Engineering Commons^™

Polyurethane-Carbon Microfiber Composite Coating For Electrical Heating Of Concrete Pavement Surfaces, Alireza Sassani, Ali Arabzadeh, Halil Ceylan, Sunghwan Kim, Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan, Peter C. Taylor, Ali Nahvi

Ali Nahvi

Electrically-heated pavements have attracted attention as alternatives to the traditional ice/snow removal practices. Electrically conductive polymer-carbon composite coatings provide promising properties for this application. Based on the concept of joule heating, the conductive composite can be utilized as a resistor that generates heat by electric current and increases the surface temperature to melt the ice and snow on the pavement surface. This research investigates the feasibility of applying an electrically conductive composite coating made with a Polyurethane (PU) binder and micrometer-scale carbon fiber (CMF) filler as the electrical heating materials on the surface of Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavements. PU-CMF …

Valuation Of Flexibility And Investment Timing In Airport Infrastructure Projects: Cases In Airport Expansions And Alternate Design Alternate Bid Bidding, Ilker Karaca

Ilker Karaca

Many large infrastructure projects are subject to considerable uncertainty over their revenue streams which makes their valuations particularly challenging. When project scalability can be altered as new information is revealed over the course of a project’s lifecycle, the presence of uncertainty can, in fact, provide option values that are ignored with static Net Present Value (NPV) analyses. To achieve these benefits, however, a better understanding of volatility is of the essence. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate how a better understanding of the business risks could facilitate the valuation of flexibility options in investment timing and engineering design. It also details …

Strengthening Of Continuous-Span Composite Bridges Using Post-Tensioning And Superimposed Trusses , Hisham Ahmed El-Arabaty

Hisham Ahmed

The need for upgrading understrength bridges in the United States has been well documented in the literature. In this thesis, two methods of strengthening are presented: post-tensioning of the positive moment regions of the bridge stringers and the addition of superimposed trusses at the piers. The use of these two systems is an efficient method of reducing flexural overstresses in undercapacity bridges. The objective of the research described in this thesis was to develop a design methodology to assist bridge engineers with designing a strengthening system to obtain the desired stress reductions. In addition, one such strengthening system was designed …

Investigation Of The Effect Of Vehicle Color On Safety, Deogratias Eustace, Fayez Khalaf Alanazi, Peter W. Hovey

Peter Hovey

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of The Effect Of Vehicle Color On Safety, Deogratias Eustace, Fayez Khalaf Alanazi, Peter W. Hovey

Deogratias Eustace

No abstract provided.

Modeling Socio-Economic Determinants Of Traffic Fatalities, Amin Azimian, Deogratias Eustace

Deogratias Eustace

Over several decades, traffic growth has caused an increased number of traffic crashes, which are associated with economic losses and human sufferings. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [1] in 2016 there were a total of 34,247 fatal traffic crashes in the United States that resulted into 37,133 fatalities. Risk factors relating to the occurrence of fatal and injury severity of motor vehicle crashes have been extensively studied. Most studies [2-7] that have attempted to model the occurrences of traffic crashes and fatalities have been mainly confined to factors related to driver characteristics, roadway geometry characteristics, traffic characteristics, …

Wastewater Pipe Consequence Of Failure Model For Risk-Based Asset Management Using Analytic Hierarchy Process, Greta Vladeanu, John Matthews

John C. Matthews

Feasibility Investigation Of Upgrading Gravel Road To Otta Seal Surface: An Economic Analysis Approach, Ali Nahvi, Yang Zhang, Ali Arabzadeh, Halil Ceylan, Sunghwan Kim, Charles T. Jahren, Douglas D. Gransberg, Sharif Y. Gushgari

Ali Nahvi

The Norwegian Road Authorities desired that a surface treatment be cost-effective to provide a faster return on investment, perform (as perceived by the road user) in a manner similar to conventional bituminous surfacing, and comply with the following requirements: • Be cheap and easy to implement • Utilize locally-available aggregates • Be impervious to prevent water incursion into moisture-susceptible base material • Be very flexible, durable, and easy to maintain.

