On Effective Hydraulic Parameters, Kuldeep Chaudhary, M. Bayani Cardenas, Wen Deng, Philip C. Bennett

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this article, the effects of different diverging-converging pore geometries were investigated, and the microscale fluid flow and effective hydraulic properties from these pores were compared with that of a pipe from viscous to inertial laminar flow regimes. The flow fields are obtained using computational fluid dynamics, and the comparative analysis is based on a new dimensionless hydraulic shape factor β, which is the "specific surface" scaled by the length of pores. Results from all diverging-converging pores show an inverse pattern in velocity and vorticity distributions relative to the pipe flow. The hydraulic conductivity K of all pores is …

Driver Injury Severity At U.S. Highway-Rail Crossings, Wei Hao

Dissertations

There are approximately 240,000 highway-rail grade crossings in the United States and highway-rail grade crossing areas have been considered in this study as these are locations where crashes frequently occur. Existing studies on crash models at highway- rail grade crossings can be classified into two categories: accident frequency prediction models and driver injury severity models. Accident frequency prediction at highway-rail grade crossings have been investigated by previous studies using varied statistical models. Few studies, however, have focused on driver injury severity studies. Three drawbacks will be addressed in this research including limitations in traditional highway- rail grade crossings studies, limited …

Dynamic Response Of Highway Bridges Under A Moving Truck And Development Of A Rational Serviceability Requirement, Shabnam Darjani

Dissertations

Through the development and usage of high-strength materials, the design of more flexible bridges is unavoidable. It is assumed that limiting a bridge static deflection would control the excessive vibration caused by more flexible design. However, results of prior studies indicate that deflection limits do not necessarily address bridges vibrational issue.

This dissertation addresses the parameters affecting bridge vibration and provides simple equations to compute bridge dynamic acceleration, velocity and displacement in both transient and steady state parts of the vibration. These equations can then be used to control bridges excessive vibration; and provide human comfort and structural performance.

A …

Safety Performance Comparison Between Light Rail Transit And Subway, Nehemie Jasmin

Theses

Along with the expansion and addition of guide way transit systems, such as light rail and subway, there came the need to compare the safety performance of each mode. The multimodal transportation systems with many different technologies, operating characteristics and diversified environments made it more difficult to compare their safety.

In order to evaluate the potential for intermodal comparison of safety performance measures, the thesis has focused on the subway and Light Rail Transit (LRT) modes at the national level. Starting with clear definitions of each safety category, the analysis utilizes mostly the National Transit Database (NTD) from recent years …

Orrahood, M. David, 1923-2000 (Sc 2657), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2657. Paper by M. David Orrahood titled “History of Green River Country” in Kentucky. Paper deals chiefly with the history of transportation and commerce along the Green River in south central Kentucky.