Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Surface Kinetic Energy Distributions In The Global Oceans From A High-Resolution Numerical Model And Surface Drifter Observations, Xiaolong Yu, Aurelien Ponte, Shane Elipot, Dimitris Menemenlis, Edward Zaron, Ryan Abernathey

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The surface kinetic energy of a 1/48◦ global ocean simulation and its distribution as a function of frequency and location are compared with the one estimated from 15,329 globally distributed surface drifter observations at hourly resolution. These distributions follow similar patterns with a dominant low-frequency component and well-defined tidal and near-inertial peaks globally. Quantitative differences are identified with deficits of low-frequency energy near the equator (factor 2) and at near-inertial frequencies (factor 3) and an excess of energy at semidiurnal frequencies (factor 4) for the model. Owing to its hourly resolution and its near-global spatial coverage, the array of surface …

Post-Treatment Of Nanofiltration Polyamide Membrane Through Alkali-Catalyzed Hydrolysis To Treat Dyes In Model Wastewater, Byung-Moon Jun, Yeomin Yoon, Chang Min Park

Faculty Publications

This research focused on the influence of post-treatment using alkali-catalyzed hydrolysis with a full-aromatic nanofiltration (NF) polyamide membrane and its application to the efficient removal of selected dyes. The post-treated membranes were characterized through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, goniometry, and zeta-potential analysis to analyze the treatment-induced changes in the intrinsic properties of the membrane. Furthermore, the changes in permeability induced by the post-treatment were evaluated via the measurement of water flux, NaCl rejection, and molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) under different pH conditions and post-treatment times. Major changes induced by the post-treatment in terms of physicochemical properties were the enhancement of …

Defect Detection Of Concrete Structures Through Sounding Data Analytics, Ran Cao, Anil K. Agrawal

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Impact sounding has been recognized as an effective technique to detect delamination in concrete structures, such as concrete decks. An enormous amount of sounding data can be generated/collected by the autonomous inspection systems equipped with impactors and microphones. However, the main challenge in the practical application of this technology is the development of advanced data analysis approaches for identifying defects from impact sounding data. In this study, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) analysis and power-spectral density (PSD) analysis are combined to extract useful features of sounding data generated by the impact hammer. It has been found that the EMD method …

Image Data Analytics To Support Engineers’ Decision-Making, Tianyi Zhao, Zhaozheng Yin, Ruwen Qin, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Robots such as drones have been leveraged to perform structure health inspection such as bridge inspection. Big data of inspection videos can be collected by cameras mounted on drones. In this project, we develop image analysis algorithms to support bridge engineers to analyze the big video data. Bridge engineers define the region of interest initially, then the algorithm retrieves all related regions in the video, which facilitates the engineers to inspect the bridge rather than exhaustively check every frame of the video. To perform this task, we propose a Multi-scale Siamese Neural Network. The network is initially trained by one-shot …

Updating Bridge Resilience Assessment Based On Corrosion And Foundation Scour Inspection Data, Yijian Zhang, Reginald Desroches, Iris Tien

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Aging and degradation of bridge structural components due to corrosion and scour create severe safety issues in the structural system and can lead to possible bridge failures. Collecting and analyzing inspection data provide a way to monitor and assess the safety condition of bridges. This paper proposes a framework to utilize collected inspection data to assess the condition of a bridge through updating both component- and system-level fragility curves of the bridge. Particularly, collected data such as mass loss of reinforcement and depth of scour hole are utilized to update the mechanical properties of structural members in the finite element …

Distributed Strain Measurements In A Steel-Concrete Composite Floor Beam Under Multi-Point Loading At Ambient Temperature, Matthew A. Klegseth, Yi Bao, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

A 12.8 m-long composite floor beam consisting of a steel reinforced concrete slab with profiled metal decking supported by a W18×35 steel beam was tested under multi-point bending load at ambient temperature. Material strain and temperature were measured using fiber optic sensors. Measurements were taken along more than 150 m of fiber optic cables using Pre-Pump Pulse Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (PPP-BOTDA) and Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR). Along the beam centerline, three strain and two temperature fiber loops were placed to characterize the strain and temperature distribution along and through the depth of the concrete slab. The neutral …

