Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Development, Implementation, And Tracking Of Preventative Safety Metrics, Zamaan Al-Shabbani, Ashtarout Ammar, Hala Nassereddine, Gabriel B. Dadi

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

What gets measured, gets improved. With respect to the safety and health of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) employees, the primary metric used has been the OSHA recordable incident rate. This incident rate measures how often a Cabinet employee sustains an injury that demands more than basic first aid. This metric is important for understanding injury frequencies, but it does not assist with management of the safety, health, and overall well-being of KYTC personnel. Based on a review of leading safety indicators adopted by various industries, this study devised a comprehensive list of safety metrics the Cabinet will benefit from tracking. …

Investigation Of The Load-Induced Cracking And Rutting Performance Of Specialty Hot Mix Asphalt Overlay Mixtures, Andrae Anthony Francois

Theses and Dissertations

This study was initiated with the aim of investigating the cracking performance, rutting performance, and cost effectiveness of specialty and composite HMA mixtures utilized in New Jersey to rehabilitate deteriorated rigid pavements. As such, four, plant-produced, specialty HMA overlay mixtures currently used in New Jersey were evaluated in this study. These overlay mixtures included: a dense-graded, 9.5-SP mixture, a gap-graded, 12.5-SMA mixture, a dense graded, 4.75-HPTO mixture, and a uniformly graded, 4.75-BRIC mixture. The 9.5-SP, 12.5-SMA, and 4.75-HPTO mixtures were produced using PG 76-22 binder while the 4.75-BRIC was contained a PG 70-28 binder. The laboratory cracking and rutting performance …

The Legacy Of Car-Share And Light-Rail Transit For Mobility And Accessibility Improvements In Economically Marginalized Neighborhoods In The New York Metro Area, Kyeongsu Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the value of the car-share program and a new light rail system with respect to their impact on mobility and accessibility improvements in economically and transportation access-wise marginalized neighborhoods in NYC and its adjacent communities. It consists of three main essays that took deep dives into how each new service or system altered mobility or accessibility for those in need. The first essay (Chapter 2) investigates car-share vehicle utilization rates of the Zipcar across NYC. It assesses the utilization rates by vehicle type, service location, time period, and weekday usage compared to weekend activity. With a multivariate …

Virus Isoelectric Point Estimation: Theories And Methods, Joe Heffron, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Much of virus fate, both in the environment and in physical/chemical treatment, is dependent on electrostatic interactions. Developing an accurate means of predicting virion isoelectric point (pI) would help to understand and anticipate virus fate and transport, especially for viruses that are not readily propagated in the lab. One simple approach to predicting pI estimates the pH at which the sum of charges from ionizable amino acids in capsid proteins approaches zero. However, predicted pIs based on capsid charges frequently deviate by several pH units from empirically measured pIs. Recently, the discrepancy between empirical and predicted pI was attributed to …

Commercial Driver’S License Prosecution, Adjudication, And Data Transmission, Andrew Martin, Jeeyen Koo, Jennifer Walton

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Kentucky Transportation Center research team examined law enforcement and adjudication of traffic offenses committed by commercial driver’s license holders. The objectives were to identify states that would provide the data, collect information about their court systems, analyze enforcement and/or adjudication data, and make some general observations about trends. Many state agencies were not able to provide their traffic offense data and therefore, the team focused primarily on data from Kentucky and Washington State.

The study focused on enforcement trends and adjudication of safety-related offenses. Overall, conviction rates remain higher than dismissal and amended rates. In recent years, dismissal and …

Behavior And Modeling Of Circular Large Rupture Strain Frp-Confined Ice Under Axial Compression, Yanlei Wang, Guipeng Chen, Baolin Wan, Gaochuang Cai, Baoguo Han

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The application of concrete is severely limited in construction in cold areas. However, the local ice has functioned as a potential substitute for concrete for a long time. In order to make efficient use of ice to overcome its weaknesses of low strength and poor ductility, an innovative type of ice-filled large rupture strain (LRS) fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) tube column was developed. The system consists of external LRS FRP tubes filled with plain ice or sawdust-reinforced ice. This paper presents an experimental investigation into the axial compressive behavior of such composite stub columns with circular sections. The test results confirmed …

A Life Cycle Comparison Of Remote, Deployed Expeditionary Waste Management Scenarios, David J. Chester, Chandrani Mukherjee, Jeremy M. Slagley, Eric Mbonimpa, Thomas Hornstein

