Geotechnical Engineering Commons^™

Purdue Ect Report - Fourth Quarter 2016, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Fourth Quarter 2016

This is a quarterly report from the Purdue ECT.

Practical Considerations In Determining Timber Pile Depth Using The Sonic Echo Method, Ali F. Jwary

Civil Engineering ETDs

The Federal Highway Administration indicates that about 85,000 bridges in the United States have no original contract documents with information about the type, depth, geometry and material of their foundations (FHWA, 2010). Furthermore, the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) provides information about 86,133 bridges nationwide that are rated as scour critical because of unknown foundation condition. In New Mexico, there are more than 281 bridges with unknown foundations, which are owned by the New Mexico Department of Transportation; 71 of these are timber bridges. These data indicate a serious problem that needs decisive action to assess the unknown bridge foundation characteristics …

Bicp Global Bim Study - Lessons For Ireland’S Bim Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Reports

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) has been promoting the benefits of digitisation in the construction and engineering industry in Ireland since its formation back in 2002. Whilst the Alliance has always strived to ensure that its members are exposed to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital tools and processes, the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has dominated the focus of its activities over the past five years.

BIM can be described as a digital tool that facilitates everybody to better understand a building or structure through the use of a digital model which draws on a range of data …

Road Zipper™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Construction work zones are growing in number around the world. The natural aging of existing roadway infrastructure ensures that more and more maintenance and rehabilitation will be required. Work zones, by their very definition, create two major problems that must be addressed in some way: safety and mobility. In the United States, highway work zones are responsible for almost 25% of all non-recurring congestion and 10% of overall congestion. Vehicle accidents are more common in work zones, and traffic congestion through work zones on urban arterials and freeways is often considered to be “unavoidable." To address these issues, ROAD ZIPPER™ …

Influence Of Moisture Content Distribution In Soil On Pavement And Geothermal Energy, Md Adnan Khan

Doctoral Dissertations

Moisture content in soil has a great implication in engineering design, and it has been heavily investigated by soil engineers and scientists. If moisture content in expansive soil changes drastically, it will create significant volume change in the soil. If expansive soil is present in building foundation or pavement subgrade, it may result in structural failure. On the other hand, if sufficient moisture content is present in soil, it will increase the production of geothermal energy from the ground soil. This dissertation is an effort to understand the effects of moisture content on both expansive soils and geothermal energy that …

Site Specific Sinkhole Risk Assessment In Central Florida Using Cone Penetrometer Testing, Ryan Shamet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As Florida's population is expanding and greater fluctuations in groundwater levels are being recorded, Central Florida has been experiencing a higher frequency of sinkhole occurrences than ever before in recorded history. Sinkholes in Central Florida are formed by a combination of bedrock weathering and overburden soil erosion due to the groundwater recharge and are a part of Florida's past and future geology. The initial stage of a sinkhole is referred to as soil raveling and is the most effective time to perform soil improvement measures, such as grouting, to mitigate further expansion of a subterranean void. Subsurface exploration tests, commonly …

Air Injection As A Scour Countermeasure At Bridge Piers, Ravi Teja Reddy Tippireddy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Local scour is a major cause of concern for the stability of bridge piers and the safety of the public using the bridges. Structural countermeasures and flow-altering devices have been developed to deal with local scour. Many armoring structural countermeasures are very effective and efficient in clear water conditions but are susceptible to moving bed forms and leaching. The flow-altering devices are effective in both clear water conditions and moving bed forms, but are prone to clogging, less efficient in changing flow direction, etc. This study aims to reduce the local scour by injecting air in order to reduce the …

Assessment Of Rockfall Rollout Risk Along Varying Slope Geometries Using The Rocfall And Crsp Software, Mariam S. Al E'Bayat

Masters Theses

"Most routes in mountainous areas suffer from rock falling, rolling and bouncing risk. There are many computer programs concerned with simulating the rockfall problem, and whereas they have the same purpose, they however differ in the input data that's needed to simulate the problem, and they also differ in the way of processing and kind of output.