Synchro-Squeezed Adaptive Wavelet Transform And Its Application To Impact Echo Signals For Pavement Defect Detection, Hongya Qu, Titantian Li, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, the recently-proposed adaptive wavelet transform (AWT) and synchro-squeezed adaptive wavelet transform (SSAWT) are introduced with their optimum transformation parameters automatically searched to derive at a desirable time-frequency representation of any dynamic response. The AWT enables the selectivity of time and frequency resolution in a domain of interest and the synchro-squeezing algorithm reduces the dispersion of a scalogram of the AWT, facilitating an accurate extraction of frequency features over time. The effectiveness of AWT is first demonstrated with an illustrative signal of four time segments covering various frequency distribution cases. In comparison with conventional wavelet transform, the AWT …

Proceedings Of The 9th International Conference On Structural Health, Monitoring Of Intelligent Infrastructure: Transferring Research Into Practice, International Society For Structural Health Monitoring Of Intelligent Infrastructure (Ishmii), Genda Chen, Sreenivas Alampalli

INSPIRE Conference Contributions

No abstract provided.

Evaluations Of Multiple Non-Destructive Techniques On Top And Bottom Surfaces Of A Reinforced Concrete Bridge Deck, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongya Qu, Haibin Zhang, Genda Chen, Neil Lennart Anderson, Evgeniy V. Torgashov

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This study is intended to assess the integrity of a reinforced concrete bridge deck at the Missouri S&T campus using non-destructive testing (NDT) methods performed at top and bottom surfaces of the bridge deck. These utilized methods are named ground generating radar (GPR), impact echo (IE), and ultrasonic surface waves (USW). GPR was applied using 1.6 GHz and 2.5 GHz antennas to transmit and receive electromagnetic radio waves at embedded concrete reinforcement or distinct contacts between solid and loose concrete materials with different dielectric properties. Due to significant variations of the apparent depth to top of the embedded reinforcing steel …

Microwave High-Resolution 3d Sar Imaging Of Corroded Reinforcing Steel Bars In Mortar Subjected To Accelerated Electrochemical Corrosion, Chao Liu, Stephona Barker, Liang Fan, Mohammad Tayeb Ahmad Ghasr, Genda Chen, R. Zoughi

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Corrosion of reinforcing steel bars (rebars) embedded in concrete is a significant maintenance, rehabilitation and safety issue as it relates to the overall health of concrete structures, particularly those subjected to cyclical chloride attack. Over the years several inspection methods have been used to detect and assess this corrosion with limited success. Wideband microwave imaging, using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques, has shown great potential for producing 3D images of structures containing rebars. Although these investigations have shown great promise, a methodical approach to investigate the overall efficacy of this imaging technique has not yet taken place. Steel corrosion byproduct …

Assessing Moisture Content On The Surface Of Mortar Samples From Hyperspectral Imaging, Liang Fan, Abdullah Alhaj, Hongyan Ma, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Hyperspectral imaging represents an electromagnetic spectrum for each pixel in the image of a structural surface. The characteristic wavelength of the spectrum at reflectance valleys or absorption peaks can be used as a spectral feature for certain chemical detection. In this study, spectral reflectance characteristics of mortar samples are extracted to assess the reduction of moisture on the surface of mortar samples during the cement hydration process. The test results indicate that the reflectance increases and the absorbance decreases because water is reacted and less light will be absorbed during the hydration process. The average absorbance between 1923 nm and …

Thermally-Stable Passive Wireless Antenna Sensor For Strain Sensing, Dan Li, Yang Wang

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Passive wireless antenna sensors have been studied in recent years as a novel approach for strain sensing. Electromagnetic resonance frequency of the antenna sensor, which is bonded on a base structural surface like a strain gage, depends on antenna dimension. When the dimension changes due to strain in the base structure, the wirelessly identified resonance frequency shift can be used to estimate the strain in the structure. Due to the multi-physics nature, both mechanical and dielectric properties of the antenna affect the resonance frequency. One drawback of previous antenna sensors is the relatively large resonance frequency fluctuation due to temperature …

