Engineering Commons^™

Understanding The Effects Of Climate On Airfield Pavement Deterioration Rates, Justin C. Meihaus

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past two decades, pavement engineers at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center have noticed the majority of identified distresses from PCI airfield surveys are climate related. To verify these trends, a comprehensive analysis of the current airfield pavement distress database was accomplished based on a climate region perspective. A four-zone regional climatic model was created for the United States using geospatial interpolation techniques and climate data acquired from WeatherBank Inc. Once the climatic regional model was developed, the climate information for each installation was imported into the Air Force pavement distress database within PAVER. Utilizing the pavement condition …

Starch Resin Moisture Level Effect On Injection Molding Processability And Molded Part Mechanical Properties With Pure Starch Resin And Polymer Blends, Jordan M. Ellingson

Theses and Dissertations

The current and forecasted global consumption of plastic packaging and products through the 21st century combined with the already reported and growing negative impact of plastics on the environment due to plastics being synthesized from nonrenewable resources that do not biodegrade is of serious concern. However, recent advances in starch technology including the development of thermoplastic starch (TPS) materials —polymers that are both renewable and biodegradable—have brought hope to reducing this impact. The mechanical properties of thermoplastic starch have often been improved by blending with synthetic polymers. One issue that arises with blending is volatilization of the melt from moisture …

Bringing To Life The World’S Tallest Structure, Jonathan Weigand

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Intended as the centerpiece of constructional developments in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa now stands as the tallest building ever constructed. The uniquely designed foundation consists of a concrete raft supported by a cast-in-place pile system protected by waterproofing membrane to inhibit corrosion. The structural design integrates high-performance reinforced concrete and steel and incorporates an engineered “Y” shape that limits the lateral wind pressure on the building. Engineers applied the latest advancements in high-rise technology to develop an optimized construction plan that consisted of segmented tasks that promoted the staff to work at a quick yet manageable pace. This article details …

Location-Allocation Optimization Of Supply Chain Distribution Networks: A Case Study, Mark Nicholas Helberg

Theses and Dissertations

The location of distribution centers is an important strategic decision in supply chain design, particularly as it relates to service quality, productivity, and profitability of the firm. There has been extensive research performed on distribution location models which require the use of complex algorithms and assumptions that make use of these models difficult in practice for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have limited capital and resources. Studies have also failed to capture and quantify potential business results of using more sophisticated methods. In this study, a deterministic and static location-allocation model is designed using a prototype software tool. The …

Rumble Stripes: Opportunity To Improve Safety And Retroreflectivity, Thomas M. Brennan Jr., Alan Plunkett, William Smith

Purdue Road School

Painted rumble stripes can provide safety benefits as well as improved retroreflectivy and paint durability. This presentation covers specifications and construction techniques. A case study will describe the recent application of rumble stripes on US 231 between Crawfordsville and Lafayette, Indiana.

Indot Qc/Qa Earthwork And Intelligent Compaction Us 31/Us 35 At Kokomo, Kurt Sommer

Purdue Road School

This presentation discusses a 2012 case study using QC/QA Earthwork Specifications and Intelligent Compaction Rollers for soils.

INDOT Contract IR-30111 in Greenfield District on US 31/ US 35 at Kokomo used this process in 2012 and continuing into 2013 for the control and acceptance of approximately 1 million cubic yards of earthwork.

Design And Construction Process Management, David Brown

Purdue Road School

New approaches for improving design and construction processes have been used recently. Innovative methods for managing the requirements and quality of these processes will be discussed. A systematic data centric approach will be discussed as well as the processes of separating progress from performance. It discusses the integration of these processes in the planning, risk analysis, design, submission, construction, inspection, quality control and documentation phases.

The Safe Installation And Removal Of Temorary Traffic Control, Bob Karrick

Purdue Road School

This session provides an overview of the safe installation and removal of temporary traffic control.

Current State Of Wireless Information Technology In The Construction Industry In Ohio, Alan Atalah, Aaron Seymour

Construction Management Faculty Publications

Construction projects are increasingly getting complex and fragmented in nature, yet contractors persistently face shortened project durations and reduced budgets. Timely delivery of accurate and reliable information among all project participants is critical and important because information is the foundation upon which decisions are made and projects are estimated, planned, monitored, and controlled. Recent developments in technology promise to introduce efficiencies that were not previously available to the industry. This study seeks to identify the current state of wireless information technology through the analysis of quantitative data from a web-based survey that represents the views of the respondents on the …