Faculty Publications

The current barrier to acquisition and utilization of viable waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies at remote or deployed expeditionary sites requires high capital and operation & maintenance costs. The impacts to environment and human health of differing expeditionary waste management strategies were compared using the Life Cycle Assessment software SimaPro 8.0. Emissions of individual waste management scenarios were compiled from peer-reviewed literature, converted to values compatible with SimaPro’s waste scenario inputs, and the calculated impacts compared using SimaPro’s pre-loaded methodologies. These calculated impacts and the economic impacts confirm that open-air burning of waste is not only dangerous to humans and the environment, …

Multiscale Legacy Responses Of Soil Gas Concentrations To Soil Moisture And Temperature Fluctuations, Anthony J. Parolari, Joseph Sizemore, Gabriel Katul

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The sensitivity of soil carbon dynamics to climate change is a major uncertainty in carbon cycle models. Of particular interest is the response of soil biogeochemical cycles to variability in hydroclimatic states and the related quantification of soil memory. Toward this goal, the power spectra of soil hydrologic and biogeochemical states were analyzed using measurements of soil temperature, moisture, oxygen, and carbon dioxide at two sites. Power spectra indicated multiscale power law scaling across subhourly to annual timescales. Precipitation fluctuations were most strongly expressed in the soil biogeochemical signals at monthly to annual timescales. Soil moisture and temperature fluctuations were …

2021 Final Butte Reduction Works (Brw) Phase I Quality Assurance Project Plan (Qapp) Revision 3. February 2021, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Materials Waste In The Egyptian Construction Industry: A Critical Analysis Of Rates And Factors, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Ahmed Osama Daoud Dr., Obas John Ebohon, Ali Bayyati

Architectural Engineering

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) is a critical challenge facing the construction industry. It leads to deterioration of the triple bottom line of sustainability. Unfortunately, the CDW management research in Egypt lacks studies investigating (1) the variations in CDW generation (CDWG) among different types of construction projects, and (2) the factors affecting CDW reduction (CDWR). Based on a benchmarking approach, this research (1) quantifies CDW in terms of generation rates and costs among different construction project types in Egypt, and (2) investigates the relationship between CDWG and different adopted CDWR factors. Using structured interviews, a comparative case study was conducted …

Structural Identification And Damage Detection In Bridges Using Wave Method And Uniform Shear Beam Models: A Feasibility Study, Mehran Rahmani, Manan Naik

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report presents a wave method to be used for the structural identification and damage detection of structural components in bridges, e.g., bridge piers. This method has proven to be promising when applied to real structures and large amplitude responses in buildings (e.g., mid-rise and high-rise buildings). This study is the first application of the method to damaged bridge structures. The bridge identification was performed using wave propagation in a simple uniform shear beam model. The method identifies a wave velocity for the structure by fitting an equivalent uniform shear beam model to the impulse response functions of the recorded …

Modeling The Effectiveness Of Cooling Trenches For Stormwater Temperature Mitigation, Scott A. Wells

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Due to elevated runoff stormwater temperatures from impervious areas, one management strategy to reduce stormwater temperature is the use of underground flow through rock media termed a cooling trench. This paper examines the governing equations for the liquid phase and media phases for modeling the temperature leaving a cooling trench assuming that changes in temperature occurred longitudinally through the cooling trench. This model is dependent on parameters such as the media type, porosity, media initial temperature, inflow rate, and inflow temperature. Several approaches were explored mathematically for evaluating the change in temperature of the water and the cooling trench media. …

Multi-Skilled Labor Optimization With Partial Allocation Of Resources, Amira Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

The current practice of labor allocation in construction schedules assumes single-skilled workforce; meaning that each worker is assumed to be skilled in only one trade. In such practice, at any instance in the project lifecycle, some of the workforce become idle waiting for other labor types to complete their work. Traditionally, companies may relocate idle workers to other projects and return them back to their original project when needed again. This complicates the resource management process and is not often performed successfully, leading to schedule and cost overruns. Alternatively, project managers may keep the idle workforce at their projects because …

Predicting The Effect Of Fly Ash On Concrete’S Mechanical Properties By Ann, Mohammad Mehdi Roshani, Seyed Hamidreza Kargar, Visar Farhangi, Moses Karakouzian

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Fly ash, as a supplemental pozzolanic material, reduces concrete’s adverse environmental footprint by decreasing the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) during the cement manufacturing process. Fly ash, which is a waste material, can enhance both the mechanical characteristics and durability of concrete, and has the capability to play an important role in sustainable design. Considering the widespread interest in applying Fly ash, and despite research studies, the level of replacement is still unclear. In this paper, a novel method using artificial neural networks (ANN) is presented to predict concrete’s mechanical …

A Web-Based Change Control Management Toolkit For Lump-Sum Turnkey Contractors: Transformation To Third Generation, Ahmed Omran

