Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Pullout And Tensile Behavior Of Crimped Steel Reinforcement For Mechanically Stabilized Earth (Mse) Walls, Oscar Ernesto Suncar

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many research studies made on hundreds of MSE walls have shown that in order to get lower values of lateral earth pressure coefficients from an active condition on the backfill soil, thus lower exerted loads and stresses on the reinforcement, the wall needs to yield. This is typical of extensible polymer-based wall systems, such as geosynthetics. Steel systems, on the other hand, are very rigid and do not allow enough deformation on the wall to generate the active condition.

For this research, steel reinforcement for MSE walls that behaves similar to geosynthetics was developed. This was done by using crimps …

Reliability-Based Underseepage Analysis In Levees Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Lourdes Polanco

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A new method for assessing the potential for unsatisfactory levee performance due to underseepage is presented. Specifically, the method assesses the potential for the initiation of piping (the internal backward erosion of the foundation or embankment caused by seepage). Current assessment methods consist of deterministic seepage analyses and simplified reliability methods. Deterministic methods produce either a maximum hydraulic exit gradient or a Factor of Safety against piping but they do not account for high levels of uncertainty in soil properties and subsurface geometry that are inherent to many levee analyses. The most common simplified reliability approaches that are currently being …

Internal Design Of Mechanically Stabilized Earth (Mse) Retaining Walls Using Crimped Bars, Bernardo A. Castellanos

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Current design codes of Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) Walls allow the use lower lateral earth pressure coefficient (K value) for designing geosynthetics walls than those used to design steel walls. The reason of this is because geosynthetics walls are less rigid permitting the wall to deform enough to work under active pressures instead of at rest pressures as in steel walls.

A new concept of crimped steel bars was recently introduced. This new type of bar was tested for tension and pullout behavior. Results on tests made on crimped bars show that putting those crimps in the steel bar will …

Increased Functionality Of Floodplain Mapping Automation: Utah Inundation Mapping System (Utims), Brian K. Stevens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Floodplain mapping has become an increasingly important part of floodplain management. Floodplain mapping employs mapping software and hydraulic calculation packages to efficiently map floodplains. Modelers often utilize automation software to develop the complex geometries required to reduce the time to develop hydraulic models.

The Utah Inundation Mapping System (UTIMS) was designed to reduce the time required to develop complex geometries for use in floodplain mapping studies. UTIMS reduces the time required to develop geometries used in floodplain management studies. The automated geometries developed include: flood specific river centerlines, bank lines, flow path lines, cross sections, and areal averaged n-value polygons. …

Water Allocation Challenges In Rural River Basins: A Case Study From The Walawe River Basin, Sri Lanka, D. K. Neelanga Weragala

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation evaluates the water allocation challenges in the rural river basins of the developing world, where demands are growing and the supply is limited. While many of these basins have yet to reach the state of closure, their water users are already experiencing water shortages. Agricultural crop production in rural river basins of the developing world plays a major role in ensuring food security. However, irrigation as the major water consumer in these basins has low water use efficiency. As water scarcity grows, the need to maximize economic gains by reallocating water to more efficient uses becomes important. …

Ultimate Shear Capacity And Residual Prestress Force Of Full-Scale, Forty-One-Year-Old Prestressed-Concrete Girders, Parry Osborn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The ultimate shear capacity of prestressed concrete beams is difficult to predict accurately, especially after being in service for an extended period of time. The Utah Department of Transportation asked researchers at Utah State University to experimentally determine the existing shear capacity of 41-year-old prestressed, decommissioned concrete bridge girders and then provide recommendations on how to increase that ultimate shear capacity. This thesis presents the research findings that relate to the existing shear capacity of the prestressed concrete girders.

Eight AASHTO Type II bridge girders were tested up to failure by applying external loads near the supports to determine their …

Data Analysis Of Utah's I-80 And I-215 Bridges - For The Use In The Development Of Accelerated Bridge Construction Standards, Erik S. Rosvall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study discusses five bridges on Utah's I-80 that were replaced in the summer of 2008 using Accelerated Bridge Construction methods. Each superstructure was built offsite and moved into place with the use of Self-Propelled Modular Transporters. The bridges were instrumented and monitored during the moving process to investigate the effects of moving an entire superstructure into place. Collected data was analyzed to find the level of stress each superstructure experienced during lifting, moving, and placement of each bridge.

