Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Deep Semantic 3d Visual Metric Reconstruction Using Wall-Climbing Robot, Liang Yang, Bing Li, Yong Chang, Jizhong Xiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This project introduces an inspection method using a deep neural network to detect the crack and spalling defects on concrete structures performed by a wall-climbing robot. First, we create a pixel-level semantic dataset which includes 820 labeled images. Second, we propose an inspection method to obtain 3D metric measurement by using an RGB-D camera-based visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which is able to generate pose coupled key-frames with depth information. Therefore, the semantic inspection results can be registered in the concrete structure 3D model for condition assessment and monitoring. Third, we present our new generation wall-climbing robot to perform …

Modeling Hose Dynamics For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Blake Hament, Paul Y. Oh, Autonomous Systems Lab (Dasl)

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridges and other large pieces of infrastructure accumulate massive amounts of dirt, dust, and other particulates that can obscure the structure when scanning to discern structural integrity. Traditionally, these particulates have been removed by humans operating handheld compressed-air hoses, often while mounting ladders -- a risky and inefficient task. To improve infrastructure scanning, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with hoses could be used to clean the structure in place of the current method.

The challenge in equipping a UAV with a hose is compensating for the reaction forces and torques produced by fluids expelled by the hose. In order to …

Parallel Manipulator-Gripper For Mobile Manipulating Uavs, Dongbin Kim, Paul Y. Oh, Autonomous Systems Lab (Dasl)

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are originally developed for military, but have been developed over time to time for valuable roles in surveillance, work-assistant, and intelligence for both civilian and military operations.

The ability of UAVs that manipulate or carry objects can expand the type of tasks achieved by unmanned aerial systems. High degree of freedom robots with dexterous arm can lead to various applications. Most of manipulators are serial, each motor on each joint affects on stabilizing UAVs. Our lab , DASL , has presented parallel mechanism manipulator for UAVs. It results in less impact on center of gravity(CoG) of …

Integrated Fiber Optic Sensors For Strain, Temperature And Corrosion-Induced Mass Loss Measurement, Chuanrui Guo, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, a fiber optic sensing system based on long period fiber gratings (LPFG) in LP06 and LP07 modes is designed, fabricated and tested for simultaneous measurements of strain, temperature and corrosion-induced mass loss. It consists of three steel tubes and several Fe-C coated LPFG sensors for long- and short-term corrosion monitoring, respectively, when deployed in proximity and parallel to a steel member. Graphene/silver nanowire (Gr/AgNW) composite was coated on the LPFG surface for efficient Fe-C electroplating due to its high optical transparency and conductivity. The sensor was subjected to both tensile strain and temperature, and submerged in 3.5 …

Bridge Resilience Assessment With Inspire Data, Yijian Albert Zhang, Reginald Desroches, Iris Tien

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this research, we proposed analytical models validated with numerical results to assess how inspection-collected data on corrosion can be used to update bridge models and predict performance under future events. A detailed investigation of the vulnerability of bridges due to corrosion at both component and global levels. The results show the impact of corrosion-induced degradation on the seismic fragility of reinforced concrete columns under various failure modes, e.g., flexural, shear, and lap-spliced failures. As increasing amounts of data are collected on the states of bridges, the results show how these data can be used to update bridge assessments and …

Microwave Imaging For Corroded Rebars And Delamination In Concrete Structures, Matthew Dvorsky, Stephon Barker, Mohammad Tayeb Ahmad Ghasr, R. Zoughi

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Corrosion of embedded steel reinforcement bars (rebars) in concrete leads to concrete cracking and delamination, which in turn leads to increased salt and moisture permeation and further damage. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of microwave imaging for the characterization of this corrosionand delaminationof steel rebar embedded in concrete.

