Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Fragility Functions Of Manufactured Houses Under Earthquake Loads, Shuyah Tani Aurore Ouoba

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

Manufactured homes are factory-built homes made of wooden structural members, then transported and installed on a given site. Manufactured housing is used in many countries, such as in Australia, and in New Zealand but remain mostly popular in the United States. In 2020, nearly 22 million people were estimated to live in manufactured homes in the United States, with an increase of more than fifty percent in the shipment over the past seven years. However, performance observations from the last decades have shown the vulnerability of manufactured homes to extreme events, like windstorms and earthquakes. Damage assessments and post-event evaluations …

Impact Of Irrigation Technologies On Withdrawals And Consumptive Use Of Water, Eric Wilkening, Derek M. Heeren, Douglas R. Hallum, Jennifer Schellpeper, Derrel Martin

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Developments in irrigation technologies have subsequently led to increases in irrigation application efficiency, including conversion from surface to sprinkler irrigation, variable rate irrigation (VRI), and low energy precision application. However, while these increases in application efficiency may reduce water withdrawals and/or diversions (from groundwater or surface water), they may not necessarily translate to additional water being available for future or downstream use. Consumptive use of water, water consumed and not returned to the local or sub-regional watershed, is not necessarily impacted by increased application efficiency, but is an important metric in conserving water for other uses. One recent irrigation technology …

Stockpiling Versus Composting: Effectiveness In Reducing Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria And Resistance Genes In Beef Cattle Manure, Zachery R. Staley, Bryan L. Woodbury, Bobbi S. Stromer, Amy Schmidt, Daniel D. Snow, Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, Bing Wang, Xu Li

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Manure storage methods can affect the concentration and prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in cattle manure prior to land application. The objective of this study was to compare stockpiling and composting with respect to their effectiveness in reducing ARB and ARGs in beef cattle manure in a field-scale study. Field experiments were conducted in different seasons with different bulking agents for composting. For both the winter-spring cycle and the summer-fall cycle, ARB concentrations declined below the limit of quantification rapidly in both composting piles and stockpiles; however, ARB prevalence was significantly greater in the composting …

Robotic Technologies For High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping: Contemporary Reviews And Future Perspectives, Abbas Atefi, Yufeng Ge, Santosh Pitla, James Schnable

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Phenotyping plants is an essential component of any effort to develop new crop varieties. As plant breeders seek to increase crop productivity and produce more food for the future, the amount of phenotype information they require will also increase. Traditional plant phenotyping relying on manual measurement is laborious, time-consuming, error-prone, and costly. Plant phenotyping robots have emerged as a high-throughput technology to measure morphological, chemical and physiological properties of large number of plants. Several robotic systems have been developed to fulfill different phenotyping missions. In particular, robotic phenotyping has the potential to enable efficient monitoring of changes in plant traits …

Comparison Of Promoter, Dna Vector, And Cationic Carrier For Efficient Transfection Of Hmscs From Multiple Donors And Tissue Sources, Tyler Kozisek, Andrew Hamann, Luke Samuelson, Miguel Fudolig, Angela K. Pannier

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are primary cells with high clinical relevance that could be enhanced through genetic modification. However, gene delivery, particularly through nonviral routes, is inefficient. To address the shortcomings of nonviral gene delivery to hMSCs, our lab has previously demonstrated that pharmacological “priming” of hMSCs with clinically approved drugs can increase transfection in hMSCs by modulating transfection-induced cytotoxicity. However, even with priming, hMSC transfection remains inefficient for clinical applications. This work takes a complementary approach to addressing the challenges of transfecting hMSCs by systematically investigating key transfection parameters for their effect on transgene expression. Specifically, we investigated …

Multi-Sensor Data Collection And Fusion Using Autoencoders In Condition Evaluation Of Concrete Bridge Decks, Sepehr Pashoutani, Jinying Zhu, Chungwook Sim, Kwanghee Won, Brian A. Mazzeo, W Spencer Guthrie

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper presents a multi-sensor data collection and data fusion procedure for nondestructive evaluation/testing (NDE/NDT) of a concrete bridge deck. Three NDE technologies, vertical electrical impedance (VEI), ground-penetrating radar (GPR), and high-definition imaging (HDI) for surface crack detection, were deployed on the bridge deck. A neural network autoencoder was trained to quantify the relationship between VEI and GPR results using the data collected at common positions. This relationship was then used for fusion of VEI and GPR data to increase the reliability and spatial resolution of the NDE measurements and to generate a data-fused condition map that showed novel characteristics. …

