Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Flood Conveyance And Restoration Upper Reach Of The Logan River, Dani Delahoz, Briana Kistler, Dallen Webster, D. Willey

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Generations of residents in Logan, Utah have sought riverside property along the Logan River, leading to crowded development within the river’s natural floodplains. This is especially true in the Upper Reach, a 1.3-mile section between First Dam and Crockett Diversion (Figure 1).

Housing and yard development at the edge of the river has confined the water to a narrow, steeply-banked channel, increasing velocity, sediment scour, and degradation of river and riparian habitat. During extreme flow events, like the 100-year 24-hour flood, the river overtops its banks and flows into adjacent properties. Dam-induced sediment deficiencies and high velocities have led to …

Thermal Bowing Testing Of Precast Concrete Sandwich Wall Panels, Fray Pozo-Lora, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Thermal bowing is out-of-plane wall deflection, which is a common issue on sandwich panel walls caused by a temperature differential between a building interior temperature and the environmental conditions.

This report aims to better understand thermal load response of concrete sandwich wall panels. Full-scale testing was performed to verify the assumptions regarding thermal gradient, temperature variation at the cross-section level and thermal conductivity of the connectors.

It was found out that carbon fiber reinforced polymer nor glass fiber reinforced polymer connectors transfer a significate amount of heat from one wythe to the other, hence, the temperature in one wythe remained …

Pressure Loss Coefficients For Large Mitered Elbows With Diameters Ranging From 36-Inches To 144-Inches, Hayden J. Coombs

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When designing a pipeline system, it is important to understand the pressure losses that will occur within the system. One common source of pressure loss is from elbow pipe fittings. There is extensive research available for pressure loss coefficients of elbow pipe fittings, but the research is derived from elbows with relatively smaller pipe diameters. The purpose of this research is to investigate pressure losses associated with larger diameter mitered elbows (36-inches to 144-inches). The dimensions for all mitered elbows considered in this research follow ANSI/AWWA C208-17 recommendations (AWWA 2017).

Due to the large size of the mitered elbows of …

Measuring Nitrogen Transformation In Wastewater Impacted Streams Using In-Situ Benthic Chambers, Makenzi Beltran

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Acrylic chambers and metal frames were installed at the sediment-water interface of streams impacted by the effluent from wastewater reclamation facilities in order to determine nitrogen rates for nitrification, denitrification, assimilation, ANAMMOX, and DNRA. Each chamber was dosed with an isotopic form of nitrate (¹⁵NO₃^-), and both isotopic (¹⁵N) and non-isotopic (¹⁴N) samples were collected. The project locations included East Canyon Creek near the East Canyon Wastewater Reclamation Facility in Park City, Utah and Box Elder Creek near the Brigham City Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brigham City, Utah. Separate chamber measurements …

Estimating Suspended Solids And Phosphorus Loading In Urban Stormwater Systems Using High-Frequency, Continuous Data, Anthony A. Melcher

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The introduction of pavement, buildings, and other impervious surfaces to urban landscapes greatly influences the quantity and quality of urban stormwater runoff. In this study, we designed and implemented modern stormwater monitoring technologies to establish a “smart” stormwater sensor network within the Northwest Field Canal (NWFC), an urban water conveyance located in Logan, Utah, USA. This network was designed to collect flow and water quality data at high frequencies and simultaneously at multiple locations. The observatory’s innovative method of inter-site communication and changing sampling frequencies during storm events was able to capture short duration events at the upstream and downstream …

Advancing Streamflow Forecasts Through The Application Of A Physically Based Energy Balance Snowmelt Model With Data Assimilation And Cyberinfrastructure Resources, Tseganeh Zekiewos Gichamo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) provides forecasts of streamflow for purposes such as flood warning and water supply. Much of the water in these basins comes from spring snowmelt, and the forecasters at CBRFC currently employ a suite of models that include a temperature-index snowmelt model. While the temperature-index snowmelt model works well for weather and land cover conditions that do not deviate from those historically observed, the changing climate and alterations in land use necessitate the use of models that do not depend on calibrations based on past data. This dissertation reports work done to overcome these …

