Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

The Professional Constructor, Full Issue, Volume 44, Number 02

The Professional Constructor

No abstract provided.

Experimental Investigations Of Levee Breach Flows, Ibrahim Adil Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Two individual but related problems involving levee breach flow are studied. The first one involves experimental and dynamic modeling of steady flow through a levee breach, and the second one involves experimental investigation of flood management by an engineered levee breach. Both studies are conducted in the Hydraulics Laboratory, the University of South Carolina.

In the first problem, an idealized levee breach on a trapezoidal embankment was studied. Flow data including water depths, surface velocities, and flow discharges were collected from 28 experiments considering different cases of breach width and downstream water depth. Ultrasonic sensors were used to record the …

Identification Of Bridges With Fracture-Prone Details, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Rick Younce, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Welded steel girder bridges can contain details that can high welding and service stresses and are termed constraintinduced fractures (CIF). The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has steel bridges with weld details known to cause CIFs whose girders have experienced fracture events. The Cabinet’s bridge inventory was reviewed and additional candidate bridges with potential CIF details were identified. A review of bridge plans and pictures along with followup field investigations pinpointed bridges with CIF details that warrant up-close (i.e., arm’s length) inspections. Several uninspected bridges were identified as candidates for inspection to determine if they contain CIF details. Guidance is provided to …

Predicting Acceptable Wait Times For Patrons At Transit Bus Stops By Time Of Day, Stephen Arhin

Mineta Transportation Institute

The time spent waiting by bus patrons at bus stops is a primary measure for assessing the reliability of transit services. Uncertainty associated with waiting affects bus patrons’ perception of quality of the service provided. Consequently, this study aimed to determine patrons’ maximum and minimum acceptable wait times at bus stops in Washington, DC and to develop prediction models to provide decision-makers with additional tools for improving patronage.

The data used in this study was obtained by surveying 3,388 bus patrons at 71 selected bus stops in Washington, D.C. over an eight-month period. Data obtained from patrons included their ethnicity, …

A Framework For Integrating Transportation Into Smart Cities, Susan Shaheen, Adam Cohen, Mark K. Dowd, Richard Davis

Mineta Transportation Institute

In recent years, economic, environmental, and political forces have quickly given rise to “Smart Cities” -- an array of strategies that can transform transportation in cities. Using a multi-method approach to research and develop a framework for smart cities, this study provides a framework that can be employed to:

1. Understand what a smart city is and how to replicate smart city successes;
2. The role of pilot projects, metrics, and evaluations to test, implement, and replicate strategies; and
3. Understand the role of shared micromobility, big data, and other key issues impacting communities.

This research provides recommendations for policy and professional practice …

Youth Design The Future Of Transportation For Their Community, Christian Wandeler, Steven Hart, Felipe Mercado

Mineta Transportation Institute

The complexity of a globalized world, accelerating technological advances, and rapid change challenge educational systems. Around the world the call is to develop 21st century skills with a focus on career readiness, ability for lifelong learning, and collaboration skills. The development of the foundational elements of civic engagement (civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions) of children and youth is also a dominant concern for educators and policymakers. Unfortunately, not all youth have the same opportunities to develop civic self-efficacy. However, the civic empowerment engagement gap can be closed by providing underserved students with interactive and authentic civic experiences.

We strove to …

Biopolymer-Stabilized Earth Materials For Resilient And Adaptable Infrastructures, Sherif Abdelaziz, Dilip Gersappe, Dilip Rafailovich

Department of Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Earth dams and levees are constructed and retrofitted nowadays using the same materials that were used in the past, clays and sands. Despite the current advances in engineering, designing and constructing these critical infrastructure, earthen dams and levees continue to suffer from the same challenges over the years. These challenges include internal and surface erosions, loss of stability due to moisture migration, and inabilities to self-heal potential failure points. This project focuses on the use of biopolymers as additives to strengthen earthen dams and levees targeting an overall increase in their resilience.

Explicitly, the report for Milestone 3 presented the …

18-01 Sustainable And Smart-Growth City Ranking: Multifaceted Transportation Performance Measures In Smart Cities, Jun-Seok Oh, Valerian Kwigizile, Ahmad Feizi

Transportation Research Center Reports

The concept of smart city is fast becoming a key instrument in transforming living environments in a way better to enhance operational efficiency of a transportation system. This study identifies a framework to assess transportation performance measures and smart-growth of cities around the U.S. The proposed assessment framework is comprised of the evaluation of individual criterion and the assessment of comprehensive results. The criteria are categorized into four groups including network performance, traffic safety, environmental impact, and physical activity. This study provides a multifaceted approach to integrate the criteria’s performance measures. As a case example, the proposed performance measures were …