This study used Rocfall® and the Colorado Rockfall Simulation Program (CRSP®) to simulate sixty-three models of varying slope geometry, where only the slope geometry is changed with the same material properties for both the slope and the rocks.

Both programs were fast and …

Evaluation Of Mechanical Parameters Of Contaminated Road Base And Railway Ballast, Prajwol Tamrakar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation comprises two topics in the area of transportation geotechnics that focus on the evaluation of stiffness parameters of contaminated road base and railway ballast. The abstracts of these two studies are provided in the following two paragraphs.

The performance of a flexible pavement depends on the mechanical characteristics of its unbound granular base layer. The mechanical characteristics such as stiffness and deformation resistance depend on many factors such as the material gradation, fines content, moisture content, physical properties of coarse aggregate and more. The base materials are often contaminated by the excessive fines that is caused by improper …

Resistivity Profiles Of Perth Soil In Australia In Leak-Detection Test, Lopa M. Pandey, Sanjay K. Shukla, Daryoush Habibi

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The use of a suitable leak-detection system for the prevention and mitigation of pollution due to lining system failures is integral to the proper management of landfill facilities. This paper briefly summarises various methods of leak detection that are currently being practised. The details of a newly developed leak-detection technique are also presented. The tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the new technique by use of controlled leakage. The resulting resistivity profiles for Perth soil in Australia were obtained at 10 min. This method is found to be effective in detecting and locating liner leakage issues within 30 …

Imaging In Karst Terrain Using The Electrical Resistivity And Multichannel Analyses Of Surface Wave Methods, Ragab W. Jaafar

Masters Theses

"Electrical resistivity tomography and multi-channel analyses of surface waves data were acquired at a study area in Phelps County in the south-central part of Missouri. The objectives of the investigation were fourfold: 1) to image the subsurface in the study area to a depth of 70 feet; 2) to compare the ERT images generated using both the dipole-dipole and Wenner-Schlumberger arrays; and 3) to assess how variations in the MASW array configuration affected MASW data quality; and 4) to compare the ERT-estimated depth to top-of-rock and the MASW-generated depth to top-of-rock.

The subsurface in the study area was imaged to …

Strength Property Variability In Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation Soils, Jacob Fuller

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) is an attractive alternative for a variety geotechnical ground improvement practices commonly used today and has a variety of potential applications. This research focuses primarily on its use as a soil stabilization technique using the bacteria Sporosarcina Pasteurii and a single injection point percolation method adapted from previous research in granular soils. This method, and most published data, show an inherent variability in both physical and engineering properties due to the distribution of precipitated calcite within the specimen. The focus of this research is on the quantification of the variability in shear strength parameters induced …

Lakebed Characterization Using Side-Scan Data For Investigating The Latest Lake Superior Coastal Environment Conditions, Hasan Salih Kulunk

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis provides a review of the development of hydrographic survey equipment and supporting geospatial equipment and technology such as GPS. Using SonarWiz, a sonar image processing software package, lakebed classification methodologies were evaluated for mapping Buffalo Reef in Lake Superior located near Gay, Michigan. The goal was to develop an approach to mapping the reef bed and delineating various components of the lake bottom, including stamp sands, which are migrating from the abandoned Gay copper processing stamp mill to the reef. This contamination of the reef is having an adverse effect on habitats important to local flora and fauna. …

In-Situ Assessment Of Concrete Bridge Decks And Pavements Using Stress-Wave Based Methods, Mengxing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"Concrete infrastructure of United States is aging and deteriorating. Accurate assessment the condition of concrete infrastructure is critical for its maintenance and rehabilitation. Stress-wave based methods, including ultrasonic surface wave (USW) and impact echo (IE), are becoming popular for characterizing defects and mechanical properties of concrete infrastructures. In this dissertation, a comprehensive literature review of seismic wave theory and common types of defects identified in concrete infrastructures, as well as stress-wave based methods used for concrete infrastructure monitoring and characterizing on a selected concrete bridge deck and two concrete pavement segments are present. The utility and reliability of both methods …

