Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Estimating Chlorophyll With Thermal And Broadband Multispectral High Resolution Imagery From An Unmanned Aerial System Using Relevance Vector Machines For Precision Agriculture, Manal Elarab, Andres M. Ticlavilca, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Inga Maslova, Mac Mckee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Precision agriculture requires high-resolution information to enable greater precision in the management of inputs to production. Actionable information about crop and field status must be acquired at high spatial resolution and at a temporal frequency appropriate for timely responses. In this study, high spatial resolution imagery was obtained through the use of a small, unmanned aerial system called AggieAirTM. Simultaneously with the AggieAir flights, intensive ground sampling for plant chlorophyll was conducted at precisely determined locations. This study reports the application of a relevance vector machine coupled with cross validation and backward elimination to a dataset composed of reflectance from …

On The Influence Of Ionic Strength On Radium And Strontium Sorption To Sandy Loam Soils, Brian A. Powell, Todd Miller, Daniel I. Kaplan

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

Models which can estimate environmental transport of radioactive contaminants in natural and engineered systems are required to 1) deploy effective remediation strategies for contaminated sites, 2) design waste repositories for future waste streams, and 3) ensure protection of human and environmental health in all cases. These models require accurate transport parameters in order to correctly predict how these contaminants will move in the subsurface. This work aimed to determine more accurately the distribution coefficients for radium and strontium sorption to Savannah River Site (SRS) soils. Radium and strontium sorption to the soils was found to be highly dependent upon ionic …

Improving Energy Efficiency And Environmental Sustainability Of Commercial Insulation, Celine F. Manoosingh, James Mihelcic, Manjriker Gunaratne

Civil Engineering & Construction: Faculty Publications

With increasingly stringent energy standards set in place by the Department of Energy, energy efficiency is becoming a paramount concern to manufacturers of appliances. Additionally, the production and disposal of the voluminous amount of polyurethane foam commonly utilized as insulation in refrigeration units poses a significant environmental challenge. In this context, this study investigated an alternative insulation for use in commercial refrigerator/freezer units. A prototype exploring the use of evacuated packets of pyrogenic silica substituting for conventional insulation was assessed. Assessment criteria included experimental comparison of heat transfer characteristics and the energy efficiency of the new insulation as well as …

Container Houses, Tran Joseph, Anissa Rosbaugh, Sydne Scott, Hanan Yassin

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

We have noticed that there is an increasing number of homeless in our community. People who are homeless have a more difficult time getting jobs, making it harder to for them to get back on their feet.

Homeless is defined as a person without a stable place to live, in risk of being homeless. Homeless under Federal status, is defined as fleeing/attempting to escape domestic violence. Examples of homelessness include couch surfing, sleeping in shelters, and living in a car.

Our proposal was to build homeless shelters out of shipping containers.

F.I.S.H. (Finding Information About Safety And Health), Ben Makuch, Edward Szczepansk, Sasha Leamy, Connor Walker, Himanshu Nagpal, Harriet Adkins, Elle Sandifer

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

People with cell phones often take it for granted how much knowledge is at their fingertips. Many people without cell phones don’t have easy instant access to the information that others do, leaving them in the dark. This kiosk would aid the homeless community, tourists, and people whose cell phones are not working. This is often overlooked by middle and upper class people, who have cell phones ingrained as a way of life.

People that do not have access to information miss out on opportunities to better their situation. There are many resources such as educational, medical, and professional tools. …

Vélo-Ck, Anna Blakley, Jonathan Cordisco, Jonathan Huang, Justin Huang, Emma Perlman, Ruhika Prasad, Siddarth Suri, Will Swindell

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Portland is known as Bike City U.S.A for its promotion of a eco friendly method of transportation and support of biking infrastructure. Although our city has this progressive reputation, there is a negative aspect of a bike-loving city that has not received attention. The Oregon Household Activity survey in 2011 states that “about 29 percent of adults in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties own a bike”. As more people has decided to commute with bikes, theft has increased dramatically. According to the Portland Police Bureau, “Portland thieves last year took more than 2,100 bikes worth well over $1 million combined”. …

