Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Camp Ocean Pines Aviary Extension, Matthew R. Stephens

Construction Management

This paper describes the construction process of an additional 192 SF storage area for an existing Nature Center, along with a new 1000 SF deck around the entire structure. The scope of work included the excavation and pouring of concrete piers and stem walls, framing of the subfloor, shear walls, roof, and deck, electrical rough-in and finish, roofing system, windows, doors, insulation, drywall, and decking. All work on this project was managed by the author, and construction was done by the author, subcontractors, local hires, and volunteers. Construction of the project took place between December 2016 and June 2017, and …

Gaining Market Share As A Union Specialty Contractor In San Diego: A Case Study, Roy Lee Perrin Jr

Construction Management

San Diego is one of the few major cities in California to have a larger share of non-union labor compared to union labor in the private specialty construction sector. Although union labor is on the rise in large cities due to California’s strict labor wage laws, union specialty contractors are still running into challenges in terms of competitiveness in the San Diego area. Western Specialty Contractors has first hand experience with competing against non-union contractors in San Diego. This paper will outline the methodology Western Specialty Contractors took in order to gain market share in San Diego. This paper will …

Implementing Net Zero Energy Into The Construction Innovations Center, Marlo Arleen Castro

Construction Management

As the environmental status of our planet declines, it is becoming more and more important for the construction industry to adapt. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is becoming an unspoken requirement for all new and tenant improvement construction, and now, with the goal of Net Zero Energy (NZE) for all new commercial buildings by 2030, NZE is becoming the way of the future. As of late, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) has made grand efforts to retrofit several of the older buildings on its campus in order to achieve LEED certification. One of …

Information Communication Improvements In B.I.G., Alexander M. Vlasity

Construction Management

Game based learning is a proven methodology of convening complex ideas and concepts to students. Game based learning creates an environment that is safe, enjoyable, stress free, and competitive. Construction management is no exception. In the classroom, there is only one way to provide real life experiences in creating and operating a business. That is through simulation software. Simulation software allows a user to experience many of the complexities that occur in real life while playing in an educational environment. This senior project will focus on one software package called The Building Industry Game. This simulation package provides its user …

Integrated Design-Bid-Build And Its Effects On Integrated Project Delivery Drivers, Alexander G. Sargiss

Construction Management

Integrated project delivery is becoming a more common and successful delivery method in the construction industry compared to more traditional methods such as design-bid-build. Integrated Design-Bid-Build is a hybrid between the two which has been implemented very few times to test if it can be used as a more viable delivery method in the future. There has been very little research in to Integrated Design-Bid-Build that is accessible for analysis. This research study examines case studies of projects completed using IPD and analyzes their “IPD Profiles” which are measured using five primary project drivers. These project drivers are: cost predictability, …

National Association Of Home Builders' Residential Construction Management Competition Guidebook, Eric Angelo Bet

Construction Management

With today’s universities, especially Cal Poly, stressing the concept of “Learn by Doing” to prepare students for successful careers, case competitions are gaining popularity and prestige amongst recruiters. By working well in team settings and showcasing one’s knowledge in front of a panel of industry judges, case competitions give students great undergraduate experience and confidence once they begin their full-time careers. One of these case competitions is the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Residential Construction Management Competition (RCMC). The NAHB RCMC asks students to create a fully-encompassing development proposal on a real-world site located in the United States. This …

Case Study Analysis Of Improving Productivity Rates For Self-Perform Concrete, Johnny Mcdermott

Construction Management

Productivity is one of the most important aspects of a successful construction project, especially if the work is self-performed and not sub-contracted out to another contractor. Usually the success of a project is directly correlated to how well the production has been throughout the course of the job. Often when a project manager notices their job is not doing well and not making their target profits or man-hours, productivity is usually the answer to that problem. This paper will examine the different ways and methods of tracking production that was used by Overaa construction. The focus of this study is …

Journeyman International: Hut2hut, Rwanda, Faith E. Johnson

Construction Management

This report details the project titled Hut2Hut, completed through the nonprofit humanitarian design organization, Journeyman International. Hut2Hut is a housing project designed to provide lodging for tourists backpacking through Rwanda. The structure is designed to house up to eight people. Features include an enclosed bunk space, a kitchen with basic appliances, wood-burning fireplace, collapsible wall-deck system to open up the living space to the outside, and two main outdoor deck spaces. The building will provide an affordable alternative to the more expensive resorts in Rwanda and aims to connect the visitors to the site and local culture. The proceeds will …

