Engineering Commons^™

Risk-Based Project Development, Steve Waddle, Ying Li, Christopher Van Dyke

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Risk management is integral to highway project development. Managing risk entails identifying uncertainties which could influence project activities, understanding how they can be mitigated or eliminated, and monitoring risk during project development. Many state transportation agencies have introduced methods for identifying risks, determining whether risks are high impact or low impact, and generating response strategies. These methods are often qualitative or semi-quantitative in nature due to the challenge of quantifying the likelihood of a risk and its effects. These approaches are nonetheless valuable for helping designers and project development teams remain mindful of negative risks which could pose significant hurdles. …

Measuring Accessibility For Pedestrians, Bicyclists, And Transit Riders To Grocery Stores In The Excelsior/Outer Mission Neighborhoods Of San Francisco, Alexandra Lee-Gardner

Master's Theses

Grocery stores are an important amenity in neighborhoods and access to grocery stores is important for health and well-being. While grocery store accessibility is a popular topic of research, studies measuring access for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders are extremely rare. When a new store opened in the Excelsior/Outer Mission districts of San Francisco on a street lacking basic infrastructure for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders, the importance of this study became apparent. The Excelsior/Outer Mission neighborhood has a shocking number of collisions (over 1,100 between 2015 and 2019), elevated levels of walking, biking, and transit ridership, and minimal safe …

Shallow-Water Wind Turbine Foundation, Andrew Walker, Nico Nani, James Cusanelli, Zachary Dunkelberger

Mechanical Engineering

Over the 2021-2022 academic year, we, the Shallow Water Wind Turbine Foundation senior project team, designed, manufactured, and tested a fixed bottom, sand mounted turbine foundation for the Cal Poly Wind Power Club’s Collegiate Wind Competition turbine. The foundation was restricted to certain material, installation, and geometric constraints outlined in this report, and needed to support the turbine under operating conditions including 22 m/s wind speeds. The design was analyzed using primarily a bearing capacity geotechnical analysis to determine final geometry and weight. The foundation was then manufactured using welded, custom carbon steel parts.

The foundation was inspected for geometric …

Feasibility Report On Water Recycling And The Housing Crisis, Tally A. Perry

City and Regional Planning

The western United States is experiencing increasing population, a housing shortage, and a drought. These challenges demand creative and unprecedented changes to development. Water recycling is slowly emerging as a viable solution for developers, home owners, and cities as a way to continue much-needed housing development while mitigating unnecessary water depletion. With all change, policy, feasibility, and awareness can be the largest influencers. Drought-ridden western-American states require additional and revised regulatory requirements to promote recycled water in new development. Currently, water reuse is largely used for agricultural and industrial purposes. To motivate and encourage housing development, water recycling needs to …

Steel Bridge Coating Inventory For 2022, Christopher Goff, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) has replaced the lead-based coatings on many of its steel bridges over the past 30 years. In the 1980s and 1990s, inorganic zinc primers with vinyl topcoats were the go-to option for coating replacement projects. Since 2000, the typical choice for these projects has been organic zinc primers that are part of a two- or three-coat system. Some of these coatings have localized failures in high-stress areas. KYTC’s current inventory of steel bridges numbers over 1,100 structures. Accounting for expected service lives, to properly maintain protective coatings on these bridges will require the Cabinet to …

Updating The Bridge Construction Cost Database, Rachel Catchings, Ying Li, Ryan Griffith, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Adopting a comprehensive suite of methods to track, analyze, and maintain data on bridge construction costs can help state transportation agencies identify and implement strategies to mitigate the influence of factors which escalate project costs. This report discusses how the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) should approach updating, maintaining, and analyzing its bridge construction cost data. Based on a review of practices introduced at other agencies and interviews with public and private industry stakeholders, the report catalogues practical strategies for improving estimating procedures and tracking cost data as well as the most important cost drivers of bridge construction. Analysis of KYTC …

