Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

2010 Statewide Bridge Sufficiency Rating Report, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

The main purpose of this report is to provide bridge sufficiency rating information for the bridges in each county. This information results from the data generated by the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) program authorized by the 1968 Federal Aid Highway Act.

Pvc Stay-In-Place Panel Covers For Tilt-Up And Pre-Cast Construction, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Octaform™ stay-in-place concrete forming system is PVC insulated concrete form system. These forms have been used in the industry for various applications to improve the insulation and corrosion resistance of structures. Octaform™ has developed the panel covers so the advantages of PVC stay-in-place concrete forming systems could be applied to tilt-up and pre-cast construction.

Conx Chassis System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Often referred to as a full-scale “Erector Set”, the ConX System applies technology to the building industry resulting in dramatic efficiencies. The systems approach is made possible by employing automated and efficient processes, from design through fabrication, shipping, and field assembly.

Nightbreeze™: Integrated Heating, Ventilation And Cooling System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

NightBreeze™ provides ventilation cooling automatically, eliminating the necessity of operating windows. NightBreeze™ uses the heating/air conditioning system fan to bring in filtered outside air and flush out warm, stale indoor air. The system also allows you to select the lowest temperature you want the house to reach overnight.

Cmic Xprojects, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

xProjects is a cloud based collaboration and project management solution that resolves the interoperability issues associated with integrated project delivery (IPD) and electrifies the IPD process by enabling capital project owners to collaborate seamlessly with multiple project stakeholders. Using XML adapters to create connections between systems, CMiC Real Time Integration (RTI) tags data so it can be transferred bi-directionally between participants within the project ecosystem with no loss of information or the need for re-entry.

Autodesk Buzzsaw®, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Autodesk® Buzzsaw® is a software solution enabling the successful execution of construction projects through a central database, collaboration and communication with access control. The software has capacities of exchanging and viewing drawings, schedule reminders and specifications. Users can directly comment on AutoCAD drawings with the date of comment and name of commenter displayed.

Bidtool.Net: An Integrated Web-Based Approach For Commercial Bid Data Management And Networking, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

BidTool is basically a web-based portal that allows the distribution and transfer of key commercial construction project data. Owners, architects, designers, engineers, estimators, contractors, material suppliers & construction professionals find track and manage everything from architectural plans specifications and renderings to action items and scheduling requirements such as bid due dates, pre bid meetings and bid results.

Contour Crafting, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Victims of disasters such as floods, earthquakes and war have to seek shelter elsewhere. A need arises to rapidly construct houses on site and at minimal cost. This will eliminate the need to transport pre-fabricated shelters long distances, saving the time and costs associated with transportation. Since Contour Crafting is an automated process, labor needs are highly minimized allowing relief workers to allocate their time and effort to rebuilding local infrastructure such as water sanitation and distribution systems, roads, electrical and communication systems as well as irrigations systems.

Super Flex Wall - New Frame System For High Rise Buildings, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The "Super Flex Wall" is a structural frame method newly developed by the Takenaka Corporation, used in combination with a core wall (the earthquake-resistant reinforced concrete wall penetrating through the center of the building from the lower part to the top floor) and a structural control method or with a base-isolation method. Part of the structure is cantilevered from the central core along the periphery of the building.

Carbon Frp Grid Structures For Use In Reinforcing Concrete, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Carbon FRP Grids are structural reinforcement materials that improve the performance of concrete structures such as insulated wall panels, architectural panels, double tee parking garage tee beams, concrete countertops and other products. The carbon grids can be used in place of welded wire mesh in most structures and is imbedded the same way as a welded wire mesh.

Conx Space Frame System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Off-site manufacture is one of the key initiatives being used by contractors to achieve these goals. Sandwich Plate System (SPS) Floors deliver a compelling off-site solution for structural floors. Their composite steel panels provide a similar performance to concrete floors at one quarter the weight, 10 - 15% shorter project schedules and broader benefits such as reduced complexity and the elimination of the majority of wet-work above ground level.

Evaluating Net-Zero Energy Houses From The U.S. Department Of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011, Jordan P. Wallpe, William J. Hutzel, Gregory Lasker, Clark Cory

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The Solar Decathlon is a two year, international project where university students compete to design, build, and test energy-efficient, net-zero homes. By definition, net-zero energy houses annually produce as much electricity as they consume. The 2011 Solar Decathlon, held in Washington D.C., had 19 university teams from around the world.

