Engineering Commons^™

Deficiencies In The Physics Of Existing Operational Wave And Surge Models, D. T. Resio

Ocean Waves Workshop

No abstract provided.

A New Real-Time Ocean Observing Station On Ship Shoal On Louisiana Shelf, Chunyan Li, Peter Luo, Brian Milan, Wei Huang

Ocean Waves Workshop

One of the major challenges that we are facing in the northern Gulf of Mexico coastal area is the need of a better and reliable offshore met-ocean real time data collection system that supports the mission of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and other federal and local agencies for coastal management, protection, and restoration, especially along the Louisiana coast. This area has a suite of environmental problems that require the acquisition of real time data for immediate assessment or model-based assessment and predictions that rely on this kind of data. One such system providing this kind of data is …

Update In Us Navy Global Wave Model Forecasting, J. D. Dykes, W. E. Rogers, D. Wang

Ocean Waves Workshop

No abstract provided.

Ocean Waves Workshop 2019 Session 2 Notes, Kaus Raghukumar, Sam Mcwilliams

Ocean Waves Workshop

No abstract provided.

Directional Spectrum Measurements By The Spotter: A New Developed Wave Buoy, Kaus Raghukumar, Grace Chang, Frank Spada, Tim Jannsen

Ocean Waves Workshop

The Spotter is an accurate, low-cost, easily deployable and robust solar powered wave buoy recently developed by Sofar Technologies (formerly Spoondrift). Spotter reduces costs and complexity of surface wave and current measurements, which can be useful for academic, military, and commercial research into surface wave and wave-driven dynamics. We performed a series of validation tests and research experiments with the Spoondrift Spotter. The low-cost and compact Spotter makes it easy to deploy arrays of wave buoys which was previously not feasible (or cost prohibitive) with traditional wave buoys. A well-designed array can provide a direct measurement of the directional wave …

Innovations In Metocean Sensors, Pieter Smit, T. T. Janssen

Ocean Waves Workshop

Real-time observations are critical to understand, predict and estimate the impact of extreme weather events such as extratropical hurricanes and storms. Remote sensing, moored wave buoys and advances in predictive models have greatly advanced understanding and predictive capability of extreme ocean weather. However, due to cost and complexity of traditional moored buoys, in-situ networks are typically sparse and often close to shore and not well suited to drive predictive models over meaningful geophysical scales. Here we will discuss ongoing efforts to extend the capability of the Sofar Spotter to measure marine boundary layer dynamics. With the advancement to more portable …

Ndbc Ocean Wave Observation System Update, Rodney Riley, Randy Stewart, Steven Dinapoli

Ocean Waves Workshop

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) is modifying its ocean wave observation system due to parts obsolescence. The modified system is named Ocean Wave Linux (OWL). OWL will replace the NDBC’s older and now obsolete Digital Directional Wave Module (DDWM). Once OWL completes operational verification, the DDWM will be phased out of the NDBC’s operational weather buoy network.

Automated Reverse Engineering Of Automotive Can Bus Controls, Charles Barron Kirby, Bryson Payne

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This research provides a means of automating the process to reverse engineer an automobile’s CAN Bus to quickly recover CAN IDs and message values to control the various systems in a modern automobile. This approach involved the development of a Python script that uses several open-source tools to interact with the CAN Bus, and it takes advantage of several vulnerabilities associated with the CAN protocol. These vulnerabilities allow the script to conduct replay attacks against the CAN Bus and affect various systems in an automobile without the operator’s knowledge or interaction.

These replay attacks can be accomplished by capturing recorded …

Adaptive Randomized Rounding In The Big Parsimony Problem, Sangho Shim, Sunil Chopra, Eunseok Kim

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Analog Implementation Of The Hodgkin-Huxley Model Neuron, Zachary D. Mobille, George H. Rutherford, Jordan Brandt-Trainer, Rosangela Follmann, Epaminondas Rosa

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Multidisciplinary Education And Research In Biomathematics For Solving Global Challenges, Padmanabhan Seshaiyer

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Achieving Energy Justice In Low Income Communities: Creating A Community-Driven Program For Residential Energy Savings, Anya Galli Robertson, Kevin Hallinan, Jennifer Hoody