Computing Accurate Probabilistic Estimates Of One-D Entropy From Equiprobable Random Samples, Hoshin V. Gupta, Mohammed Reza Ehsani, Tirthankar Roy, Maria A. Sans-Fuentes, Uwe Ehret, Ali Behrangi

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

We develop a simple Quantile Spacing (QS) method for accurate probabilistic estimation of one-dimensional entropy from equiprobable random samples, and compare it with the popular Bin-Counting (BC) and Kernel Density (KD) methods. In contrast to BC, which uses equal-width bins with varying probability mass, the QS method uses estimates of the quantiles that divide the support of the data generating probability density function (pdf) into equal-probability-mass intervals. And, whereas BC and KD each require optimal tuning of a hyper-parameter whose value varies with sample size and shape of the pdf, QS only requires specification of the number of quantiles to …

Cabra: A Novel Large-Sample Dataset For Brazilian Catchments, Andre Almagro, Paulo Tarso S. Oliveira, Antonio Alves Meira Neto, Tirthankar Roy, Peter Troch

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present the Catchments Attributes for Brazil (CABra), which is a large-sample dataset for Brazilian catchments that includes long-term data (30 years) for 735 catchments in eight main catchment attribute classes (climate, streamflow, groundwater, geology, soil, topography, land cover, and hydrologic disturbance). We have collected and synthesized data from multiple sources (ground stations, remote sensing, and gridded datasets). To prepare the dataset, we delineated all the catchments using the Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain Digital Elevation Model (MERIT DEM) and the coordinates of the streamflow stations provided by the Brazilian Water Agency, where only the stations with 30 years (1980–2010) …

Biotransformation Of Doxycycline By Brevundimonas Naejangsanensis And Sphingobacterium Mizutaii Strains, Ting He, Jianguo Bao, Yifei Leng, Daniel D. Snow, Shuqiong Kong, Tong Wang, Xu Li

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The fate of doxycycline (DC), a second generation tetracycline antibiotic, in the environment has drawn increasing attention in recent years due to its wide usage. Little is known about the biodegradability of DC in the environment. The objective of this study was to characterize the biotransformation of DC by pure bacterial strains with respect to reaction kinetics under different environmental conditions and biotransformation products. Two bacterial strains, Brevundimonas naejangsanensis DD1 and Sphingobacterium mizutaii DD2, were isolated from chicken litter and characterized for their biotransformation capability of DC. Results show both strains rely on cometabolism to biotransform DC with tryptone as …

Modeling Vadose Zone Hydrology [Lecture Notes], Derek M. Heeren, Dean E. Eisenhauer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Modeling Vadose Zone Hydrology is a graduate-level course offered biennially in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. Topics included hydraulic properties of porous media, application of Darcy's Law in variably saturated media, hydrologic and transport processes in the vadose zone, and solution of steady and unsteady flow problems using numerical techniques. A graphical approach for characterizing vertical one-dimensional problems with energy head profiles was emphasized. Common one-dimensional flow and transport problems were solved analytically. The course was taught using a combination of lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations. The lecture notes from 2021, captured using the Microsoft Whiteboard app with a …

Design And Detailing Of Cast-In-Place And Precast Concrete Approach Slabs, George Morcous, Mostafa Abo-Elkhier

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Approach slab is a structural concrete slab that spans from the backwall of the abutment (i.e. end of the bridge floor) to the beginning of the paving section. The purpose of the approach slab is to carry the traffic loads over the backfill behind the abutments to avoid differential settlement that causes bumps at the bridge ends. Cast- in-place concrete approach slab is the current practice in US with various spans, reinforcement, thicknesses, joints, and concrete covers. NDOT has observed premature cracking in a significant number of approach slabs, which could result in a shorter service life and costly repairs/replacements …

Design And Detailing Of Cast-In-Place And Precast Concrete Approach Slabs, George Morcous Ph.D., Mostafa Abo-Elkhier

