Engineering Commons^™

Mechanical Connection For Concrete Structures, George Morcous, Raed Tawadrous

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

A system and method for connecting precast concrete structures includes anchoring a sleeve within a pocket formed in one of the concrete structures , and placing the concrete structures in contact with one another such that the pocket is diposed around a protruding end of a shear connector embedded in the other concrete structure . A bridge is inserted around the protruding end of the shear connector and a fastener is installed onto the protruding end of the shear connector to engage the bridge and urge the bridge in abutting relation with a lip of the sleeve . The pocket …

Improving The Sustainability Of The Built Environment By Training Its Workforce In More Efficient And Greener Ways Of Designing And Constructing Through The Horizon2020 Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The construction industry consumes up to 50% of mineral resources excavated from nature, generates about 33% of CO2 present in the atmosphere and is responsible for 40% of total global energy through both construction and operation of buildings. The realisation that current pervasive construction practices now face globalization, sustainability, and environmental concerns, as well as ever-changing legislation requirements and new skills needed for the information age has resulted in technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) becoming a key enabler in navigating these barriers. To assist in overcoming these barriers, a number of funding initiatives have been put in place …

Centres Of Excellence And Roadmaps For Digital Transition: Lessons For Ireland’S Construction Industry, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

Like most sectors in today’s working world, construction businesses are challenged to work in an increasingly digitised world with sophisticated demands from intelligent clients. So much has been written about the inefficiencies of the construction industry, its fragmentation, lack of collaboration, low margins, adversarial pricing, poor productivity, financial fragility, lack of research and development, poor industry image and relatively weak use of digital solutions. The Irish government recognises the importance of digital innovation to address many of the challenges the construction industry faces. With recent high profile reports of escalating spend on signature public sector projects and weak productivity performance …

Bim In Ireland 2019: A Study Of Bim Maturity And Diffusion In Ireland, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

In 2017, the BIM Innovation Capability Programme team applied five macro BIM maturity conceptual models to capture the capability of the Irish construction industry and assess its BIM maturity. The results found that while Ireland is mature for modelling processes, it is less developed with regards to collaboration processes and policies. Ireland also ranked poorly when it came to regulatory frameworks, measurements and benchmarks compared to a number of countries which also applied the same conceptual models. At the time, the findings highlighted that Ireland’s diffusion dynamic was middle out, meaning that larger organisations or industry associations were pushing the …

An Investigation Into Current Procurement Strategies That Promote Collaboration Through Early Contractor Involvement With Regards To Their Suitability For Irish Public Work Projects, Barry Mcauley, Frederic Lefebvre

Conference papers

Previous research has established that multi-disciplinary collaboration will benefit a construction project throughout its lifecycle. While Lean Construction, Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) can all be viewed as separate processes which add independent value to a project, they are more effective when used in partnership with each other. In order to ensure the high levels of collaboration expected for these processes to work in unison, the early involvement of the Contractor is paramount. Early contractor involvement within the design process can ensure a more focused integrated project team, improvement of both constructability and cost certainty, as …

From Roadmap To Implementation: Lessons For Ireland’S Digital Construction Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

As part of their Future of Construction initiative in 2018 the World Economic Forum published an action plan to accelerate Building Information Modelling adoption. The WEF report highlighted actions that companies, industry organisations and governments are advised to implement to accelerate BIM adoption and better capitalise on delivering better project outcomes. According the authors of the report BIM is seen as the centrepiece of the construction industry’s digital transformation, however they acknowledged that BIM adoption globally remain slow. Anecdotal experience would suggest that BIM usage in Ireland is also very low and that a similar initiative or an adaptation of …

Delivering Energy Savings For The Supply Chain Through Building Information Modelling As A Result Of The Horizon 2020 Energy Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The global buildings sector is now responsible for 40% of final energy consumption as well as accounting for 33% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This has resulted in a growing urgency to address energy and emissions from buildings and construction, to meet restrictive 2020 targets as specified by the European Union (EU). To achieve these targets a number of funding initiatives have been put in place through Horizon 2020 with a focus on BIM, due to it having the potential to rapidly produce energy outputs that enable design teams to analyse and compare the most cost-effective, energy-efficient options. However, despite …

Using Bluetooth Low Energy Devices To Monitor Visitor Activity In Remote Amenity Spaces, Ahlam Al Anbouri, David Powell, Damon Berry, John Mcgrory, Niall Holmes, Lorraine D'Arcy

Conference Papers

Tracking of pedestrian behaviour, particularly route selection and temporal behaviours, can be difficult to undertake. This is especially true of studies at a community or campus level where the anonymity of pedestrians can be difficult to protect. The introduction of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations 2016 (GDPR) has increased the complexity of this challenge. Advances in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology in recent years have increased the potential to monitor human behaviour by tracking and triangulating pedestrians. This paper describes an experiment undertaken along The Great South Wall at the Port of Dublin, which is considered a leading amenity …

Predicting The Hardness Of Turf Surfaces From A Soil Moisture Sensor Using Iot Technologies, Ann Marie Mckeon

Other

In horseracing, “the going” is a term to describe the racetrack ground conditions. In Ireland presently, a groundskeeper or course clerk walks the racecourse poking it with a blackthorn stick, assesses conditions, and declares the going – it is a subjective measurement.

