Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

How Sustainable Are Drone (Uav) Deliveries?, Miguel Figliozzi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Private companies and public officials are seeking sustainable and cost effective ways to green supply chains and freight deliveries. There is enthusiasm regarding the potential benefits that innovative technologies such as drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can generate. This presentation discusses key issues and insights that arise from modeling the logistical, and environmental performance of UAVs.

Transportation Impacts Of Affordable Housing: Informing Development Review With Travel Behavior Analysis, Amanda Howell

PSU Transportation Seminars

Planning for affordable housing is challenged by development policies that often do not differentiate between the travel patterns of residents of market-rate housing and those living in affordable units. The development review process generally requires an evaluation of the anticipated additional transportation demand that new development places on the system and an assessment of fees or improvements to mitigate these impacts.

However, industry standard guidelines for assessment of travel demand outlined within the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook have been focused solely on vehicle trip rates for these traffic impact analyses. Given the public goals of providing …

Evaluating The Applicability Of Modflow2005 Plus Mt3d-Usgs: Borden Case Study, Linley Mescher

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Groundwater is essential to communities around the world for drinking, industrial, and agricultural purposes. MODFLOW is a modeling program that uses the three-dimensional continuity equation in a finite difference approach to simulate groundwater flow in an aquifer. MT3D-USGS is a MODFLOW package that simulates contaminant transport. This study used MODFLOW2005 with MT3D-USGS to build a model simulating contaminant transport in Borden, Ontario. A study conducted at the Borden site in 1982 injected a solution of eight solutes to test the transport of contaminants over three years. Initial simulations showed similar transport characteristics for chloride and carbon tetrachloride as compared to …

Ocean And Ice Shelf Tides From Cryosat-2 Altimetry, Edward Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A new empirical model of ocean tides has been developed for the Weddell Sea, south of 668S, between 908W and 08, using six years of radar altimeter data from the CryoSat-2 satellite mission. Because of its long groundtrack repeat period (368 days) and its diverse measurement modes, low-rate mode (LRM) over the ocean and synthetic aperture radar interferometric mode (SARin) over ice surfaces and parts of the ocean, the CryoSat2 data pose a number of challenges for tidal analysis. The space and time sampling properties of the exact repeat, near-repeat, and crossover ground tracks have been analyzed to discover which …

A Novel Laser And Video-Based Displacement Transducer To Monitor Bridge Deflections, Miguel A. Vicente, Dorys C. Gonzalez, Jesus Minquez, Thomas Schumacher

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The measurement of static vertical deflections on bridges continues to be a first-level technological challenge. These data are of great interest, especially for the case of long-term bridge monitoring; in fact, they are perhaps more valuable than any other measurable parameter. This is because material degradation processes and changes of the mechanical properties of the structure due to aging (for example creep and shrinkage in concrete bridges) have a direct impact on the exhibited static vertical deflections. This paper introduces and evaluates an approach to monitor displacements and rotations of structures using a novel laser and video-based displacement transducer (LVBDT). …

Hydrodynamic And Water Quality Modeling Of The Tigris River System In Iraq Using Ce-Qual-W2, Muhanned Al Murib

Dissertations and Theses

The Tigris River is one of two primary rivers in Iraq and is, along with the Euphrates, the main source for drinking and irrigation water in the country. The Tigris River originates in the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, and is 1850 km long. The majority of the river lies within Iraq. The river passes through, and is the primary drinking water source for major cities such as Mosul, Baeji, Samarra, Baghdad (the capital), and Kut. The Tigris River joins the Euphrates River in Qurna city within Basra province to form the Shatt Al-Arab River which eventually discharges into the Persian …

Transit Demand Analysis And User Classification Using Automatic Fare Collection (Afc) Data, Alireza Khani

PSU Transportation Seminars

Development of origin-destination demand matrices is crucial for transit planning. The development process is facilitated by transit automated data, making it possible to mine boarding and alighting patterns on an individual basis. This research proposes a novel stochastic trip chaining method which uses Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and General Transit Feed Specifications (GTFS) data to infer an origin-destination (O-D) matrix.

Road Diet V2.0 - Road Diet With Roundabouts, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

How can we go one step, or one lane, further than the standard road diet? Roundabouts allow a road diet to reduce the final number of lanes from three to two.

Questions arise when roundabouts are used with a road diet. What traffic volumes are supportable? Will the roundabouts fit within existing intersections? What does current guidance tell us about this approach?