Corrosion Induced Mass Loss Measurement Under Various Strain Levels Through Gr/Agnw-Based, Fe-C Coated Lpfg Sensors, Chanrui Guo, Liang Fan, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, three Gr/AgNW-based, Fe-C coated long period fiber gratings (LPFG) corrosion sensors were prepared and tested for corrosion-induced mass loss measurements under various strain levels. Graphene grew on a copper foil using a low pressure chemical vapor deposition, was transferred to the curve surface of each LPFG sensor, and strengthened by silver nanowire (AgNW) for a more robust electroplating process of the Fe-C layer. The three Fe-C coated LPFG sensors were subjected to three different strain levels: 0, 500 and 1000 με. The sensors were immersed up to 72 hours in 3.5% w.t NaCl solution. Both optical transmission …

Uav-Based Smart Rock Positioning For Determination Of Bridge Scour Depth, Haibin Zhang, Zhaochao Li, Alec Reven, Buddy Scharfenberg, Genda Chen, Jinping Ou

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This study aims to predict the depth of scour hole developed around a bridge pier with one smart rock. A 3-axis magnetometer was assembled on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to measure magnetic fields before and after the smart rock has been deployed as the UAV flew around the bridge pier. A 3-axis high resolution GPS unit was fixed on the UAV to ensure accurate measurements of the latitude, longitude and altitude of the magnetometer. The GPS and the magnetometer measurements were synchronized to output the coordinate and magnetic field intensity correspondingly. A simple optimization algorithm was used to predict …

Considerations For Hose Wielding Uav For Civil Infrastructure Cleaning, Blake Hament, Paul Oh

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

To expand the capabilities of a multi-rotor aerial vehicle, one or several hoses could be mounted to the vehicle. Such hoses could be used to expel compressed air or other fluid for the purpose of cleaning hard-to-reach surfaces. The main challenge in operating a hose mounted on a free-flying aerial vehicle is compensating for the reaction forces and torques the vehicle experiences as fluid leaves the hose. This paper introduces dynamic modeling for a hose mounted on a multi- rotor vehicle. It is shown that safe operating ranges can be defined in terms of hose angle and fluid PSI, with …

Visual Shm For Concrete Infrastructure Using A Wall-Climbing Robot, Liang Yang, Yong Chang, Biao Jiang, Jizhong Xiao

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Concrete structural health monitoring (SHM) is urgently required with more and more severe aging problems happen. Conventional manual inspection approach is labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose a wall-climbing robotic approach for visual inspection of concrete structures using a deep neural network and 3D semantic reconstruction to build a 3D map overlaid with defects. The wall-climbing robot uses a negative pressure module to operate on both vertical and horizontal surfaces. An RGB-D camera is mounted in the robot with an Intel-NUC computer as visual positioning and image processing core to make metric measurement, Our main contribution is the …

Roller Chain-Like Robot For Steel Bridge Inspection, Son Thanh Nguyen, Hung Manh La

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

This paper presents a novel design of steel bridge/structure inspection robot. Compared to most existing robots designed to work on particular surface contour of steel structures such as flat or curving, the proposed roller chain-like robot can implement and transfer smoothly on many kind of steel surfaces. The developed robot can be applied to inspection tasks for steel bridges with complicated structures. The robot is able to carry cameras, sensors for visual and specialized examination. Rigorous analysis of robot kinematics, adhesion force and turn-over failure has been conducted to demonstrate the stability of the proposed design. Mechanical and magnetic force …

A Genetic Algorithm For Minmax K-Chinese Postman Problem With Applications To Bridge Inspection, Siming Liu, Sushil J. Liu, N. Harris, Hung Manh La

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

Bridge inspections ensure transportation infrastructure safety and save lives but current manual bridge inspections can be slow and costly. Automated bridge inspection research mitigates these problems and we investigate a multirobot approach to automated bridge inspection by mapping the inspection problem to the well known k-Chinese Postman problem and using multiple robots for faster, more cost-effective, and more standardized bridge inspections. We first show that a genetic algorithm quickly approaches the optimal solution to the 1-postman problem corresponding to a single robot inspecting a bridge. Then, we use the same genetic algorithm to efficiently solve the more difficult, multi-robot, NP-hard, …