Case History Of Microtunneling Through A Very Soft Soil Condition, Alan Atalah

Construction Management Faculty Publications

Waikiki Public Bath Force Main Replacement Project consists of 1,037 m of 400 mm force main that carries the wastewater from the Public Bath pump station to a gravity sewer on the Kuhio Avenue. This force main transports wastewater underneath Kalakaua Ave, very close to some of the most expensive real state in the world. This area is the heart of Waikiki beach, and it is full of beach resorts, five star hotels, shopping, etc. The soil strata can be described as 2.50 to 3.00 m deep of beach sand on top of half a meter of a very hard …

Design And Construction Cost Of A Water Line Underneath I-75 In Bowling Green, Ohio, V. Goduto, Alan Atalah

Construction Management Faculty Publications

The City of Bowling Green, OH operates a water distribution system that delivers high quality water. The system operates optimally in a grid system; larger, “trunk water mains,” are installed in a grid pattern on the outer limits of the system with smaller lines branching from the larger lines. Almost all the residential, industrial, and commercial areas in Bowling Green were originally limited to the west side of I-75. However over the past few decades, these areas grew on the east side of I-75. Two 24” water mains crossed underneath I-75 at the central and south part of the city …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Using Model Building In Structural Engineering To Enhance Understanding Of Construction Principles And Methods, Niall Holmes, Henry Mullen

Articles

This paper presents a new model building exercise in a second year module in the Department of Civil & Structural Engineering in the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). The activity aimed to improve students’ understanding of structural engineering, construction principles and methods. It allowed students to practically apply lecture material and construct a scaled model giving them an opportunity to study and visualise a real structure and generate their own ideas on how it should be assembled within a constructivist active learning environment. As a result, lectures were found to be more interactive and students more engaged in the discussions …

Designing A Framework For Exchanging Partial Sets Of Bim Information On A Cloud-Based Service, Alan Redmond

Doctoral

The rationale behind this research study was based on the recognised difficulty of exchanging data at element or object level due to the inefficiencies of compatible hardware and software. Interoperability depicts the need to pass data between applications, allowing multiple types of experts and applications to contribute to the work at hand. The only way that software file exchanges between two applications can produce consistent data and change management results for large projects is through a building model repository. The overall aim of this thesis was to design and develop an integrated process that would advance key decisions at an …

Resilience Quantification And Its Application To A Residential Building Subject To Hurricane Winds, Berna E. Tokgoz, Adrian V. Gheorghe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In order to overcome negative consequences of a disaster, buildings and infrastructures need to be resilient. After a disaster occurs, they must get back to their normal operations as quickly as possible. Buildings and infrastructures should incorporate both pre-event (preparedness and mitigation) and post-event (response and recovery) resilience activities to minimize negative effects of a disaster. Quantitative approaches for measuring resilience for buildings and infrastructures need to be developed. A proposed methodology for quantification of resilience of a given building type based on different hurricane categories is presented. The formulation for the resilience quantification is based on a model embedding …

Library Holdings (2013) Ce Report, Georgia Southern University, Zach S. Henderson

Program Accreditation Reports (2013-2023)

This document is a part of the 2013 Library Holdings Report for the Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia Southern University. The report includes data for the library resources and services supporting the research of the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing, Department of Civil Engineering and Construction.

Applying Cognitive Principles To The Delivery Of Engineering Information By Different Mediums, Gabriel B. Dadi

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Construction project performance and worker productivity are often tied to the availability and effective presentation of information, tools, materials, and equipment. While advancements in technology have improved much of the processes on a construction project, the medium of information dissemination at the construction work face has consistently relied on the use of two dimensional drawings and specifications.

Industry initiatives are driving increased collaboration through three dimensional BIM (Building Information Modeling) models. However, the added dimension partially loses its effect when presented on a two dimensional computer monitor. Other computer forms of presentation intended for mobility (PDAs, laptops, and tablets) can …

Mechanical Concrete, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Mechanical Concrete® is a way of binding crushed stone aggregates together into a load bearing cellular building unit. The Mechanical Concrete® unit can support compressive loads and resist lateral soil pressure.

Greenpatch® - Cold Mix Asphalt, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

GreenPatch® is environmentally friendly cold asphalt that is a direct replacement for traditional cold patch in repairing asphalt pavements. This revolutionary breakthrough in the cold asphalt industry contains no petroleum based softeners such as diesel, toluene, kerosene, and naphthalene found in conventional cold asphalt that pose serious threats to human health and the environment.

Tire Log™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The Tire Log™ is a patented innovation made from waste tires with a unique and energy efficient approach to recycling tires. Re-Tread Products (RTP) process takes full advantage of the embedded energy in tires that is wasted in conventional tire recycling that primarily involves the grinding, burying or burning of waste tires.

Bubbledeck, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Conventional horizontal concrete slabs are heavy that limit their spans. Enhancement of span results in addition of beams that increases the cost of the structure. Thus, there is a need for a technology that will help in increasing the span by reducing weight of the span. BubbleDeck is a revolutionary construction method that virtually eliminates concrete from the middle of a floor slab between columns that does not perform any structural function, thereby dramatically reducing structural dead weight. BubbleDeck is based on a patented technique - the direct way of linking air and steel.