The change in supporting conditions from when the superstructure was built to being transferred onto Self-Propelled Modular Transporters caused significant stress …

A Study Of Cause And Effect Relationships Of Snowmelt-Induced Movement For The Skunk Hollow Landslide, Brent P. Randall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Skunk Hollow Landslide (located 1 mile north of Mantua, UT along US-89) was instrumented with an automated monitoring system to aid in the determination of the triggering mechanism of slow moving landslides. Data was transmitted wirelessly through telecommunications to allow year-round, real-time monitoring of the site. Measurements were recorded and analyzed for the first season of landslide movement (fall 2009 to spring 2010) to better understand the correlations between snowmelt and movement initiation. Based on the first year of data, it appears that the Skunk Hollow Landslide is controlled by water infiltrating into the slide mass through cracks and …

Full-Scale Testing Of 40 Year Old Prestressed Aashto Girders That Have Been Retrofitted In Shear By Externally Applied Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Wraps, David A. Petty

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is interested in the application of rehabilitation techniques to strengthen their AASTHO prestressed bridge girders for shear. Utah's bridges are exposed to deterioration from rain, snow, and the introduction of salt for ice removable. This requires innovative rehabilitation techniques to address the deteriorations of their highway bridges, especially the ends of bridge girders where water and salt are more common due to construction joints. Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) are becoming more prevalent as a tool in highway bridge rehabilitation.

This research investigates the application of various CFRP systems that can be used as …

Effects Of Submergence In Montana Flumes, Ryan P. Willeitner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As part of a continued research project for the Utah Water Research Laboratory and the State of Utah, a study of flow measurement devices is being conducted throughout the state. Initially the project included only measurement devices associated with high-risk dams, but has since been broadened to any measurement structure of interest for water users in the state. The physical dimensions, relative elevations, and flow accuracy were documented for each included device.

After visiting sixteen sites, it was found that fourteen of the measuring devices had incorrect geometries. Of these fourteen, thirteen of them were originally Parshall flumes. A large …

The Utah Pilot Bridge, Live Load And Dynamic Testing, Modeling And Monitoring For The Long-Term Bridge Performance Program, Steven M. Petroff

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As part of the Federal Highway Administration's Long-Term Bridge Performance Program, Live Load and Dynamic tests were conducted. A long-term monitoring plan was developed and presented for the Utah Pilot Bridge based on Live Load and Dynamic tests. As one of seven pilot bridges, the Utah Pilot Bridge is one of the first bridges used to initiate the LTBP Program. A formal permit approval process, with the Utah Department of Transportation, was followed to gain permission to conduct the tests and install long-term instrumentation. Analysis provided good results for each test completed, with a summary of test results presented. A …

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

A Concise Model Of 3x7 Wire Rope Used In Cable Guardrail Systems, Cody S. Stolle

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wire rope is a versatile, flexible, high-strength member that is used in many mechanical systems. However, due to the complexity of wire rope, analytical investigations have been relatively limited. Previous attempts to create simplified models of wire rope were not validated with physical testing and used a cumbersome beam-and-shell or beam-and-solid method for simulating the wire rope. An improved LS-DYNA model of 19-mm diameter 3x7 wire rope commonly used in roadside cable guardrail installations has been developed. A Belytschko-Schwer beam element was selected along with material *MAT_166. Since wire rope displays internal damping due to friction of strands and wires, …

Polarization Of Galvanic Point Anodes For Corrosion Prevention In Reinforced Concrete, Margareth Dugarte

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The polarization performance of two types of commercial galvanic point anodes for protection of reinforced steel around patch repairs was investigated. Experiments included measurement of the polarization history of the anode under constant current impressed by galvanostatic circuits and in reinforced concrete slabs. The tests revealed, for both types of anodes, a potential-current function (PF) indicating relatively little anodic polarization from an open circuit potential at low current levels, followed by an abrupt increase in potential as the current approached an apparent terminal value. Aging of the anodes was manifested by a continually decreasing current output in the concrete tests, …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 3, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

This report is the third in a series of efforts by students at the Muskie School of Public Service, Community Planning and Development Master’s program, in a core class called “Sustainable Communities.” In this course students seek to understand principles of sustainability and how efforts to implement Sustainability programs can become more successful. The report assembles term papers students completed on particular efforts by municipalities, universities, and other groups to achieve sustainability goals. Students worked on each project in a service learning format with real world clients. They were asked to fashion their papers around lessons learned by other organizations …

Achieving The Vision Through High Ethical Standards, Sarah E. Bertke

Ohio Valley Regional Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Perpetual Pavement Analysis For The Marquette Interchange Instrumentation Project, Nicholas James Hornyak

Dissertations (1934 -)

With the emergence of the mechanistic-empirical pavement design process, development of pavements rely on the structural response and fatigue characteristics of pavement materials due to traffic loads. In the past, pavement design has been almost entirely based on empirical data. One area of interest in designing hot-mix asphalt (HMA) pavements is the fatigue life of the pavement, which has been shown to be dependent on the horizontal strain in the pavement.

