Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

A New Uav-Based Module Lifting And Transporting Method: Advantages And Challenges, Jin Choi, Dong Bin Kim

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

The modular construction technique is the one key technology that can substantially advance the competitiveness of the construction industry. However, the industry is having difficulty creating an optimum environment for broader and more effective use of modularization due to one key barrier: implementing a modular construction technique, that is, shipping modules from the fabrication shop to the build site. Multiple issues are potentially challenging to overcome, such as module size and center of gravity, rigging, tie-down, site access, site congestion, and transportation regulations, as well as the availability of local heavy lift equipment. The researchers propose to implement drones as …

A Pilot Study Of Identifying Execution Plan Differences For Accelerated Bridge Construction, Jin Choi, Elina Prajapati

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Accelerated bridge construction (ABC) is an innovative construction technique used to accelerate the construction of new bridges, as well as the renovation/replacement of existing bridges. Due to the benefits offered by ABC, transportation authorities have a higher preference in executing an accelerated approach over conventional bridge construction. The execution of an accelerated approach has differences when compared to the conventional approach, and it is important to identify such differences for the successful implementation of ABC projects. However, there have been no studies to identify such execution differences. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify execution plan differences relevant to ABC. …

Calibrating Cii Rt283s Modularization Critical Success Factor Accomplishments, Jin Choi, James T. O’Connor, Young Hoon Kwak, Rajarshi Ghimire

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Modularization is a well-known construction technique where sections of the job are moved from on-site to a fabrication shop. Previously, the researchers identified the 21 most influential Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for successful modularization and quantified the degree of each CSF’s accomplishment by conducting a survey with 19 subject matter experts, and a case study with three modular projects. Through this methodology, the findings relied on the experience of experts. However, still missing from the understanding of modularization CSFs is a validation of the current degree of each CSF’s accomplishment by examining actual modular projects using a sufficient number of …

Investigating Stakeholders' Perceptions Of Feasibility And Implications Of Modular Construction-Based Post-Disaster Reconstruction, Pedram Ghannad, Yong-Cheol Lee, Jin Ouk Choi

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Natural Disasters cause major adverse social and financial effects by destroying homes and infrastructures. For example, Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 damaged over 214,700 homes in New Orleans and forced over 800,000 citizens to live outside of their homes due to flooding. Thus, these disasters require a quick and efficient response to post-disaster housing issues and provide resources for temporary houses for short-term disaster relief and reconstruction of destroyed and damaged housing for full rehabilitation. Reconstruction of permanent housing for disaster victims is one of the most time-consuming activities in the post-disaster recovery process. However, time is a critical factor …

Effects On Strength And Corrosive Characteristics Of Hardened Cement Paste Using Rice Husk And Sugarcane Bagasse, Travis D. Garrett

Master's Theses

Cement is one of the most used building materials in the world. The production of ordinary Portland cement contributes to the release of harmful greenhouse gasses. In an effort to reduce these emissions, different materials are being evaluated for their use as partial replacements for ordinary Portland cement. Rice husk and sugarcane bagasse are agricultural waste products and large amounts of these are currently landfilled, making them inexpensive and available. When combusted at high temperatures they form rice husk ash and sugarcane bagasse ash that have pozzolanic characteristics. The high silicon dioxide in these products makes them good options to …

Geotechnical And Geothermal Properties Of Louisiana Coastal Sediments, Myriam Bou-Mekhayel

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Land loss in South Louisiana is increasing at a fairly rapid rate. In an effort to reduce land loss and save the marshes of Louisiana, marsh creation projects have been proposed in carefully selected regions around the coast as part of the CPRA Coastal Master Plan 2017. Properties and characteristics of the soil obtained from soil borings were analyzed and used to determine the various design parameters that allow the marsh creation process to occur. Other properties that were taken into consideration for Louisiana coastal sediment are the geothermal properties.

This research analyses those different properties obtained from geotechnical reports …

Total Fume Emissions And Emission Factors Applicable To Gas Metal Arc Welding, Nayara De Souza

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Welding is a common industrial practice that has the potential to emit air pollutants. Emission factors are useful indicators to help in the understanding of the extent of pollution from a process and managing them to reduce or minimize health impacts. The objective of this thesis is to determine emission factors applicable to the gas metal arc welding (GMAW), under varying current and voltage conditions. The most used base metals and an electrode for the shipbuilding industry were considered. A weld fume chamber was used to achieve the project goals along with standard sampling and analytical procedures. Three test runs …

Evaluation Of Total Fume And Heavy Metal Emission Factors Applicable To Gas Metal Arc Welding, Abhinay Jilla

