Engineering Commons^™

The Transportation Of Corrosion Products In Cementitious Material Under Chloride-Rich Environment, Yuzhou Wang

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

Corrosion products, forming on steel bar in cementitious material, can lead to concrete cracking. Clear the transportation of corrosion products is of great significance to predict corrosion-induced structural deterioration. This study investigates the corrosion products in steel-reinforced concrete specimen. By Raman spectroscopy and SEM method, the chemical constituents and micromorphology of corrosion products at steel-concrete interface as well as those inside the pore of cement paste are investigated. The proportion of corrosion products filling into the cement paste is determined by EDTA titration method. The results reveal that corrosion products diffuse in forms of ion in solution under chloride-rich environment, …

Research On Water Absorption And Frost Resistance Of Concrete Coated With Different Impregnating Agents For Ballastless Track Structure, Xin Ge, Yanbin Tan, Xiaowei Wang, Yongjiang Xie, Qinfei Li, Linxiang Li, Lu Yang, Zhongwei Feng

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

In consideration of performance requirement of ballastless track concrete in cold regions of China, 3 types of commercially available impregnating agents were employed to research their effect on water absorption and frozen resistance of concrete, containing silanes, potassium silicate and osmotic curing agent. The results presented that coating silanes was the most effective on the reduction of water absorption among all employed impregnating agents, because of the most significant character change of concrete surface from hydrophilicity to hydrophobicity which could be proved by the contact angle test of concrete. The promotion on frozen resistance of concrete was not as significant …

Study On Corrosion Resistance Of Portland Cement-Calcium Sulphoaluminate Cement Binary System In A Sodium Chloride Environment, Shilin Song, Tao Xing, Yu Zhang, Jianzheng Wang, Xiaodong Shen, Ying Ma

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

Portland cement is widely used in civil engineering. However, Portland cement-based materials are easy to be corroded by seawater in marine environment. Many research show the corrosion resistance of Portland cement mortar can be improved by add appropriate amount of mineral admixture.Sulphoaluminate cement have high strength and good corrosion seawater resistance. However, the short setting time and high hydration heat of sulphoaluminate cement limit its application in civil engineering.Portland cement-sulphoaluminate cement (PC-CSA) not only have high strength and corrosion resistance but also long setting time.In this work, the sulphoaluminate cement was used to partially replace Portland cement. The replacement level …

Elemental Sulfur And Metal Sulfide Minerals For Autotrophic Denitrification: Applications To Aquaculture, Groundwater Treatment, And Domestic Wastewater Treatment, Erica Amah Dasi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nutrient pollution of waterways, from excess N and P, is a global concern that results in harmful impacts the environment, human health, and aquatic animals. This dissertation harnesses sulfur autotrophic denitrification to remove nutrients from groundwater, domestic wastewater, and wastewaters produced from marine recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). Part 1 evaluates the denitrification performance of woodchips and elemental sulfur in cyclic denitrification filters (WS-CDFs) integrated into marine RAS operated under saline conditions. Part 2 investigates the use of metal sulfide minerals, with and without oyster shells, for supporting nutrient removal from groundwater in batch reactors. Part 3 assesses …

Anti-Skid Characteristics Of Asphalt Pavement Based On Partial Tire Aquaplane Conditions, Miao Yu, Yao Kong, Zhanping You, Jue Li, Liming Yang, Lingyun Kong

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

This study presented a finite element model of radial tire-asphalt pavement interaction using ABAQUS 6.14 software to investigate the skid resistance properties of asphalt pavement under partial tire aquaplane conditions. Firstly, the pavement profile datum acquired by laser scanning were imported to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software to conduct the pavement modeling. Secondly, a steady state rolling analysis of a tire on three types of asphalt pavements under drying conditions was carried out. Variation laws of the friction coefficient of the radial tire on different pavements with different pavement textures, tire pressures, and loads on the tire were examined. Subsequently, …

Uzbek Commands Recognition By Processing The Spectrogram Image, M M. Musayev, I Sh Khujayorov, M I. Abdullaeva, M M. Ochilov