Michael Williams will present his work on creating a sequel to FHWA’s Road Diet Informational Guide. This work is intended to provide a feasibility determination tool for the application of this approach to existing corridors. Data from Bird …

Evaluation Of Route Changes Utilizing High-Resolution Gps Bus Transit Data, Travis Bradley Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

Congestion and travel delay on urban roadways can influence operating costs and service attractiveness. This research uses high resolution bus data to examine sources of delay on urban arterials. A set of tools was created to help visualize trends in bus behavior and movement; this allowed larger traffic trends to be visualized along urban corridors and urban streets. By using buses as probes and examining aggregated bus behavior, contoured speed plots can be used to understand the behavior of roadways outside the zone of influence of bus stops. Speed plots can be utilized to discover trends and travel patterns with …

Apprehensive Drought Characteristics Over Iraq: Results Of A Multidecadal Spatiotemporal Assessment, Maysoun Ayad Hameed, Ali Ahmadalipour, Hamid Moradkhani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drought is an extreme climate phenomenon that happens slowly and periodically threatens the environmental and socio-economic sectors. Iraq is one of the countries in the Middle East that has been dealing with serious drought-related issues in the 21st century. Here, we investigate meteorological drought across Iraq from 1948 to 2009 at 0.25° spatial resolution. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) has been utilized as a multi-scalar drought index accounting for the effects of temperature variability on drought. Four of the main characteristics of drought including extent, intensity, frequency and duration are studied and the associated spatiotemporal patterns are investigated for …

Decision Support System For The Design And Planning Of Low-Impact Development Practices: The Case Of Seoul, Jae-Yeol Song, Eun-Sung Chung, Soo Hyun Kim

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study presented the conceptual framework of the water-management analysis module (WMAM) to derive effective physical specifications for the design and planning of low-impact development (LID) practices using the storm-water management model (SWMM). This decision-support system can be used for six LID types and has the following key capabilities: determining relevant LID design parameters within the SWMM that critically influence the hydrological cycle components using a simple sensitivity analysis and determining the best hydrological values for LID planning specification. This study analyzed a highly urbanized university campus as a case study to determine the design and planning specifications for an …

Flavour Chemicals In A Sample Of Non-Cigarette Tobacco Products Without Explicit Flavour Names Sold In New York City In 2015, Shannon M. Farley, Kevin R.J. Schroth, Victoria Grimshaw, Wentai Luo, Julia Lynn Degagne, Peyton A. Tierney, Kilsun Kim, James F. Pankow

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background Youth who experiment with tobacco often start with flavoured products. In New York City (NYC), local law restricts sales of all tobacco products with ‘characterising flavours’ except for ‘tobacco, menthol, mint and wintergreen’. Enforcement is based on packaging: explicit use of a flavour name (eg, ‘strawberry’) or image depicting a flavour (eg, a fruit) is presumptive evidence that a product is flavoured and therefore prohibited. However, a tobacco product may contain significant levels of added flavour chemicals even when the label does not explicitly use a flavour name.

Methods Sixteen tobacco products were purchased within NYC in 2015 that …

Exploring The Determinants Of Vulnerable Road Users’ Crash Severity In State Roads, Álvaro Caviedes

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Pedestrians and bicyclists are the most vulnerable road users and suffer the most severe consequences when crashes take place. An extensive literature is available for crash severity in terms of driver safety, but fewer studies have explored non-motorized users’ crash severity. Furthermore, most research efforts have examined pedestrian and bicyclist crash severity in urban areas. This study focuses on state roads (mostly outside major urban areas) and aims to identify contributing risk factors of fatal and severe crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists in state roads. The results seem to suggest that besides improvements …

Development Of A Design Guideline For Bridge Pile Foundations Subjected To Liquefaction Induced Lateral Spreading, Jonathan A. Nasr

Dissertations and Theses

Effective-stress nonlinear dynamic analyses (NDA) were performed for piles in liquefiable sloped ground to assess how inertia and liquefaction-induced lateral spreading combine in long-duration vs. short-duration earthquakes. A parametric study was performed using input motions from subduction and crustal earthquakes covering a wide range of earthquake durations. The NDA results were used to evaluate the accuracy of the equivalent static analysis (ESA) recommended by Caltrans/ODOT for estimating pile demands. Finally, the NDA results were used to develop new ESA methods to combine inertial and lateral spreading loads for estimating elastic and inelastic pile demands.

The NDA results showed that pile …

Exploring High-Resolution Data Obtained From Asc/3 Controller Of Intersection Se Division St & Se 122nd Ave, Portland, Oregon, Naowar Al-Abbas

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

High-resolution data obtained from ASC/3 controllers can be used to create a variety of performance measures, helping engineers and professionals in monitoring intersection performance, identifying issues, and making proper improvements. These measures concern the intersection quality of the progression, capacity, and non-vehicular operations (e.g. pedestrian crossings). In this report, we explored high-resolution data obtained from the intersection of SE Division Street and 122nd Avenue. This intersection had some safety concerns as it is considered one of most dangerous intersections in Portland, Oregon. Thus, the first variable we examined from the data was pedestrian wait time when a cross request is …