Theses and Dissertations

Project deviations and changes are one of the key common particulars encountered in the Construction industry. Project changes can occur in different forms, may impact different pillars of the project, and can be caused due to the existence of various underlying factors. Mismanaging or lack of controlling these changes is one of the key contributing factors leading to project hardships. Contractors incur profit erosion, scope creep, and time slippages mainly by failing to have an effective project change management system enforced within its project execution philosophy. Such adversity is amplified for contractors engaging in lump-sum turnkey “LSTK” projects. Contractors encounter …

The Use Of Dynamic Message Signs (Dmss) On The Freeways: An Empirical Analysis Of Dmss Logs And Survey Data, Boniphace Kutela, Hualiang Teng

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

This study evaluates the Dynamic Message Signs (DMSs) use to dissipate incident information on the freeways in Las Vegas, Nevada. It focuses on the DMSs message timing, extent, and content, from the operators’ and drivers’ perspectives, considering the variability in drivers’ freeway experience. Two-week incidents data with fifty-nine incidents, DMS log data, and responses from a survey questionnaire were used. The descriptive analysis of the incidents revealed that about 54% of the incidents had their information posted on the DMSs; however, information of only 18.6% of the incidents was posted on time. The posted information covered the incident type (54.2%), …

Truck Platooning Effects On Girder Bridges, Joshua Steelman, Jay A. Puckett, Daniel Linzell, Bowen Yang

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Truck platooning – digitally linking two or more trucks to travel in a closely spaced convoy – is increasingly used to save fuel, and reduce driver work and road congestion. Currently, the platoon load effects with several constant headways on bridges have been evaluated and compared to AASHTO design and legal loads. However, reliability assessment and a more rigorous investigation of headway spacing assumptions for truck platoons are lacking. This research provides a framework for determining how much a platoon permit load might be increased given strict control over the load characteristics and operational tactics. The present research evaluates the …

Covid-19: A Spectio-Temporal Analysis Of Air Quality Status In Coking Coalfields Of India Due To Nationwide Lockdown In India, Amarjeet Singh Mr., Gurdeep Singh Dr.

Journal of Sustainable Mining

A novel infectious corona virus disease (COVID-19) was identified in month of December 2019.It has now been announced as a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization [1]. The COVID-19 pandemic has positive impacts on the environmental pollutants. In present work, Coalfield areas of Jharia Coalfields (JCF), India have been taken as a case study to evaluate the effect of lockdown on air quality at 10 locations. This study had been selected to estimate the reduction in concentration of pollutants like PM₁₀, PM_2.5, SO₂, and NOx during 3 Seasons (summer, Post-Monsoon and winter season) …

New Particle Formation In The Remote Marine Boundary Layer, Guangjie Zheng, Yang Wang, For Full List Of Authors, See Publisher's Website.

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Marine low clouds play an important role in the climate system, and their properties are sensitive to cloud condensation nuclei concentrations. While new particle formation represents a major source of cloud condensation nuclei globally, the prevailing view is that new particle formation rarely occurs in remote marine boundary layer over open oceans. Here we present evidence of the regular and frequent occurrence of new particle formation in the upper part of remote marine boundary layer following cold front passages. The new particle formation is facilitated by a combination of efficient removal of existing particles by precipitation, cold air temperatures, vertical …

Course Master Planning, Haroon Stephen, Jee Woong Park

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Our specific teaching practice is to use a course master plan, which is a comprehensive document that provides the embodiment to the course skeleton often given in the syllabus. The master plan strategy addresses the need to provide multi-level perspectives of the course. The master plan provides a one-stop source of information and enables a consistent course delivery in case of multiple instructors assigned to a course in the same semester or on rotation.

Application Of Ultrasonic Measurements For The Evaluation Of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete, Belayhun Gebretsadik, Kazem Jdidirendi, Visar Farhangi, Moses Karakouzian

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

This study investigates the feasibility of the application of ultrasonic measurement to characterize Steel-Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (SFRC). Specifically, the effects of steel fiber content, age, moisture content, and fiber orientation on Ultrasonic-Pulse-Velocity (UPV) were investigated. In this regard, beam and cylindrical samples were fabricated with different steel fiber contents. The result indicated that for beam specimens the UPV increases with the addition of fiber up to 2% and decreases for higher fiber percentages. Additionally, the fiber orientation within the beam specimens influences the UPV measurements. For cylindrical samples, the rate of UPV decreased with the addition of steel fiber reinforcement. In …

Quality Assessment Of Flexible Pavement Automated Cracking Data In Louisiana, Mostafiz Emtiaz

LSU Master's Theses

Pavement distress survey is the most critical and integral part of pavement management system. Transportation agencies all over the world depends on the accurate pavement distress survey to take major decisions like pavement rehabilitation or reconstruction. Pavement management at the network level requires accurate pavement distress survey to decide the allocation of budget for pavement maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction. This study started collected network-level cracking distress data through manual measurements on high-resolution pavement images and the results were used as the ground truth measurements to evaluate the corresponding automated distress data from the Pavement Management System database. Results showed that …

Generation Of 3d Model Of Downtown Sullivan, Jim Speer

2020 Fall Reports (Sullivan)

The City of Sullivan identified the downtown area as an area for improvement and needed a way to depict areas. In ENVI 610, one graduate student was able to address the agreed upon goals of developing a 3D model of the downtown square. Some recommendations for future use of the 3D model were made for land-use planning, drainage systems, elevation, and more.