Concise Handbook For Temporary Traffic Control - Construction, Maintenance, And Utility Operations, Indiana Ltap, Ohio Department Of Transportation

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

This handbook gives the basic principles and provides examples for the design, application, installation, and maintenance of the various types of traffic control devices used in temporary traffic control or for incident management. Traffic control in roundabouts has been included in this version. The guidelines presented are in accordance with the standards provided within the Indiana Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (IMUTCD). This handbook is based upon one created by the Ohio Department of Transportation, Guidelines for Traffic Control in Work Zones. Indiana LTAP expresses thanks to ODOT for their permission to reprint this material.

Geometry-Based Mass Grading Of Mango Fruits Using Image Processing, M. A. Momin, Md Towfiqur Rahman, M. S. Sultana, C. Igathinathane, A. T. M. Ziauddin, T. E. Grift

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Mango (Mangifera indica) is an important, and popular fruit in Bangladesh. However, the post-harvest processing of it is still mostly performed manually, a situation far from satisfactory, in terms of accuracy and throughput. To automate the grading of mangos (geometry and shape), we developed an image acquisition and processing system to extract projected area, perimeter, and roundness features. In this system, images were acquired using a XGA format color camera of 8-bit gray levels using fluorescent lighting. An image processing algorithm based on region based global thresholding color binarization, combined with median filter and morphological analysis was developed …

Quantifying The Impact Of Truck Only Lanes On Vehicular Emissions On A Limited-Access Highway, Edward Chee Tang

Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to estimate CO₂ emissions on a portion of the U.S. 101 highway in San Luis Obispo County before and after construction of a truck only lane on the Cuesta Grade. Towards that aim, the microsimulation software, VISSIM, was used in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions model, MOVES. The microsimulation model was calibrated and validated against historical and present traffic volumes obtained from Caltrans with good results using several validation measures. It was found that CO₂ emissions did decrease between 1998 and 2012 (pre and post lane addition), but this effect was shown to …

Evaluation Of Pc-Based Virtual Reality As A Tool To Analyze Pedestrian Behavior At Midblock Crossings, Kristina Lynn Mai

Master's Theses

The aim of this research was to analyze if current generation PC-driven virtual reality simulations can be used to accurately mimic and therefore, observe behavior at a crosswalk. Toward that goal, the following research tasks were carried out: a) Designing a 3D virtual crosswalk and recruiting volunteers to wear the HTC Vive headset and to walk across the street, b) Setting up cameras near the midblock crosswalk on University Drive at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo to observe pedestrians, and c) Comparing pedestrian behavior data from both the virtual and real midblock crosswalk. The comparison was based on …

Estimating Transit Ridership Patterns Through Automated Data Collection Technology: A Case Study In San Luis Obispo, California, Ashley Kim

Master's Theses

Public transportation offers a crucial solution to the travel demand in light of national and global economic, energy, and environmental challenges. If implemented effectively, public transit offers an affordable, convenient, and sustainable transportation mode. Implementation of new technologies for information-harvesting may lead to more effective transit operations. This study examines the potential of automated data collection technologies to analyzing and understand the origin-destination flow patterns, which is essential for transit route planning and stop location placement.

This thesis investigates the collection and analysis of data of passengers onboard San Luis Obispo Transit buses in February and March 2017 using Bluetooth …

Injury Severity Of Truck Drivers In Crashes At Highway–Rail Grade Crossings, Waleed Ali Khan

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

There is a noticeable difference between different road users, specifically between passenger vehicles and heavy vehicles such as its length and weight. The majority of previous research were focused on general highway traffic that included passenger cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc. Moreover, HRGC safety studies of specific types of vehicles are relatively few and heavy vehicle safety at grade crossing is even more under-explored.

This research thus focuses on the following objectives: Identify factors related to different injury severity levels of heavy-vehicle drivers (truck/truck-trailer) drivers in crashes reported at HRGCs; to identify a more suitable statistical model for injury severity …

Regulatory Barriers To Approval Of New Technologies For Small Drinking Water Systems, Deanna T. Ringenberg

Department of Environmental Engineering: Theses and Other Student Research

Small drinking water systems face different challenges than large drinking water systems. Innovative technologies can provide cost and reliability benefits to small systems, but new technologies are not frequently considered. One important barrier to the implementation of new technologies is obtaining state drinking water agency approval.