Investigating Pedestrian Distraction By Phone At Intersection Crossings, Safety Implications And Potential Treatments, Lusanni Mercedes Acosta Rodriguez

Dissertations

Road user distraction is a major safety concern. The issue is not only for drivers, but also for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians. Every year people are involved in potential and real crashes due to being distracted while walking/crossing streets. Although there are several ways by which pedestrians are distracted, phone use while crossing streets is among the riskier and growing behaviors. Crossing an intersection, especially those with heavy traffic, requires full attention from the individual. Inattentiveness to traffic while on a phone call, texting, web-surfing, listening to music before crossing a street can lead to a fatal crash. …

Evaluation Of An Equivalent Mean Grain Size Diameter To Rationally Predict The Erodibility Of Fine Riverbed Soils In Nebraska, Basil Abualshar

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The erosion of riverbed soils under the bridges is one of the major reasons that cause bridge closure or failure leading to a significant effect on the local economy. One of the commonly used methods to predict the erosion rate of soils is the excess shear stress method, which is based on two parameters describing the erodibility behavior; the erodibility coefficient and the critical shear stress. On the other hand, studies showed that the mean grain size diameter D₅₀ could be correlated to the erosion resistance of soils, usually for cohesionless soils but not for cohesive soils. It is …

Development Of Probabilistic Failure Pressure Models For Pipelines With Single Corrosion Defect, Kiswendsida J. Kere, Qindan Huang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Many models have been developed in the past to predict the failure pressure of a pipeline with a single corrosion defect. However, most of the existing models are conservative and may lead to unnecessary repairs and maintenance in the pipeline risk management. The aim of this study is to develop probabilistic failure pressure prediction models that are suitable for risk assessment of corroded pipelines. The proposed models are developed at three levels of pipe ultimate strength based on a comprehensive database (consist of both experimental and numerical data) established in this study. When comparing with the existing models, it is …

Utilization Of Lidar Technology — When To Use It And Why, Levy Mcintosh, Brad Rister

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Lidar technologies can assist transportation agencies during the design, construction, and maintenance phases of transportation projects. While Lidar has numerous applications, successfully deploying Lidar technologies is only possible if agencies have a solid understanding of their use cases and potential limitations. This report offers guidance the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) can use when making decisions on how to employ Lidar technologies in highway contexts. In addition to reviewing Lidar platforms and comparing Lidar-driven surveying to traditional surveying methods, the report examines challenges related to processing and storing Lidar data and the safety benefits Lidar technologies confer in the field. Brief …

Outdoor Laboratory And Testbed For Bridge Health, Richard L. Wood, Mitra Nasimi, Bowen Yang, Christine E. Wittich, Joshua Steelman, Jay Puckett, Daniel Linzell, Jinying Zhu, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Due to the aging problem of bridges and the limited financial resources in the United States, it is necessary to form a deeper understanding of existing, aging bridges in an effort to extend their in-service life. To address this problem, researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and engineers from the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) identified three, out-of-service bridges (two steel and one concrete) to establish the Nebraska Outdoor Bridge Lab (NOBL). As the first step in NOBL’s development, geometric surveys of the current condition of each bridge were produced using lidar and Structure-from-Motion (SfM). This data contributed to …

Data-Driven Prioritization And Empirical Predictions For Bridge Scour In Nebraska, Richard L. Wood, Awgku Ahmad Hashim B. Awg Bolhasan, Basil Abualshar, Christine E. Wittich, Chung R. Song, Junke Guo, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi, Mitra Nasimi, Yijun Liao

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The effect of scour at the bridge substructure results in an increase in the vulnerability of the overall bridge stability. Previous studies have found that current guidelines are often overly-conservative with respect to scour. This project aims to provide guidance on hydraulic modeling parameters and reasonable scour estimates specific to Nebraska conditions. This will enable engineers to assess bridge sites for scour more precisely for efficient and effective design and countermeasures. Four sites were surveyed for scour changes between the period of December 9, 2020, to April 20, 2021. At these four sites, overland and bathymetry survey data were collected. …