Input Parameters In Discrete Element Modeling, Seyedali Yousefi

Civil Engineering ETDs

The discrete element method (DEM) is employed to study complex behaviors of particulate media. Input parameters may greatly affect the response of DEM models and should therefore be selected carefully. Scaling techniques are employed to enlarge prohibitively small time-steps. To study these techniques, dimensionless input parameters were defined. Responses of models in the dimensionless scale were invariant with choice of density, elastic modulus, and characteristic length if the dimensionless parameters were kept constant. Hence, density scaling is equivalent to use of a higher strain-rate, and stiffness scaling results in a higher strain-rate and an elevated stress state in the dimensionless …

Lucidpipe™ Power System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

In most gravity fed water transmission pipelines, it is desired to reduce excess pressure head to prevent undue strain on a pipeline and lower the incidence of leaks. Normally this is done with pressure reducing valves that essentially burn off this excess pressure as heat. The LucidPipe™ system converts it to low cost electricity thereby removing unwanted pressure and generating energy at the same time - energy that can be put used behind the grid or put back on the grid. The LucidPipe™ system extracts a small percentage of pressure head providing nearly invisible operation allowing water operators to fulfill …

Soil Moduli Obtained From A Back Pressure Constant Rate Of Strain Bender Element Consolidation Apparatus, Yi Zhao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A back-pressure saturated, constant-rate-of-strain consolidation device was modified to incorporate bender elements (BP-CRS-BE) and thus allowed for shear wave measurements during consolidation tests. This newly fabricated system has many advantages over other previous or current devices: 1) it can be utilized not only for laboratory prepared soil samples but also for field sampled soils such as Shelby tube samples, and 2) continuous compression curves, and continuous values of vertical hydraulic conductivity and coefficient of consolidation can be acquired with a significant reduction in testing time. Soil modulus values such as shear modulus and constrained modulus are also able to be …

Determination Of Seismic Earth Pressures On Retaining Walls Through Finite Element Analysis, Michael Iannelli

Master's Theses

Seismic pressures on displacing or rigid retaining or basement walls have been derived based on the original work of Mononobe and Okabe, who used a shake table to calculate dynamic pressures of displacing retaining walls existing in cohesionless soils. Since this original work was done over eighty years ago, the results of Mononobe and Okabe, colloquially known as M-O theory, have been applied to different conditions, including non-displacing basement walls, as well as changes in soil properties. Since the original work of M-O, there have been numerous studies completed to verify the accuracy of the original calculation, most notably the …

Effect Of Temperature On Deep Lined Circular Tunnels In Isotropic And Transversely Anisotropic Elastic Ground, Fei Tao

Open Access Theses

A tunnel is a passageway constructed through soil or rock. It is one of the most important underground structures and has been widely used in transportation. Much research has been done on tunnel performance and on the interaction between ground, excavation, liner installation and support. The work has provided a better understanding of the interplay that exists between deformations and stresses transferred from the ground to the support. Significant insight into the problem has been provided by closed-form analytical solutions. A number of analytical formulations have been obtained for underground openings and lined tunnels under different scenarios, namely shallow or …

Evaluating The Suitability Of Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation Technique For Stabilizing Expansive Soils, Sikha Neupane

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Expansive soils, also known as swell-shrink soils have been a problem for civil infrastructures including roads and foundations from ancient times. The use of chemical additives such as cement and lime to stabilize expansive soils is a common practice among geotechnical engineers especially for lightly loaded structures. However, several occurrences of subgrade failures were observed after stabilizing with chemical additives hence engineers are in search of sustainable stabilization alternatives. Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) is gaining attention as an environmental friendly soil improvement technique. Several researchers have successfully tested its feasibility in mitigating liquefaction induced problems in sandy soils. This …