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Approach slab is a structural concrete slab that spans from the backwall of the abutment (i.e. end of the bridge floor) to the beginning of the paving section. The purpose of the approach slab is to carry the traffic loads over the backfill behind the abutments to avoid differential settlement that causes bumps at the bridge ends. Cast-in-place concrete approach slab is the current practice in US with various spans, reinforcement, thicknesses, joints, and concrete covers. NDOT has observed premature cracking in a significant number of approach slabs, which could result in a shorter service life and costly repairs/replacements as …

Uavs For Vegetation Monitoring: Overview And Recent Scientific Contributions, Ana I. De Castro, Yeyin Shi, Joe Mari Maja, Jose M. Peña

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper reviewed a set of twenty-one original and innovative papers included in a special issue on UAVs for vegetation monitoring, which proposed new methods and techniques applied to diverse agricultural and forestry scenarios. Three general categories were considered: (1) sensors and vegetation indices used, (2) technological goals pursued, and (3) agroforestry applications. Some investigations focused on issues related to UAV flight operations, spatial resolution requirements, and computation and data analytics, while others studied the ability of UAVs for characterizing relevant vegetation features (mainly canopy cover and crop height) or for detecting different plant/crop stressors, such as nutrient content/deficiencies, water …

Editorial: Advances In Pollutant Transport In Critical Zone Environments, Huilian Ma, Yusong Li, Chongyang Shen, Constantinos V. Chrysikopoulos, Hyunjung Kim

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

One major environmental challenge facing humankind is the constantly increasing pollution of water and soil resources on a global scale. The substances that cause such pollution arise primarily from human-made wastes, including agricultural and industrial wastes, household garbage, oil spills, and other toxic materials. The spatiotemporal distribution of these polluting substances in soil and water systems is determined by an interplay of many factors such as physicochemical properties of pollutants, soil grain properties and structure, fluid flow chemistry and velocity, biological activity, and other environmental factors (temperature, precipitation). In this issue, we have collected a series of articles that advance …

Research And Education For Optimizing The Development And Implementation Of An Unmanned Aircraft Program At The Nebraska Department Of Transportation, Wayne Woldt, Jon Starr, Christopher M. U. Neale

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

This report describes the development and implementation of an Unmanned Aircraft System Program at the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT). The project involved the selection and purchase of appropriate UAS and imaging systems for NDOT, education and training for NDOT personnel with classroom and hands-on operation of UAS with the goal of obtaining proficiency and pilot licenses. In addition, the development of policy for the use of UAS within NDOT was accomplished as well as standard operating procedures (SOP) documentation and the development of example case studies of interest to NDOT using the purchased systems and technology.

Early Detection Of Encroaching Woody Juniperus Virginiana And Its Classification In Multi-Species Forest Using Uas Imagery And Semantic Segmentation Algorithms, Lin Wang, Yuzhen Zhou, Qiao Hu, Zhenghong Tang, Yufeng Ge, Adam Smith, Tala Awada, Yeyin Shi

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Woody plant encroachment into grasslands ecosystems causes significantly ecological destruction and economic losses. Effective and efficient management largely benefits from accurate and timely detection of encroaching species at an early development stage. Recent advances in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) enabled easier access to ultra-high spatial resolution images at a centimeter level, together with the latest machine learning based image segmentation algorithms, making it possible to detect small-sized individuals of target species at early development stage and identify them when mixed with other species. However, few studies have investigated the optimal practical spatial resolution of early encroaching species detection. Hence, we …

Research And Education For Optimizing The Development And Implementation Of An Unmanned Aircraft Program At The Nebraska Department Of Transportation, Wayne Woldt, Jon Starr, C.M.U. Neale

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

This report describes the development and implementation of an Unmanned Aircraft System Program at the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT). The project involved the selection and purchase of appropriate UAS and imaging systems for NDOT, education and training for NDOT personnel with classroom and hands-on operation of UAS with the goal of obtaining proficiency and pilot licenses. In addition, the development of policy for the use of UAS within NDOT was accomplished as well as standard operating procedures (SOP) documentation and the development of example case studies of interest to NDOT using the purchased systems and technology.