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The cost of residential energy the U.S. is unequally distributed, with low income households paying higher rates and spending 16.8% of their income on utility bills compared to 3.5% of all U.S. Residents.[1] Researchers have found that bringing the housing stock up to the efficiency of the median household would reduce excess energy cost by as much as 68%.[2] However, access to opportunities to reduce residential energy consumption and costs such as tax incentives and utility rebate programs tends to be biased toward wealthier, white homeowners. Additionally, low income residents are most likely to be renters, and residence owners have …

Human Rights, Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Faith Values And Ethics: Building Stronger Partnerships For The Common Good By Understanding The Differences, Theresa Harris, Leanne M. Jablonski, Sarah Fortner, Malcolm Daniels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Partnerships between human rights practitioners, local communities, scientists, engineers, and health professionals have shown potential to address deeply rooted, systemic human rights concerns. These collaborations are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and for engaging the perspectives and expertise of all constituents. However, even when the individuals in these partnerships or the organizations they represent have common goals, their motivations, analyses, and solutions often come from different perspectives. Members of good will can inadvertently alienate one another when attempting to work together. The fields of human rights, social justice, environmental justice, and ethics have each developed their …

Bim-Based Risk Identification And Assessment In Building Projects At Their Design Phase, Angeliki P. Tsoupra, Fotios P. Tsoukalis, Athanasios P. Chassiakos

UBT International Conference

The complexity and dynamics of construction sites, interwoven with the uncertain behaviour of human factors, may result in severe injuries in the workplace, illness, and may even lead to fatality. Despite the drafting of a strict legislative framework, the statistics in construction industry remain dissatisfactory and worrisome. Therefore, the demand for a thorough risk management process, based on automated safety modelling and preventive strategy, stands out in order to identify and eliminate potential hazards early in the design phase of a construction project, resolving thus safety issues in the field by extending traditional safety management practices. The underlying purpose of …

Defect Detection Of Concrete Structures Through Sounding Data Analytics, Ran Cao, Anil K. Agrawal

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Impact sounding has been recognized as an effective technique to detect delamination in concrete structures, such as concrete decks. An enormous amount of sounding data can be generated/collected by the autonomous inspection systems equipped with impactors and microphones. However, the main challenge in the practical application of this technology is the development of advanced data analysis approaches for identifying defects from impact sounding data. In this study, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) analysis and power-spectral density (PSD) analysis are combined to extract useful features of sounding data generated by the impact hammer. It has been found that the EMD method …

Image Data Analytics To Support Engineers’ Decision-Making, Tianyi Zhao, Zhaozheng Yin, Ruwen Qin, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Robots such as drones have been leveraged to perform structure health inspection such as bridge inspection. Big data of inspection videos can be collected by cameras mounted on drones. In this project, we develop image analysis algorithms to support bridge engineers to analyze the big video data. Bridge engineers define the region of interest initially, then the algorithm retrieves all related regions in the video, which facilitates the engineers to inspect the bridge rather than exhaustively check every frame of the video. To perform this task, we propose a Multi-scale Siamese Neural Network. The network is initially trained by one-shot …

Updating Bridge Resilience Assessment Based On Corrosion And Foundation Scour Inspection Data, Yijian Zhang, Reginald Desroches, Iris Tien

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Aging and degradation of bridge structural components due to corrosion and scour create severe safety issues in the structural system and can lead to possible bridge failures. Collecting and analyzing inspection data provide a way to monitor and assess the safety condition of bridges. This paper proposes a framework to utilize collected inspection data to assess the condition of a bridge through updating both component- and system-level fragility curves of the bridge. Particularly, collected data such as mass loss of reinforcement and depth of scour hole are utilized to update the mechanical properties of structural members in the finite element …

Distributed Strain Measurements In A Steel-Concrete Composite Floor Beam Under Multi-Point Loading At Ambient Temperature, Matthew A. Klegseth, Yi Bao, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

A 12.8 m-long composite floor beam consisting of a steel reinforced concrete slab with profiled metal decking supported by a W18×35 steel beam was tested under multi-point bending load at ambient temperature. Material strain and temperature were measured using fiber optic sensors. Measurements were taken along more than 150 m of fiber optic cables using Pre-Pump Pulse Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (PPP-BOTDA) and Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR). Along the beam centerline, three strain and two temperature fiber loops were placed to characterize the strain and temperature distribution along and through the depth of the concrete slab. The neutral …

