Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Machine Learning For High-Fidelity Prediction Of Cement Hydration Kinetics In Blended Systems, Rachel Cook, Taihao Han, Alaina Childers, Cambria Ryckman, Kamal Khayat, Hongyan Ma, Jie Huang, Aditya Kumar

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), the most broadly utilized man-made material, has been scrutinized due to its contributions to global anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. Thus -- to mitigate CO₂ emissions -- mineral additives have been promulgated as partial replacements for OPC. However, additives -- depending on their physiochemical characteristics -- can exert varying effects on OPC's hydration kinetics. Therefore -- in regards to more complex systems -- it is infeasible for semi-empirical kinetic models to reveal the underlying nonlinear composition-property (i.e., reactivity) relationships. In the past decade or so, machine learning (ML) has arisen as a promising, …

Semi-Annual Progress Report #9, Missouri University Of Science And Technology. Inspire - University Transportation Center

Semi-Annual Progress Reports

No abstract provided.

Three-Dimensional Printing Of Reinforced Concrete And Nozzle Therefor, Chenglin Wu, Genda Chen, Dimitri Feys, Guirong Grace Yan, Bryce Tyler Tafolla

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A three-dimensional printing system for reinforced concrete and a nozzle therefor. The system employs an extruder for extruding unreinforced concrete and a concrete reinforcement feeder is for feeding one or more elongate reinforcement members. The nozzle has an outlet and is operatively connected to the extruder and the concrete reinforcement feeder to receive the unreinforced concrete from the extruder and to receive the one or more elongate reinforcement members from the concrete reinforcement feeder. The nozzle combines the unreinforced concrete from the extruder and the one or more elongate reinforcement members from the concrete reinforcement feeder into a reinforced concrete …

Effects Of Fiber Clustering On Fatigue Behavior Of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams, Danying Gao, Zhiqiang Gu, Congjie Wei, Chenglin Wu, Yuyang Pang

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper investigated the effects of fiber clustering on fatigue behavior of steel-fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) beams with reinforcements by experimental and numerical analysis. The steel fiber volume fractions of beams were 0 vol%, 0.5 vol%, 1.0 vol%, and 1.5 vol%. One beam was tested under static loading, and eight beams under fatigue loading with different stress levels. Moreover, the fiber distribution in the cross section of concrete was experimentally characterized to understand the underlying mechanism. The results indicated that the fatigue life of beam increased with increasing fiber volume fraction from 0 to 1.0 vol% and decreased from 1.0 vol% …

Energy Dissipation Using Negative Stiffness Shells, Mohamed Elgawady, Yasser Darwish

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A negative stiffness shell has a convex first position, but can transition or snap to a concave second position under a force applied to the exterior surface of the shell in the convex first position. During the transition, the shell exhibits negative stiffness that permits a large amount of energy to be absorbed. The negative stiffness shell can withstand a high initial force threshold prior to transitioning. In the second, concave position the shell can still resist force. Moreover, it is possible for the shell to revert back to the first, convex position with minimal plastic deformation for subsequent use. …

Image-Based Bridge Defect Detection And Monitoring Technologies, Jian Zhang

INSPIRE Archived Webinars

Computer-vision is an emerging technology which has been widely used in the field of structural health monitoring. This seminar will cover the latest achievements of our research group in defect detection, health monitoring, and construction control using image-based technologies. For defect detection, advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed to automatically detect surface cracks and other types of structural damages based on digital image processing techniques. An integrated navigation system combining binocular camera and inertial sensor enables automated route planning for the developed UAVs in case of GPS failure. Specifically, a wall-climbing UAV is designed to acquire detailed surface …

Common Ground Newsletter Fall 2021, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

Common Ground

-Lighting the way with solar panel inspections
-CArEE Miner athletes score recognition
-Celebrating 150 years of civil engineering at S&T

Assessment Of Streamflow Predictions Generated Using Multimodel And Multiprecipitation Product Forcing, Bong Chul Seo, Witold F. Krajewski, Felipe Quintero, Steve Buan, Brian Connelly

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study assesses streamflow predictions generated by two distributed hydrologic models, the Hillslope Link Model (HLM) and the National Water Model (NWM), driven by three radar-based precipitation forcing datasets. These forcing data include the Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS), and the Iowa Flood Center's single-polarization-based (IFC-SP) and dual-polarization-based (IFC-DP) products. To examine forcing-and model-dependent aspects of the representation of hydrologic processes, we mixed and matched all forcing data and models, and simulated streamflow for 2016–18 based on six forcing–model combinations. The forcing product evaluation using independent ground reference data showed that the IFC-DP radar-only product's accuracy is comparable to MRMS, which is …