Technical science and innovation

This paper describes the most common algorithms with image approach convolutional neural network and two-dimensional DCT with machine learning classification KNN, SVM and RF. These algorithms are evaluated for applicability to the Uzbek language and a comparative analysis on the accuracy and recognition rate. The command words of the Uzbek language were chosen for the experiments. According to the results, it was found that both methods give high rates of recognition accuracy and are 92% (CNN) and 90% (2DDCT+Zigzag+SVM). Also the combinations of 2D-DCT+Zigzag+ KNN and 2D-DCT+Zigzag+ RF with average recognition accuracy of 86% and 85%, respectively, were considered in …

Thermodynamic And Kinetic Investigation Of U(Vi) And As(V) Reactions: Insights For Risk Assessment And Remediation, Maria Isabel Meza

Civil Engineering ETDs

The goal of this dissertation was to investigate the mechanisms of immobilization of uranium (U) and arsenic (As) in waters nearby to Native American Communities for remediation applications. This work sought to identify the physical or chemical processes affecting the complexation, sorption, and precipitation of U and As with calcium (Ca), carbonates (CO3)2-, and phosphate (PO4)3-. The current knowledge about the mechanisms affecting the reaction of metal mixtures such as U, As, and other co-occurring elements in natural waters with minerals such as limestone1-5 and hydroxyapatite for remediation applications is limited. A better understanding of thermodynamics and kinetics affecting the …

An Investigation Of Emerging Technologies To Advance The Understanding Of Dynamics Between The Floodplain And Main Channel Due To Riparian Vegetation, Smriti Chaulagain

Civil Engineering ETDs

Riparian vegetation covers only about 0.4% of the land surface whereas rivers and streams cover about 0.3 to 0.56% but riparian vegetation still provides substantial ecosystem services including many that affect hydrodynamic processes. The ability to estimate the flow resistance caused by vegetation and the consequences for hydrodynamic processes has long been a vexing problem for engineers. Flow resistance is strongly influenced by local hydraulic conditions (water velocity and depth) and vegetation structures, and in turn, vegetation affects mass and momentum exchange processes. However, riparian vegetation conditions change continuously due to external stressors including climate change (e.g., extended drought in …

Chemical Toxicants In Water: A Geohealth Perspective In The Context Of Climate Change, Naveen Joseph, Tate Libunao, Elizabeth Herrmann, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt, Catherine R. Propper, Jesse E. Bell, Alan S. Kolok

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

The editorial focuses on four major themes contextualized in a virtual GeoHealth workshop that occurred from June 14 to 16, 2021. Topics in that workshop included drinking water and chronic chemical exposure, environmental injustice, public health and drinking water policy, and the fate, transport, and human impact of aqueous contaminants in the context of climate change. The intent of the workshop was to further define the field of GeoHealth. This workshop emphasized on chemical toxicants that drive human health. The major calls for action emerged from the workshop include enhancing community engagement, advocating for equity and justice, and training …

Predicting Tensile Strength For Prestressed Reinforced Concrete-Driven Piles, Thuyet N. Nguyen, Thang Pham, Thuy Vu, Adnan A. Malik, Duc N. Dinh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Reinforced concrete piles installed by impact hammers have been used as a common solution for deep foundations because they are cost effective and require less time for construction. Driven piles are often used in large volumes for infrastructure and industrial projects in rural areas. Unlike other installation methods, installing piles using impact hammers can generate tensile stress during construction, which can result in pile failures. Induced tensile stress occurs when piles are being driven through a hard soil layer to a softer soil layer, and transverse cracks happen when induced tensile stress exceeds the pile tensile strength. This issue is …

Applications Of Stretching Technique And Time Window Effects On Ultrasonic Velocity Monitoring In Concrete, Bibo Zhong, Jinying Zhu

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Coda wave interferometry (CWI) has been used to measure the relative wave-velocity change (dV/V) caused by small changes in materials. This study uses the stretching processing technique which has been used for CWI analysis to investigate velocity changes of direct longitudinal (P) wave, direct shear (S) wave, and coda wave in concrete by choosing different time windows of ultrasonic signals. It is found that the obtained wave-velocity change depends on the time window position, because the relative contribution of P wave and S wave is different in each signal window. This paper presents three experimental scenarios of velocity …

Permeability And Porosity Of Loose Granular Salt, Evan J. Babcock

Civil Engineering ETDs

In this study, permeability and porosity measurements are made and reported for loose granular salt from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Measurements are made on a particularly wide range of particle sizes of this salt in a permeameter constructed large enough to fit and represent mixtures containing salt particles up to 25.4 cm in size. Salt samples with different particle size distributions are constructed and tested at varying levels of consolidation due to induced vibrations. Permeability measurements are made at a varying range of porosities for a given sample. Measurements are also compared with a predictive model for permeability …

Revealing Driver Psychophysiological Response To Emergency Braking In Distracted Driving Based On Field Experiments, Ying Li, Li Zhao, Kun Gao, Yisheng An, Jelena Andric

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to characterize distracted driving by quantifying the response time and response intensity to an emergency stop using the driver’s physiological states.