Unfortunately, many past Solar Decathlon houses have traditionally been very costly. However, the 2011 Solar Decathlon was the first competition to have an affordability contest. The affordability contest required each home to be valued under an estimated builder’s cost of $250,000, forcing the teams to select economically feasible solutions for …

Construction Of Mse Wall Using Tire Shred-Sand Mixture As Backfill (Spr-3470), Monica Prezzi, Varenya Kumar Duvvuru Mohan

JTRP Other Publications and Reports

A large number of waste tires are generated each year throughout the world. Instead of disposing these tires in landfills, they can be used beneficially in road construction, MSE walls or structural fills that require large quantities of material. Such use of tires not only saves the costs of landfilling, but also provides certain desirable mechanical properties. The focus of this research was on determining important geotechnical properties of tire shred-sand mixtures required for their use as a lightweight backfill for MSE walls. Accordingly, the shear strength and pullout characteristics of tire shred-sand mixtures at various mixing ratios were determined …

Utilizing Technology To Increase The Recycled Content Of Asphalt Mix Designs, Nicholas Ricketts

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This directed project examined the idea that increasing the amount of recycled asphalt product in road construction will result in a comparable performance to the current levels of recycled asphalt product in today’s pavement. A critical review of literature is structured in four areas: describing the need (financial and environmental) for the increased use of recycled materials, describing how others have addressed the issue and technology needed for increasing the use of recycled content, describing how some contractors have created the technology needed, and finally describing the direction needed in order to encourage customers and government agencies to embrace the …

Engaging New Partners In Transportation Research: Integrating Publishing, Archiving, And Indexing Of Technical Literature Into The Research Process, Mark P. Newton, Darcy M. Bullock, Charles Watkinson, Paul J. Bracke, Deborah K. Horton

Libraries Research Publications

transportation research. The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) annually invests approximately $180 million in State Planning and Research (SPR) and University Transportation Centers (UTC). This investment generates an extensive portfolio of “grey literature” that is not yet uniformly cataloged or accessible, despite the best efforts of the National Technical Information Service, the Transportation Research Board, and the National Transportation Library. This paper reports on a review of publishing and archiving practices for transportation research technical reports, summarizes best practices, and recommends that UTC and SPR research programs seek and strengthen partnerships with libraries to facilitate improved production, stewardship and …

Dataset For Investigating Computational Efficiency Of Alternative Arterial Offset Optimization Algorithms, Christopher M. Day, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Data Papers

No abstract provided.

2010 Summary Of Highway Revenues, Distributions, & Expenses For Indiana Counties, Cities, & Towns, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

This report provides information on revenues, distributions, and expenses of state and local governments for highway, road, and street work. Since the Motor Vehicle Highway (MVH) and Local Road and Street (LRS) Accounts are the principal source of funds for local road or street construction and maintenance operations, this summary may be used to see the trends in income sources and in the expenses charged to the funds prior to their being distributed to the highway, road, and street agencies.

Population Trends For Indiana Counties, Cities, And Towns 1980 – 2010, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

This report contains population figures and trends for the State of Indiana complied using data from the 2010 US Census. Business, industry, and local governments should find this information helpful with their planning.

Do Wind Turbines Affect Weather Conditions?: A Case Study In Indiana, Meghan F. Henschen, Brittany Herrholtz, Lacey Rhudy, Kathryn Demchak, Brian Doogs, Joshua Holland, Erik Larson, Johnny Martin, Matthew Rudkin

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Wind turbines are becoming increasingly widespread in the United States as the world looks for cleaner sources of energy. Scientists, policymakers, and citizens have strong opinions regarding the positive and negative effects of wind energy projects, and there is a great deal of misinformation about wind energy circulating on the Web and other media sources. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how the rotation of hundreds of turbines can influence local weather conditions within a wind farm and in the surrounding areas. This experiment measures temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity, …

Development Of Guidelines For The Rating, Inspection, And Acquisition Of Railroad Flatcars For Use As Highway Bridges On Low-Volume Roads, Jason T. Provines, Robert Connor

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Technical Reports

Due to budget constraints, many state and county highway agencies are often forced to develop innovative and economical rehabilitation strategies for deteriorated bridges. One such option is to use a retired railroad flatcar for a bridge superstructure. Railroad flatcars can be found in many lengths, making them versatile options for replacing bridges of a range of span lengths up to about 90 feet. Railroad flatcars are also completely modular and lightweight, allowing for quick construction. Within Indiana, as well as other states, several of these bridge structures have been in service for many years.

Although their performance has been satisfactory, …

Estimating Highway Maintenance Work, Fifth Edition, Ohio Department Of Transportation, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

This manual is founded upon a problem index that walks through a number of equations that will estimate the maintenance work required in areas such as bridge deck repair, chip and seal, crack sealing, mowing, road salt application, salt spreader calibration, and many more everyday road maintenance operations. The manual also includes an appendix to help with lengths, areas, volumes, rates, equivalents, and rules.

Developing A Regional Land Use Drought Index In Florida, Chi-Han Cheng, Fidelia Nnadi

2011 Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts

Drought is a natural phenomenon that occurs when a significant decrease of water availability during a significant period of time and over a larger area. Drought indices can be a useful tool to assess and respond to drought. However, current drought indices could not fully show the land use effects and they have limitation in data sources. ENSO influence the climate of Florida; where El Niño years tend to be cooler and wetter, and La Niña years tend to be warmer and drier than normal in the fall through the spring, with the strongest effect in the winter. Both prolonged …

Probabilistic Assessment Of Drought Characteristics Using A Hidden Markov Model, Ganeshchandra Mallya, Shivam Tripathi, Sergey Kirshner, Rao S. Govindaraju