Unmanned Aerial And Traversing Robot As Mobile Platform For Bridge Inspections, Alec M. Reven, Clayton A. Fritsche, Genda Chen

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

In this study, a bridge inspection robot deployment system (BIRDS) is designed, prototyped, and tested to facilitate the remote inspection of bridges with nondestructive evaluation tools such as microwave and hyperspectral cameras. The multimodal robotic system utilizes both flying and driving technologies. First, BIRDS as an unmanned aerial vehicle flies to the underside of the bridge to be inspected. When in position, BIRDS is engaged with the bottom flange of a bridge girder with a specifically designed roller clamping system and then traverses the bridge in a stable manner, providing high quality images from cameras. Finally, BIRDS simply detaches from …

An Analytical Approach To Ascertain Saturation-Excess Versus Infiltration-Excess Overland Flow In Urban And Reference Landscapes, Ryan D. Stewart, Aditi S. Bhaskar, Anthony J. Parolari, Dustin L. Herrmann, Jinshi Jian, Laura A. Schifman, William D. Shuster

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Uncontrolled overland flow drives flooding, erosion, and contaminant transport, with the severity of these outcomes often amplified in urban areas. In pervious media such as urban soils, overland flow is initiated via either infiltration‐excess (where precipitation rate exceeds infiltration capacity) or saturation‐excess (when precipitation volume exceeds soil profile storage) mechanisms. These processes call for different management strategies, making it important for municipalities to discern between them. In this study, we derived a generalized one‐dimensional model that distinguishes between infiltration‐excess overland flow (IEOF) and saturation‐excess overland flow (SEOF) using Green–Ampt infiltration concepts. Next, we applied this model to estimate overland flow …

Modeling Irrigation Behavior In Groundwater Systems, Timothy Foster, Nicholas Brozovic, Adrian P. Butler

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Integrated hydro-economic models have been widely applied to water management problems in regions of intensive groundwater-fed irrigation. However, policy interpretations may be limited as most existing models do not explicitly consider two important aspects of observed irrigation decision making, namely the limits on instantaneous irrigation rates imposed by well yield and the intraseasonal structure of irrigation planning. We develop a new modeling approach for determining irrigation demand that is based on observed farmer behavior and captures the impacts on production and water use of both well yield and climate. Through a case study of irrigated corn production in the Texas …

Laboratory Evaluation Of Cold In-Place Recycling Asphalt Mixtures Using A Balanced Mix Design, Ahmed Saidi

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research study is to present a procedure for designing Cold In-Place Recycling (CIR) mixtures through balancing cracking and rutting for these mixtures. Eight CIR mixtures were prepared using two recycling agents (foamed and emulsified asphalts), then cured for three days at two temperatures (140oF and 50oF), and compacted at two gyration levels (30 and 70 gyrations). The CIR mixtures were prepared at constant dosages of water and cement, 3% and 1%, respectively. Air void of each CIR performance test specimen was determined using the CoreLok device. The rutting susceptibility of these mixtures was then evaluated using …

General Nonlinear-Material Elasticity In Classical One-Dimensional Solid Mechanics, Ronald Joseph Giardina Jr

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

We will create a class of generalized ellipses and explore their ability to define a distance on a space and generate continuous, periodic functions. Connections between these continuous, periodic functions and the generalizations of trigonometric functions known in the literature shall be established along with connections between these generalized ellipses and some spectrahedral projections onto the plane, more specifically the well-known multifocal ellipses. The superellipse, or Lam\'{e} curve, will be a special case of the generalized ellipse. Applications of these generalized ellipses shall be explored with regards to some one-dimensional systems of classical mechanics. We will adopt the Ramberg-Osgood relation …

Effects Of Nutrient Level And Growth Rate On Mutation And Conjugation Processes That Confer Antibiotic Resistance To E. Coli, Mohammadreza Shafieifini

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

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) may enter surface water with the discharge of treated wastewater. Conjugation is a main mechanism for the horizontal gene transfer of ARGs from wastewater microbiome to the microbiome indigenous to surface water. However, little is known about how environmental factors affect the conjugation process of ARGs.