The Impact Of Wood Biochar On The Plant Uptake Of Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products From Reclaimed Wastewater, Jeffrey Flashinski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Reclaimed water (treated water discharged from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)) is increasingly used in drier regions for irrigation purposes. This effectively increases the water supply and reduces the amount of WWTP discharge into surface waters but it creates the potential for contaminants in the reclaimed water, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), to accumulate in exposed crops. The US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) considers PPCPs contaminants of emerging concern due to their near universal presence in the environment and their potential for endocrine disruption. Biochar is gaining attention as a soil amendment and could potentially be used …

Calcium Sulfoaluminate Cement Concrete For Prestressed Bridge Girders: Prestressing Losses, Bond, And Strength Behavior, Nicholas Markosian

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA) cement was used to cast a prestressed voided deck slab bridge girder. The rapid-set properties of CSA cement allowed the initial concrete strength to reach the required 4300 psi needed in order to cut the prestressing strands 6.5 hours after casting. Prestress losses were monitored long-term using vibrating wire strain gages cast into the concrete at the level of the prestressing strands and the data was compared to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Load and Resistance Factor Design (AASHTO LRFD) predictions for prestress losses. AASHTO methods for prestress loss calculation were overestimated compared …

Hydraulic Average Of Multiple Tap Sets To Improve Performance Of Venturi Flowmeters With Upstream Disturbance, Taylor Stauffer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Venturi flowmeters have been used to measure flow in piped systems for over 100 years (Finnemore & Franzini, 2006). There has been much research on the performance of Venturi flowmeters and for that reason they have become popular flowmeters used in various municipal and industrial applications. Venturi flowmeters can be calibrated in a laboratory setting to find their performance characteristics. In order for the flowmeter to achieve optimum performance, the flowmeter should be installed with sufficient length of straight pipe immediately upstream of the flowmeter. Often Venturi flowmeters that are not installed in ideal conditions produce errors and uncertainty is …

Estimating Upper Red Butte Watershed Contribution To Salt Lake Valley Water Resources, Sal Bir Limbu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Water is crucial for domestic, agricultural, industrial, environmental, and hydropower uses. Once precipitation occurs, it eventually partitions into streamflow, evapotranspiration (ET), and groundwater recharge. Distribution of precipitation into these partitions is called a hydrologic budget. The hydrologic budget of any geographic area or watershed under different climate change conditions help water managers to make appropriate water management plans. Computer based hydrologic modeling software has been used extensively to solve many water resources problems including hydrologic budgets. Hydrologic modeling requires high quality weather parameter data.

This study projected surface and groundwater flows from the portion of RBC watershed that lies above …

Analytical Models For 3-D Diffusion Of Ions From Salt-Contaminated Aggregates, Robert J. Thomas, Andrew D. Sorensen, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This article presents an analytical investigation of the mobility of salts from contaminated aggregates in concrete. Salt-contaminated aggregates may have varied effects on the mechanical properties and durability of concrete. These depend primarily on the mobility of salts within the concrete matrix. Existing diffusion-based models for the mobility of salts in concrete focus on their intrusion from external sources (e.g., chloride penetration from deicing salts and brines). Such problems are well described by the closed-form solution of Fick’s law for diffusion in one dimension from a continuous source. Salt-contaminated aggregates represent a case of diffusion from a finite internal source …

Low-Cost, Open-Source, And Low-Power: But What To Do With The Data?, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Juan Caraballo, Maurier Ramírez, Anthony K. Aufdenkampe, David B. Arscott, Sara Geleskie Damiano

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

There are now many ongoing efforts to develop low-cost, open-source, low-power sensors and datalogging solutions for environmental monitoring applications. Many of these have advanced to the point that high quality scientific measurements can be made using relatively inexpensive and increasingly off-the-shelf components. With the development of these innovative systems, however, comes the ability to generate large volumes of high-frequency monitoring data and the challenge of how to log, transmit, store, and share the resulting data. This paper describes a new web application that was designed to enable citizen scientists to stream sensor data from a network of Arduino-based dataloggers to …

Ascending The Data Usability Gap In Mountainous Regions Through Scientist-Stakeholder Co-Production, Alan Rhoades

Spring Runoff Conference

No abstract provided.