Design/methodology/approach – Field tests with 17 participants were conducted in the connected and automated vehicle test field. All participants were required to prioritize their primary driving tasks while a secondary nondriving task was asked to be executed. Demographic data, vehicle trajectory data and various physiological data were recorded through a biosignalsplux signal data acquisition toolkit, such as electrocardiograph for heart rate, electromyography for muscle strength, electrodermal activity for skin conductance and …

Learning From Machines: Insights In Forest Transpiration Using Machine Learning Methods, Morgan Thornwell

Dissertations and Theses

Machine learning has been used as a tool to model transpiration for individual sites, but few models are capable of generalizing to new locations without calibration to site data. Using the global SAPFLUXNET database, 95 tree sap flow data sites were grouped using three clustering strategies: by biome, by tree functional type, and through use of a k-means unsupervised clustering algorithm. Two supervised machine learning algorithms, a random forest algorithm and a neural network algorithm, were used to build machine learning models that predicted transpiration for each cluster. The performance and feature importance in each model were analyzed and compared …

Interfacial Interactions Of Uranium And Hdpe In Agricultural Soil And Their Bioacummulation In Mentha Arvensis, Casey Miller, Andrew Neidhart, Kendra Hess, Abdul-Mehdi S. Ali, Angelica Benavidez, Michael Spilde, Laura Green, José M. Cerrato, Jorge Gonzalez Estrella, Eliane El Hayek

Civil Engineering ETDs

We investigated the adsorption, precipitation, and phytoavailability of uranium after reactions with soil, high-density polyethylene particles, and Mentha arvensis through the integration of batch experiments, plant exposure, microscopy, and spectroscopy. Soluble U (initially 100 µM) decreased by 98.6% (1.09 µM) at pH 5 and 86.2% (13.81 µM) at pH 7.5 after 0.1 h of reaction with 10 g of soil in solution. Heterogenous U precipitates were observed in weathered HDPE surfaces for experiments without soil at both pH conditions. This suggests the weathering of the microplastic surfaces enhanced the nucleation of the U precipitates. Plants exposed to both U and …

Anthropogenic Stressors Compound Climate Impacts On Inland Lake Dynamics: The Case Of Hamun Lakes, Arash Modaresi Rad, Jason Kreitler, John T. Abatzoglou, Kendra Fallon, Kevin R. Roche, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Inland lakes face unprecedented pressures from climatic and anthropogenic stresses, causing their recession and desiccation globally. Climate change is increasingly blamed for such environmental degradation, but in many regions, direct anthropogenic pressures compound, and sometimes supersede, climatic factors. This study examined a human-environmental system – the terminal Hamun Lakes on the Iran-Afghanistan border – that embodies amplified challenges of inland waters. Satellite and climatic data from 1984 to 2019 were fused, which documented that the Hamun Lakes lost 89% of their surface area between 1999 and 2001 (3809 km² versus 410 km²), coincident with a basin-wide, multi-year …

Performance Modeling And Analysis Of A Thermoelectric Building Envelope For Space Heating, Xiaoli Liu, Ming Qu, Kazuaki Yazawa, Jorge Kohanoff, Piotr Chudzinski, Lorenzo Stella, Brian Norton, Niall Holmes Dr., Ruchita Jani, Hongxi Yin

Conference papers

To provide energy-efficient space heating and cooling, a thermoelectric building envelope (TBE) embeds thermoelectric devices in building walls. The thermoelectric device in the building envelope can provide active heating and cooling without requiring refrigerant use and energy transport among subsystems. Thus, the TBE system is energy and environmentally friendly. A few studies experimentally investigated the TBE under limited operating conditions, and only simplified models for the commercial thermoelectric module (TEM) were developed to quantify its performance. A holistic approach to optimum system performance is needed for the optimal system design and operation. The study developed a holistic TBE-building system model …