To identify specific state regulatory barriers, a survey including sixteen questions was sent to the 49 state agencies. The survey included questions regarding their acceptance programs, experiences with new technologies, barriers, data needs for technology approval, and interest in a shared approach for acceptance of new technologies. The survey was sent in 2015 and …

Land Use And Active Travel: A Complex Relationship, Steven R. Gehrke

TREC Project Briefs

While it’s accepted that mixed-use development promotes active travel, researchers don’t have a consensus on exactly how land use determines people’s travel patterns.

Development Of A Performance-Based Procedure To Predict Liquefaction-Induced Free-Field Settlements For The Cone Penetration Test, Mikayla Son Hatch

Theses and Dissertations

Liquefaction-induced settlements can cause a large economic toll on a region, from severe infrastructural damage, after an earthquake occurs. The ability to predict, and design for, these settlements is crucial to prevent extensive damage. However, the inherent uncertainty involved in predicting seismic events and hazards makes calculating accurate settlement estimations difficult. Currently there are several seismic hazard analysis methods, however, the performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) method is becoming the most promising. The PBEE framework was presented by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center. The PEER PBEE framework is a more comprehensive seismic analysis than any past seismic hazard analysis …

Walking Behavior Of Individuals With And Without Disabilities At Right-Angle Turning Facility, Nirdosh Gaire, Mohammad Sadra Sharifi, Keith M. Christensen, Anthony Chen, Ziqi Song

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

To accommodate the needs of pedestrians, urban designers need to carefully consider pedestrian walking behavior in different walking environments. Detailed studies of the walking behavior of pedestrians have been conducted and used for pedestrian simulation models. A right-angle turning facility (RATF) is found in many built environments. Hence the study of pedestrians' walking behavior in RATFs is important to build pedestrian simulation models. Previous studies have failed to address the walking behavior of individuals with visual and mobility disabilities even though they comprise a significant portion of the population in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to …

Rca: Use And Future Possibilities, Bushra Marium Islam

Theses

Reuse and recycling of concrete is essential for construction purposes. There has been progressive development in construction projects but at the same time it has an inverse effect on the environment. Concrete structures are built and demolished continuously all over the world, generating tons of waste materials which are actually reusable in concrete production itself. This paper emphasis on recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) and many characteristics of RCA. This paper studies RCA’s different properties. RCA’s replacement in the place of natural aggregate is discussed. The proper amount and researches done on RCA improvement have also been discussed for further in …

Analysis Of Response Of Flexible Pavements Using Finite Element Method, R.M. Mulungye, P.M.O Owende, K. Mellon

The ITB Journal

The characteristic response of flexible pavements under traffic load depict a delayed lateral strain relaxation (Viscoelasticity), a phenomenon that may be more accurately and expeditiously analysed using finite element (FE) viscoelastic response models. In this study a flexible pavement was modelled using ANSYS/ED finite element software suite. The pavement model was subjected to cyclic loading that simulated three levels of truck loads on 10R20 tyres at four tyre inflation pressures (viz. 350,490,630 and 770 kPa). The modelled results were in good agreement with the measured in-situ full-scale test data. Therefore, for known pavement material characteristics and tyre-pavement contact regime, finite …

Sensor System, Implantable Sensor And Method For Remote Sensing Of A Stimulus In Vivo, Eric H. Ledet, Rebecca A. Wachs, Keegan Paul Cole, David Fiorella

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

A sensor system for sensing a stimulus in vivo includes an implantable sensor. The sensor comprises a passive resonator circuit having a resonant frequency and including at least a pair of generally parallel spirally wound unconnected conductive coils sandwiching a layer of solid dielectric material that manifest a change in property affecting the resonant frequency in response to application of the stimulus to the layer. A resonant frequency of the sensor is modulated by altering the spacing or gap between the coils or altering the overlapping area of the coils. The sensor is energized through application of radio frequency energy …

Potential Of Rainwater Harvesting In Meeting The Domestic Outdoor Demand: A Study In Dry And Wet Regions Of The United States, Kazi Ali Tamaddun, Ajay Kalra, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Feasibility of meeting the outdoor water demand with rainwater harvesting (RWH) was evaluated for the states of Arizona and Florida as representatives of dry and wet regions, respectively, using a system dynamic model. The potential of RWH was found to be highly sensitive to the demand of water, desert landscaping potential, and the percentage of households with RWH systems. The percentage of demand met through RWH and the storage potential of a 50-gallon rainwater barrel was found to be significant even for arid regions. The model can be used to compare among various influencing parameters of RWH systems.