Inertial And Liquefaction-Induced Kinematic Demands On A Pile-Supported Wharf: Physical Modeling, Milad Souri, Arash Khosravifar, Stephen E. Dickenson, Scott Schlechter, Nason Mccullough

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Results of a centrifuge test on a pile-supported wharf were used to investigate the time-, depth-, and row-dependent nature of kinematic and inertial loading on wharf piles in sloping rockfill. P-y models were calibrated against recorded bending moments in different piles and different depths. It was found that full kinematic demands and full superstructure inertia should be combined to estimate bending moments at pile head and shallow depths (less than 10 diameters below the ground surface). On the contrary, it was found that applying full kinematic demands alone was adequate to estimate pile bending moments at large depths (greater than …

The Effects Of Long-Duration Subduction Earthquakes On Inelastic Behavior Of Bridge Pile Foundations Subjected To Liquefaction-Induced Lateral Spreading, Jonathan Nasr, Arash Khosravifar

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Effective-stress nonlinear dynamic analyses (NDA) were performed for a large-diameter reinforced concrete (RC) pile in multi-layered liquefiable sloped ground. The objective was to assess the effects of earthquake duration on the combination of inertia and liquefaction-induced lateral spreading. A parametric study was performed using input motions from subduction and crustal earthquakes covering a wide range of motion durations. The NDA results showed that the pile head displacements increased under liquefied conditions, compared to nonliquefied conditions, due to liquefaction-induced lateral spreading. The NDA results were used to develop a displacement-based equivalent static analysis (ESA) method that combines inertial and lateral spreading …

Drone Deliveries Logistics, Efficiency, Safety And Last Mile Trade-Offs, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Chad Tucker, Polina Polikakhina

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drone last mile deliveries are receiving a lot of attention from startups and big companies like Google, Amazon, and UPS. Around the world there are already examples of successful small scale delivery operations utilizing drones. Despite all the hype and excitement around this topic, there is surprisingly little research done on understanding the capabilities and technical tradeoffs among drones that are currently available in the market. The goal of this paper is to survey currently available multicopter drones and analyze them in terms of their potential for last mile and last yard deliveries. Novel data …

Hydro-Climatological Summer Trends In The Continental United States, Naya Mairena Flores

REU Final Reports

We investigated trends in air temperature, stream temperature and discharge for rivers across the continental United States from the summer months of 1996 to 2016. Using GAGES II from USGS and PRISM and programming language R we analyzed specific hydrological trends in Mann-Kendall’s tests. After collecting the slope values whether they were negative or positive and the P-Values, the significance of that slope, we mapped slopes of trends in GIS. Stream temperature increased 12% of stations across the summer, while air temperature increased 22% of stations, and discharge decreased 15% of stations, respectively. Seven day moving average of daily maximum …

Modified Design Procedures For Bridge Pile Foundations Subjected To Liquefaction-Induced Lateral Spreading, Arash Khosravifar, Jonathan Nasr

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Effective-stress nonlinear dynamic analyses (NDA) were performed for piles in the liquefiable sloped ground to assess how inertia and liquefaction-induced lateral spreading combine in long- and short-duration motions. A parametric study was performed using input motions from subduction and crustal earthquakes covering a wide range of durations and amplitudes. The NDA results showed that the pile demands increased due to (a) longer duration shakings, and (b) liquefaction-induced lateral spreading compared to nonliquefied conditions. The NDA results were used to evaluate the accuracy of the equivalent static analysis (ESA) recommended by Caltrans/ODOT for estimating pile demands. Finally, the NDA results were …

Mechanisms Controlling Copper Transport In Natural Soils, Julie A. Luisi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Biosolids are used as amendments to agricultural soils and can be a source of trace metals. It is unknown if these land-applied trace metals travel through the soil column to the water table. This study aims to determine the transport behavior of copper in natural soils, including 'aged' soils, commercial agricultural soils that have had multiple years of biosolids applications. Using acid digests and Darcy column apparatus it was determined that factors such as pH, soil composition, especially organic matter content, and the presence of other trace metals influence copper’s complex transport behavior in these soils. Natural soil appears to …

Transportation Impacts Of Affordable Housing: Informing Development Review With Travel Behavior Analysis, Amanda Howell, Kristina Marie Currans, Steven R. Gehrke, Gregory Norton, Kelly J. Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Planning for affordable housing is challenged by development policies that assess transportation impacts based on methodologies that often do not distinguish between the travel patterns of residents of market-rate housing and those living in affordable units. Given the public goals of providing affordable housing in areas with good accessibility and transportation options, there is a need to reduce unnecessary costs imposed by the potential overestimation of automobile travel and its associated impacts. Thus, the primary objective of this paper is to examine and quantify the influences of urban characteristics, residential housing type, and income on metrics commonly used to assess …

Terahertz Imaging Of Thin Film Layers With Matched Field Processing, Scott Schecklman, Lisa M. Zurk