This thesis will propose using remote low-cost soil moisture sensors to gather high frequency data about the soil water content in the ground and to enable informed decisions to be made. This will remove the subjective element from the ground hardness, and look at the data in an objective way.

The soil moisture sensor will systematically collect high …

A Harmless Wireless Quantum Alternative To Cell Phones Based On Quantum Noise, Florentin Smarandache, Robert Neil Boyd, Victor Christianto

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In the meantime we know that 4G and 5G technologies cause many harms to human health. Therefore, here we submit a harmless wireless quantum alternative to cell phones. It is our hope that this alternative

Workforce Development Through Online Experiential Learning For Stem Education, Arefeh Mohammadi, Kevin Grosskopf, John Killingsworth

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The U.S. workforce is increasingly comprised of older adults, women, and minorities who lack basic skills and are unable to acquire these skills through traditional educational and training programs. New approaches are needed to provide effective training to the adult learner and flexible support for nontraditional students who must balance work-life demands with limited educational opportunities. Contextualized teaching and learning (CTL) is a form of experiential learning that blends both basic skills and occupational training together in environments that allow students to relate subject matter to real-world situations. Virtual CTL environments can be created to better engage students, provide immediate …

Development Of A Framework To Support The Effective Adoption Of Bim In The Public Sector: Lessons For Ireland, Shiyao Kuang, Alan Hore, Barry Mcauley, Roger West

Conference papers

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been formally adopted by many countries with the promise of creating greater economic, social and sustainability benefits. Several authors and institutions have presented alternative BIM policies and tactics which have been adopted by developed countries. However, there is evidence to indicate that BIM adoption theories are not well established and, in particular, the linkage between BIM public sector adoption strategy outcomes and their contribution to achieving Government policy objectives are underdeveloped. This paper will present the outcome of the first phase of a systematic literature review of published studies (including journal papers and noteworthy international …

Evaluating The Potential For Renewable Energy Technology At Us Ski Resorts, Tyler Farrell

ENGS 86 Independent Projects (AB Students)

The ski industry is one of the most at-risk industries as a result of climate change. Warming temperatures and decreasing snowfall are contributing to a decline in skier visitations, shorter seasons, and higher energy costs. Currently, only 3 of 478 ski resorts in the United States rely on 100% renewable energy sources. The intent of this paper is to understand what the issues and barriers are to renewable energy development at ski resorts, and what technologies are feasible and appropriate for this industry to develop. While the renewable energy industry faces many issues and barriers, the ski industry faces its …

Automated Generation Of Daily Evacuation Paths In 4d Bim, Kyungki Kim, Yong-Cheol Lee

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Spatial movements of workers and equipment should be carefully planned according to project plans. In particular, it is crucial for workers’ safety to prepare emergency evacuation paths according to changing construction site configurations and construction progress. However, creating evacuation paths for all crews for each day can be an extremely labor-intensive task if it is done manually. Consequently, in most construction projects, evacuation plans are not provided to managers and crews throughout the entire construction. Even state-of-the-art technologies do not suggest ways to generate evacuation paths according to changing progresses presented in 4-Dimensional Building Information Model (4D BIM). This research …

Applications Of Optimization Modeling In Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Research, Anton F. Astner, Ekramul Haque Ehite, Yang Li, Colin Sasthav

Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Publications and Other Works

Optimization modeling is the process of selection of the best solution to a design problem using predetermined constraints from a set of prospective solutions. Increased computing power has made optimization solvers readily available for business/research needs. For example, Microsoft Excel has a simple, but robust solver. Such solvers can model linear, nonlinear, and integer programming problems that are limited in size. This study shows the use of the optimization model solvers in various research contexts.

Management Support For Safety: Disrupting The Paradigm, Scotty Dunlap

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

It is a challenge that has been accepted by safety professionals in both recent and long-past generations. We have accepted it as part of the unchangeable status quo, and it is a challenge that has been met with mixed success in individual careers and across the safety profession as a whole. We have filled safety academic programs of study and professional development seminar rosters with tricks of the trade on how to accomplish this daunting task.