Such a bituminous surface treatment, referred to as in 1963, and initial field trials were carried out during 1963-1965 in the Otta Valley, Norway. Although Nordic countries, Asia, Africa, New …

Otta Seal Construction For Asphalt Pavement Resurfacing, Sharif Y. Gushgari, Yang Zhang, Ali Nahvi, Halil Ceylan, Sunghwan Kim

Ali Nahvi

Otta seal resurfacing methods have been widely demonstrated for unpaved roads and road rehabilitation in a few states in the U.S. as well as in Scandinavia and Africa. Application of Otta seal over a deteriorated hot mix asphalt (HMA) surface has been considered as the feasible concept that has not been applied for real construction. In this study, a double-layer Otta seal construction over HMA surface was monitored. The applied materials for the construction were introduced. The following performance of the constructed Otta seal layers was evaluated by measuring the international roughness index (IRI) and dust. The road IRI did …

Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization Of Super Hydrophobic Coatings On Asphalt Concrete Surfaces, Ali Nahvi, Mohammad Kazem Sadoughi, Ali Arabzadeh, Alireza Sassani, Chao Hu, Halil Ceylan, Sunghwan Kim

Ali Nahvi

Conventional snow removal strategies add direct and indirect expenses to the economy through profit lost due to passenger delays costs, pavement durability issues, contaminating the water runoff, and so on. The use of superhydrophobic (super-water-repellent) coating methods is an alternative to conventional snow and ice removal practices for alleviating snow removal operations issues. As an integrated experimental and analytical study, this work focused on optimizing superhydrophobicity and skid resistance of hydrophobic coatings on asphalt concrete surfaces. A layer-by-layer (LBL) method was utilized for spray depositing polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) on an asphalt concrete at different spray times and variable dosages of PTFE. …

New Mixture Additives For Sustainable Bituminous Pavements, Gabriel Nsengiyumva, Kommidi Santosh, Yong-Rak Kim, Helan Xu, Yiqi Yang Phd

Gabriel Nsengiyumva

Evaluation Of Testing Methods For Tracking Cipp Liners’ Life-Cycle Performance, Shaurav Alam, John Matthews

John C. Matthews

No abstract provided.

Dense-Graded Aggregate Base Gradation Influencing Rutting Model Predictions, Issam I.A. Qamhia, Liang Chern Chow, Debakanta Mishra, Erol Tutumluer

Debakanta Mishra

This paper presents findings from an ongoing research study at the University of Illinois focused on developing and calibrating an improved permanent deformation model for unbound aggregate materials through laboratory testing and characterization. The project scope included testing sixteen aggregate materials, commonly used in the state of North Carolina for pavement base courses, in the laboratory through monotonic and repeated load triaxial testing. This paper primarily focuses on quantifying effects of aggregate gradation on permanent deformation behavior. To accomplish this, four materials were tested at both: (1) “source gradations,” i.e. original gradations from quarry, and (2) an “engineered gradation,” i.e., …

Evaluation Of The Role Of Driver’S Knowledge Of Who Has The Right-Of-Way Contributes To Interstate On-Ramp Crashes, Deogratias Eustace, Vamsi Krishna Indupuru

Deogratias Eustace

The knowledge of drivers on who has the right-of-way between the one on mainline lanes of a freeway and the one entering the freeway through on-ramp junction lane was evaluated. In addition, drivers’ opinions on how to make the on-ramp junctions safer were collected. A survey instrument with 21 items requesting drivers’ information in regard with demographics, freeway driving experience, knowledge of right-of-way and merging practices was used for data collection. The results show that crashes are relatively rare events and for some reasons, most of them never happen but result into near misses, which can not be reported and …

Coupling Of Integrated Biosphere Simulator To Regional Climate Model Version 3, Jonathan M. Winter, Jeremy S. Pal, Elfatih A. B. Eltahir

Jeremy Pal

A description of the coupling of Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) to Regional Climate Model version 3 (RegCM3) is presented. IBIS introduces several key advantages to RegCM3, most notably vegetation dynamics, the coexistence of multiple plant functional types in the same grid cell, more sophisticated plant phenology, plant competition, explicit modeling of soil/plant biogeochemistry, and additional soil and snow layers.

A single subroutine was created that allows RegCM3 to use IBIS for surface physics calculations. A revised initialization scheme was implemented for RegCM3–IBIS, including an IBIS-specific prescription of vegetation and soil properties.

To illustrate the relative strengths and weaknesses of RegCM3–IBIS, …

Large-Scale Flexible Membrane For Automatic Strain Monitoring Of Transportation Infrastructure, Simon Laflamme, Venkata D. Kolipara, Hussam S. Saleem, Randall L. Geiger

Randall Geiger

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of transportation infrastructures is a complex task, typically conducted by visual inspection due to the technical and economical constrains of existing health monitoring technologies. It results that health monitoring is highly dependent on scheduling and on the judgment of the inspectors, which can be costly and ineffective. Thus, it is fundamental to automate the SHM process to allow timely inspection, maintenance, and management of transportation infrastructure. The authors propose a flexible membrane that can be deployed over large surfaces, at low cost, for automatic and continuous monitoring of strains. The membrane, termed sensing skin, is constituted …