Fiber Optic-Based Thermal Integrity Profiling Of Drilled Shaft: Inverse Modeling For Spiral Fiber Deployment Strategy, Wen Deng, Ruoyu Zhong, Haiying Ma

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The current state of practice to interpret the thermal integrity profiling (TIP) data of drilled shaft is the so-called effective radius method. It uses the concrete pouring log and average temperature to construct a relationship between temperature distribution and effective radius that can be used to reconstruct a drilled shaft model. While this effective radius method is computationally inexpensive and has good operationality, it is not good at predicting the dimensions and shape of shaft defects. Upgrading the sensor used in conventional TIP from thermocouples/thermal wires to fiber optic sensors, the spatial resolution of the measured temperature will be enhanced. …

Evaluation Of Guayule Resin As An Innovative Bio-Based Asphalt Alternative In Mix Performance -- Preprint, Ahmed Hemida, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Literature revealed the potential of using guayule resin for asphalt cement replacement from the binder’s perspective. However, monitoring guayule resin through binder-aggregate mixture could disclose its performance through field. In this study, designated binders were employed to investigate the applicability of such an innovative replacer through mixture, which were neat asphalt and guayule-based binders (neat guayule, asphalt-rubber-guayule, guayule-rubber binders). Consecutively, field-simulated lab mixtures were prepared to investigate the major distresses. Moisture damage, rutting, fatigue cracking, and thermal cracking resistances were investigated using the modified Lottman (TSR) test, rut test by asphalt pavement analyzer (APA), semi-circular bending (SCB) test, and disk-shaped …

Rapid Measurement Of Rh-Dependent Aerosol Hygroscopic Growth Using A Humidity-Controlled Fast Integrated Mobility Spectrometer (Hfims), Jiaoshi Zhang, Steven Spielman, Yang Wang, Guangjie Zheng, Xianda Gong, Susanne Hering, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The ability of aerosol particles to uptake water (hygroscopic growth) is an important determinant of aerosol optical properties and radiative effects. Aerosol hygroscopic growth is traditionally measured by humidified tandem differential mobility analyzers (HTDMA), in which size-selected dry particles are exposed to elevated relative humidity (RH), and the size distribution of humidified particles is subsequently measured using a scanning mobility particle sizer. As a scanning mobility particle sizer can measure only one particle size at a time, HTDMA measurements are time consuming, and ambient measurements are often limited to a single RH level. Pinterich et al. (2017b) showed that fast …

Poster Awards Ceremony, Hongyan Ma

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

• 1st Place: Dongbin Kim, Missouri S&T, A Human-Embodied Drone for Dexterous Aerial Manipulation
• 2nd Place: Yu Otsuki, Georgia Tech, Autonomous ultrasonic thickness measurement using Martlet wireless sensing system integrated with a steel climbing mobile robot
• 3rd Place: Pu Jiao, Missouri S&T, INSPIRE UTC Bridge Inspection Field Campaign Update, 2021

Closing Remarks And Winners Announced, Hongyan Ma

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Closing Remarks and Winners Announced by INSPIRE UTC Graduate Student Poster Session Chair Dr. Hongyan Ma, Assistant Professor, Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, Missouri S&T

Improving 3d Metric Gpr Imaging Using Robotic Data Collection And Dnn Based Processing, Jinglun Feng

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

GPR is one of the most important NDE devices to detect subsurface objects and reconstruct the underground scene. There are two challenges for GPR- based inspection, which are GPR data collection and subsurface object imaging. To address these challenges, we propose a robotic solution that automates the GPR data collection process with a free motion pattern. It facilitates the 3D metric GPR imaging by tagging the pose information with GPR measurement in real-time. We also introduce a DNN based GPR data analysis method which includes a noise removal segmentation module to clear the noise in GPR raw data and a …

Encoding Time-Series Ground Motions As Images For Convolutional Neural Networks-Based Seismic Damage Evaluation, Xinzhe Yuan

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Earthquake records can be encoded as images to classify their resulting damage states to structures based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Different encoding techniques such as Recurrence Plot (RP) and Wavelet Transform (WT) can be used to transfer earthquake records to images. Presently, no consensus has been reached on the understanding of the most suitable encoding technique for CNN-based seismic damage classification. In this study, we develop a new encoding technique based on Time-series Segmentation (TS) and compare it to state-of-the-art RP and WT techniques. These techniques are mainly compared based on their classification accuracy and computation efficiency.