Construction Industry Hesitation In Accepting Wearable Sensing Devices To Enhance Worker, Harrison M. Fugate

Master's Theses

The construction industry is one of the most unsafe industries for workers in the United States. Advancements in wearable technology have been proven to create a safer construction environment. Despite the availability of these devices, use within the construction industry remains low. The objective of this research is to identify and analyze the causes behind the reluctance of the construction industry to implement two specific wearable safety devices, a biometric sensor, and a location tracking system. Device acceptance was analyzed from the perspective of the user (construction field labor) and company decision makers (construction managers). A modified unified theory of …

Improving Interprofessional Environmental Health Education Using The Leave No One Behind Framework, Daniel B. Oerther, Sarah E. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Response Of Elastic Two-Story Steel Moment Frame Scaled Structure Equipped With Viscous Dampers, Garrett L. Barker, Alexander L. Poirier

Architectural Engineering

The authors of this report are Architectural Engineering undergraduate students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Damping is a complex, experimentally derived value that is affected by many structural properties and has a profound effect on the dynamic response of structures. Deducing the inherent damping of a steel moment frame and affecting the damping ratio with viscous dampers are two topics explored in this paper. Dampers are commonly implemented in resilient structures that perform better in a design basis earthquake, reducing the seismic cost and downtime. Undergraduate coursework does not delve into the factors that affect damping and …

Guidelines For The Eeri Seismic Design Competition, Kate Robinson

Architectural Engineering

The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) has been dedicated to exposing undergraduate students to the wide range of interdisciplinary subjects related to earthquake engineering through the Seismic Design Competition. In 2022, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) sent 14 students to Salt Lake City, Utah for the competition – to compete with 31 other teams who all tackled the competition problem statement uniquely. The 2022 team was tasked with the research, design, analysis, and construction of a new structure to be built in downtown Salt Lake City, with the goal of replicating the design sequence of real-world …

Sage Garden Pavilion Shade Structure, Anthony Razouk Karroum, Manuel Bermudez, Matthew Kilbride, Sarah Holt, Marisa Martineau

Architectural Engineering

Form finding, testing, and construction of funicular double-layered shells in an interdisciplinary format with a focus on designing a shade structure for the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Children’s Pavilion. In the process, challenges such as connection design, materiality, storage, and more are explored and refined in relation to shell structures.

Increasing Strength Of Plywood Shear Walls, Elizabeth Claypool, Michelle Dennin

Architectural Engineering

In a recent iteration of an upper-division engineering design lab course at Cal Poly SLO, students were challenged to identify and understand the probable failure mechanism of conventionally built plywood shear walls and hypothesize how they could delay or prevent common failure mechanisms to increase the overall lateral load capacity. After observing the results of a test on a conventional, code specified wall, a solution to integrate metal gauge strapping into edge nailing was developed to address the common failure mechanisms of nail head pull through and panel edge tear out. A shear wall with metal strapping installed between the …

Understanding Ch4 Emissions From Compostables: An Exploration Of Local Ch4 Emissions From Landfilled Compostables And The Efficacy Of Emission Mitigation Via Anaerobic Biogas Digestion, Jordan-Yoosuf Aljbour

University Honors Theses

Methane (CH₄) is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas within the atmosphere, comprising ~16% of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas composition on Earth. It has an ~12-year lifetime relative to its eventual oxidation via reaction with tropospheric hydroxyl radicals (OH), and has a 100-year indirect global warming potential (GWP) approximately ranging between 28-36 [Environmental Protection Agency, 2021]. In recent years, the observed average global concentration of atmospheric CH₄ has increased by ~11.0% from 2020 (~15.3 ppb) to 2021 (~17.0 ppb) [Dlugokencky et al., 1994; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2022]. With …

Extended Weight Systems Pavement Analysis, Gayle Marks, Jon Wilcoxson, Bryan Gibson