Synchro-Squeezed Adaptive Wavelet Transform And Its Application To Impact Echo Signals For Pavement Defect Detection, Hongya Qu, Titantian Li, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, the recently-proposed adaptive wavelet transform (AWT) and synchro-squeezed adaptive wavelet transform (SSAWT) are introduced with their optimum transformation parameters automatically searched to derive at a desirable time-frequency representation of any dynamic response. The AWT enables the selectivity of time and frequency resolution in a domain of interest and the synchro-squeezing algorithm reduces the dispersion of a scalogram of the AWT, facilitating an accurate extraction of frequency features over time. The effectiveness of AWT is first demonstrated with an illustrative signal of four time segments covering various frequency distribution cases. In comparison with conventional wavelet transform, the AWT …

Evaluations Of Multiple Non-Destructive Techniques On Top And Bottom Surfaces Of A Reinforced Concrete Bridge Deck, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongya Qu, Haibin Zhang, Genda Chen, Neil Lennart Anderson, Evgeniy V. Torgashov

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This study is intended to assess the integrity of a reinforced concrete bridge deck at the Missouri S&T campus using non-destructive testing (NDT) methods performed at top and bottom surfaces of the bridge deck. These utilized methods are named ground generating radar (GPR), impact echo (IE), and ultrasonic surface waves (USW). GPR was applied using 1.6 GHz and 2.5 GHz antennas to transmit and receive electromagnetic radio waves at embedded concrete reinforcement or distinct contacts between solid and loose concrete materials with different dielectric properties. Due to significant variations of the apparent depth to top of the embedded reinforcing steel …

Microwave High-Resolution 3d Sar Imaging Of Corroded Reinforcing Steel Bars In Mortar Subjected To Accelerated Electrochemical Corrosion, Chao Liu, Stephona Barker, Liang Fan, Mohammad Tayeb Ahmad Ghasr, Genda Chen, R. Zoughi

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Corrosion of reinforcing steel bars (rebars) embedded in concrete is a significant maintenance, rehabilitation and safety issue as it relates to the overall health of concrete structures, particularly those subjected to cyclical chloride attack. Over the years several inspection methods have been used to detect and assess this corrosion with limited success. Wideband microwave imaging, using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques, has shown great potential for producing 3D images of structures containing rebars. Although these investigations have shown great promise, a methodical approach to investigate the overall efficacy of this imaging technique has not yet taken place. Steel corrosion byproduct …

Assessing Moisture Content On The Surface Of Mortar Samples From Hyperspectral Imaging, Liang Fan, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongyan Ma, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Hyperspectral imaging represents an electromagnetic spectrum for each pixel in the image of a structural surface. The characteristic wavelength of the spectrum at reflectance valleys or absorption peaks can be used as a spectral feature for certain chemical detection. In this study, spectral reflectance characteristics of mortar samples are extracted to assess the reduction of moisture on the surface of mortar samples during the cement hydration process. The test results indicate that the reflectance increases and the absorbance decreases because water is reacted and less light will be absorbed during the hydration process. The average absorbance between 1923 nm and …

Thermally-Stable Passive Wireless Antenna Sensor For Strain Sensing, Dan Li, Yang Wang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Passive wireless antenna sensors have been studied in recent years as a novel approach for strain sensing. Electromagnetic resonance frequency of the antenna sensor, which is bonded on a base structural surface like a strain gage, depends on antenna dimension. When the dimension changes due to strain in the base structure, the wirelessly identified resonance frequency shift can be used to estimate the strain in the structure. Due to the multi-physics nature, both mechanical and dielectric properties of the antenna affect the resonance frequency. One drawback of previous antenna sensors is the relatively large resonance frequency fluctuation due to temperature …

Corrosion Induced Mass Loss Measurement Under Various Strain Levels Through Gr/Agnw-Based, Fe-C Coated Lpfg Sensors, Chanrui Guo, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, three Gr/AgNW-based, Fe-C coated long period fiber gratings (LPFG) corrosion sensors were prepared and tested for corrosion-induced mass loss measurements under various strain levels. Graphene grew on a copper foil using a low pressure chemical vapor deposition, was transferred to the curve surface of each LPFG sensor, and strengthened by silver nanowire (AgNW) for a more robust electroplating process of the Fe-C layer. The three Fe-C coated LPFG sensors were subjected to three different strain levels: 0, 500 and 1000 με. The sensors were immersed up to 72 hours in 3.5% w.t NaCl solution. Both optical transmission …