Standardisation In Construction Cost Control, Charles Mitchell

Other Resources

Poster presentation submitted as to the School of Surveying and Construction Management Research and Innovation Industry Evening, March 2019.

Level Of Service And The Transit Neighbourhood: Observations From Dublin City And Surburbs, David O'Connor, Brian Caulfield

Articles

Few studies have looked at the impact Level-of-Service (LOS) might have on the distances people walk to public transport. The relationship, if any, has implications for transit-oriented-development and the viability of different transit modes serving suburban areas. This paper examines pedestrian catchment areas and LOS across a light rail, a metro rail and two bus corridors in Dublin. Public transport users have been surveyed at 17 stops around the city and their trip origin identified. Catchment areas for bus services with high levels of service were found to be comparable and often greater than those for LRT or metro …

Landslides Near Enguri Dam (Caucasus, Georgia) And Possible Seismotectonic Effects, Alessandro Tibaldi, Paolo Oppizzi, John S. Gierke, Thomas Oommen, Nino Tsereteli, Zurab Gogoladze

Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences Publications

The Enguri dam and water reservoir, nested in the southwestern Caucasus (Republic of Georgia), are surrounded by steep mountain slopes. At a distance of 2.5 km from the dam, a mountain ridge along the reservoir is affected by active deformations with a double vergence. The western slope, directly facing the reservoir, has deformations that affect a subaerial area of 1.2 km². The head scarp affects the Jvari–Khaishi–Mestia main road with offsets of man-made features that indicate slip rates of 2–9 cm yr⁻¹. Static, pseudostatic and Newmark analyses, based on field and seismological data, suggest different unstable …

The Expanding Business Of The Entrepreneurial University: Job Creation, Mike Murphy, Michael Dyrenfurth

Books/Book chapters

This chapter explores the role of universities in job creation. It does this by taking two approaches. The first is to look at how the university sees its role as expanding from traditional first and second mission activities to encompass third mission activities including industry engagement and how this supports job creation and economic development. The second approach is to examine how new jobs are created in a geographic region or country, and the role that the university can play in support of this. Typical third mission activities such as incubators, technology transfer, and science parks are also examined; including …

Business In Engineering Education: Issues, Identities, Hybrids, And Limits, Mike Murphy, Pat O'Donnell, John Jameson

Books/Book chapters

This chapter explores how engineering students are broadened in their education through the teaching of non-engineering subjects, such as business subjects, in order to develop critical thinking skills and self-knowledge of what it means to be an engineer. The goal of the chapter is to provide a commentary on the level of interaction, from design of courses to design of curricula, between business faculty and engineering faculty, and the results of that interaction. This chapter sets out to (i) explore whether there appears to be a place in engineering education curricula for reflective critique of assumptions related to business thinking, …

The Adoption Of Collaborative Robots Toward Ubiquitous Diffusion: A Research Agenda, Yuhua (Jake) Liang, Seungcheol Austin Lee

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This paper proposes a framework to study the adoption of collaborative robots (co-robots or cobots) as an innovation and their diffusion into the larger population. Collaborative robots are only starting to appear in our society, yet challenges such as fear and distrust may impede their further adoption. This paper discusses the foundational work necessary to understand collaborative robot adoption and the core elements to achieve ubiquitous diffusion, with a focus on human users and the communication processes.

The Effect Of Using A Project-Based Learning (Pbl) Approach To Improve Engineering Students' Understanding Of Statistics, Fionnuala Farrell, Michael Carr

Articles

Over the last number of years we have gradually been introducing a project based learning approach to the teaching of engineering mathematics inDublin Institute of Technology. Several projects are now in existence for the teaching of both second-order differential equations and first order differential equations.We intend to incrementally extend this approach acrossmore of the engineering mathematics curriculum. As part of this ongoing process, practical realworld projects in statistics were incorporated into a second year ordinary degree mathematics module. This paper provides an overview of these projects and their implementation. As a means to measure the success of this initiative, we …

The Role Of Role-Play In Student Awareness Of The Social Dimension Of The Engineering Profession, Diana Adela Martin, Eddie Conlon, Brian Bowe

Articles

The article aims to expand upon traditional case based instruction through role-play and to explore the effectiveness of the approach in raising students’ awareness of the social dimension of the engineering profession. For this purpose, we added a contextual description to the case study Cutting Roadside Trees driven by a macroethical outlook. Our contribution draws on an exercise based on the contextualised case study in which 80 students at Technological University Dublin participated. The results gathered show that role-playing contributed to complex student responses to the scenario and an awareness of the social factors that are part of engineering practice …