Bs News January/February

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Multi Geophysical Parameters For Earthquake Forecasting, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

This article focuses on the importance of keeping the public aware of earthquake forecasting. This article also encourages proper seismic codes to design buildings in the seismic-prone regions because such practice can save lives and property associated with an earthquake.

Documenting Postural Changes And Repetition Among Violin Players And Their Influence In The Development Of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Cristina Handal

LSU Master's Theses

The objective of this study was to document the changes in posture and the number of wrist and forearm repetitions among violin/viola players during an experiment session to attempt to understand the development of musculoskeletal disorders. Also, the perception of discomfort and pain felt by the violin/viola players in the past and the number that had been diagnosed with a disorder was documented. Finally, possible correlations were calculated between pain/discomfort with variables like the number of years playing the violin, hours of practice/day, frequency of pain, gender, and dominant hand and among different pain/discomfort variables (pain/discomfort before the experiment, after …

Automatic Object Recognition And Registration Of Dynamic Heavy Equipment Using A Hybrid Ladar System, Mengmeng Gai

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

It has been a challenging subject to recognize dynamic objects from a scattered work environment because large and complex 3D site data obtained by a laser scanner makes it difficult to process itself in real or near real time. This thesis introduces a model-based automatic object recognition and registration framework, Projection-Recognition-Projection (PRP), to assist heavy equipment operators in rapidly perceiving 3D working environment at dynamic construction sites. In this study, a digital camera and a hybrid laser scanner were used to rapidly recognize and register dynamic target objects in a 3D space by separating target object’s point cloud data from …

Best Practices Using Building Information Modeling In Commercial Construction, Simon Beveridge

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an increase in adoption of building information modeling (BIM) by commercial contractors over the past few years but there is not a clear indication of current application or the frequency of each use. This research was undertaken to determine the frequency and best practices of using BIM in commercial construction. Leading commercial contracting firms were contacted and employees were selected to complete a telephone survey that was designed to determine how they are using BIM. It was found that BIM is being used with more frequency on projects, with plans to continue to implement it even further …

Dynamic Vulnerability Assessment Of Highway And Railway Bridges, Mehdi Mohseni

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

Dynamic loads can cause severe damage to bridges, and lead to malfunction of transportation networks. A comprehensive understanding of the nature of the dynamic loads and the structural response of bridges can prevent undesired failures while keeping the cost-safety balance. Dissimilar to the static behavior, the dynamic response of bridges depends on several structural parameters such as material properties, damping and mode shapes. Furthermore, dynamic load characteristics can significantly change the structural response. In most cases, complexity and involvement of numerous parameters require the designer to investigate the bridge response via a massive numerical study.

This dissertation targets three main …

Applications Of Cobb-Douglas Production Function In Construction Time-Cost Analysis, Ashkan Hassani

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Cobb-Douglas Production Function was widely used in economics and productivity studies across many sectors. The function’s quantitative modeling of resource inputs and production outputs is appealing to the research domain of construction management. In this thesis we explored this function’s application in construction schedule crashing and project risk analysis related to duration of construction projects. Existing research on construction time-cost tradeoff issues rarely explore the origin of the crashing cost which is defined as the cost needed to shorten the project to the desired duration. In the existing literature crashing cost function was either assumed without much justification, or came …

The Implementation Of A Versatile Pseudodynamic Hybrid Simulation For Seismic Evaluation Of Structural Systems, Chelsea Griffith

Masters Theses

Pseudodynamic hybrid simulation technique was developed to evaluate structural seismic performance by physically testing the critical portion with the remaining structure simulated using a numerical model in the computer. An incremental approach was adopted in developing the control scheme to suit multiple testing facilities and test specimens. First the small scale, predictable specimen was utilized to investigate techniques of improving stability, slowing down the loading rate and triggering the accurate force measurement in a series of at benchmark scale experiments in the Laboratory of Earthquake and Structural Simulation at Western Michigan University (WMU). A step/hold command scheme was developed and …

In-Plane Shear Resistance Of Sustainable Structural Walls With Large Openings, Matija Radovic

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Shear walls are primary structural systems that support building against lateral loads (tornadoes and hurricanes). Even though concrete shear walls are the most efficient lateral resisting system, they are rarely used in a residential construction. The reasons for why contractors do not use concrete walls in residential construction were due to higher construction cost and slower construction paces. This study proposes building and testing residential concrete structural wall system that is energy efficient, cost competitive and structurally safe.

In order to decrease environmental impact of the residential construction process, this study proposed implementing sustainability concept while building residential structures. The …