Feature-Based Point Cloud-Based Assessment Of Heritage Structures For Nondestructive And Noncontact Surface Damage Detection, Richard L. Wood, Mohammad Ebrahim Mohammadi

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Assessment and evaluation of damage in cultural heritage structures are conducted primarily using nondestructive and noncontact methods. One common deployment is laser scanners or ground-based lidar scanners that produce a point cloud containing information at the centimeter to the millimeter level. This type of data allows for detecting surface damage, defects, cracks, and other anomalies based only on geometric surface descriptors using a single dataset, which does not rely on a change detection approach. Moreover, geometric features are not influenced by color, which is essential for heritage structures because they are nonuniform in color due to anthropologic and environmental effects …

Exploration Of The Sludge Biodiesel Pathway, Zachary Christman

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wastewater sludge is an overlooked source of fat, oil, and grease (FOG) that could be converted into biodiesel. The United States produces about 8 million tons of sludge per year. The disposal cost for this amount of sludge is about 2 billion US dollars. The widespread availability and low cost of sludge compared to other biodiesel raw materials make it an economical choice for a renewable fuel. Using sludge as a raw material can produce 25 to 30 mg per gram of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME); the main component of biodiesel. Sludge biodiesel has the potential of transforming a …

Field Demonstration Of Gpr And Uav Technologies For Evaluation Of Two Us 75/77 Bridges, Sepehr Pashoutani, Jinying Zhu, Chungwook Sim, Ji-Yong Lee

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Two Nebraska bridges with asphalt overlay were selected for nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT/NDE). Three NDT techniques were conducted on these two bridges, including Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Half-Cell Potential (HCP) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imaging. NDT data were collected during three construction stages of the bridges: (1) before repair on existing asphalt overlay; (2) on bare concrete after asphalt removal; (3) and after repairing delaminated concrete.

A machine learning technique, autoencoder, was used to build quantitative relationships between different NDT datasets. On bare concrete, the GPR amplitude and HCP voltage show a strong linear relationship. Then a threshold …

Risk And Safety Associated With Hazardous Materials Transport In Rural And Native American Communities: A Case Study Of Thurston County, Nebraska, Sydney James

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

Rural counties and Native American Reservations often lack the resources and planning to respond to a hazardous material release which can cause catastrophic results. Many rural counties and Native American Reservations do not have close access to a fire department or medical facility, which would increase response times during a time of crisis. Jurisdiction issues further complicate the matter since Native American Reservations are sovereign nations,.

Thurston County, home to two Native American Reservations, served as a case study to perform a safety analysis for vehicles transporting hazardous material. Stakeholders within the county from tribal, county, and state levels were …

Feasibility Study: Alternatives To Prevent Settlements And Bumps At Bridge Approach, Seunghee Kim, Jongwan Eun, Yusuf Alhowaidi, Daniel Robertson

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

This project aims to examine the feasibility of improving the current design practice of the approach slab foundation in Nebraska and the alternative of using geosynthetic reinforcement of soils to prevent the bump issues near the end of bridge approaches via an in-depth numerical simulation study. A large-scale pullout test is also conducted as complementary to provide input parameters for the interaction between the regional soil and selected geosynthetics. Based on the results, it is recommended that the number of grade beam piles could be reduced to 40-50 % of the total number of abutment piles while maintaining the same …

Evaluating Asct Operations For Dodge Street Corridor, Anuj Sharma, Subhadipto Poddar, Atousa Zarindast, Christopher Day

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

As Adaptive Traffic Control (ATC) is increasingly being implemented by various traffic agencies, careful evaluation is needed of the degree to which a given ATC implementation improves traffic signal performance. The present study details the evaluation of ATC for two arterial corridors in the City of Omaha, Nebraska. Several performance measures were used across two stages of ATC implementation as well as during the unanticipated COVID-19 lockdown stage.

The average travel time and variability in travel time showed that Stage 1 of ATC implementation in Omaha did not improve traffic signal performance for the study’s main corridor, Dodge Street. This …

Drinking Water: Iron And Manganese, Bruce I. Dvorak, Becky Schuerman

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

Iron and manganese are two naturally occurring drinking water contaminants that can cause poor taste and odor issues, and be associated with discoloration that leads to staining of fixtures, dishes, and laundry. They are primarily found in Eastern Nebraska groundwater and most people mention these issues when iron levels exceed 300 micrograms per liter (µg/L) and manganese levels exceed 50 µg/L. Levels of iron can be much higher and are not associated with health concerns but manganese concentrations above 300 µg/L may pose a health issue for rice or soy formula-fed infants. Higher levels, over 1,000 µg/L, may pose a …