Water Challenges In The Lower Colorado River Basin And The Drought Contingency Plan, Sharon Megdal

Spring Runoff Conference

No abstract provided.

Water Management In The West—A Federal Perspective, Brent Esplin

Spring Runoff Conference

No abstract provided.

Harmful Algae Blooms In Utah, Scott Daly

Spring Runoff Conference

No abstract provided.

An Update On Water Legislation From The 2019 Utah Legislative Session, Tim Hawkes

Spring Runoff Conference

No abstract provided.

Spring Runoff Conference 2019: Water Challenges In The West, Spring Runoff Conference

Spring Runoff Conference

The Spring Runoff Conference, hosted by the USU Water Initiative, is held annually on the campus of Utah State University. The conference provides a forum for interdisciplinary sharing and exchange of ideas on water-related issues in Utah and the lntermountain Region

A New Method For Microsimulation Model Calibration: A Case Study Of I-710, Hossein Nasr Esfahani, Ziqi Song

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

As a part of the feasibility analysis of electric truck roadways for some of the major corridors near Los Angles, California, this paper aims to introduce and investigate a new method for microsimulation model calibration. The model of I-710 southbound was developed in VISSIM software and calibrated through two sets of data: O-D demand from planning models and field data which was consist of traffic flow and speed. Due to the lack of proper count data for on-ramps/off-ramps, the O-D demand was estimated via path flow estimator. After determining the calibration parameters, in an attempt to avoid unnecessary VISSIM’s time-consuming …

Exploring Boarding Strategies For High-Speed Railway, Tie-Qiao Tang, Yi-Xiao Shao, Liang Chen, Hai-Jun Huang, Ziqi Song

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In light of the increasing demand for passenger transportation on high-speed railway (HSR), the pedestrian flow at HSR stations has become quite crowded in many countries, which has attracted researchers to study the HSR boarding behavior. In this paper, we propose three boarding strategies based on the features of the boarding behavior at an origin HSR station; we then use a cellular automaton (CA) model to study the impacts of boarding strategies on each passenger’s motion during the boarding process at HSR station. The simulation results indicate that some of the three strategies can optimize some passengers’ boarding time and …

Assessing Data Availability And Research Reproducibility In Hydrology And Water Resources, James H. Stagge, David E. Rosenberg, Adel M. Abdallah, Hadia Akbar, Nour A. Atallah, Ryan James

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

There is broad interest to improve the reproducibility of published research. We developed a survey tool to assess the availability of digital research artifacts published alongside peer-reviewed journal articles (e.g. data, models, code, directions for use) and reproducibility of article results. We used the tool to assess 360 of the 1,989 articles published by six hydrology and water resources journals in 2017. Like studies from other fields, we reproduced results for only a small fraction of articles (1.6% of tested articles) using their available artifacts. We estimated, with 95% confidence, that results might be reproduced for only 0.6% to 6.8% …

Addressing Challenges For Mapping Irrigated Fields In Subhumid Temperate Regions By Integrating Remote Sensing And Hydroclimatic Data, Tianfang Xu, Jillian M. Deines, Anthony D. Kendall, Bruno Basso, David W. Hyndman

Publications

High-resolution mapping of irrigated fields is needed to better estimate water and nutrient fluxes in the landscape, food production, and local to regional climate. However, this remains a challenge in humid to subhumid regions, where irrigation has been expanding into what was largely rainfed agriculture due to trends in climate, crop prices, technologies and practices. One such region is southwestern Michigan, USA, where groundwater is the main source of irrigation water for row crops (primarily corn and soybeans). Remote sensing of irrigated areas can be difficult in these regions as rainfed areas have similar characteristics. We present methods to address …

A Data Model To Manage Data For Water Resources Systems Modeling, Adel M. Abdallah, David E. Rosenberg