An Open-Source Data Manager For Network Models, Stephen Knox, James Tomlinson, Julien J. Harou, Philipp Meier, David E. Rosenberg, Jay R. Lund, David E. Rheinheimer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Developing simulation and optimisation models for resource networks like water or energy systems increasingly involves integrating multiple data sources and software. Connecting multiple models and managing data accessed by different groups of analysts is a software challenge. Many resource systems are represented in computer models as networks of nodes and links, driven by a range of objectives and rules. We present a data storage platform, written in Python, which exploits the commonality of network representations to store data for multiple model types within a single deployment. This open-source platform provides a common source of data to multiple models using consistent …

Researche Of Certain Host-Rocks Of Uranium Ores By The Method Of Thermal Analysis, O.F. Petukhov, B.T. Ruziev, U.Z. Sharafutdinov, Khalimov U.I.

Gorniy vestnik Uzbekistana

The article presents the results of thermal analysis of samples of minerals – calcite (limestone), dolomite, magnesite and quartz, as well as their mixtures in the host rock of uranium ore. It has been established that thermal decomposition (dissociation) of calcite occurs in one stage at a temperature of 870°C, magnesite - in one stage at 6500° C, and dolomite - in two stages at 7300°C and at 9100°C. Thermal analysis of a sample of uranium ore showed that, as host rocks, it contains calcite, dolomite, and quartz.

Design And Preliminary Testing Of Demand-Responsive Transverse Rumble Strips, Md Shakhawat Hossen, Christopher Kappes, Mohamed Trabia, Brendan Morris, Jeewoong Park, Alexander Paz

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

Transverse rumble strips are common practice to alert drivers by engaging their auditory and tactile senses in addition to visual senses by traffic signals. However, continuous exposure to noise and vibration by transverse rumble strips often results in diminished effectiveness and erratic behaviors, leading to additional safety challenges. In response, demand-responsive transverse rumble strips were developed as traffic safety countermeasures that reduce unnecessary noise and vibration associated with transverse rumble strips by incorporating active control of the rumble strips. Rather than staying static, demand-responsive transverse rumble strips are activated based on the presence of pedestrians, at predesignated times, or in …

A Physically Based Constitutive Model For Dynamic Strain Aging In Inconel 718 Alloy At A Wide Range Of Temperatures And Strain Rates, George Z. Voyiadjis, Yooseob Song

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Dynamic strain aging has a huge effect on the microstructural mechanical behavior of Inconel 718 high-performance alloy when activated. In a number of experimental researches, significant additional hardening due to the dynamic strain aging phenomenon was reported. A constitutive model without considering dynamic strain aging is insufficient to accurately predict the material behavior. In this paper, a new constitutive model for Inconel 718 high-performance alloy is proposed to capture the additional hardening, which is caused by dynamic strain aging, by means of the Weibull distribution probability density function. The derivation of the proposed constitutive relation for the dynamic strain aging-induced …

Groundwater Management Optimization And Saltwater Intrusion Mitigation Under Uncertainty, Jina Yin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Groundwater is valuable to supply fresh water to the public, industries, agriculture, etc. However, excessive pumping has caused groundwater storage degradation, water quality deterioration and saltwater intrusion problems. Reliable groundwater flow and solute transport modeling is needed for sustainable groundwater management and aquifer remediation design. However, challenges exist because of highly complex subsurface environments, computationally intensive groundwater models as well as inevitable uncertainties. The first research goal is to explore conjunctive use of feasible hydraulic control approaches for groundwater management and aquifer remediation. Water budget analysis is conducted to understand how groundwater withdrawals affect water levels. A mixed integer multi-objective …

An Investigation Into Current Procurement Strategies That Promote Collaboration Through Early Contractor Involvement With Regards To Their Suitability For Irish Public Work Projects, Barry Mcauley, Frederic Lefebvre

Conference papers

Previous research has established that multi-disciplinary collaboration will benefit a construction project throughout its lifecycle. While Lean Construction, Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) can all be viewed as separate processes which add independent value to a project, they are more effective when used in partnership with each other. In order to ensure the high levels of collaboration expected for these processes to work in unison, the early involvement of the Contractor is paramount. Early contractor involvement within the design process can ensure a more focused integrated project team, improvement of both constructability and cost certainty, as …

Removal Of Selected Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products In Wastewater Treatment Plant In Jordan, Othman Al-Mashaqbeh, Diya Alsafadi, Sahar Dalahmeh, Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt, Daniel D. Snow

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The largest wastewater treatment plant in Jordan was monitored in the summer to determine the removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). Grab samples were collected from the influent and effluent of As-Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). Liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) were utilized to determine the concentrations of 18 compounds of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). The results showed that 14 compounds were detected in the collected samples from the influent and effluent of As-Samra WWTP. These compounds are 1,7-dimethylxanthine, amphetamine, acetaminophen, caffeine, carbamazepine, cimetidine, cotinine, diphenhydramine, methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), morphine, phenazone, sulfamethazine, sulfamethoxazole, thiabendazole, and …