Hyperspectral Image Analysis For Mechanical And Chemical Properties Of Concrete And Steel Surfaces, Liang Fan, Paul Manley, Huaishuai Shang, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongyan Ma, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

According to the 2017 ASCE Report Card, 39% and 15% of 614,387 bridges in the U.S. are more than 50 years and 40 to 49 years, respectively. The number of deficient bridges is increasing. One of the most common causes of reinforced concrete deterioration is corrosion of steel reinforcing bars. Currently, most bridges are visually inspected every two years using boom/snooper trucks to get access to various areas to be inspected. The subjective visual inspection often leads to inconsistent results that are less useful in bridge management. Hyperspectral camera, installed on an unmanned aerial vehicle, can potentially supplement visual inspection …

Uav-Enabled Measurement On Magnetic Field Of Smart Rocks For Bridge Scour Monitoring, Haibin Zhang, Zhaochao Li, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Scour and other hydraulic induced failures accounted for 58% of over 1,500 bridge collapses in the U.S. Bridge scour is the engineering term for the erosion of soil surrounding a bridge foundation as a result of water current. Monitoring with fixed and/or portable instrumentations is one of the most effective measures in mitigating scour hazards. However, fixed instrumentation with sensors installed prior to flood events cannot detect scour other than the area instrumented. It is susceptible to the harsh environment during a flood event. Portable instrumentation is difficult to deploy during a severe flood event due to safety consideration and/or …

Battery-Free Antenna Sensors For Strain And Crack Monitoring Of Bridge Structures, Yang Wang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Fatigue cracks need to be monitored in fatigue critical elements. Previous research by the PI produced a radiofrequency identification (RFID) sensor prototype that can accurately measure tens of micro-strains in laboratory. The antenna sensor was made on a glass microfiber-reinforced polymer substrate. Although accurate for strain measurement and detection of fatigue cracks, the sensor performs less satisfactorily in field conditions since the substrate material (RT/duroid® 5880) is susceptible to thermal effect. In addition, a wireless interrogation distance by a general-purpose commercial RFID reader is limited to the order of meter, which is not desirable with the operation of a UAV. …

Uav-Enabled Measurement For Spatial Magnetic Field Of Smart Rocks In Bridge Scour Monitoring, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Foundation scour is the main cause of bridge collapses in the U.S. In 2011, the principal investigator (PI) proposed smart rocks with embedded magnets for bridge scour monitoring. Once deployed around a bridge pier, smart rocks as field agents offer mission-critical information about the maximum depth of a scour hole developed around the bridge foundation – the key parameter that is used to assess foundation stability in engineering design and retrofit. Smart rocks have recently been deployed and tested at three bridge sites in California and Missouri. With multiple measurements, they can be located with an accuracy of 0.5 m. …

Poultry Slaughterhouse Wastewater Treatment Using Submerged Fibers In An Attached Growth Sequential Batch Reactor, Hamidi Abdul Aziz, Nur Nasuha Ahmad Puat, Motasem Y.D. Alazaiza, Yung-Tse Hung

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In this study, a sequential batch reactor (SBR) with different types of fibers was employed for the treatment of poultry slaughterhouse wastewater. Three types of fibers, namely, juite fiber (JF), bio-fringe fiber (BF), and siliconised conjugated polyester fiber (SCPF), were used. Four SBR experiments were conducted, using the fibers in different reactors, while the fourth reactor used a combination of these fibers. The treatment efficiency of the different reactors with and without fibers on biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia-nitrogen (NH₃-N), phosphorus (P), nitrite (NO₂), nitrate (NO₃), total suspended solids (TSS), and oil-grease were evaluated. The removal …

Comparison Of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks And Edge Detectors For Image-Based Crack Detection In Concrete, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper compares the performance of common edge detectors and deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) for image-based crack detection in concrete structures. A dataset of 19 high definition images (3420 sub-images, 319 with cracks and 3101 without) of concrete is analyzed using six common edge detection schemes (Roberts, Prewitt, Sobel, Laplacian of Gaussian, Butterworth, and Gaussian) and using the AlexNet DCNN architecture in fully trained, transfer learning, and classifier modes. The relative performance of each crack detection method is compared here for the first time on a single dataset. Edge detection methods accurately detected 53–79% of cracked pixels, but they …

Groundwater Flow And Exchange Across The Land Surface Explain Carbon Export Patterns In Continuous Permafrost Watersheds, Bethany T. Neilson, M. Bayani Cardenas, Michael T. O'Connor, Mitchell T. Rasmussen, Tyler V. King, George W. Kling