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Welding is a metal joining process widely used in many manufacturing facilities around the world. It involves the process of heating the base and filler metals to a high temperature that leads to the formation of fumes. Welding emissions consist of gaseous pollutants and micron and sub-micron particles consisting of different heavy metals. Health risks associated with exposures to weld fume is well recognized in the literature. This research evaluates emissions and emission factors applicable to gas metal arc welding (GMAW) on AH 36 (mild steel) and 316 L (stainless steel). Emission factors evaluated consisted, total fume, chromium, cobalt, lead, …

Detection Of Sand Boils From Images Using Machine Learning Approaches, Aditi S. Kuchi

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Levees provide protection for vast amounts of commercial and residential properties. However, these structures degrade over time, due to the impact of severe weather, sand boils, subsidence of land, seepage, etc. In this research, we focus on detecting sand boils. Sand boils occur when water under pressure wells up to the surface through a bed of sand. These make levees especially vulnerable. Object detection is a good approach to confirm the presence of sand boils from satellite or drone imagery, which can be utilized to assist in the automated levee monitoring methodology. Since sand boils have distinct features, applying object …

Proposed New Military Live Load For Highway Bridges In The United States, Walter P. Parker

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the results of a mathematical analysis of various live load combinations on highway bridge spans up to 304.8 meters (1,000 feet) total lengths. The analysis included continuous beams, but only the results for simple beams is presented. The analysis was performed using an independently developed Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheet computation, based on superposition and classical mechanics.

In this thesis, several actual bridge live loadings and several hypothetical live loadings were analyzed and compared to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Load and Resistance Factor Design method. Also considered was the new bridge design method adopted …

Statistical Viability Analysis Of United States Air Force Estimating Cost Factor For Sustainable Construction, Philip A. Ramsey, Diedrich Prigge, Torrey J. Wagner, Alfred E. Thal Jr.

Faculty Publications

Varying legislation and executive orders coupled with needs for energy resiliency have led the United States Air Force (USAF) to pursue sustainable construction. However, the limited understanding of initial costs to implement these changes have contributed to poor project cost estimating, resulting in 62 percent of USAF projects experiencing more than 5 percent cost growth. After reviewing 1628 USAF Military Construction (MILCON) construction projects in 922 category codes (CATCODEs), a twotailed t-test for populations with unequal variance was accomplished on the final normalized contract cost for 340 projects in 16 CATCODEs executed between 2002 and 2017. This analysis provides a …

Development Of Traffic Live Load Models For Bridge Superstructure Rating With Rbdo And Best Selection Approach, Sasan Siavashi, Christopher D. Eamon

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is frequently used to determine optimal structural geometry and material characteristics that can best meet performance goals while considering uncertainties. In this study, the effectiveness of RBDO to develop a rating load model for a set of bridge structures is explored, as well as the use of an alternate Best Selection procedure that requires substantially less computational effort. The specific problem investigated is the development of a vehicular load model for use in bridge rating, where the objective of the optimization is to minimize the variation in reliability index across different girder types and bridge geometries. …

Asphalt Binder Laboratory Short-Term Aging, Hamzeh Haghshenas, Robert C. Rea

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The Rolling Thin Film Oven (RTFO) is widely used to simulate asphalt binder short-term aging. However, there is a general interest to improve the current short-term aging protocol especially for reducing the aging time. Besides, there are some doubts about the capability of RTFO in the simulation of aging of highly polymer modified asphalt binders which is mainly due to improper dispersion of such binders in the bottles during rotating and creeping of highly viscous binder out of the bottles during rotation. This work addresses the effect of time, temperature, airflow rate, and weight of asphalt binder on the laboratory …

Ce 200a-041: Surveying Lab, Allison Lapatka

Civil and Environmental Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Numerical Modeling Of Wave Dynamics And Sediment Transport Near The Mississippi Birdfoot Delta And Barataria Estuary, Soroush Sorourian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Barataria Basin is a large estuarine system in Southeastern Louisiana, connected to the Gulf of Mexico through a number of inlets, the most important of which is the Barataria Pass. This research examines, during April-June 2010 including both cold front passage and calm summer-time wind regimes, the wave dynamics in this basin and in its major inlets, morphological evolution near the Barataria Pass, and the budgeting and dispersal of the Mississippi River sediment in the birdfoot delta region. An unstructured grid, terrain following, high resolution coupled FVCOM-SWAVE-SED model is employed and validated in this study. The numerical model results …

Global Observations Of Fine-Scale Ocean Surface Topography With The Surface Water And Ocean Topography (Swot) Mission, Rosemary Morrow, Lee-Lueng Fu, Fabrice Ardhuin, Mounir Benkiran, Bertrand Chapron, Emmanuel Cosme, Francesco D’Ovidio, J. Thomas Farrar, Sarah T. Gille, Guillaume Lapeyre, Pierre-Yves Le Traon, Ananda Pascual, Aurélien Ponte, Bo Qiu, Nicolas Rascle, Clement Ubelmann, Jinbo Wang, Edward Zaron