This research is focused on measuring the structural response of a pavement located within the Marquette Interchange Project in order to analyze fatigue behavior with great detail. Virtually all …

Development Of A Geopolymer-Based Cementitious Coating For The Rehabilitation Of Buried Concrete Infrastructure, Carlos Montes

Doctoral Dissertations

The current research project was devoted to the incorporation of geopolymers as a new material for Trenchless projects, taking advantage of their properties in a field in which they had not been used before, providing a substantial help to municipalities to meet their rehabilitation needs. Trenchless Technologies are a family of methods, materials and equipment capable of being used for the installation of new or replacement or rehabilitation of existing underground infrastructure with minimal disruption to surface traffic, business, and other activities.

The dissertation research work described herein is divided into six primary objectives: (1) the evaluation of geopolymer as …

Use Of Dynamic Cone Penetration And Clegg Hammer Tests For Quality Control Of Roadway Compaction And Construction, Hobi Kim, Monica Prezzi, Rodrigo Salgado

JTRP Technical Reports

Soil compaction quality control presently relies on the determination of the in-place compacted dry unit weight, which is then compared with the maximum dry unit weight obtained from a laboratory compaction test. INDOT requires that the in-place dry unit weight for compacted soil be over 95% of the laboratory maximum dry unit weight. In order to determine the in-place dry unit weight, INDOT engineers generally use nuclear gauges, which are hazardous and also costly because of the required safety precautions. Thus, several alternative tests such as the Dynamic Cone Penetration Test (DCPT) and the Clegg Hammer Test (CHT) were introduced …

Geotechnical Design Based On Cpt And Pmt, Daehyeon Kim, Younjin Shin, Nayyar Siddiki

JTRP Technical Reports

This research presents the correlation of undrained shear strength based on the cone resistance from the cone penetration test (CPT) for clayey soils in Indiana. It utilized the field cone penetration test program including the CPT, the index test, the one dimensional test and the triaxial test. The cone factor, which is essential to reliable estimation of undrained shear strength from cone resistance, has been evaluated considering the plasticity index of soils. The cone factor is influenced by the penetration rate during the CPT and test methods that are used for obtaining the undrained shear strength. The rate effect of …

Analyzing The Effects Of Led Traffic Signals On Urban Intersection Safety, Deogratias Eustace, Valerie E. Griffin, Peter W. Hovey

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Faculty Publications

In 2002, there were 1,299,000 crashes at signalized intersections in the United States. These crashes account for approximately 21 percent of total crashes and about 24 percent of all fatal and injury collisions. The social and financial impact of this number of collisions is substantial. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and other agencies have recognized the detrimental effects of intersection crashes on our society and continue to fund research that will lead to a decrease in crash frequency. Numerous countermeasures have been tested for their potential to reduce crashes. Infrastructure improvements such as the construction of left-turn lanes, the removal …

High-Performance Concrete Bridge Decks: A Fast-Track Implementation Study Volume 2: Materials, Mateusz Radlinski, Jan Olek

JTRP Technical Reports

The purpose of this research was to examine the applicability of ternary binder systems containing ordinary portland cement (OPC), class C fly ash (FA) and silica fume (SF) for bridge deck concrete. This was accomplished in two parts, the laboratory part and a field application part.

During the laboratory studies, four ternary mixtures, each containing either 20% or 30% FA and either 5% or 7% SF were subjected to four different curing regimes (air drying, 7 days curing compound application and 3 or 7 days wet burlap curing). In general, all four ternary mixtures exhibited very good water and chloride …

A Simple Technique For Surface Area Determination Through Supercritical Co2 Adsorption, Mahmud Sudibandriyo

Makara Journal of Technology

The measurement of specific surface area of porous materials has long been important in physical sciences and is currently growing in importance in applied and environmental science. Numerous systems have been developed for surface area measurement by gas adsorption. Commercial systems are available which can measure a wide range of absolute surface area with relative ease. However, their cost is often prohibitive. In this study, an inexpensive apparatus for surface area measurement has been set up to be used for measuring supercritical adsorption of CO2. The Ono-Kondo Lattice model was used to represent the adsorption isotherm and to determine the …

Fishing Catch And Catch Rate Assesment Of Mini Trawl, Trapnet And Setnet Fisheries, Muhammad Firdaus