Environmental Impacts Of Overdesign In Small Community Water Resource Recovery Facilities, Andrew Pham

Department of Environmental Engineering: Theses and Other Student Research

Although water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) reduce environmental impacts related to water quality, their construction and operation result in negative environmental impacts in other categories. Past research into Nebraska WRRFs investigated variables determining energy intensity, opportunities and barriers for energy efficiency improvements, and environmental impacts of the construction and operation phase. This leads to the research question of what design practices can be considered to reduce the environmental impacts.

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was used to evaluate and compare the inventory and environmental impacts of nine small WRRFs, most of which are serving slow growing or declining populations. …

A Methodology For Estimating Capacity And Passenger Car Equivalents For Connected And Automated Vehicles Traveling On Freeways, Antonio Hurtado Beltran

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

Recently, there has been a significant amount of research related to heavy trucks operating as connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). In order to understand the potential impact on the freeway system of CAV technologies, analyses should be conducted using the standard US methodological framework. In the current version of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM-6), equal-capacity passenger car equivalencies (EC-PCEs) are used to account for the effect of heavy trucks on capacity and quality of service analyses. It is argued in this dissertation the HCM-6 EC-PCE methodology for basic freeway and multilane highway segments can be used to explore a wide …

Removal Of Carbamazepine Onto Modified Zeolitic Tuff In Different Water Matrices: Batch And Continuous Flow Experiments, Othman A. Al-Mashaqbeh, Diya A. Alsafadi, Layal Z. Alsalhi, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt, Daniel D. Snow

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Carbamazepine (CBZ) is the most frequently detected pharmaceutical residues in aquatic environments effluent by wastewater treatment plants. Batch and column experiments were conducted to evaluate the removal of CBZ from ultra-pure water and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent using raw zeolitic tuff (RZT) and surfactant modified zeolite (SMZ). Point zero net charge (pHpzc), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) were investigated for adsorbents to evaluate the physiochemical changes resulted from the modification process using Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HDTMA-Br). XRD and FTIR showed that the surfactant modification of RZT has created an amorphous surface with new alkyl …

Evaluation Of Permanent Concrete Barriers To Mash 2016, Samuel Elias Hovde

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

The objective of this research project was to develop evaluation criteria for permanent concrete barriers to MASH 2016 TL-3 and TL-4 without crash testing and then to evaluate permanent concrete barrier standards provided by the sponsoring agencies of the Midwest Pooled Fund Program. A literature review was conducted to determine evaluation criteria for stability, shape, strength, and anchorage, and a database of permanent concrete barrier crash tests was compiled. A survey was conducted to collect barrier standards from the members of the Midwest Pooled Fund Program, and barriers were selected and evaluated according to the determined methodology. A total of …

Biopolymerized Slope/Subgrade Stabilization And Advanced Field Monitoring, Chung R. Song, Layla Bitar, Richard L. Wood, Yong-Rak Kim, Jongwan Eun, Binyam M. Bekele, Basil Abualshar

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The slightly overconsolidated glacial tills and weathered shales in Midwestern states of the USA often show substantial strength degradation after construction. This strength reduction often causes time dependent slope failures along the roadside. This study investigated the possibility of applying biopolymer based soil modification techniques to mitigate the strength reduction phenomenon of these soils. For this research, several different biopolymers were evaluated through laboratory tests, two biopolymers were selected for extensive weathering tests, then a higher-performing biopolymer, Xanthan, was applied to a test slope in Verdigre, Nebraska with heavy instrumentation. The followings are the summary of the results.

The unweathered …

Facilitating The Industrial Sector's Adoption Of Collaborative Project Delivery Methods, Xavier Wood-Aliberch

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In an effort to improve outcomes in the civil and healthcare sectors, clients have adopted collaborative project delivery methods for the delivery of their capital projects. The success stories in these sectors have gathered the attention of clients in the industrial sector, where cost and schedule overruns have become the norm. The central objective of this thesis is to help clients make the transition to this new type of project delivery.

This thesis was written in a three-paper format, where each paper addresses a challenge with the adoption of collaborative delivery methods. The first paper investigates what type of industrial …