Integrated Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment Of Coastal Hazards Using Data-Driven And Multi-Criteria Analysis Approaches, Ahad Hasan Tanim, Erfan Goharian, Hamid Moradkhani

Faculty Publications

Coastal hazard vulnerability assessment has been centered around the multi-variate analysis of geo-physical and hydroclimate data. The representation of coupled socio-environmental factors has often been ignored in vulnerability assessment. This study develops an integrated socio-environmental Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI), which simultaneously combines information from five vulnerability groups: biophysical, hydroclimate, socio-economic, ecological, and shoreline. Using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach, two CVI (CVI-50 and CVI-90) have been developed based on average and extreme conditions of the factors. Each CVI is then compared to a data-driven CVI, which is formed based on Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis (PPCA). Both MCDM and PPCA …

Rapid Response Protocol (Rrp) For Monitoring Water Quality Parameters For Wildfire Disturbance, Paige G. Tunby

Civil Engineering ETDs

The increase in wildfire frequency and intensity has been driven by the sensitivity of fire regimes to climate changes and fire suppression. Wildfires impact hydrological and environmental processes and ecosystem service due to the mobilization of wildfire debris by precipitation. Data on post-fire water quality dynamics have been measured in a few study cases from burned watersheds where sensors were deployed to monitor non-fire-related water quality issues. This has led to a dearth of data for understanding the effects of wildfire disturbances on fluvial networks. To close the gap in available water quality data, we have created a rapid response …

Mdam-Drnet: Dual Channel Residual Network With Multi-Directional Attention Mechanism In Strawberry Leaf Diseases Detection, Tingjing Liao, Ruoli Yang, Peirui Zhao, Wenhua Zhou, Mingfang He, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The growth of strawberry plants is affected by a variety of strawberry leaf diseases. Yet, due to the complexity of these diseases' spots in terms of color and texture, their manual identification requires much time and energy. Developing a more efficient identification method could be imperative for improving the yield and quality of strawberry crops. To that end, here we proposed a detection framework for strawberry leaf diseases based on a dual-channel residual network with a multi-directional attention mechanism (MDAM-DRNet). (1) In order to fully extract the color features from images of diseased strawberry leaves, this paper constructed a color …

Mdam-Drnet: Dual Channel Residual Network With Multi-Directional Attention Mechanism In Strawberry Leaf Diseases Detection, Tingjing Liao, Ruoli Yang, Peirui Zhao, Wenhua Zhou, Mingfang He, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The growth of strawberry plants is affected by a variety of strawberry leaf diseases. Yet, due to the complexity of these diseases' spots in terms of color and texture, their manual identification requires much time and energy. Developing a more efficient identification method could be imperative for improving the yield and quality of strawberry crops. To that end, here we proposed a detection framework for strawberry leaf diseases based on a dual-channel residual network with a multi-directional attention mechanism (MDAM-DRNet). (1) In order to fully extract the color features from images of diseased strawberry leaves, this paper constructed a color …

Reactions In The Microannulus Of A Wellbore System With Produced Water From The Permian Basin, Ernesto J. Perea

Civil Engineering ETDs

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of the products from steel corrosion and cement dissolution after reaction with produced water (PW) on the permeability of a wellbore microannulus. The wellbore microannulus is the interface between wellbore cement and steel casing and is often identified as a leakage pathway in wellbore systems. The need to better understand the impact of PW on well integrity aids in the assessment of environmental impacts of energy production. Static batch reactors were used to expose a cement – steel microannulus to two PW solutions, a simulated PW, and a field sampled …

Structural Health Monitoring Of Fatigue Cracks For Steel Bridges With Wireless Large-Area Strain Sensors, Sdiq Anwar Taher, Jian Li, Jong-Hyun Jeong, Simon Laflamme, Hongki Jo, Caroline Bennett, William N. Collins, Austin Downey

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a field implementation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) of fatigue cracks for steel bridge structures. Steel bridges experience fatigue cracks under repetitive traffic loading, which pose great threats to their structural integrity and can lead to catastrophic failures. Currently, accurate and reliable fatigue crack monitoring for the safety assessment of bridges is still a difficult task. On the other hand, wireless smart sensors have achieved great success in global SHM by enabling long-term modal identifications of civil structures. However, long-term field monitoring of localized damage such as fatigue cracks has been limited due to the lack …

