Engineering Commons^™

Flexible Urban Drainage Systems In New Land-Use Areas, Jochen Eckart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban drainage systems are influenced by several future drivers that affect the performance as well as the costs of the systems. The uncertainties associated with future drivers and their impact creates difficulties in designing urban drainage systems sustainably. A review of the different future drivers for urban drainage systems illustrates that no sufficient future predictions for the long operational life spans of the systems are possible. This dissertation contends that to deal with future uncertainties, flexibility in urban drainage systems is necessary.

At present, profound insights about defining, measuring, and generating flexible urban drainage systems do not exist. This research …

Modeling Travel Time And Reliability On Urban Arterials For Recurrent Conditions, Prony Bonnaire Fils

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Travel time reliability is defined as the consistency or dependability in travel times during a specified period of time under stated conditions, and it can be used for evaluating the performance of traffic networks based on LOS (Level of Service) of the HCM (Highway Capacity Manual). Travel time reliability is also one of the most understood measures for road users to perceive the current traffic conditions, and help them make smart decisions on route choices, and hence avoid unnecessary delays (Liu & Ma, 2009). Therefore, travel time reliability on urban arterials has become a major concern for daily commuters, …

Understanding Operating Speed Variation Of Multilane Highways With New Access Density Definition And Simulation Outputs, Bing Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traffic speed is generally considered a core issue in roadway safety. Previous studies show that faster travel is not necessarily associated with an increased risk of being involved in a crash. When vehicles travel at the same speed in the same direction (even high speeds, as on interstates), they are not passing one another and cannot collide as long as they maintain the same speed. Conversely, the frequency of crashes increases when vehicles are traveling at different rates of speed. There is no doubt that the greater speed variation is, the greater the number of interactions among vehicles is, resulting …

Rainwater Harvesting Storage Methods And Self Supply In Uganda, Jonathan Peter Blanchard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Self supply is an emerging approach to water supply which focuses on fostering household investment in incremental improvements to their water sources. When successful, it can lower costs and increase sustainability by offering users a larger share

of ownership in their own supply, and harnessing the already existing strengths of a community rather than trying to impose an external perspective. In addition to well upgrading and source protection, one of the key self supply areas is rainwater harvesting.

Uganda has a diverse selection of rainwater storage options, but many of them are scattered and disparate.

The objective of this study …

Willingness-To-Pay For Maintenance And Improvements To Existing Sanitation Infrastructure: Assessing Community-Led Total Sanitation In Mopti, Mali, Justin Vern Meeks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, much focus has been put on the sustainability of water and sanitation development projects. Experts in this field have found that many of the projects of the past have failed to achieve sustainability because of a lack of demand for water and sanitation interventions at a grassroots level. For years projects looked to create this demand through various subsidy schemes, with the "software" of behavior change and education taking a backseat to the "hardware" of infrastructure provision. Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a fairly new way of looking at the issues of increasing basic sanitation coverage, promoting …

Estimation Of The Impact Of Single Airport And Multi-Airport System Delay On The National Airspace System Using Multivariate Simultaneous Models, Nagesh Nayak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Airline delays lead to a tremendous loss of time and resources and cost billions of dollars every year in the United States (U.S.). At certain times, individual airports become bottlenecks within the National Airspace System (NAS). To explore solutions for reducing the delay, it is essential to understand factors causing flight delay and its impact on airports in the NAS. Major causal factors of flight delay at airports include over-scheduling, en-route convective weather, reduced ceiling and visibility around airports, and upstream delay propagation. Delay at one airport can be passed on to other airports in the NAS, in another word, …

On The Development Of The Extradosed Bridge Concept, Steven Lynn Stroh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Extradosed Prestressed Bridge represents a relatively new bridge type. The first of this type bridge was constructed in Japan in 1994, and Japan has since built at least 29 examples of this bridge type. Throughout the rest of the world, another 34 of this bridge type have been built, with most countries having only one, or at most a few, examples. A broader application of this bridge type has been hampered by lack of design information and in particular lack design criteria for the stay cables. The purpose of this dissertation is to progress the understanding and application of …

Corrosion Evaluation And Durability Estimation Of Aluminized Steel Drainage Pipes, Mersedeh Akhoondan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aluminized steel pipes are expected to have a long service life, e.g. 75 years. Spiral ribbed aluminized pipes (SRAP) have been widely specified and used by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for drainage of runoff water. Confidence in the long term durability of SRAP has been challenged by recent unexpected early corrosion failures in various Florida locations. SRAP premature corrosion incidents have occurred in two modalities. Mode A has taken place in near-neutral soil environments and has often been associated with either gross manufacturing defects (i.e. helical cuts) or corrosion concentration at or near the ribs. Mode B took …

Optimization Of An Advanced Water Treatment Plant: Bromate Control And Biofiltration Improvement, Dustin William Bales

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The David L. Tippin Water Treatment Facility (DLTWTF) serving the city of Tampa, Florida is an advanced drinking water treatment facility consisting of coagulation/flocculation, ozonation, granular activated carbon biofiltration, and disinfection by chloramine. New regulations and the recent economic crisis pushed the facility to investigate methods to decrease costs and meet regulatory requirements easier.

The two major issues identified as priorities for investigation were the optimization of the biofiltration system and the use of a novel process to reduce the formation of bromate during ozonation.

Optimization of the biofiltration system is needed to remove more of the assorted particles that …

Numerical Simulation Of Sliding Friction And Wet Traction Force On A Smooth Tire Sliding On A Random Rough Pavement, Janaka Vishwanath Kosgolla

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Availability of analytical and numerical tools that can provide reliable and accurate estimates of wet frictional resistance in different pavements would preclude the need for time consuming field tests. Therefore, many research efforts have been made to develop such tire-pavement friction predictive tools that are invaluable for friction management programs. However, due to the complexity of the problem, most existing tools have been developed based on several simplifying assumptions and without field verification of their predictions. The current study is focused on the evaluation of two specific prediction methods that can be used to predict friction on a smooth tire …

Development And Application Of Its Operations Evaluation Models (Itsoems), Gummadavelly Narasimha Murthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) play an important role in supporting motorists and first responders to handle major incidents, hazmat spills, security measures and other emergency operations. Increasingly, technology advancements and applications are providing invaluable integration opportunities to interconnect safety, maintenance, ITS, traffic operations, facilities, and transportation equipment programs to maximize available resources and achieve efficiency in transportation operations.

This research focuses on one of the prominent ITS devices: Dynamic Message Signs (DMS) operations. Using real time incident management operations data and ITS operations data, an attempt is made to develop ITS Operations Evaluations Models (ITSOEMs) that are capable of quantifying …