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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Port-Of-Entry Simulation Model For Potential Wait Time Reduction And Air Quality Improvement: A Case Study At The Gateway International Bridge In Brownsville, Texas, Usa, Benjamin Stewart, Hiram Moya, Amit U. Raysoni, Esmeralda Mendez, Matthew Vechione Mar 2023

Port-Of-Entry Simulation Model For Potential Wait Time Reduction And Air Quality Improvement: A Case Study At The Gateway International Bridge In Brownsville, Texas, Usa, Benjamin Stewart, Hiram Moya, Amit U. Raysoni, Esmeralda Mendez, Matthew Vechione

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The mathematical study known as queueing theory has recently become a major point of interest for many government agencies and private companies for increasing efficiency. One such application is vehicle queueing at an international port-of-entry (POE). When queueing, fumes from idling vehicles negatively affect the overall health and well-being of the community, especially the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents that work at the POEs. As such, there is a need to analyze and optimize the border crossing queuing operations to minimize wait times and number of vehicles in the queue and, thus, reduce the vehicle emissions. For this …


Defect Detection In Freight Railcar Tapered-Roller Bearings Using Vibration Techniques, Constantine Tarawneh, Joseph Montalvo, Brent Wilson Feb 2021

Defect Detection In Freight Railcar Tapered-Roller Bearings Using Vibration Techniques, Constantine Tarawneh, Joseph Montalvo, Brent Wilson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Currently, there are two types of defect detection systems used to monitor the health of freight railcar bearings in service: wayside hot-box detection systems and trackside acoustic detection systems. These systems have proven to be inefficient in accurately determining bearing health, especially in the early stages of defect development. To that end, a prototype onboard bearing condition monitoring system has been developed and validated through extensive laboratory testing and a designated field test in 2015 at the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. in Pueblo, CO. The devised system can accurately and reliably characterize the health of bearings based on developed vibration …


Real-Time Road Hazard Information System, Carlos Pena-Caballero, Dong-Chul Kim, Adolfo Gonzalez, Osvaldo Castellanos, Angel A. Cantu, Jungseok Ho Sep 2020

Real-Time Road Hazard Information System, Carlos Pena-Caballero, Dong-Chul Kim, Adolfo Gonzalez, Osvaldo Castellanos, Angel A. Cantu, Jungseok Ho

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Infrastructure is a significant factor in economic growth for systems of government. In order to increase economic productivity, maintaining infrastructure quality is essential. One of the elements of infrastructure is roads. Roads are means which help local and national economies be more productive. Furthermore, road damage such as potholes, debris, or cracks is the cause of many on-road accidents that have cost the lives of many drivers. In this paper, we propose a system that uses Convolutional Neural Networks to detect road degradations without data pre-processing. We utilize the state-of-the-art object detection algorithm, YOLO detector for the system. First, we …


Structural Integrity Of Conventional And Modified Railroad Bearing Adapters For Onboard Monitoring, Joseph Montalvo, Alexis Trevino, Arturo A. Fuentes, Constantine Tarawneh Mar 2015

Structural Integrity Of Conventional And Modified Railroad Bearing Adapters For Onboard Monitoring, Joseph Montalvo, Alexis Trevino, Arturo A. Fuentes, Constantine Tarawneh

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a detailed study of the structural integrity of conventional and modified railroad bearing adapters for onboard monitoring applications. Freight railcars rely heavily on weigh bridges and stations to determine cargo load. As a consequence, most load measurements are limited to certain physical railroad locations. This limitation provided an opportunity for an optimized sensor that could potentially deliver significant insight on bearing condition monitoring as well as load information. Bearing adapter modifications (e.g. cut outs) were necessary to house the sensor and, thus, it is imperative to determine the reliability of the modified railroad bearing adapter, which will …