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Kentucky established its Extended Weight Coal or Coal By-products Haul Road System (EWCHRS) in 1986. This road network includes segments of the Coal Haul Highway System on which more than 50,000 tons coal or coal byproducts were transported by motor vehicles during the previous calendar year. In the past few years, the state has introduced extended weight (EW) systems focused on petroleum products and metal commodities. Trucks can operate above posted weight limits on these networks by paying annual fees that range from $160 to $2,000. While EW networks benefit motor carriers by improving efficiency, vehicles that exceed weight limits …

Exploring Student Feedback In Order To Help Build An International Summer Program, Gillian Mcafee

Construction Management

Studying abroad presents students with the opportunity to acquire and develop a diverse range of employability and life skills. Exposure to diverse cultures introduces you to innovative ideas and ways of thinking that you might not have thought of otherwise. International travel is extremely beneficial to those working in the construction industry as they can study foreign business practices, architectural styles, and intercultural communication. While Cal Poly has had a successful summer study abroad program in the past, the faculty leaders are looking for student feedback to help better structure the program and in turn hopefully increase enrollment. This project …

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden Bridge Rebuild, Anthony T. Flores

Construction Management

This paper will outline the process of designing, deconstructing, and reconstructing a utility bridge at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden. The San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden’s entrance was recently changed deeper into the property. The old entrance was at the front and was home to a bridge utilized by staff, volunteers, and visitors alike. This project’s goal was to rebuild the utility bridge so that it could be used by the facilities staff and volunteers when working on property. There was one student involved in this project who acted as the designer, performed the preconstruction work, and constructed the …

Paso Robles Police Department Shooting Range Shade Structure, Kevin Jaggers

Construction Management

The Paso Robles Police Department uses a private shooting range about 15 minutes from their station and nearby the Paso Regional Airfield. This range is used for training and certifications and the California Highway Patrol and other local law enforcement organizations have access to do the same. The Paso Police department received a grant from the state to make improvements to the range and they have decided to allow Cal Poly students to use much of the grant to complete senior projects at the range. With the climate in Paso Robles being quite hot, with summer temperatures frequently in the …

Estimating And Project Management For The Construction Of A Visitor Deck At City Farm Slo, Eric Cederstrom

Construction Management

This paper will outline the process of estimating and the project management of a visitor deck that was built at City Farm of San Luis Obispo, a local non-profit. The deck was built for the purpose of providing an area for visitors to observe the agricultural land where City Farm educates the community on ecology, nutrition, and sustainable farming. The construction of the deck was completed by three fourth-year Construction Management majors: Eric Cederstrom, Lane Lagomarsino, and Brett Jones. Each project team member was responsible for their own aspect of the project planning and all members collaborated throughout the entire …

Experimental Investigation On Short Concrete Columns Laterally Strengthened With Ferrocement And Cfrp, Wisam Amer Aules, Yasir Saeed, Hosam Abdullah Al-Azzawi, Franz Rad

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of ferrocement in strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) structures has increased recently. Ferrocement has mostly been used to provide extra confinement for RC columns. However, its performance, especially in combination with CFRP confinement has not yet been fully understood. In this study, a total of fifteen columns were experimentally tested to investigate the effects of using ferrocement confinement in strengthening square RC columns. The combination between CFRP and ferrocement in strengthening RC columns has also been investigated. In addition to providing extra confinement, ferrocement is used to modify the shape of square columns to curvilinear shape, which is more …

Effects Of Experimental Scale On The Adsorption Of Two Pharmaceutical Drugs Detected In Municipal Wastewater Effluent, Michael Moore

Master's Theses

Pharmaceutical drugs are being produced and consumed in increasing quantities every year and are poorly treated by conventional wastewater treatment processes, leading to increasing detection of such compounds in surface water, groundwater, and municipal drinking water. Soil aquifer treatment (SAT) is a promising method for treating these emerging compounds through combined adsorption and degradation of target compounds in soil. This thesis examines the consistency of results from typical studies like adsorption isotherms and soil columns utilized in analysis of SAT performance, across varying experimental scales. The adsorption behavior of two pharmaceuticals was investigated as a function of experimental scale and …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of Mechanical Hinges With Snap-Fit Locking Mechanisms In Rigid Origami Structures, Colby James Scanlon

