Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Using Micro-Simulation To Evaluate Transit Signal Priority For Lrt Operations In A Downtown Environment, Faisal Mahmud

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Transit Signal Priority or TSP is an operational strategy that facilitates the movement of transit vehicles such as buses, light rail or streetcars, through traffic-signal controlled intersections. The benefits of TSP operations include improved schedule adherence and improved transit travel times with minimal impact to normal traffic operations. New advances in Global Positioning Systems, detection and communication, and control strategies have helped overcome many problems with early systems and increased interest in implementing TSP for Light Rail Transit (LRT) and other transit operations. The increased capabilities of these advanced systems have led to a dramatic increase in operational and planned …

A Study Of Passive Earth Pressure In Anisotropic Sand With Various Wall Movement Modes, Achmad Bakri Muhiddin

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the effect of anisotropy on passive pressure in sands by developing computer simulation utilizing FLAC code for plane strain condition. A series of wall movement modes was applied namely translation, rotation about a point below the wall, RBT, and rotation about a point above the wall, RTT.

From comparisons with other FLAC model in translation mode with isotropic material, the coefficients of passive pressure K_p were similar to each other except for some combinations of zero dilation, low wall friction, and high angle of internal friction ϕ. Dilation angle has less effect on K_p than …

Bs News July/August

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of The Properties Of Portland Cement And Portland-Limestone Cement, Alex Lyatonga Mrema

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

A study was made in a cement factory in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where Ordinary Portland Cement (CEM I 42.5N) and Portland-limestone cement (PLC) which has the brand name Twiga Cement Extra (CEM II/A-L/32.5R) are produced and conforming to the Tanzania Standard TZS 727 (Part1): 2002, which is equivalent to EN 197 published by the committee for European normalization (CEN). A comparison was made between the two types of cements in terms of physical, chemical and mechanical properties. It was found out that they all complied with the standards, that there was no significant difference in their setting times and …

The Effect Of Service Installations On Structural Integrity Of Slabs In Buildings, Ladislaus Lwambuka

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

In building construction industry service installations, usually housed in conduit pipes, are commonly mounted inside reinforced concrete structural elements. This practice is adopted to attain aesthetical outlook at both interior and exterior surfaces of the buildings. Depending on the extent of service installations, the cross sectional area of the load bearing structural member is substantially reduced. However, the current structural design guidelines have no provision to accommodate the extent to which the existence of conduit pipes impairs the load bearing capacity of the structural element though reduced cross sectional area. This study has attempted to address this gap in structural …

Developments In Intelligent Monitoring Of Concrete Structures, T. M. Chrisp, G. Starrs, W. J. Mccarter, E. H. Owens, S. V. Nanukuttan, Niall Holmes, L. Basheer

Conference papers

Deterioration in concrete comprises an initiation period and a propagation period. The initiation period is characterised by changes that occur within the concrete in response to the exposure environment and continues until a stage is reached when damage begins to propagate. The propagation period begins at a point in time defined when a particular event occurs (e.g. loss of steel passivity due to chloride ingress) and continues until a specified limit state is reached. The initiation and propagation stages of a deterioration process result from a complex interaction of physical, chemical and electrochemical phenomena. Prediction of the field performance of …

Expanding Horizons With Chameleon: Team Missouri's Innovative Home Automation System, Bryan Glass, Ben Brannon, Katie Grantham, Stuart Werner Baur

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Team Missouri's 2009 Solar Decathlon entry featured a revolutionary home automation system, Chameleon, promoting both convenience and energy savings. This was accomplished using the typical controls of a convenience based automation system, while maintaining user set points, such as a home's ambient temperature, in the most energy efficient manner. Environmental features of the system include controls for home heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, windows, shades, appliances, indoor air quality, as well as indoor and outdoor irrigation. Further analysis and refinement to the prototype system displayed at the competition is also presented in this paper.

Residential Energy Performance Metrics, Christopher Wright, Stuart Werner Baur, Katie Grantham, Robert B. Stone, Scott Erwin Grasman

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Techniques for residential energy monitoring are an emerging field that is currently drawing significant attention. This paper is a description of the current efforts to monitor and compare the performance of three solar powered homes built at Missouri University of Science and Technology. The homes are outfitted with an array of sensors and a data logger system to measure and record electricity production, system energy use, internal home temperature and humidity, hot water production, and exterior ambient conditions the houses are experiencing. Data is being collected to measure the performance of the houses, compare to energy modeling programs, design and …

Optimizing Integrated Service For A Transit Route With Heterogeneous Demand, Yavuz Yusuf Ulusoy

Dissertations

The methodology developed in this dissertation attempts to optimize integrated service that minimizes the total cost, including user and supplier costs, of a transit route with heterogeneous demand. While minimizing total cost, a set of practical constraints, such as capacity, operable fleet size and frequency conservation, are considered.