The Effects Of Recycled Waste On Concrete Mixture Properties, Noral Hadbawi

Master of Science in Civil Engineering Theses

Recent years have seen an exponential increase in plastic product consumption worldwide. Manufacturing, and individuals rely on plastics in almost every aspect, as a result, a negative impact on the environment is detected due to the large quantities and low biodegradability of plastic waste. The massive amount of plastic waste and end-of-life tires produced annually required a vast area of landfills, which became a major concern far and wide. To address these issues, an eco-friendly approach consisting of incorporating plastic and rubber waste into engineering applications, such as plastic concrete, and rubberized concrete was proposed. A primary objective of this …

A Deep Learning Image Segmentation Model For Agricultural Irrigation System Classification, Ehsan Raei, Ata Akbari Asanjan, Mohammad Reza Nikoo, Mojtaba Sadegh, Shokoufeh Pourshahabi, Jan Franklin Adamowski

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Effective water management requires a large-scale understanding of agricultural irrigation systems and how they shift in response to various stressors. Here, we leveraged advances in Machine Learning and availability of very high resolution remote sensing imagery to help resolve this long-standing issue. To this end, we developed a deep learning model to classify irrigation systems at a regional scale using remote sensing imagery. After testing different model architectures, hyper parameters, class weights and image sizes, we selected a U-Net architecture with a Resnet-34 backbone for this purpose. We applied transfer learning to increase training efficiency and model performance. We considered …

Construction Industry Cluster: An Investigation Of Its Existence In Pakistan, Muhammad Yanzar Sarim

2022 REYES Proceedings

Introduction: Clusters can be defined as a geographical concentration of industries and institutes that are unified and interconnected. These industries and institutes are not just physically close to each other but also gain some advantage from being near to each other.

Supporting Information For “Predictions Of Household Water Affordability Under Conditions Of Climate Change, Demographic Growth, And Fresh Groundwater Depletion In A Southwest Us City Indicate Increasing Burdens On The Poor”, Josiah Heyman, Alex Mayer, Jessica Alger

Departmental Papers (CE)

The Supporting Information contains (a) supplemental tables of annual volumes and costs for each water supply source and by year for each scenario (see Supplemental Information.pdf), (b) the census tract numbers used in the analysis of incomes spent on water (see Supplemental Information.pdf), (c) a correlation matrix for demographic variables and the fraction of households in a census tracts paying > 5% for water in 2070 for the worst case scenario (see Supplemental Information.pdf), and (d) the shapefiles for the El Paso Water utility service area boundaries (see compressed folder boundary11.24.21.gdb).

Wastewater-Derived Ammonia For A Green Transportation Fuel, Joseph Kalman, Maryam Haddad

Mineta Transportation Institute

The energy-water nexus (i.e., availability of potable water and clean energy) is among the most important problems currently facing society. Ammonia is a carbon-free fuel that has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint in combustion related vehicles. However, ammonia production processes typically have their own carbon footprint and do not necessarily come from sustainable sources. This research examines wastewater filtration processes to harvest ammonia for transportation processes. The research team studied mock wastewater solutions and was able to achieve ammonia concentrations above 80%(nanofiltration) and 90% (reverse osmosis). The research team also investigated the influence of transmembrane pressure and flow …

Contracting Strategies: A Different Approach To Address Long-Term Performance, Maria Calahorra-Jimenez

Mineta Transportation Institute

For cost-efficiency, public safety, and sustainability, improving long-term performance in highway projects is imperative for public administrations. Project delivery and procurement methods provide an opportunity to align design and construction processes with this goal. While previous studies have explored whether project delivery methods impact the long-term performance of highway projects, these studies did not focus on how core elements within project procurement relate to long-term performance. Thus, to fill this gap, this research explores how and to what extent long-term evaluation criteria are considered in design-build best-value procurement of highway projects. To this end, the team conducted content analysis on …

Dice Testing With The Running Chi-Square Distribution, Warren Campbell, Hunter Wimsatt

SEAS Faculty Publications

Dice are not fair. Producing a geometrically precise, uniform die is not possible. Casino dice come as close as possible to perfectly random dice because they are machined to an accuracy of a few ten-thousandths of an inch and the putty used for the pips (dots) is the same density as the plastic die body. Polyhedral dice used in games like Dungeons and Dragons are far more difficult to manufacture to high tolerances. Some dice are fairer than others. Since 20-sided dice (D20s) are very difficult to manufacture precisely, they were the focus of this study. The running chi-square distribution …