Cleaning Up The Cities Of Tomorrow, Miguel Campos, Jack Chen, Alex Gaiovych, Fernando Lauer, Kaleb Swoverland, Anna Velikoretskikh, Jason Yu

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A huge problem with current modernized and non modernized cities is the amount of trash being thrown away. There is a tremendous amount of recyclable material that is being thrown away with non recyclable waste into massive landfills. Even though we can not physically see the trash that we throw away on the street, it must still go somewhere. Some of that waste is toxic, other waste is made of non decomposable material. These massive waste disposal sites hurt animals, damage soil, and harm the health people living nearby.

In 2007, Americans threw out about 570 billion pounds of municipal …

Osmosis Alive – Algae Water Filtration System, Adrik Gurganus, Htet Htet Soe, Jonathan Baird, Liam Beckett, Nick Vautravers, Parker Swensen, Tucker Johnson

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Goals: Our goals of this project was to:

• Obtain an energy efficient, self-sufficient system to help reduce waste and money, and reuse and recycle water. To have a successful, natural, and more self-sufficient filtration system, using algae.
• To use algae and other plants as an efficient way to filter water.
• To create a water filtration system that is organic and would have 0 waste.
• To use the water in the best and most efficient way possible, and to reduce energy and coal/oil consumption (water turbine)
• To make our community cleaner and greener, and reduce carbon footprint, pollution, and environmental impact. …

Smarter Cycling, Cory Koehler, Richard Smith, Sarah St. Clair, Alex Taylor, Aubrey Masten, Konon Phillips

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

With the current trend of urbanization, the populations of major cities such as Portland are steadily increasing. This is causing a variety of problems, both within the city and in rural areas. In regards to the city, the major challenges facing city planners are the need for the expansion of residential neighborhoods and a rise in traffic throughout the city. One way to tackle the issue of an abundance of traffic, is to make alternate means of transportation more appealing to residents. We chose to focus on bicycling because of the bike‐friendly culture already in place in Portland. An increase …

Cleaner Drain, Jonah Paivarinta, Daniel Ortiz‐Rojo, Masson Klepp, Rebekah Likestoskat, Macy Chadney, Jeremy Ferrando

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Water in streets causes several issues, both to our infrastructure and our emotions. The water can harm property by rotting wooden structures. If the water is high enough, it can even stall cars and flood into buildings.

Being forced to walk through or around a puddle can hurt someone's emotional state, which reduces productivity and this affect people around them.

It costs about 30 dollars to clean a drain, and there are about 15 thousand drains, which totals to to around$450,000 and if you add in other costs such as employees and street sweeping for a cleaning company it costs …

Optimizing Efficiency Of Street Lights, Elias Taylor, Graciela Quinto, Peter Ataras, Shareace Miller, Jesus Montes, Dylan Penston, Olivia Carter

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A significant amount of energy is lost in the transportation and transformation of electricity from its source location to the street lights due to the imperfect systems. Whole constellations have disappeared because of light pollution.

Research Methodology: A Novice Researcher’S Approach, Cormac Flood, Lloyd Scott

Other resources

ABSTRACT

This research is a detailed study on the performance of external walls aimed at providing a guidance tool which will enable designers to determine the appropriate thermal upgrade system for a housing retrofit, particularly in Ireland; taking into account wall type, climatic conditions and orientation. This paper explains the steps taken to establish a research design and methodological approach suited to the topic at hand.