The research problem is presented in three scenarios, consisting of various service patterns (e.g., all-stop, short-turn and express) under heterogeneous demand. A logit-based model was used to estimate passenger transfer demand. An exhaustive search method was developed to find the optimal solutions for a simplified transit route with six stops, and a …

Coupled Simulation Of Loading And Response Of Columns Under Extreme Events, Navid H. Allahverdi

Dissertations

Forces imparted to structural columns during blast-induced loading depends on the shape and size of columns as well as on the intensity of the blast. Column's geometry - i.e., shape and size - influences the flow field around the column and consequently the flow field determines forces experienced by the column The main objective of this research is to estimate the forces imparted to columns in a blast event through studying the air flow field around columns

In this study, the physics of shock wave reflection and rarefaction waves are reviewed with application to describing the air flow around columns …

Ecotourism And Water Quality: Linking Management, Activities And Sustainability Indicators In The Caribbean, Ken Darrie Thomas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ecotourism from its genesis and founding theories has been set out to conserve and preserve the environment through sustainable operation that includes surrounding communities in efforts to reduce their poverty levels. Over the years ecotourism has been hypothesized to have departed from this ideal with several researchers, through social, qualitative analyses, have said that these non-sustainable ecotourism operations are simply due to poor management. This work sought to test this central hypothesis as a first approach to quantitatively linking ecotourism activities to management with surface water quality as the key indicator of sustainable ecotourism as a complex system through systems …

Implications Of Climate-Driven Variability And Trends For The Hydrologic Assessment Of The Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed, Idaho, V. Sridhar, Anurag Nayak

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was used to assess the implications of long-term climate trends for the hydroclimatology of the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) in the Owyhee Mountains, Idaho of the Intermountain West over a 40- year period (1967-2006). Calibration and validation of the macroscale hydrology model in this highly monitored watershed is key to address the watershed processes that are vulnerable to both natural climate variability and climate change and . The model was calibrated using the streamflow data collected between 1997 and 2006 from the three nested weirs, the Reynolds Mountain East (RME) , …

Ie Tools In Construction - Small Tools Spreadsheet, Ronald Goodson

All Theses

This document will explore the development and implementation of a spreadsheet tool that will provide for effective planning, procurement, and management of 'small tools' on a construction site - small tools are relatively inexpensive items that are usually handheld. The following five chapters cover the development of the spreadsheet. Both methodology and the calculation process are explored in detail and all facets of the spreadsheet are explained. A key component of the development process is that end users were involved in the entire development process to ensure the spreadsheet met their needs. In general, users input several criteria regarding work …

Analytical Seismic Fragility Curves For Skewed Multi-Span Steel Girder Bridges, Ian Sullivan

All Theses

Most of the past seismic fragility studies on typical highway bridges in the Central and Southeastern United States (CSUS) have focused on regular multi-span bridges with little to no skew. However, past earthquakes and studies have shown that skewed multi-span simply supported bridges may also be susceptible to earthquake damage, specifically causing coupled responses (longitudinal and transverse) that place more demand on individual components. With over 27 percent of simply supported steel girder highway bridges in the CSUS having a skew angle over 15 degrees, there is a specific need to further quantify the vulnerability of such bridges exposed to …

Fringe Visibility Enhanced Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometer Using A Graded Index Fiber Collimator, Yinan Zhang, Yanjun Li, Tao Wei, Xinwei Lan, Ying Huang, Genda Chen, Hai Xiao

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report a fringe visibility-enhanced extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) by fusion splicing a quarter-pitch length of a graded-index fiber (GIF) to the lead-in single mode fiber (SMF). The performance of the GIF collimator is theoretically analyzed using a ray matrix model and experimentally verified through beam divergence angle measurements. The fringe visibility of the GIF-collimated EFPI is measured as a function of the cavity length and compared with that of a regular SMF-EFPI. At the cavity length of 500 μm, the fringe visibility of the GIF-EFPI is 0.8, while that of the SMF-EFPI is only 0.2. The visibility-enhanced GIF-EFPI may …

A Comparison Of Small Scale Laboratory Experiments With The Environmetnal Protection Agency Reccomended Dense Gas Dispersion Models: An Assessment Of The Validity Of Salt Bath Modeling Of Atmospheric Flows, Katie Betz