Centres Of Excellence And Roadmaps For Digital Transition: Lessons For Ireland’S Construction Industry, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

Like most sectors in today’s working world, construction businesses are challenged to work in an increasingly digitised world with sophisticated demands from intelligent clients. So much has been written about the inefficiencies of the construction industry, its fragmentation, lack of collaboration, low margins, adversarial pricing, poor productivity, financial fragility, lack of research and development, poor industry image and relatively weak use of digital solutions. The Irish government recognises the importance of digital innovation to address many of the challenges the construction industry faces. With recent high profile reports of escalating spend on signature public sector projects and weak productivity performance …

Improving The Sustainability Of The Built Environment By Training Its Workforce In More Efficient And Greener Ways Of Designing And Constructing Through The Horizon2020 Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The construction industry consumes up to 50% of mineral resources excavated from nature, generates about 33% of CO2 present in the atmosphere and is responsible for 40% of total global energy through both construction and operation of buildings. The realisation that current pervasive construction practices now face globalization, sustainability, and environmental concerns, as well as ever-changing legislation requirements and new skills needed for the information age has resulted in technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) becoming a key enabler in navigating these barriers. To assist in overcoming these barriers, a number of funding initiatives have been put in place …

From Roadmap To Implementation: Lessons For Ireland’S Digital Construction Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

As part of their Future of Construction initiative in 2018 the World Economic Forum published an action plan to accelerate Building Information Modelling adoption. The WEF report highlighted actions that companies, industry organisations and governments are advised to implement to accelerate BIM adoption and better capitalise on delivering better project outcomes. According the authors of the report BIM is seen as the centrepiece of the construction industry’s digital transformation, however they acknowledged that BIM adoption globally remain slow. Anecdotal experience would suggest that BIM usage in Ireland is also very low and that a similar initiative or an adaptation of …

Bim In Ireland 2019: A Study Of Bim Maturity And Diffusion In Ireland, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

In 2017, the BIM Innovation Capability Programme team applied five macro BIM maturity conceptual models to capture the capability of the Irish construction industry and assess its BIM maturity. The results found that while Ireland is mature for modelling processes, it is less developed with regards to collaboration processes and policies. Ireland also ranked poorly when it came to regulatory frameworks, measurements and benchmarks compared to a number of countries which also applied the same conceptual models. At the time, the findings highlighted that Ireland’s diffusion dynamic was middle out, meaning that larger organisations or industry associations were pushing the …

Precipitation Trends Over The Indus Basin, Nir Krakauer, Tarendra Lakhankar, Ghulam Hussain Dars

Publications and Research

A large population relies on water input to the Indus basin, yet basinwide precipitation amounts and trends are not well quantified. Gridded precipitation data sets covering different time periods and based on either station observations, satellite remote sensing, or reanalysis were compared with available station observations and analyzed for basinwide precipitation trends. Compared to observations, some data sets tended to greatly underestimate precipitation, while others overestimate it. Additionally, the discrepancies between data set and station precipitation showed significant time trends in many cases, suggesting that the precipitation trends of those data sets were not consistent with station data. Among the …

Data To Risk-Informed Decisions Through Bridge Model Updating, Iris Tien

INSPIRE Archived Webinars

Across the country, bridge structures are aging with use commonly extending beyond their original design lives. Decisions to repair, retrofit or rehabilitate these structures will support continued reliability and resilience of these structures. To better understand the states of the bridges at any point in time, there are new technologies to inspect, monitor and assess bridge conditions.

To effectively use the results of these inspections and monitoring activities, we need an understanding of the relation between varying inspection parameters and the predicted performance of bridge structures.

In this seminar, we will describe methods to use inspection data to update assessment …

An Investigation Of Runoff Sources To Headwater Streams And Implications For Hydropower Projects Using Stable Isotope Analyses, Paulina Lima

Civil Engineering ETDs

The purpose of this research is to investigate the predominant sources and processes that influence runoff in the watersheds that interact with hydraulic structures in different climate systems. The predominant sources in three basins were analyzed: The San Juan-Chama River System in the USA, the Manduriacu, and Coca Codo Sinclair hydropower systems in Ecuador. This field study is based on the identification of the predominant sources in the watershed by the comparison of the isotopic signature between the seasonal variation of water sources to the surface water samples in different stream order tributaries. The results exposed that there are three …

A Comparison Of Three Types Of Permeable Pavements For Urban Runoff Mitigation In The Semi-Arid South Texas, U.S.A, Taufiqul Alam, Ahmed Mahmoud, Kim D. Jones, Juan Cesar Bezares-Cruz, Javier Guerrero