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Groundwater flow regimes in the seasonally thawed soils in areas of continuous permafrost are relatively unknown despite their potential role in delivering water, carbon, and nutrients to streams. Using numerical groundwater flow models informed by observations from a headwater catchment in arctic Alaska, United States, we identify several mechanisms that result in substantial surface‐subsurface water exchanges across the land surface during downslope transport and create a primary control on dissolved organic carbon loading to streams and rivers. The models indicate that surface water flowing downslope has a substantial groundwater component due to rapid surface‐subsurface exchanges across a range of hydrologic …

Thermal Vibration Contribution To Continuum Stress In The Elastic Regime, Ranganathan Parthasarathy

Civil and Architectural Engineering Faculty Research

Homogeneous deformation of an ordered crystalline solid at finite temperature can cause non-affine transformation of atomic trajectories. In such a case, continuum measures based on affine transformation of trajectories are insufficient to ensure energetic equivalence between the atomic and continuum scales. We use molecular dynamics simulation of fcc aluminum in NVT ensembles to demonstrate that the second moments of atomic positions about equilibrium show increasing deviation from affine behavior with strain and temperature. While the Cauchy-Born rule enforces affine deformation of the crystal in the static sense, second moments have been used to quantify non-affinity in thermal vibrations due to …

Webinar: Meeting & Exceeding Mobility User Expectations With Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau, Derek Fretheim

TREC Webinar Series

Every day transit riders ask the same question: when’s the next one coming? To answer this question, transit agencies are transitioning to providing real-time transit information through smartphones or displayed at transit stops.

The proliferation of transit planning and real time arrival tools that have hit the market over the past decade is staggering. Yet with transit ridership on the decline, agencies can’t afford to ignore the importance of providing accurate, real time information to their customers. Real-time transit information improves the reliability and efficiency of passenger travel, but barriers have prevented some transit agencies from adopting the GTFSrealtime v1.0 …

Stream Centric Methods For Determining Groundwater Contributions In Karst Mountain Watersheds, Bethany T. Neilson, Hyrum Tennant, Trinity L. Stout, Matthew P. Miller, Rachel S. Gabor, Yusuf Jameel, Mallory Millington, Andrew Gelderloos, Gabriel J. Bowen, Paul D. Brooks

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Climate change influences on mountain hydrology are uncertain but likely to be mediated by variability in subsurface hydrologic residence times and flow paths. The heterogeneity of karst aquifers adds complexity in assessing the resiliency of these water sources to perturbation, suggesting a clear need to quantify contributions from and losses to these aquifers. Here we develop a stream centric method that combines mass and flow balances to quantify net and gross gains and losses at different spatial scales. We then extend these methods to differentiate between karst conduit and matrix contributions from the aquifer. In the Logan River watershed in …

Causal Loop Development Activity, Ali Mirchi

All ECSTATIC Materials

Students will work in groups to develop a causal loop diagram (CLD) to illustrate the structure and expected behavior of the fictional water short state of Nevizonato facilitate qualitative discussion of expected outcomes of a proposed water management strategy. This activity requires familiarity with systems thinking and system dynamics modeling. CLDs are introduced as a fundamental systems thinking tool for conceptual modeling.

Measuring Landscape Performance: Case Study Investigation, Hannah Michelle Lopresto, Brandon Zambrano, Catherine De Almeida

UCARE: Research Products

Participating in the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s 2018 Case Study Investigation has been an incredibly informative experience for our research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We are eager to shine a spotlight on the landscape performance of two Great Plains projects: P Street Corridor, a revitalized downtown streetscape in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park, a waterfront redevelopment in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Working on the post-occupancy study of both projects has been extremely beneficial in understanding how reclaiming underutilized sites can create high-performing landscapes. Both are public projects in urban settings with primary goals of transforming formerly unpleasant, …

Twelve Questions For The Participatory Modeling Community, Rebecca Jordan, Steven Gray, Moira Zellner, Pierre D. Glynn, Alexey Voinov, Beatrice Hedelin, Eleanor J. Sterling, Kirsten Leong, Laura Schmitt Olabisi, Klaus Hubacek, Pierre Bommel, Todd K. Bendor, Antoine J. Jetter, Bethany Laursen, Alison Singer, Philippe J. Giabbanelli, Nagesh Kolagani, Laura Basco Carrera, Karen Jenni, Christina Prell, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center Participatory Modeling Pursuit Working Group

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Participatory modeling engages the implicit and explicit knowledge of stakeholders to create formalized and shared representations of reality and has evolved into a field of study as well as a practice. Participatory modeling researchers and practitioners who focus specifically on environmental resources met at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in Annapolis, Maryland, over the course of 2 years to discuss the state of the field and future directions for participatory modeling. What follows is a description of 12 overarching groups of questions that could guide future inquiry.