Uav-Based Smart Rock Positioning For Determination Of Bridge Scour Depth, Haibin Zhang, Zhaochao Li, Alec Reven, Buddy Scharfenberg, Genda Chen, Jinping Ou

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This study aims to predict the depth of scour hole developed around a bridge pier with one smart rock. A 3-axis magnetometer was assembled on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to measure magnetic fields before and after the smart rock has been deployed as the UAV flew around the bridge pier. A 3-axis high resolution GPS unit was fixed on the UAV to ensure accurate measurements of the latitude, longitude and altitude of the magnetometer. The GPS and the magnetometer measurements were synchronized to output the coordinate and magnetic field intensity correspondingly. A simple optimization algorithm was used to predict …

Considerations For Hose Wielding Uav For Civil Infrastructure Cleaning, Blake Hament, Paul Oh

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

To expand the capabilities of a multi-rotor aerial vehicle, one or several hoses could be mounted to the vehicle. Such hoses could be used to expel compressed air or other fluid for the purpose of cleaning hard-to-reach surfaces. The main challenge in operating a hose mounted on a free-flying aerial vehicle is compensating for the reaction forces and torques the vehicle experiences as fluid leaves the hose. This paper introduces dynamic modeling for a hose mounted on a multi- rotor vehicle. It is shown that safe operating ranges can be defined in terms of hose angle and fluid PSI, with …

Visual Shm For Concrete Infrastructure Using A Wall-Climbing Robot, Liang Yang, Yong Chang, Biao Jiang, Jizhong Xiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Concrete structural health monitoring (SHM) is urgently required with more and more severe aging problems happen. Conventional manual inspection approach is labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose a wall-climbing robotic approach for visual inspection of concrete structures using a deep neural network and 3D semantic reconstruction to build a 3D map overlaid with defects. The wall-climbing robot uses a negative pressure module to operate on both vertical and horizontal surfaces. An RGB-D camera is mounted in the robot with an Intel-NUC computer as visual positioning and image processing core to make metric measurement, Our main contribution is the …

Roller Chain-Like Robot For Steel Bridge Inspection, Son Thanh Nguyen, Hung Manh La

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This paper presents a novel design of steel bridge/structure inspection robot. Compared to most existing robots designed to work on particular surface contour of steel structures such as flat or curving, the proposed roller chain-like robot can implement and transfer smoothly on many kind of steel surfaces. The developed robot can be applied to inspection tasks for steel bridges with complicated structures. The robot is able to carry cameras, sensors for visual and specialized examination. Rigorous analysis of robot kinematics, adhesion force and turn-over failure has been conducted to demonstrate the stability of the proposed design. Mechanical and magnetic force …

A Genetic Algorithm For Minmax K-Chinese Postman Problem With Applications To Bridge Inspection, Siming Liu, Sushil J. Liu, N. Harris, Hung Manh La

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridge inspections ensure transportation infrastructure safety and save lives but current manual bridge inspections can be slow and costly. Automated bridge inspection research mitigates these problems and we investigate a multirobot approach to automated bridge inspection by mapping the inspection problem to the well known k-Chinese Postman problem and using multiple robots for faster, more cost-effective, and more standardized bridge inspections. We first show that a genetic algorithm quickly approaches the optimal solution to the 1-postman problem corresponding to a single robot inspecting a bridge. Then, we use the same genetic algorithm to efficiently solve the more difficult, multi-robot, NP-hard, …

Unmanned Aerial And Traversing Robot As Mobile Platform For Bridge Inspections, Alec M. Reven, Clayton A. Fritsche, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, a bridge inspection robot deployment system (BIRDS) is designed, prototyped, and tested to facilitate the remote inspection of bridges with nondestructive evaluation tools such as microwave and hyperspectral cameras. The multimodal robotic system utilizes both flying and driving technologies. First, BIRDS as an unmanned aerial vehicle flies to the underside of the bridge to be inspected. When in position, BIRDS is engaged with the bottom flange of a bridge girder with a specifically designed roller clamping system and then traverses the bridge in a stable manner, providing high quality images from cameras. Finally, BIRDS simply detaches from …