Development Of A Wireless Mems Multifunction Sensor System And Field Demonstration Of Embedded Sensors For Monitoring Concrete Pavements, Halil Ceylan, Liang Dong, Shuo Yang, Yueyi Jiao, Sunghwan Kim, Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan, Peter Taylor, Seval Yavas

Liang Dong

Pavements tend to deteriorate with time under repeated traffic and/or environmental loading. By detecting pavement distresses and damage early enough, it is possible for transportation agencies to develop more effective pavement maintenance and rehabilitation programs and thereby achieve significant cost and time savings. The structural health monitoring (SHM) concept can be considered as a systematic method for assessing the structural state of pavement infrastructure systems and documenting their condition. Over the past several years, this process has traditionally been accomplished through the use of wired sensors embedded in bridge and highway pavement. However, the use of wired sensors has limitations …

Smart Sensing Skin For Detection And Localization Of Fatigue Cracks, Sari Kharroub, Simon Laflamme, Chunhui Song, Daji Qiao, Brent M. Phares, Jian Li

Daji Qiao

Fatigue cracks on steel components may have strong consequences on the structure's serviceability and strength. Their detection and localization is a difficult task. Existing technologies enabling structural health monitoring have a complex link signal-to-damage or have economic barriers impeding large-scale deployment. A solution is to develop sensing methods that are inexpensive, scalable, with signals that can directly relate to damage. The authors have recently proposed a smart sensing skin for structural health monitoring applications to mesosystems. The sensor is a thin film soft elastomeric capacitor (SEC) that transduces strain into a measurable change in capacitance. Arranged in a network configuration, …

Urban Waterways And Waterfront Spaces: Social Construction Ofa Common Good, Anne Taufen Wessells, Raul P. Lejano

Anne Taufen

No abstract provided.

In-Plane Loading Of Brick Veneer Over Wood Shear Walls, Elias Anis Toubia, James M. Lintz

Elias Toubia

In the design of wood stud walls with brick veneer, current design building codes specify that the wood stud wall should resist all in-plane and out-of-plane loads (IBC 2009). For out-of-plane loads, this assumption is entirely justified as the brittle brick veneer will crack and lose its capacity to resist bending. For in-plane loads, the brick veneer is significantly stiffer than the wood shear wall, and the veneer is unlikely to crack before the wood shear wall reaches its allowable capacity. The assumption that the wood shear wall resists the entire load is based on the further assumption that the …

Thermal And Fatigue Testing Of Fiber Reinforced Polymer Tie Connectors Used In Concrete Sandwich Walls , Anthony William Post

Anthony Williams

The purpose of this research program was to determine the strength, strain, fatigue, temperature, and other corresponding behavioral characteristics of concrete sandwich wall panels containing the new Delta TieRTM fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) tie connector produced by Dayton/Richmond, a brand of Dayton Superior. The scope of this program included a matrix of three full-scale 40'-0'' wall panels subjected to a 100°F temperature differential, and a matrix of six elemental specimens, three with the ties oriented in the strong direction (parallel tie orientation) and three with the ties oriented in the weak direction (perpendicular tie orientation), subjected to cyclic load tests …

Data Provisioning For The Object Modeling System (Oms), Jack R. Carlson, Olaf David, Wes J. Lloyd, George H. Leavesley, Ken W. Rojas, Timothy R. Green, Mazdak Arabi, Lucas Yaege, Hom Kipka

Wes Lloyd

The Object Modelling System (OMS) platform supports initiatives to build or re-factor agro-environmental models and deploy them in different business contexts as model services on cloud computing platforms. Whether traditional desktop, client-server, or emerging cloud deployments, success especially at the enterprise level relies on stable and efficient data provisioning to the models. In this paper we describe recent experience and trends with tools and services deployed to cloud platforms. Also, systematic, sustained data stewardship and alignment with standards organizations impart stability to data provisioning efforts.

The Virtual Machine (Vm) Scaler: An Infrastructure Manager Supporting Environmental Modeling On Iaas Clouds, Wes J. Lloyd, Olaf David, Mazdak Arabi, James C. Ascough Ii, Timothy R. Green, Jack R. Carlson, Ken W. Rojas

Wes Lloyd

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds provide a new medium for deployment of environmental modeling applications. Harnessing advancements in virtualization, IaaS clouds can provide dynamic scalable infrastructure to better support scientific modeling computational demands. Providing scientific modeling “as-a-service” requires dynamic scaling of server infrastructure to adapt to changing user workloads. This paper presents the Virtual Machine (VM) Scaler, an autonomic resource manager for IaaS Clouds. We have developed VM-Scaler, a REST/JSON-based web services application which supports infrastructure provisioning and management to support scientific modeling for the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) [Lloyd et al. 2012]. VM-Scaler harnesses the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) …