3d Hydrodynamic, Temperature, And Water Quality Numerical Model For Surface Waterbodies: Development, Verification, And Field Case Studies, Hussein Ali Mahdi Al-Zubaidi

Dissertations and Theses

Numerical modeling has become a major tool for managing water quality in surface waterbodies such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and estuaries. Since the two-dimensional longitudinal/vertical model CE-QUAL-W2 is a well-known model and it has been applied to thousands of waterbodies around the world successfully, its numerical scheme was adapted to develop a new three-dimensional numerical model for simulating hydrodynamics, temperature, and water quality in surface waterbodies. Finite difference approximations were used to solve the fluid dynamic governing equations of continuity, free water surface, momentums, and mass transport. No coordinate transformations were performed and the z-coordinate system has been used. Higher-order …

Development Of A Subsurface Landfill Fire Risk-Index, Samain Sabrin

Theses and Dissertations

Landfill subsurface fires create environmental hazards by emitting potentially dangerous particulates into the atmosphere and damaging liners, potentially contaminating surrounding soil and groundwater aquifers with leachate. Currently, the only means of detecting underground fires are physical tests. This paper is used to describe an index that can be employed to track fire risk across a landfill. The landfill parameters analyzed for fire risk susceptibility in Chapter 1 include residual nitrogen concentration, oxygen exceedance, methane concentration, carbon monoxide level, methane and carbon dioxide ratio and monitoring well temperature. Incorporating these factors, a landfill fire index ranging from 1 to 10 was …

Internet Traffic Forecasting Model Using Self Organizing Map And Support Vector Regression Method, Enrico Laoh, Fakhrul Agustriwan, Chyntia Megawati, Isti Surjandari

Makara Journal of Technology

Internet traffic forecasting is one of important aspect in order to fulfill the customer demand. So, the service quality of internet service provider (ISP) can be maintained at the good level. In this study self-organizing map (SOM) and support vector regression (SVR) algorithm are used as forecasting method. SOM is first used to decompose the whole historical data of traffic internet into clusters, while SVR is used to build a forecasting model in each cluster. This method is used to forecast ISPs traffic internet in Jakarta and surrounding areas. The result of this study shows that SOM-SVR method gives more …

Effects Of The Preheating Temperature On The Crystal Structure And Texture Of Martensitic Stainless Steel, Tri Hardi Priyanto, Rifai Muslih, Herry Mugirahardjo, Bharoto Bharoto, Andon Insani, Muzzakiy Muzzakiy

Makara Journal of Technology

Theoretically, the preheating temperature refers to the start martensite temperature (Ms), and the martensite transformation can be considered as the conservation of the invariant habit-plane in the lattice structure. The habit-plane is the interface plane between austenite and martensite as measured on a macroscopic scale. From the calculation, Ms = 252 °C. The martensite formation can be affected by temperature or stress treatment. In this experiment, temperature treatment was conducted. The sample was treated at 250 °C ± 10 °C. Before and after the pre-heat treatment, the sample was characterized using the neutron diffraction method. BATAN’s Texture Diffractometer (DN2) with …

Investigation Of Ship Hull Girder Strength With Grounding Damage, Muhammad Zubair Muis Alie, Ristiyanto Adiputra

Makara Journal of Technology

The objective of the present study is to investigate ship hull girder strength as a result of grounding damage upon longitudinal bending. A bulk carrier and tanker are analyzed and Smith’s Method is adopted and implemented in the analysis program. An efficient solution procedure is performed by assuming the cross-section remains plane and the vertical bending moment is applied to the cross section. As a fundamental case, the damage is simply created by removing the elements from the cross section. Welding residual stress, initial imperfections, and crack extensions are not considered. The grounding damage is made by two conditions, namely …