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Terahertz (THz) time of flight (TOF) tomography systems offer a new measurement modality for non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of the subsurface layers of protective coatings and/or laminated composite materials for industrial, security and biomedical applications. However, for thin film samples, the time-of-flight within a layer is less than the duration of the THz pulse and consequently there is insufficient range resolution for NDE of the sample under test. In this paper, matched field processing (MFP) techniques are applied to thickness estimation in THz TOF tomography applications, and these methods are demonstrated by using measured THz spectra to estimate the the thicknesses …

The Transport Of Non-Spherical Particles In A Simulated Ocean Environment, Hannah Reed

REU Final Reports

Plastic particles contaminating the world’s oceans and accumulating in oceanic gyres has become a ubiquitous problem and the solution involving how to clean up the debris efficiently has still not been found. One particular issue is understanding where the greatest densities of debris may be. It is known that floating trash will tend to accumulate in large circular systems of ocean water called gyres, however these areas span thousands of miles of ocean. The present study aims to understand the transport of anisotropic particles in conditions similar to an oceanic environment using experimental methods in an effort to better predict …

Day Laborers & Extreme Heat: Recommendations For Reducing Heat Stress, Sandra Mena

REU Final Reports

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has various Global Climate Models (GCM). One of them, models three greenhouse gases. The increasing amount of greenhouse gases are just a fraction of factors that fuel global climate change. According to the IPCC 2014, climate related extremes such as heatwaves are likely to occur more regularly and are likely to increase in duration. Since 1979, there has been over 9000 deaths that occurred from heat-related incidents in the United States (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). Which brings attention to population groups who are exposed to hot temperatures on a frequent basis due …

Water Quality Factor Prediction Using Supervised Machine Learning, Kathleen Joslyn

REU Final Reports

The objective of this research is to explore prediction accuracy of water quality factors, with techniques and algorithms in machine learning consisting of a variation of support vector machines - Support Vector Regression (SVR) and the gradient boosting algorithm Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). Both the XGBoost and SVR algorithms were used to predict nine different factors with success rates ranging from 79% to 99%. Parameters of these algorithms were also explored to test the prediction accuracy levels of individual water quality factors. These parameters included normalizing the data, filling missing data points, and training and testing on a large set …

Effects Of Land Development And Season On Heavy Metal Concentrations In Urban Streams, Helen Daigle

REU Final Reports

Although it is generally understood that urban development can impact the quality of urban streams, there are many factors that affect the concentrations of pollutants being transferred from the built environment to a given output. This study examines the impact of land use surrounding urban streams, specifically, the degree of development and presence or absence of green infrastructure (GI) in these areas on heavy metal (HM) concentrations in Portland, Oregon. After collecting 1021 water quality samples from 2010-2018, we examined the difference in concentrations of HM pollutants across different combinations of land use and season. Increased levels of calcium, magnesium, …

Spatial Transferability Assessment Of A Composite Walkability Index: The Pedestrian Index Of The Environment (Pie), Gabriel Lefebvre-Ropars, Catherine Morency, Patrick A. Singleton, Kelly J. Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper analyzes the transferability of a composite walkability index, the Pedestrian Index of the Environment (PIE), to the Greater Montréal Area (GMA). The PIE was developed in Portland, Oregon, and is based on proprietary data. It combines six urban form variables into a score ranging from 20 to 100. The measure introduces several methodological refinements which have not been applied concurrently in previous efforts: a wide coverage of the different dimensions of the urban form, together with the use of a distance-based decay function and modelling-based weighing of the variables.

Structural Behavior Of Lap Shear Connections With Thermally Insulating Filler Plates, Salih Qasim Mahmood

Dissertations and Theses

This research consists of experimental load tests and numerical simulations of structural steel connections with various filler materials to study the effect of non-steel fillers on the connection strength. Non-steel fillers are used in the steel connections to provide thermal insulation by reducing thermal bridging. Eight specimens having steel and polypropylene filler plates of various thicknesses were tested in the laboratory. The collected data were compared to a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) using ABAQUS to validate the numerical results. After validation, three parametric studies were conducted using ABAQUS to provide insight into general behavior of connections with a variety of …

Utilizing High-Resolution Archived Transit Data To Study Before-And-After Travel-Speed And Travel-Time Conditions, Travis Bradley Glick

Dissertations and Theses

Travel times, operating speeds, and service reliability influence costs and service attractiveness. This paper outlines an approach to quantify how these metrics change after a modification of roadway design or transit routes using archived transit data. The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet), Portland's public transportation provider, archives automatic vehicle location (AVL) data for all buses as part of their bus dispatch system (BDS). This research combines three types of AVL data (stop event, stop disturbance, and high-resolution) to create a detailed account of transit behavior; this probe data gives insights into the behavior of transit as well as …