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

This study examines the hydrologic and environmental performance of three types of permeable pavement designs: Porous Concrete Pavement (PCP), Permeable Interlocking Concrete (PICP), and Interlocking Block Pavement with Gravel (IBPG) in the semi-arid South Texas. Outflow rate, storage, Normalized Volume Reduction (NVR), Normalized Load Reductions (NLR) of Total Suspended Solids (TSS), and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD₅) were compared to results obtained from adjacent traditional pavements at different regional parking lots. A notable percentage of peak flow attenuation of approximately 31–100% was observed when permeable pavements were constructed and implemented. IBPG was capable to hold runoff from rainfall depths …

Melpf Version 1: Modeling Error Learning Based Post-Processor Framework For Hydrologic Models Accuracy Improvement, Rui Wu, Lei Yang, Chao Chen, Sajjad Ahmad, Sergiu M. Dascalu, Frederick C. Harris Jr.

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

This paper studies how to improve the accuracy of hydrologic models using machine-learning models as post-processors and presents possibilities to reduce the workload to create an accurate hydrologic model by removing the calibration step. It is often challenging to develop an accurate hydrologic model due to the time-consuming model calibration procedure and the nonstationarity of hydrologic data. Our findings show that the errors of hydrologic models are correlated with model inputs. Thus motivated, we propose a modeling-error-learning-based post-processor framework by leveraging this correlation to improve the accuracy of a hydrologic model. The key idea is to predict the differences (errors) …

Analytical Approach To Investigation Of Free Vibration Of Thin Rectangular Plate Immersed In Fluid, Resting On Winkler And Pasternak Foundations, Obanishola Sadiq, Gbeminiyi Sobamowo, Saheed Salawu

Karbala International Journal of Modern Science

Dynamic behaviour of free vibration of rectangular plate is investigated. This study considered an analytical approach to investigation of free vibration of thin rectangular plate immersed in fluid, resting on Winkler and Pasternak foundations.The governing nonlinear partial differential equation is analyzed using two-dimensional differential transform method. The accuracy of the analytical solutions obtained is verified with existing results in literature and confirmed in excellent agreement. Thereafter, the analytical solutions are used for investigation of effect of elastic foundation, fluid and aspect ratio on vibrating plate.From the result, it is observed that, increase elastic foundation parameters increases natural frequency, increase aspect …

Using Parallel Genetic Algorithms For Estimating Model Parameters In Complex Reactive Transport Problems, Jagadish Torlapati, T. P. Clement

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

In this study, we present the details of an optimization method for parameter estimation of one-dimensional groundwater reactive transport problems using a parallel genetic algorithm (PGA). The performance of the PGA was tested with two problems that had published analytical solutions and two problems with published numerical solutions. The optimization model was provided with the published experimental results and reasonable bounds for the unknown kinetic reaction parameters as inputs. Benchmarking results indicate that the PGA estimated parameters that are close to the published parameters and it also predicted the observed trends well for all four problems. Also, OpenMP FORTRAN parallel …

Inter-Comparison Of Reflectivity Measurements Between Gpm Dpr And Nexrad Radars, Munsung Keem, Bong Chul Seo, Witold F. Krajewski, K. Robert Morris

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study demonstrates the potential use of the NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) to examine ground radar (GR) miscalibration and other uncertainty sources (e.g., partial beam blockage). We acquired the GPM Ground Validation System Validation Network reflectivity matchups between the DPR and three GRs (two in Iowa and one in South Dakota) for 2014–2017. We then refined the matching parameters (e.g., time separation) to reduce uncertainty in the matchup samples by analyzing the sensitivity of the matchup statistical properties to changes in these parameters. To reconcile the same observables (i.e., reflectivity) with different observational properties among …

Analysis Of The Effects Of Dam Release Properties And Ambient Groundwater Flow On Surface Water‐Groundwater Exchange Over A 100‐Km‐Long Reach, Stephen B. Ferencz, M. Bayani Cardenas, Bethany T. Neilson

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Hydroelectric dams often create highly dynamic downstream flows that promote surface water‐groundwater (SW‐GW) interactions including bank storage, the temporary storage of river water in the riverbank. Previous research on SW‐GW exchanges in dammed rivers has primarily been at single study sites, which has limited the understanding of how these exchanges evolve as dam releases travel downstream. This study evaluates how dam releases affect SW‐GW exchange continuously over a 100‐km distance. This is accomplished by longitudinally routing water releases through a synthetic river and modeling bed and bank fluid and solute exchange across transverse transects spaced along the reach. Peak and …

Earth Cube Data Capabilities: Collaborative Research: Deep Integration Of Reproducibility In Community Portals, David G. Tarboton

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Environmentally Responsible Land Use, Spring/Summer 2010, Issue 22

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.