Reveal Underground Defects Through Impact Sounding (Is) And Impact Echo (Ie), Ejup Hoxha

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Impact Echo (IE) and Impact Sounding (IS) are well-developed non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods that are widely used for inspection of concrete structures to ensure safety and sustainability. However, it is a tedious work to collect IE and IS data along grid lines covering large target area for characterization of subsurface defects. On the other hand, data processing is very complicated and requires domain experts to interpret the results. To address the above problems, we present a robotic inspection system, to automate the data collection process and introduce data analytics software to visualize the inspection results allowing non-professionals to easily understand …

Autonomous Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement Using Martlet Wireless Sensing System Integrated With A Steel Climbing Mobile Robot, Yu Otsuki

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

The objective of this research is to develop an autonomous ultrasonic thickness measurement system for steel bridge members through the integration of wireless sensing and robotics. The ultrasonic thickness measurement is achieved using a transducer that requires access to only one side of a steel bridge member. Building upon the Martlet wireless sensing platform, this project first develops pulser and ultrasonic daughter boards to generate a pulse excitation and to filter and amplify the received ultrasonic signal. The developed Martlet wireless ultrasonic device is next integrated with a steel climbing mobile robot developed by University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). The …

Drone Vision-Based Clamping Strategy For Bridge Inspection, Bo Shang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Most bridges in the United States are near their designed lifetime. So, policy needs bridges to be inspected every two years. Currently, most of those inspections are done by human which needs to block the traffic and can cause injury. MST INSPIRE-UTC’s project Bridge Inspection Robot Deployment Systems (BIRDS) tries to develop a flying and climbing platform that has the following benefit:

• Capturing high quality data for inspection without vibration;
• Free of blocking traffic;
• Operator and inspector are safe.

Gas Leakage Detection With Hyperspectral Imagery-Based Vegetation Stress Indices, Pengfei Ma

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

The objective of this research is to provide a basis for gas leakage detection with hyperspectral cameras. The gas leakage attacks vegetations, which yields some spectral signature changes. As the vegetation under different stressors may induce similar effect. The spectral signature changes can be similar. A lab test was arranged to test three kinds of plants under four common natural stressors with a reference. All plants are routinely scanned with hyperspectral cameras every three days to obtain every developmental stage. Linear discriminant analysis (LDR) was applied in the data analysis to discriminate the plant with gas leakage treatment from the …

A Human-Embodied Drone For Dexterous Aerial Manipulation, Dongbin Kim

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Current drones passively surveil. Drones equipped with robotic arms shift this paradigm: the drone is actively interacting with the environment rather than simply sensing it. This would be needed to robotically enhance bridge-related work, called dexterous aerial manipulation: drones could hose decks; drilling on surfaces; and epoxy cracks. Such research is important to advancing bridge maintenance and repair.

Recently, the worker’s experience was integrated in aerial manipulation using haptic technology. The net effect is such system could enable the worker to leverage drones to collaborative perform haptic assessments of the objects and complete tasks on the bridge remotely. However, the …

Probability Of Detection In Corrosion Monitoring With Fe-C Coated Lpfg Sensors, Ying Zhuo

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This project aims to develop two statistical methods for determining the probability of detection in corrosion monitoring using long period fiber gratings (LPFG) sensors with thin Fe-C coating, validate these methods from independent laboratory tests, and determine the steel mass loss at 90% probability of detection and the largest steel mass loss that may miss from a corrosion inspection at 95% upper confidence bounds. LPFG sensors could reflect the corrosion process by the wavelength shift in the transmission spectrum due to the change of the refractive index of the Fe-C coating. POD is a method used to determine the capability …

Smart Sounding System For Autonomous Evaluation Of Concrete Structures, Deepak Kumar

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Impact sounding has been used successfully to detect defects in concrete structures. Recent research has shown that the sounding, such as chirp signal, can be generated by electronic speakers, and can be designed with controlled frequency characteristics to excite defects in concrete decks. The bottom of a deck cannot be conventionally sounded, and precise location of the damaged area is a challenge. The focus of this research is on development of a “Smart Sounding System” that can be used to inspect the underdeck and pier surfaces effectively and autonomously.

Inspire Utc Bridge Inspection Field Campaign Update, 2021, Pu Jiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridge inspection activities using robotic sensing system are surging in the recent years due to the increasing demand of infrastructure maintenance and development of commercial drones and open-source robotic platforms. On the other hand, the data acquired through bridge inspection is also booming, which stimulated the application of machine learning in infrastructure.