All Theses

Accurate dense gas dispersion modeling is important in a number of fields from modeling smoke movement in a room to the spreading of dense toxic gas releases such as resulted from the Chlorine spill in Graniteville, SC in 2005. To this end, a series of small scale laboratory experiments using instantaneous releases of a cylindrical, finite volume of dense salt water were performed. In the experiments, the horizontal spread of the dense liquid over a flat surface(i.e. gravity current front position over time) was measured.
The results of these small scale experiments were compared to two dense gas dispersion models …

Liquefaction Analysis Of Three Pleistocene Sand Deposits That Did Not Liquefy During The 1886 Charleston, South Carolina Earthquake Based On Shear Wave Velocity And Penetration Resistance, Aaron Geiger

All Theses

The results of geotechnical investigations at three sites located in the South Carolina Coastal Plain are presented in this thesis. The three sites are called the Hobcaw Barony Borrow Pit site located near Georgetown, SC; the Rest Area Ponds site near Walterboro, SC; and the Lowcountry Sand & Gravel site, also near Walterboro. Near-surface sand deposits at these sites ranged in geologic age from 200,000 to greater than 1,000,000 years. These three sites lie well outside the region of most liquefaction effects observed following the 1886 Charleston earthquake. Investigations conducted at the sites include seismic cone penetration tests with pore …

Evaluation Of In-Situ Stiffness Of Subgrade By Resilient And Fwd Modulus, Daehyeon Kim, Yigong Ji, Nayyar Zia Siddiki

JTRP Technical Reports

Resilient modulus has been used for characterizing the stress-strain behavior of subgrade soils subjected to traffic loadings in the design of pavements. With the recent release of the M-E Pavement Design Guide, highway agencies are further encouraged to implement the resilient modulus test to improve subgrade design. A laboratory resilient modus test and a FWD test are usually used to obtain the resilient modulus of subgrade. However, the difference in the resilient modulus obtained from these two methods is considerably large due to the fact that these tests are conducted under different conditions. This difference gives engineers a significant confusion …

Travel Time Reliability In Indiana, Maria Martchouk, Fred L. Mannering, Lakhwinder Singh

JTRP Technical Reports

Travel time and travel time reliability are important performance measures for assessing traffic condition and extent of congestion on a roadway. This study first uses a floating car technique to assess travel time and travel time reliability on a number of Indiana highways. Then the study goes on to describe the use of Bluetooth technology to collect real travel time data on a freeway and applies it to obtain two weeks of data on Interstate 69 in Indianapolis. An autoregressive model, estimated based on the collected data, is then proposed to predict individual vehicle travel times on a freeway segment. …

Performance Of Nevada’S Aggregates In Alkali-Aggregate Reactivity Of Portland Cement Concrete, Mohammad Shahidul Islam

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Alkali-aggregate reaction (AAR) is a form of distress that occurs in concrete and results in serviceability problems, cracks, spalling, and other deterioration mechanisms. There are two categories of AAR, namely, alkali-silica reaction (ASR) and alkali-carbonate reaction (ACR). Alkali-silica reaction is one of the most recognized deleterious phenomena in concrete, and has been a major concern since its discovery in the 1940s. The reaction which occurs between reactive silica or silicates present in some aggregates and alkalis of Portland cement produces an alkali-silica gel that expands in the presence of moisture resulting in concrete cracks. ACR is also a chemical reaction …

Development Of A Structural Index As An Integral Part Of The Overall Pavement Quality In The Indot Pms, William Frederick Flora, Ghim Ping (Raymond) Ong, Kumares C. Sinha

JTRP Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Ground-Level Aviation Emissions On Air Quality In The Western United States, Eric Edward Clark

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The aviation industry has experienced sustained growth since its inception result- ing in an increase in air pollutant emissions. Exposure to particulate matter less than 2.5 µm in diameter (PM_2.5) has been linked to respiratory health problems because it penetrates deepest into human lungs.