Makara Journal of Technology

Fishing Catch and Catch Rate Assesment of Mini Trawl, Trapnet and Setnet Fisheries. This paper is aimed at assessing fishing catch and catch rate of the dragged gear on shrimp, trapnet, and setnet fisheries in Tarakan. The catch and effort data (number and species) and the fishing time of captured units were used in this qualitative analysis of fishing catch and catch rate to describe catch composition and catch rate from three catch fishery units in Tarakan. The result of the research shows that in the catching operation the dragged gear on shrimp has two main catch targets, which are …

Monitoring And Predicting Traffic Induced Vertebrate Mortality Near Wetlands, J. Andrew Dewoody, Jamie M. Nogle, Melissa Hoover, Barny Dunning

JTRP Technical Reports

Animal-vehicle collisions are undesirable to the general public, to drivers, to insurance providers, to biologists, and presumably to the animals themselves. However, traffic-induced mortality (―roadkill‖) is difficult to mitigate in large part because scientists lack the empirical data required to understand the patterns and processes associated with roadkill. Roadkill is not randomly distributed in space or in time, but what are the primary determinants of roadkill? And do they differ across organismal groups? We monitored vertebrate roadkill at 6 wetland and 6 upland sites in Indiana twice a week for a period of 20 months to determine whether roadkill occurs …

A Visual Approach To Construction Cost Estimating, Phuwadol Samphaongoen

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Construction cost estimating is considered one of the most important and critical phases of a construction project. Preparing reliable and accurate estimates to help decision makers is the most challenging assignment that estimators face. An estimate is not only necessary for proposal preparation but also for several project management functions. Despite the importance of estimating, it has remained a very time consuming process. The most inefficient part of construction cost estimating is determination of the amount of resources needed for the construction of a project. This is also known as quantity takeoff. Quantity takeoff is a very long and error-prone …

Real-Time Health Monitoring System For Mast-Arm Sign Support Structures, Andrew David Smith

Master's Theses (2009 -)

There has been an ongoing study conducted by Marquette University and supported by the Wisconsin Highway Research Program that is seeking to understand the risk of fatigue-induced fracture in the connections of mast-arm sign support structures. This study has been brought on by recent problems encountered with the connections contained in, and the in-service performance of, several cantilevered mast-arm sign support structures. A resulting recommendation of phase one in this effort was to monitoring an in-service cantilevered mast-arm sign support structure.

The health monitoring system developed in this thesis effort includes a grouping of strain gages (full-bridge arrangements) positioned around …

Ontology-Based Automatic Classification For News Articles In Indonesian Language, Prajna Wira Basnur, Dana Indra Sensuse

Makara Journal of Technology

Ontology-Based Automatic Classification for News Articles in Indonesian Language. Searching specific information will be difficult if relying only on query. Choosing less specific queries will result in a lot of irrelevant information fetched by the system. One of the most successful ways to overcome this problem is to perform document classification based on the topic. There are many methods that can be used to conduct such a classification, such as using statistical and machine learning approaches. However, those document classification methods require training the data or learning the documents. In this study, the authors attempted to classify documents using a …

Particle Filter With Binary Gaussian Weighting And Support Vector Machine For Human Pose Interpretation, Indah Agustien, Muhammad Rahmat Widyanto, Sukmawati Nur Endah, Tarzan Basaruddin

Makara Journal of Technology

This paper proposes human pose interpretation using particle filter (PF) with Binary Gaussian Weighting and support vector machine (SVM). In the proposed system, particle filter is used to track a human object, then this human object is skeletonized using thinning algorithm and classified using SVM. The classification is to identify human pose, whether it is normal or abnormal behavior. Here particle filter is modified through weight calculation using Gaussian distribution to reduce the computational time. The modified particle filter consists of four main phases. First, particles are generated to predict target’s location. Second, the weight of certain particles is calculated …

Maintenance Activity Planning By Reability Centered Maintenance Ii Method, Rachmad Hidayat, Nachnul Ansori, Ali Imron

Makara Journal of Technology

Maintenance Activity Planning by Reability Centered Maintenance II Method. This research discusses maintenance activity planning using the RCM II method to evaluate failure function risk on compresor screw. The calculation of maintenance time is performed by considering maintenance and repair costs. The risk evaluation result with RPN shows that the critical component that needs to get the main priority in applying maintenance on compresor screw is function disorder on timeworn piston and on the broken outgoing air sponge’s filter that receives RPN 45. The optimum maintenance time calculation is applied on components that undergo scheduled restoration and scheduled discard task …