Metadata For Describing Water Models, Mohamed M. Morsy, Jonathan L. Goodall, Christina Bandaragoda, Anthony M. Castronova, Jane Greenberg

Anthony Castronova

Computer models are widely used in hydrology and water resources management. A large variety of models exist, each tailored to address specific challenges related to hydrologic science and water resources management. When scientists and engineers apply one of these models to address a specific question, they must devote significant effort to set up, calibrate, and evaluate that model instance built for some place and time. In many cases, there is a benefit to sharing these computer models and associated datasets with the broader scientific community. Core to model reuse in any context is metadata describing the model. A standardized metadata …

Civilizing The Civil Engineer: How A History Course Can Serve As A Curriculum Capstone, John Alfred Heitmann

John A. Heitmann

Beginning in 1989 and then every other year thereafter, a unique course dealing specifically with the history of civil engineering has been taught to all civil engineering majors at the University of Dayton. What has evolved over time -- in response to student feedback, ongoing reform in the curriculum, and a maturing of faculty expertise -- is a course in the history of civilization that has as its major focus the discipline of civil engineering. In reality, what happens in the classroom is a far broader learning experience than either the disciplines of history or civil engineering could provide standing …

Optimal Planning For Traffic Signal Alternative Power Sources In Signal Network, Mo Zhao, Anuj Sharma

Mo Zhao

Dark signals and flash operation during traffic signal malfunction can degrade the efficiency and safety at an intersection warranting a signalized control. Alternative power sources, such as an uninterruptable power supply system, can provide power protection as well as power back-up to the traffic control systems. The policy makers, with limited budgets and unlimited demands, need a tool to choose signalized intersections that can be provided with backup power. They also need to decide the battery capacity at these intersections. At present, there exists no such tool that can help to make an optimal choice for capacity and installation of …

A Lean Modeling Protocol For Evaluating Green Project Delivery, Leidy E. Klotz, Michael Horman, Mark Bodenschatz

Leidy E. Klotz

The first vital step to leaning an operation is to model or map the processes used to deliver value in that operation. This allows the requisite understanding of where waste and non value-adding activity exists, and provides the foundation for improvement. Current protocols for modeling operations present the basic tenets for lean mapping, but tend to be based in manufacturing language, and are not easily adapted to capital facilities projects. “Green” or “sustainable” capital projects delivered using current project delivery systems seem to be laden with hidden waste. These projects tend to be more challenging to deliver due increased levels …

Meeting Engineering Program Objectives Through Service Learning Opportunities In Developing Countries, Jeffrey M. Plumblee, Lansford Bell, Leidy E. Klotz

Leidy E. Klotz

The civil engineering profession, in an adaptive reaction to emerging roles for civil engineers, is recognizing the need for new engineers to possess a more robust skill set than just the typical design background. This paper describes the efforts of Clemson Engineers for Developing Countries (CEDC) to fulfill the more nontraditional and often unaddressed “learning outcomes” noted by ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the 21st Century as important prerequisites for licensure. The learning outcomes are addressed through ongoing international service learning projects in Cange, Haiti. The paper focuses on the following four outcomes and their fulfillment methods: leadership, …

Probabilistic Approaches To Stability And Deformation Problems In Braced Excavation, Zhe Luo

Zhe Luo

This dissertation is aimed at applying probabilistic approaches to evaluating the basal-heave stability and the excavation-induced wall and ground movements for serviceability assessment of excavation in clays. The focuses herein are the influence of spatial variability of soil parameters and small sample size on the results of the probabilistic analysis, and Bayesian updating of soil parameters using field observations in braced excavations. Simplified approaches for reliability analysis of basal-heave in a braced excavation in clay considering the effect of spatial variability in random fields are presented. The proposed approaches employ the variance reduction technique (or more precisely, equivalent variance method) …

A Computer Program For Optimal Control Of Water Supply Pump Stations: Development And Testing, Donald V. Chase

Donald V. Chase

This report presents an optimal control methodology designed to reduce the electrical consumption and operating costs at Army water supply pumping stations. The methodology, contained in a computer program called Optimal Control of Pumping Stations (OCOPS), enables water utility managers and operators to reduce the electrical consumption at pumping stations while maintaining adequate storage and system pressures for fire protection. OCOPS can be applied to any water distribution system and is not limited to any number of pumps, pump stations, or storage tanks within the system. The optimal control strategy developed is based on electricity unit charges, but can be …