The choice of research methodology is a difficult step for the researcher to decide upon in the research process. When it comes down to an architectural technologist, the process becomes even more difficult. Throughout …

Load Bearing Clip Angle Design, Cheng Yu, Mohamad Yousof, Mahsa Mahavian

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

The material contained herein has been developed by researchers based on their research findings. The material has also been reviewed by the American Iron and Steel Institute Committee on Specifications for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members. The Committee acknowledges and is grateful for the contributions of such researchers. The material herein is for general information only. The information in it should not be used without first securing competent advice with respect to its suitability for any given application. The publication of the information is not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of the American Iron …

Modeling Safety Performance Functions On Urban And Suburban Arterials In Alabama, Jaehoon Kim

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Large-Eddy Simulation Of The Inner Continental Shelf Under The Combined Effects Of Surface Temperature Fluxes, Tidal Currents And Langmuir Circulation, Rachel Walker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a shallow shelf region, turbulent motion can have a major effect on coastal processes including ecosystem functioning, surface gas exchange and sediment resuspension. Many factors contribute to such turbulence; wind and wave forcing, buoyancy induced by surface heat fluxes and tidal forcing all play a key role in generating vertical mixing in this shallow region. Alongside these independent sources of turbulence, combinations thereof can lead to full-depth turbulent structures acting secondary to the mean flow and leading to enhanced vertical mixing throughout the entire water column.

Field and laboratory experiments can often prove to be costly and time consuming, …

Anthropogenic Impacts To The Sediment Budget Of São Francisco River Navigation Channel Using Swat, Calvin T. Creech, Rafael Brito Siqueira, James P. Selegean, Carol J. Miller

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

The São Francisco River Basin, located in eastern Brazil, has undergone a significant amount of anthropogenic changes in the last several decades, such as agricultural expansion, irrigation activities, mining, and the construction of large dams. Together, these changes have altered the historic sediment budget and have led to an aggradation of sediments in the navigation channel, impacting the ability to efficiently ship agricultural commodities to regional ports. In an effort to aid decision makers in future waterway navigation planning, an international partnership between the Brazilian government agency CODEVASF and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was created. Through this …

Load Bearing Clip Angle Design, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

The report presents a comprehensive research project aimed at developing design methods for three limit states of cold-formed steel clip angles: shear, compression, and pull-over of the screw connections. For each limit state, a test program was conducted to investigate the behavior, strength, and deflection of the clip angles. The test results were compared with existing design methods for members similar to, but not exactly the same as, cold-formed steel clip angles. It was found that none of the existing methods worked well for the tested clip angles, therefore new design methods were developed for each of the three limit …

Water Resources Management - Singapore University Of Technology And Design, Stefano Galelli

All ECSTATIC Materials

Undergraduate course in Water Resources Management offered at Singapore University of Technology and Design in Spring 2015.

Seismic In-Plane Response Of Reinforced Concrete Frames With Masonry Infill Walls, Rabab Abdel Karim Al Louzi

Open Access Dissertations

Field data gathered after destructive earthquakes indicate that infill walls interact with reinforced concrete (RC) frames in buildings during an earthquake and could cause failure mechanism different than what the frames are originally designed for. A new method to identify the failure modes of RC frames with infill walls is developed. The method requires only the simple geometric and material properties of the elements involved in the frame- wall assembly. The approach checks various possible failure mechanisms, including those that may evolve depending on how the infill wall may fail during strong shaking, for example, the dynamically evolved captive column …

Water Resources Systems Analysis - Colorado State University, Darrell Fontane

All ECSTATIC Materials

Applications of systems analysis, simulation and optimization techniques in water resources planning and management. Course taught at Colorado State University.

Engineering Decision Support And Expert Systems - Colorado State University, John Labadie

All ECSTATIC Materials

The student is introduced to development of decision support systems (DSS) for application to complex engineering management and design problems under conflicting objectives and uncertainty. A number of techniques are introduced for aiding in the analysis of a wide range of complex multiobjective engineering problems. Several stochastic optimization methods are presented for including risk and reliability in engineering design. Basic concepts of expert systems (ES) are discussed to show an essential synergy between DSS and ES for development of decision support structures that allow inclusion of human domain knowledge, heuristics and fuzzy logic. Heuristic methods such as genetic algorithms and …