At INSPIRE UTC of Missouri University of Science and Technology, bridge inspection equipment’s are being developed and tested for comprehensive data collection using multiple sensing technologies. This paper presents and evaluates the drone-carried sensors’ abilities and applications after 3 bridge inspections in Missouri in 2021 and sketches the …

Multi-Directional Bicycle Robot For Steel Bridge Inspection, Son Thanh Nguyen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In contrast to the current climbing robots, this research presents a new design and implementation of a roller chain-based climbing robot to provide a practical solution for steel structure inspection (bridges, poles, pipes, etc.)

The proposed roller chain-like robot has 12 joints for moving and 3 pairs of joints for turning, which makes the robot very flexible. This setup allows the robot to traverse areas of complex geometry on steel bridges. The robot utilizes permanent magnets to be able to well adhere on steel structures while moving.

Inspire Utc Bridge Inspection Field Campaign Update, 2021, Pu Jiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridge inspection activities using robotic sensing system are surging in the recent years due to the increasing demand of infrastructure maintenance and development of commercial drones and open-source robotic platforms. On the other hand, the data acquired through bridge inspection is also booming, which stimulated the application of machine learning in infrastructure.

At INSPIRE UTC of Missouri University of Science and Technology, bridge inspection equipment’s are being developed and tested for comprehensive data collection using multiple sensing technologies. This paper presents and evaluates the drone-carried sensors’ abilities and applications after 3 bridge inspections in Missouri in 2021 and sketches the …

2021 Technical Program, Inspire - University Transportation Center

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

INSPIRE University Transportation Center 2020 Annual Meeting
August 10-11, 2021

Mrda-Mgfsnet: Network Based On A Multi-Rate Dilated Attention Mechanism And Multi-Granularity Feature Sharer For Image-Based Butterflies Fine-Grained Classification, Maopeng Li, Guoxiong Zhou, Weiwei Cai, Jiayong Li, Mingxuan Li, Mingfang He, Yahui Hu, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Aiming at solving the problems of high background complexity of some butterfly images and the difficulty in identifying them caused by their small inter-class variance, we propose a new fine-grained butterfly classification architecture, called Network based on Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism and Multi-granularity Feature Sharer (MRDA-MGFSNet). First, in this network, in order to effectively identify similar patterns between butterflies and suppress the information that is similar to the butterfly's features in the background but is invalid, a Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism (MRDA) with a symmetrical structure which assigns different weights to channel and spatial features is designed. Second, fusing the …

Multi Hazard Hurricane Vulnerability Model To Enable Resilence Informed Decision, Omar M. Nofal, John W. Van De Lindt, Guirong Grace Yan, Sara Hamideh, Casey Dietrich

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hurricanes or typhoons are multi-hazard events that usually result in strong winds, storm surge, waves, and debris flow. A community-level multi-hazard hurricane risk analysis approach is proposed herein to account for the combined impacts of hazards driven by hurricanes including surge, wave, and wind. A tightly coupled ADCIRC and SWAN model is used to account for the surge and wave hazard. Community-level exposure analysis is conducted using a portfolio of building archetypes associated with each hazard. A building-level hurricane vulnerability model is developed using fragility functions to account for content, building envelope, and structural damage. These fragility functions calculate the …

Vertical Profiles Of Trace Gas And Aerosol Properties Over The Eastern North Atlantic: Variations With Season And Synoptic Condition, Yang Wang, Guangjie Zheng, Michael P. Jensen, Daniel A. Knopf, Alexander Laskin, Alyssa A. Matthews, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Because of their extensive coverage, marine low clouds greatly impact the global climate. Presently, the response of marine low clouds to the changes in atmospheric aerosols remains a major source of uncertainty in climate simulations. One key contribution to this large uncertainty derives from the poor understanding of the properties and processes of marine aerosols under natural conditions and the perturbation by anthropogenic emissions. The eastern North Atlantic (ENA) is a region of persistent but diverse subtropical marine boundary layer (MBL) clouds, where cloud albedo and precipitation are highly susceptible to perturbations in aerosol properties. Here we examine the key …

Review Of Expansive And Collapsible Soil Volume Change Models Within A Unified Elastoplastic Framework, Sandra L. Houston, Xiong Zhang

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Numerous laboratory tests on unsaturated soils revealed complex volume-change response to reduction of soil suction, resulting in early development of state surface approaches that incorporate soil expansion or collapse due to wetting under load. Nonetheless, expansive and collapsible soils are often viewed separately in research and practice, resulting in development of numerous constitutive models specific to the direction of volume change resulting from suction decrease. In addition, several elastoplastic models, developed primarily for collapse or expansion, are modified by add-on, such as multiple yield curves/ surfaces, to accommodate a broader range of soil response. Current tendency to think of unsaturated …