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Current practices to identify, organize, analyze, and serve data to water resources systems models are typically model and dataset-specific. Data are stored in different formats, described with different vocabularies, and require manual, model-specific, and time-intensive manipulations to find, organize, compare, and then serve to models. This paper presents the Water Management Data Model (WaMDaM) implemented in a relational database. WaMDaM uses contextual metadata, controlled vocabularies, and supporting software tools to organize and store water management data from multiple sources and models and allow users to more easily interact with its database. Five use cases use thirteen datasets and models focused …

Lecture 1: Stochastic Hydrology, Julianne Quinn

All ECSTATIC Materials

This is the first lecture of CE 5500: Stochastic Hydrology, taught by Julianne Quinn at the University of Virginia.

Ce 5500: Stochastic Hydrology, University Of Virginia, Julianne Quinn

All ECSTATIC Materials

This document is the syllabus for CE 5500: Stochastic Hydrology by instructor Julianne D. Quinn at the University of Virginia. The course is an elective class, open to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students.

100 North Street Bridge Over Logan River Project Rubber Bridge Engineering, Chandler Baird, Evan Capron, Micah Rasmussen, Derek Walker

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rubber Bridge Engineering is over the 100 North Bridge Project used in the Logan River Restoration Project. The100 North Street Bridge is being replaced and the implementation of the proposed new bridge will improve the safety and aesthetics of the surrounding area. The new bridge will also accommodate a new and improved floodplain for the Logan River. Rubber Bridge Engineering designed a pre-engineered steel girder for the superstructure of the bridge and steel reinforced concrete piles for the foundation of the bridge. The transportation detour for the project uses the Conifer Place to Pointe Place detour route and roadway improvements. …

Austin Bridge Design Team Sr-118: Bridge Replacement Over The Sevier River, Wyatt Nielson, Chad Withers, Patrick Campana, Jonathon Reynolds, Andy Erickson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Austin Bridge, D-272, spans the Sevier River along SR-118, in Sevier County, Utah. The bridge was built in 1935 and is structurally sound. However D-272 is deteriorating slightly and is too narrow, presenting a traffic hazard. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) wants to replace the bridge. Our group chose to design a replacement bridge.

Courthouse Wash Pedestrian Bridge: Moab, Utah, Wyatt Hansen, L. Kade Flake, Josh Kerkvliet, Trygve Mccrea

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Arches Engineering (AE) is a team of four civil engineering students at Utah State University (USU). The team has selected to work in conjunction with Jones & DeMille Engineering (JDE) to design a pedestrian bridge over Courthouse Wash in Moab, Utah. After analyzing the conditions, AE determined a prefabricated steel bridge with a modified bowstring truss style would best suit the 130-foot crossing.

A modified bowstring truss has a relatively low cost, is aesthetically pleasing, and is simple to construct. AE specifies to use a prefabricated bridge to reduce cost and simplify on-site construction. A drilled shaft foundation would best …

Crockett Diversion Rehabilitation Project, Philip Duncan, Zackary Pali

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Crockett Diversion is an irrigation diversion structure on the Logan River. This diversion serves the little Logan Canal and provides irrigation water to the valley. The diversion is operated using horizontal stop logs. Operators must manually install or remove these stop logs to maintain upstream water surface elevation as flow conditions change. The stop logs also cause a lot of build up of run off material such as logs, twigs, and other debris. The cleaning, maintenance, and manual operation of this current set up is tedious and requires a lot of extra work for the city. It can also …

Fishhook Sunrise Bed & Breakfast Expansion, Carter Johnson, Andrew Lecheminant, Heather Nielsen, Erika Parsons, Tyler Searle

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Willardsons, owners of Fishhook Sunrise Bed & Breakfast, located near Palmer, AK, demonstrated interested in expanding their existing bed and breakfast to accommodate future visitors. The expansion includes three new cabins on the northwest side of the property, across Wasilla Creek, which has no existing infrastructure. The expansion, therefore, includes the installation of a drinking water well, access road, septic system, and bridge. Fishhook Engineering proposed providing a site layout for the expansion with high level recommendations for the septic system and roadway material. The project scope also included the complete design of a one lane bridge to span …