Consolidation-Induced Solute Transport For Constant Rate Of Strain. Ii: Comparison With Incremental Loading, Patrick J. Fox, Hefu Pu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a numerical investigation of one-dimensional large strain consolidation-induced solute transport for incremental loading (IL) and constant rate of strain (CRS) conditions. Solute transport accounts for advection, diffusion, dispersion, linear and nonlinear sorption, and equilibrium and nonequilibrium sorption, and is consistent with temporal and spatial variations of porosity and seepage velocity in the consolidating soil. Simulations were conducted using material properties for kaolinite clay and indicate that IL and CRS conditions produce significantly different responses during the course of consolidation, including applied stress, rate of settlement, excess pore pressure, and local strain. However, for a given set of …

Senior Design: Proposed Stem Academic Building, Middlesex Community College, Senior Design Class

Civil Engineering Student Work

2015 Civil Engineering Senior Design Project.

A proposal for a new STEM building to be constructed on the Middlesex Community College.

Completed by:

• Abdullah Al Bakri
• Ryan Benoit
• Brittany Brown
• Michael Buraczynski
• Samuel Colangelo
• Joseph Connolly
• Kyle Elmy
• Michael Fischer
• Victor Goitia Jurado
• Michael Hanley
• Andrew Malian
• Michael Mathews
• Dionys Quezada
• Katie Rougeot
• Jacob Santos
• Isadora Sartor
• Vega Yerko

Environmental Systems Engineering - Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Arthur Mcgarity

All ECSTATIC Materials

Course in environmental systems engineering offered at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore in Spring 2015.

Analysis Of Rainfall Time-Series, Stefano Galelli

All ECSTATIC Materials

No abstract provided.

Modelling Rainfall-Runoff Processes (Empirical Models), Stefano Galelli

All ECSTATIC Materials

No abstract provided.

Consolidation-Induced Solute Transport For Constant Rate Of Strain. I: Model Development And Simulation Results, Hefu Pu, Patrick J. Fox

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A numerical model, called CSTCRS1, is presented for coupled one-dimensional consolidation and solute transport under constant rate of strain (CRS) loading conditions. The consolidation algorithm accounts for vertical strain, general constitutive relationships, relative fluid velocity, changing compressibility and hydraulic conductivity during consolidation, and an external hydraulic gradient. The solute transport algorithm accounts for advection, dispersion, linear and nonlinear sorption, and equilibrium and nonequilibrium sorption. Soil compressibility is rate-independent and as such CSTCRS1 is more appropriate for less-structured soils. The model is based on a dual-Lagrangian framework that separately tracks the motions of sold and fluid phases. The development of CSTCRS1 …

Sediment Transport Modelling On The River Bandon, John Gamble, D. Barnett, Joseph R. Harrington

Conference Papers

Presented at Environ 2015 The River Bandon catchment area is 6ookm^ with a river length of 72km. The River Bandon has protected species within its waters, e.g., Salmon and Freshwater Pearl Mussel. The upstream portion of the catchment above Dunmanway is an SAC The river is characterised by suspended and bed load transport.

The Effect Of Maximum Aggregate Size On The Shear Strength Of Geometrically Scaled Reinforced Concrete Beams, Derek Robert Daluga

Open Access Theses

Shear strength of reinforced concrete beams without web reinforcement has been reported to decrease with increases in depth. This is often referred to as a size effect. This reduction in shear strength has been reported to decrease with the use of web reinforcement and increases in maximum aggregate size. ^ The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses 1) shear strength increases with increases in maximum aggregate size and 2) aggregate gradation affects this increase in shear strength. Maximum aggregate size is defined here as the size of the smallest sieve opening through which all aggregate particles pass. …

Development And Application Of Quantitative Methods For Ecosystem Services, Rebecca A. Logsdon

Open Access Dissertations

Ecosystem services are benefits that people receive from the environment. Despite recent exponential increases in ecosystem service research, the ecosystem service framework has made little impact on policy and land management decisions, especially in the United States. Two of the main limitations for a lack of ecosystem service considerations in both policy and land management decisions are a need for more advanced quantification methods and the lack of engagement of key stakeholders who are responsible for making land management decisions. This research seeks to address these two limitations by testing and improving quantification methods of ecosystem services and by evaluating …