This thesis focused on the concentrations of three secondary aerosol species (i.e., sulfate, nitrate + ammonium and organic carbon) as they relate to the formation of total PM_2.5. There were three goals of this research: evaluate differences in total PM_2.5 concentration as (1) ground-level aviation emissions (i.e., up to 3,000 …

Long-Term Performance Of Pavement Markings On Primary And Secondary Roads, Joshua Johnson

All Theses

This research analyzes waterbased and thermoplastic pavement markings on primary and secondary roads in South Carolina. The primary objective of this research was to develop retroreflectivity degradation models for these two pavement marking materials, as well as determine the expected useful life of the markings. Predicting retroreflectivity and marking life is important so that state DOTs may efficiently replace markings in order to reduce safety hazards as well as maintenance costs.
Data collection for this research lasted 21 months, where retroreflectivity of pavement markings was measured on over 100 primary and secondary roads in South Carolina. Variables such as marking …

Comparision Of Open Graded Friction Course Mix Design Methods Currently Used In The United States, Laura Kline

All Theses

This research compares the open graded friction course (OGFC) mix design methods which are currently being used in the United States. OGFCs are a type of porous pavement that have been used in the United States since 1944, but has provided inconsistent and highly variable performance results. The design procedures for several agencies were obtained, and then compared for similarities. All of the design methods were then conducted to determine the optimum binder content. The optimum binder content (OBC) of a single aggregate gradation for each method was tested for properties and performance characteristics.
The design methods which are currently …

Performance Evaluation Of Sbs Modified Asphalt Mixtures Using Warm Mix Technologies, Hakseo Kim

All Theses

The need for more sustainable methods and techniques in industry has been increasing and it is important to respond to the needs of society and address issues surrounding its environment and health. In order to better introduce such new and more sustainable methods, it is necessary to combine existing and proven methods with new technology. The main idea of this research was to use the established industry standard of using Styrene Butadiene Styrene (SBS) modified binder and combine it with the relatively new Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) technology in order to create a more sustainable and eco-friendly asphalt paving process. …

Statistical Modeling And Analysis Of Injury Severity Sustained By Occupants Of Passenger Vehicles Involved In Crashes With Large Trucks, Ahmad Koupaenejad

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Crashes are the result of complex interactions between several factors representing driver, roadway, vehicle, and environmental characteristics. Understanding to what degree each factor contributes to the severity of a crash is not a simple task. The outcomes of crashes in the US have been an average of 42,000 deaths and 3 million injuries per year. To better understand the role of significant contributors to crashes, three sets of models using multinomial logit and one using ordered probit were calibrated. To calibrate these models, forty two independent predictor variables including driver/occupants characteristics, crash environment at the crash location, crash characteristics, and …

Time-Dependent Scour Depth Under Bridge-Submerged Flow, Yuan Zhai

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

Failure of bridges due to local scour has motivated many investigators to explore the reasons of scouring and to give the prediction of the scour depth. But most scour prediction equations only address non-pressure-flow situations. Little research has been dedicated to another destructive scour, submerged-flow bridge scour (pressure flow scour) which can cause significant damages to bridges when partially or totally submerged during a large flood.

This thesis is specifically focused on the experimental study for time-dependent scour depth under bridge-submerged flow. The experiments were conducted in a self contained re-circulating tilting flume where two uniform sediment sizes and one …

Use Of Passive Samplers To Evaluate Pharmaceutical Fate In Surface Waters, Delshawn L. Brown

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

Emerging contaminants have been of importance in recent water research. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have proved ineffective at handling present-day antibiotic loads from hospital and municipal sources. Kolpin et al. (2002) performed a study that identified pharmaceuticals in numerous waters downstream from effluent discharge. Though present in trace levels, concern has been raised regarding pharmaceutical persistence in natural environments. In the present study, uptake rates were quantified in the laboratory for 25 pharmaceutical compounds using Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Samplers (POCIS). Twenty new uptake rates were determined for compounds that have no previously reported literature values. POCIS was also used …

Laboratory Approach To Modeling The Initiating Mechanism In The Piping Failure Of Sandy Soils, Olalekan O. Olorunsola

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This research intends to develop a testing apparatus to measure the critical gradient in sandy soils. The designed apparatus will be used in subsequent studies to develop a relationship between critical hydraulic gradient, soil properties and the inclination of the exit face.

This study evaluates several design modification to assess the effects of the modifications, and develop a design that most closely models the field mechanism of piping initiation. The design is initiated from a conceptual design and is executed into the first version. This design is called the Alpha Version. The next version, or more precisely, the Beta Version, …

Characterizing Ecologically Relevant Variations In Streamflow Regimes, Kiran J. Chinnayakanahalli

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Maintaining the ecological health of streams is vital for sustainable water resources management. Streamflow is a primary factor influencing the structure and function of ecological communities. A quantitative understanding of how stream biota respond to variation in streamflow is required for stream bioassessment. This dissertation focuses on quantifying relationships between streamflow regime and stream macroinvertebrate richness and composition. The contribution comprises statistical models that predict stream macroinvertebrate class from streamflow regime and predict streamflow regime from watershed attributes, and a tool that helps derive watershed attribute variables used in these models.

The dissertation is a collection of three papers. In …