High Performance Mortar With 100% Recycled Aggregate Using Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles, Molly Schrager, Vito Francioso, Arjun Kadakia, Mirian Velay-Lizancos

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Concrete and mortar are materials commonly used in construction. Their main compounds are cement, aggregates (sand and gravel) and water. In an effort to increase the sustainability of these materials, the idea of using recycled aggregates from ground old concrete and using it to make mortar and concrete has gained more interest. It has two advantages: it reduces the need to mine for raw materials and lessens the amount of old and defective concrete that is typically put in landfills. But, the use of recycled concrete aggregate lowers the strength of mortars and concretes because the residual compounds in the …

Determining The Optimal Traffic Opening Time Using Piezoelectric Sensors, Adlan Amran, Yen-Fang Su, Na Lu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) requires a reliable method of determining the early age quality of concrete to improve traffic opening time. We propose to develop an in-situ method that enables an accurate, efficient, and non-destructive health monitoring of concrete using the electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique coupled with a piezoelectric sensor named Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT). The test was conducted by mounting a PZT sensor on mortar samples. The PZT sensor was then excited by a voltage to track the strengthening of samples. The data obtained from the EMI technique was refined using the Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) …

Spatial And Temporal Storm Generation From A Stochastic View, Jiaxiang Ding, Josept D. Revuelta-Acosta, Engel Bernard

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Precipitation is one of the most important parameters in the study of hydrology and most of the research has been done on daily storm generation. Current weather generation models are used to replicate daily or monthly time resolution, which is not able to show the variability within one day or one month. This project deals with sub-daily storm generation with finer resolution and more accurate estimation, which also requires an independent storm separation method. And the Monte Carlo correlated multivariate simulation is applied to compute the variables. The description is essential for soil erosion and water quality research. Another reason …

Real-Time Non-Contact Road Defect Detection Using Inexpensive Sensors, Zhao Xing Lim, Mohammad Jahanshahi, Tarutal Ghosh Mondal, Da Cheng, Shutao Wang, Mohammad K. Sweidan, Aanis Ahmad, Omar Hesham Abouhussein, Xi Chen

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Road defects such as potholes, humps, and road cracks have become one of the main concerns for road and traffic safety worldwide. Pavement defect detection is crucial to ensure road safety. However, current solutions to this problem are either too time-consuming or too expensive to be employed large-scale. We propose a novel approach which has the ability to autonomously detect potholes in real-time using cost-effective sensors. Inexpensive sensors are mounted on a vehicle and a deep learning algorithm is used to identify road defects. The detection system is paired with a GPS and positional sensors to map the location of …

Purdue Air Sense: A Methodology For Improving The Accuracy Of Ambient Aerosol Mass Concentration And Size Distribution Measurement With Low-Cost Optical Sensing Techniques, Rishabh Ramsisaria, Satya Sundar Patra, Brandon Emil Boor

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There is a global lack of a means for monitoring air pollutant levels at a local level due to expensive and bulky instrument requirements. It is important to monitor toxic gas levels, as well as particulate matter levels, in the atmosphere to study their effects on human health and to further develop city- and community-level air pollution solutions. In this study, with the means of a Raspberry Pi, low-cost Alphasense Optical Particle Counter and gas sensors, and methodical calibration techniques, we built a portable 3-D printed module powered by clean electricity generated by an on-board Voltaic solar cell that measures …

Indoor Premise Plumbing: The Relationship Between Water Stagnation, Chlorine Decay, And Total Organic Carbon Levels, Emerson M. Ringger, Andrew J. Whelton, Tolulope Odimayomi, Maryam Salehi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Drinking water safety is critical to the health of populations worldwide, and modern plumbing infrastructure can influence drinking water chemical characteristics. Inside residential and commercial buildings however, water use and contact with different plumbing components can vary. For example, water can endure lengthy stagnation periods and residual disinfectant agents like chlorine can decay, leaving the water vulnerable to microbial growth. Plastic cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipes have become popular and have shown to influence water quality. While several studies have been carried out on chemical leaching from PEX piping, none were found that examined the role of pipe diameter in relation …