Study Of Potential Integrated Management Of Water Resources In Las Vegas Valley, Haroon Stephen, Yoohwan Kim, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Water resource management under short term system perturbations such as storms and longer-term systemic changes caused by climate change such as droughts is a challenge when multiple agencies are involved. To address this challenge this research focuses on water management under changing climate conditions and population growth through understanding the agency water jurisdictions, management strategies, and modes of operation in Las Vegas Valley. A framework for integrated management through sharing data and models is presented that combines drinking water supply, flood control, and waste water treatment. This framework can be adopted to improve coordination among different water management agencies.

A Plan For Using Phenomenography To Explore Academic Conceptions Of Their Role In Developing Professional Skills In Engineering Students, Una Beagon, Brian Bowe

Other resources

This presentation presents a PhD study looking at academic conceptions of the approaches to teaching professional skills in engineering programmes in Ireland.

Teaching Professional Skills In Engineering Programmes: The Academic Perspective, Una Beagon

Other resources

Teaching Professional skills in Engineering Programmes: The Academic Perspective

A plan for using phenomenography to explore academic conceptions of their role in developing professional skills in engineering students

Utilization Of Remote Sensing In Drought Monitoring Over Iraq, Yousif Almamalachy

Dissertations and Theses

Agricultural drought is a creeping disaster that overshadows the vegetative cover in general and cropland specifically in Iraq, a country that was well known for its agricultural production and fertile soil. In the recent years, the arable lands in Iraq experienced increasing land degradation that led to desertification, economic losses, food insecurity, and deteriorating environment. Remote sensing is employed in this study and four different indices are utilized, each of which is derived from MODIS satellite mission products. Agricultural drought maps are produced from 2003 to 2015 after masking the vegetation cover. Year 2008 was found the most severe drought …

Development Of Geospatial And Temporal Characteristics For Hispaniola’S Lake Azuei And Enriquillo Using Landsat Imagery, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

In this paper, we used Landsat imagery for water body identification to create a novel 36-year surface area extent time series for lakes Azuei (Haiti) and Enriquillo (Dominican Republic) aimed at illuminating the dramatic temporal changes of these two lakes not just at yearly but at monthly or even sub-monthly scales. We used the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) to extract water features and we also used spatial differentiation and thresholding techniques to remove clouds and associated shadows from the scene that were then passed through gap filling algorithms to complete and extract the lake extent polygons. We also explored …

Analysis Of Preparation And Properties On Shape Memory Hydrogenated Epoxy Resin Used For Asphalt Mixtures, Biao Ma, Xueyan Zhou, Kun Wei, Yanzhen Bo, Zhanping You

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The objective of this investigation is to prepare the shape memory hydrogenated epoxy resin used for asphalt mixtures (SM-HEP-AM) and study its properties. The shape memory hydrogenated epoxy resin (SM-HEP) is prepared using hydrogenated bisphenol A epoxy resin (AL-3040), polypropylene glycol diglycidylether diacrylate (JH-230), and isophorone diamine (IPDA). The formulations of the SM-HEP-AM are obtained by the linearly fitted method. The thermo-mechanical property, molecular structure, and shape-memory performance of the SM-HEP-AM are studied. The glass-transition temperature (T_g) is determined using the differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The results proved that the T_g level increased when the JH-230 content …

Civil Engineering And Construction News, Georgia Southern University

Civil Engineering & Construction: News & Publications (2011-2022)

• SGA president named final four in national student body awards

Climate, Weather, Socio-Economic And Electricity Usage Data For The Residential And Commercial Sectors In Fl, U.S, Sayanti Mukherjee, Roshanak Nateghi

School of Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents the data that is used in the article entitled “Climate sensitivity of end-use electricity consumption in the built environment: An application to the state of Florida, United States” (Mukhopadhyay and Nateghi, 2017) [1]. The data described in this paper pertains to the state of Florida (during the period of January 1990 to November 2015). It can be classified into four categories of (i) state-level electricity consumption data; (ii) climate data; (iii) weather data; and (iv) socio-economic data. While, electricity consumption data and climate data are obtained at monthly scale directly from the source, the weather data was …