Smart Proxy Modeling Of Sacroc Co2-Eor, Gholami Vida, Mohaghegh D. Shahab, Maysami Mohammad

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Large CO2-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects usually contain an abundance of geological and good performance data. While this volume of data leads to robust models, it often results in difficult to manage, slow-running numerical flow models. To dramatically reduce the numerical run-times associated with the traditional simulation techniques, this work investigated the feasibility of using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to develop a smart proxy model of the Scurry Area Canyon Reef Operators Committee (SACROC) oilfield, located in the Permian Basin, TX, USA. Smart proxy models can be used to facilitate injection-production optimization for CO2-EOR projects. The use of …

Sns Optical Fiber Structure Sensor For Direct Detection Of The Phase Transition In C18h38 N-Alkane Material, Wei Han, Marek Rebow, Xiaokang Lian, Dejun Liu, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

A singlemode-no-core-singlemode (SNS) fiber structure optical sensor for detecting the solid-liquid phase change in a phase change material: C18H38 n-alkane material (n-octadecane) is proposed and demonstrated. The transmission-type sensor probe consists of a short section of no-core fiber sandwiched between two sections of a singlemode fiber. Phase changes in n-octadecane are accompanied by large step-like variations of its refractive index (RI). Such a large discontinuous change of the n-octadecane’s RI during its phase transition, leads to the corresponding step-like change in the transmitted optical power that can reliably indicate the phase change of the sample in the vicinity of the …

Mechanical Response Of He- Implanted Amorphous Sioc/ Crystalline Fe Nanolaminates, A. Zare, Q. Su, J. Gigax, T. A. Harriman, M. Nastasi, L. Shao, D. A. Lucca

Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research: Publications

This study investigates the microstructural evolution and mechanical response of sputter-deposited amorphous silicon oxycarbide (SiOC)/crystalline Fe nanolaminates, a single layer SiOC film, and a single layer Fe film subjected to ion implantation at room temperature to obtain a maximum He concentration of 5 at. %. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy indicated no evidence of implantation-induced phase transformation or layer breakdown in the nanolaminates. Implantation resulted in the formation of He bubbles and an increase in the average size of the Fe grains in the individual Fe layers of the nanolaminates and the single layer Fe film, but the bubble …

Efficient Excitation Of Micro/Nano Resonators And Their Higher Order Modes, N. Jaber, M. A. A. Hafiz, S. N. R. Kazmi, M. H. Hasan, F. Alsaleem, S. Ilyas, M. I. Younis

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

We demonstrate a simple and flexible technique to efficiently activate micro/nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) resonators at their fundamental and higher order vibration modes. The method is based on the utilization of the amplified voltage across an inductor, L, of an LC tank resonant circuit to actuate the MEMS/NEMS resonator. By matching the electrical and mechanical resonances, significant amplitude amplification is reported across the resonators terminals. We show experimentally amplitude amplification up to twelve times, which is demonstrated to efficiently excite several vibration modes of a microplate MEMS resonator and the fundamental mode of a NEMS resonator.

Voltage And Deflection Amplification Via Double Resonance Excitation In A Cantilever Microstructure, Mohammad H. Hasan, Fadi Alsaleem, Abdallah Ramini

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Cantilever electrostatically-actuated resonators show great promise in sensing and actuating applications. However, the electrostatic actuation suffers from high-voltage actuation requirements and high noise low-amplitude signal-outputs which limit its applications. Here, we introduce a mixed-frequency signal for a cantilever-based resonator that triggers its mechanical and electrical resonances simultaneously, to overcome these limitations. A single linear RLC circuit cannot completely capture the response of the resonator under double resonance excitation. Therefore, we develop a coupled mechanical and electrical mathematical linearized model at different operation frequencies and validate this model experimentally. The double-resonance excitation results in a 21 times amplification of the voltage …

Experiencing Extreme Height For The First Time: The Influence Of Height, Self-Judgment Of Fear And A Moving Structural Beam On The Heart Rate And Postural Sway During The Quiet Stance, Mahmoud Habibnezhad, Jay Puckett, M. S. Fardhosseini, Houtan Jebelli, Terry Stentz, L. A. Pratama

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Falling from elevated surfaces is the main cause of death and injury at construction sites. Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports, an average of nearly three workers per day suffer fatal injuries from falling. Studies show that postural instability is the foremost cause of this disproportional falling rate. To study what affects the postural stability of construction workers, we conducted a series of experiments in the virtual reality (VR). Twelve healthy adults—all students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln—were recruited for this study. During each trial, participants’ heart rates and postural sways were measured as the dependent factors. …