Master's Theses

The ancient art of ‘origami’ has recently become the source of inspiration for engineers to create structures that can unfold from a compact state to a fully deployed one. For instance, researchers have currently adopted origami designs in various engineering disciplines, including aerospace engineering, robotics, biomedical engineering, and architecture. In particular, architects have been interested in designing origami-inspired rigid walled structures that can be deployed as disaster-relief shelters. This type of design has three main advantages: transportability, constructability, and rigidity. Although there has been increased interests in deployable structures, limited research has been conducted on evaluating their structural performance, specifically …

On Internal Resonance Analysis Of A Double-Cable-Stayed Shallow-Arch Model With Elastic Supports At Both Ends, Xiaoyang Su, Houjun Kang, Tieding Guo, Guirong Grace Yan

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In previous research on the nonlinear dynamics of cable-stayed bridges, boundary conditions were not properly modeled in the modeling. In order to obtain the nonlinear dynamics of cable-stayed bridges more accurately, a double-cable-stayed shallow-arch model with elastic supports at both ends and the initial configuration of bridge deck included in the modeling is developed in this study. The in-plane eigenvalue problems of the model are solved by dividing the shallow arch (SA) into three partitions according to the number of cables and the piecewise functions are taken as trial functions of the SA. Then, the in-plane one-to-one-to-one internal resonance among …

Wavelet Power And Shannon Entropy Applied To Acoustic Emission Signals For Corrosion Detection And Evaluation Of Reinforced Concrete, Jinrui Zhang, Ziye Kang, Dongshuai Hou, Biqin Dong, Hongyan Ma

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Acoustic emission (AE) signals detected from corrosion test on a steel reinforced concrete beam subjected to the coupling effects of corrosive wet-dry cycles and static load are analyzed by power spectral density, wavelet transform, and Shannon entropy. The degradation process of the corroded reinforced concrete beam can be divided into four stages on the basis of the accumulated event number (AEN). Due to the difference of material properties, steel reinforcement and concrete matrix have distinguished AE features. The time-frequency characteristics of AE signals can reflect the microstructural degradation mechanism of steel corrosion and concrete cracking. The corrosion evaluation entails investigating …

Effect Of Biochar On Desiccation Of Marine Soils Under Constant And Cyclic Temperatures, Thellen Kumar Puspanathan, Vihan Shenal Jayawardane, Suvash Chandra Paul, Kong Sih Ying, Sanjay Kumar Shukla, Vivi Anggraini

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Biochar has recently been gaining increasing attention as a stable and sustainable soil amendment material. However, the effect of biochar amendment on the desiccation behaviour of coastal soils has not yet been examined. Consequently, the present study primarily investigated the effect of exposing biochar-amended marine soil (BAS) to constant and cyclic temperatures on its swell–shrink, evaporation and desiccation cracking characteristics. Biochar contents of 1%, 2%, 4% and particle size ranges of PS-1 (600 μm < D ≤ 2000 μm), PS-2 (300 μm < D ≤ 600 μm), PS-3 (D ≤ 75 μm) (D: biochar particle diameter) were employed. It was revealed that the absolute volumetric shrinkage of both unamended and biochar-amended specimens increased as the number of thermal cycles increased. Under continuous heat exposure, 4% (PS-3) BAS in compacted state achieved the maximum reduction in volumetric shrinkage which was 42%. Moreover, under continuous heat exposure, 2% (PS-1) BAS in slurry state achieved the highest reduction in desiccation cracking, which was 73%. The present study highlights the importance of identifying the most effective combination of biochar content and particle size required to achieve a desired outcome, in order to gain the maximum benefit of biochar as an amendment material at the lowest possible cost.