Coating Compositions And Methods For Using The Same, Fateme Rezaei, Thomas P. Schuman, Glenn Morrison

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Coating compositions and methods for using the same are disclosed. The coating compositions can include an aminosilica adsorbent. The coating compositions can adsorb CO₂.

Strength, Fracture Evolution, And Permeability Changes From Confined Brazilian Tests On Sandstone, Tyler Louis Hagengruber

Civil Engineering ETDs

This research reports on confined Brazilian strength tests and concurrent permeability testing on sandstone. The majority of the tests measured permeability during loading to failure in the confined extension region. Additional testing includes unloading and reloading cycles to detect the development of microcracks and the dependence of permeability on mixed stress conditions. Further testing characterizes fracture networks by observing porosity changes due to microcrack interactions before peak load. All tests involve 5 cm diameter disk-shaped, jacketed samples that are subjected to confining stresses while they are diametrically loaded. Specially designed end caps allow for gas flow measurements. The test configuration …

Wearable Sensing Devices: Towards The Development Of A Personalized System For Construction Safety And Health Risk Mitigation, Chukwuma Nnaji, Ibukun Awolusi, Jeewoong Park, Alex Albert

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Wearable sensing devices (WSDs) are increasingly helping workers stay safe and healthy in several industries. However, workers, especially in the construction industry, have shown some aversion towards the use of WSDs due to their ability to capture specific information that may be considered personal and private. However, this revered information may provide some critical insight needed by management to plan and optimize worksite safety and support technology adoption in decision making. Therefore, there is a need to develop personalized WSD systems that are mutually beneficial to workers and management to ensure successful WSD integration. The present study aims to contribute …

Establish Integrated Crop-Livestock Production To Promote Ammonia Reduction In Livestock Industry, Hongnan Liu, Yulong Yin

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

No abstract provided.

Accuracy Assessment Of Global Internal-Tide Models Using Satellite Altimetry, Loren Carrere, Brian K. Arbic, Brian Dushaw, Gary D. Egbert, Svetlana Erofeeva, Florent Lyard, Richard D. Ray, Clément Ubelmann, Edward Zaron, Zhongxiang Zhao, Jay F. Shriver, Maarten C. Buijsman, Nicolas Picot

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Altimeter measurements are corrected for several geophysical parameters in order to access ocean signals of interest, like mesoscale or sub-mesoscale variability. The ocean tide is one of the most critical corrections due to the amplitude of the tidal elevations and to the aliasing phenomena of high-frequency signals into the lower-frequency band, but the internal-tide signatures at the ocean surface are not yet corrected globally.

Internal tides can have a signature of several centimeters at the surface with wavelengths of about 50–250 km for the first mode and even smaller scales for higher-order modes. The goals of the upcoming Surface Water …

Development Of A Hurricane Recovery Function And Resilience Model For Single-Family Residential Homes, Uriel Robert Donald Clark

Theses and Dissertations

The resilience of communities, infrastructure, and the environment in the face of hurricanes has increasingly become of public interest in the wake of recent natural disasters and environmental activism. Previous methodologies have attempted to quantify resilience for various structures and scenarios. Many studies have primarily investigated the robustness of critical infrastructure (e.g., bridges, emergency facilities, and water systems) which are essential to the function of a community. However, few studies have applied this approach to individual residential buildings. Therefore, this research aimed to adapt the most recent recovery functions developed for residential homes by considering measurable factors that are known …

Using System Dynamics To Study The Effect Of Change Orders On Labor Productivity, Shrouk Gharib

Theses and Dissertations

Change orders in construction projects lead to numerous negative impacts, including loss of labor productivity, delays, and cost overruns. Owners and contractors are usually in disagreement when it comes to allocating the extent of responsibilities with respect to the resulting overruns. Each party tries to hold the other party fully responsible for such overruns through a series of claims and disputes. Several delay analysis techniques have been developed to aid in settling such disputes, however, they do not fully grasp the rippled impacts of change orders and do not assist parties in reaching consensus when it comes to finding the …