2011 Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts

Droughts are evaluated using drought indices that measure the departure of meteorological and hydrological variables such as precipitation and stream flow from their long-term averages. While there are many drought indices proposed in the literature, most of them use pre-defined thresholds for identifying drought classes ignoring the inherent uncertainties in characterizing droughts. In this study, a hidden Markov model (HMM) [1] is developed for probabilistic classification of drought states. The HMM captures space and time dependence in the data. The proposed model is applied to assess drought characteristics in Indiana using monthly precipitation and stream flow data. The comparison of …

A Look At 20th Century Droughts, Vijay P. Singh, Ashok K. Mishra

2011 Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts

Droughts exercise a profound effect on the social and economic fabric of nations. Many nations of the world experienced droughts encompassing the full spectrum of severity, areal extent and duration. The result has been that the economic development was hampered and many countries have not yet recouped fully from the ravages of droughts. The first decade of the 21st century has also witnessed varying degrees of droughts across the globe. Therefore, we ask the following questions: (a) Do droughts affect every part of the world? (b) Are there similarities in major droughts around the world? (c) Are climate change and …

On The Physics Of Droughts, M. Levent Kavvas

2011 Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts

By means of a simple general circulation model of the northern hemisphere the interaction of atmospheric and hydrologic processes during droughts will be analyzed at continental scale. It will be shown by numerical solutions of this model that the mechanism leading to droughts is a non-linear positive feedback mechanism in the sense that it feeds on itself. Imposing a temperature wave over western USA for a short period on the order of few months induces geophysical conditions in that region which tend to reduce the hydrologic water storage for a period on the order of years. The mechanisms for returning …

Parametric Assessment Of Stress Development And Cracking In Restrained Mortars Containing Internal Curing Under Autogenous And Thermal Loading, Kambiz Raoufi, John Schlitter, Dale Bentz, Jason Weiss

Lyles School of Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

A finite element model is used to examine how the properties of cementitious mortar are related to the stress development in the dual ring test. The results of this investigation are used to explain the thermal cracking behavior of mixtures containing prewetted lightweight aggregates (LWA) by quantifying the contribution of several material properties individually. In addition to the beneficial effects of using the LWA as an internal curing agent to reduce the autogenous shrinkage of concrete, the LWA also helps to reduce the potential for thermal cracking due to a lower elastic modulus and increased stress relaxation. The rate of …

How Much Do U.S. University Students Know, And Want To Know, About Sustainability And Green Building? The Findings Of A Survey, And Possible Implications For General Elective Curricula., Jeremy R. Farner

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Using the survey approach, this investigation examined the attitudes and interest of college students at two universities in different geographic locations within the United States.  Approximately 24,000 students from all disciplines and majors at Weber State University (WSU) in Utah, and 4,000 at Purdue University in Indiana, were invited to participate in a study to determine current knowledge, familiarity, and interest in topics within the sustainability and Green Building educational arena. The goal of this study was to determine what students already know, would like to know, and how much interest there would be in developing …

Fiber Reinforced Polymer Bridge Decks, Rita E. Rodriguez-Vera, Nicolas J. Lombardi, Marcelo A.S. Machado, Judy Liu, Elisa D. Sotelino

JTRP Technical Reports

The overarching goal of this study was to perform a comprehensive evaluation of various issues related to the strength and serviceability of the FRP deck panels that are available in the industry. Specific objectives were to establish critical limit states to be considered in the design of FRP deck panel, to provide performance specifications to designers, and to develop evaluation techniques for the deck panels in service.

Two different FRP panels were studied during the research project: a sandwich panel and a pultruded panel. The sandwich panel was initially selected for the rehabilitation case study bridge. However, for a variety …

An Asset Management Framework For Addressing The New Mutcd Traffic Sign Retroreflectivity Standards, Eric Hulme, Sarah Ml Hubbard, Grant D. Farnsworth, Alexander M. Hainen, Steve M. Remias, Darcy M. Bullock

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Technical Reports

The 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) requires that all agencies implement traffic sign management programs by January 8th, 2012. Most agencies are expected to adopt some type of systematic replacement policy based on life expectancy, augmented by visual inspection to identify signs with obvious damage. Several previous efforts have developed models based on average degradation of the retroreflective sheeting as the signs age. This paper develops a series of survival curves characterizing the percent of signs that pass the retroreflectivity standards for signs ranging from 0 to 20 years. The curves representing expected conformance with the retroreflectivity …

How Do Millennial Engineering And Technology Students Experience Learning Through Traditional Teaching Methods Employed In The University Setting?, Elizabeth A. Howard

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

The purpose of the study was to document and analyze how Millennial engineering and technology students experience learning in large lecture classrooms. To help achieve this purpose, perceptions Millennials have toward traditional teaching methods employed in large lecture classes were analyzed and discussed. Additionally, this study documented how Millennials experienced technology within large lecture classrooms. A learning model depicting how Millennials experience learning within the large lecture classroom was created based on the results of this study. This model employed three separate tools utilized within the large lecture classroom. These tools: Lecture, Technology, and Homework, work together to synthesize learning …