In this thesis, an extensive research related to spreading antibiotic resistance genes in the environment is reported. The project investigated how environmental parameters may affect the rate of dissemination of ARGs and in what extent the resistance level of the population is changed after mutation and conjugation event. The chemostat …

9th International Conference On Structural Health Monitoring Of Intelligent Infrastructure (Smhii-9) Conference Program, Smhii-9

INSPIRE-UTC Annual Meetings

No abstract provided.

Water Productivity In Meat And Milk Production In The Us From 1960 To 2016, Mesfin Mekonnen, C.M.U. Neale, Chittaranjan Ray, Galen E. Erickson, Arjen Y. Hoekstra

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Global demand for livestock products is rising, resulting in a growing demand for feed and potentially burdening freshwater resources to produce this feed. To offset this increased pressure on water resources, the environmental performance of livestock sector should continue to improve. Over the last few decades, product output per animal and feedstuff yields in the US have improved, but before now it was unclear to what extent these improvements influenced the water productivity (WP) of the livestock products. In this research, we estimate changes in WP of animal products from 1960 to 2016. We consider feed conversion ratios (dry matter …

Long-Term Performance Of Sustainable Pavements Using Ternary Blended Concrete With Recycled Aggregates, Seth M. Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to (a) design concrete pavement mixtures with recycled concrete aggregates using ternary blends of cementitious materials and a low water-to-binder ratio, (b) measure the fresh and hardened properties of the proposed concrete mixtures and (c) assess the long-term performance of the concrete implementing the use of recycled coarse aggregates. Preliminary investigation into ternary blend combinations via the compressive testing of mortar cubes and isothermal calorimetry was used to predict an optimal blend of cementitious material. Mixes using recycled concrete aggregates at varying replacement rates were tested for fresh and hardened properties using the proposed …

A Study Of The Electron Regeneration Efficiency Of Solar Cells Fabricated Using Cmc/Pva-, Alginate-, And Xanthan-Based Electrolytes, Nur Farha Shaafi, Saifful Kamaluddin Muzakir, Bouchta Sahraoui

Makara Journal of Technology

A photovoltaic (PV) mechanism consists of three important steps, i.e., (i) electron excitation upon absorption of photon with energy higher than the bandgap of fluorophore, (ii) excited-state electron injection from the fluorophore to the pho-toelectrode, and (iii) electron regeneration from the electrolyte to the fluorophore. An efficient electron regeneration could be achieved upon fulfillment of the requirements of energy alignment, i.e., lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of fluorophore (LUMOfluorophore) > redox potential of electrolyte > highest occupied molecular orbital of fluorophore (HOMOfluorophore). This study investigated the electron regeneration efficiency of excitonic solar cells fabricated using three polymer-based electrolytes, i.e., (i) 60% carboxymethyl cellulose …

Use Of The “Dnachecker” Algorithm For Improving Bioinformatics Research, Nausheen Bhat, Ezra Bernadus Wijaya, Arli Aditya Parikesit

Makara Journal of Technology

Basic Local Alignment Sequencing Tool (BLAST) is a bioinformatics tool used for analyzing nucleotide sequences with regards to their similarity. BLAST can be found online on biological databases such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and other such repositories. The mechanism of BLAST allows the target sequence to be compared with other sequences to find regions of local similarity, and thus, a comparability quotient that determines the resemblance between the sequences is created. Due to the open-platform nature of the online databanks, several sequences can be accepted with little to no interjections regarding the quality of sequence submitted. …

Study Of Ecological Design Of Residential Complexes Using Spss To Elevate Resident Satisfaction, Soheil Malekpour Kolbadinejad, V. Malekpour Ravasjan, A. Darvish

Makara Journal of Technology

This article reports the general residential satisfaction, affecting ecological factors, and their importance in area in Tehran. The collected field data was analyzed using SPSS. Cronbach's alpha variable was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire and the Friedman test was used to assess priorities that influence residential satisfaction. The results show that the quality of residential environments and general satisfaction of their residents may be enhanced by identifying these criteria and making appropriate plans for their improvement.