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The future international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) Mission, planned for launch in 2021, will make high-resolution 2D observations of sea-surface height using SAR radar interferometric techniques. SWOT will map the global and coastal oceans up to 77.6 latitude every 21 days over a swath of 120 km (20 km nadir gap). Today’s 2D mapped altimeter data can resolve ocean scales of 150 km wavelength whereas the SWOT measurement will extend our 2D observations down to 15–30 km, depending on sea state. SWOT will offer new opportunities to observe the oceanic dynamic processes at scales that are important in …

Advanced Removal Of 4-Nitrophenol By Emerging And Intensifying Technology Of Emulsion Liquid Membrane With Magnetic Nanoparticles, Qusay Al-Obaidi, Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

4-nitrophenol is one of the phenolic compounds found in industrial wastes that needs to be removed from treated wastewater. Emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) has been introduced as a developing technology for advanced wastewater and water treatment. This emerging technology of treatment can be intensified by strategically adding nanoparticles to organic membrane phase (O). To facilitate the industrial implementation of ELM with nanoparticles, we used magnetic iron nanoparticles added to the organic phase (O) in order to recover them by a magnet for reuse. This also assists in de-emulsification step. The results show that with the use of 1% (W/W) of …

Recent Advances In Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensor: Calibration And Application, Jiayu Li

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Particulate matter (PM) has been monitored routinely due to its negative effects on human health and atmospheric visibility. Standard gravimetric measurements and current commercial instruments for field measurements are still expensive and laborious. The high cost of conventional instruments typically limits the number of monitoring sites, which in turn undermines the accuracy of real-time mapping of sources and hotspots of air pollutants with insufficient spatial resolution. The new trends of PM concentration measurement are personalized portable devices for individual customers and networking of large quantity sensors to meet the demand of Big Data. Therefore, low-cost PM sensors have been studied …

Validation Of The State Based Peridynamic Lattice Model, Anima Bista

Civil Engineering ETDs

This thesis presents a study performed to validate the State-based Peridynamic Lattice Model (SPLM) using results obtained from laboratory experiments. The SPLM is capable of modeling cracking of solids using particle lattices. We use a plane stress, elastic-plastic damage SPLM model for the simulations. The SPLM model is appropriate for computational simulations of cementitious materials as it automatically allows cracks to develop. In this study, the lattices are rotated through different angles and the variations of the cracking patterns are studied. In the laboratory, we performed nine Brazilian split cylinder tests, three anchor pullout/direct tensile tests, and eight compression tests …

Quantification Of Sediment Yields From Semi-Arid Watersheds Using Unmanned Aerial Systems And Photogrammetry Techniques, Jared L. Romero

Civil Engineering ETDs

Sediment has long been considered an environmental pollutant, causing physical and ecological impairments linked to the detachment and transport of sediments from the land surface to downstream communities. Additionally, aging flood control and water storage detention facilities have suffered the effects of sediment accumulation, spurring new research in the field of soil erosion and sediment yield estimation. Recent advances in technology have stimulated the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and photogrammetric techniques for near-surface data collection and monitoring, with such techniques being used previously to achieve centimeter-level accuracy reconstruction of the land surface. This study seeks to apply UAS …

The Critical Difference Seismic Design Can Make For A Reinforced Concrete Building Located In Oxford, Mississippi, Naim Daghmash

Honors Theses

The Senior Design course at the University of Mississippi requires the completion of a capstone project. One part of the capstone project is a complete structural design of the NOLA, an ongoing construction in the city of Oxford in Mississippi. The course requires the NOLA to be designed according to gravity loads, meaning the forces act in the downward direction towards the earth’s surface. Some loading mechanisms that could occur in a different direction than gravity are seismic loads, which are earthquake-generated loads. I was not required by my instructors to consider the effect of an earthquake on the structural …

How Av Could Shape Our Cities - Research From The Netherlands, Gonçalo H. A. Correia

PSU Transportation Seminars

Automated driving has become a hot topic of research in different fields of science. Despite the great advancements in the vehicle technology itself, researchers are now concerned in figuring out what will be the impacts of these vehicles in life as we know it. These impacts can be rather broad from traffic safety to the economy. In this lecture, Goncalo will focus on the research that is being done at TU Delft, a leading university in automated vehicles’ (AVs) impacts research, focusing on urban areas and how mobility, and even the city itself, can change with fully-automated vehicles. Goncalo Correia …

Using Wind And Hydro Power To Sustain The Off-Grid Power Supply For A 50' Cruising Sailboat, Keisha Meyer, Torrey J. Wagner, Jada Williams

Faculty Publications

Cruising sailboats operate with a power requirement modest enough to operate mostly or completely on renewable energy technology sources. Cruisers without renewable energy systems use the vessel’s diesel engine to charge the boat’s batteries; if the systems are operated at anchor, this dramatically decreases the time before the engine needs major overhaul. System users estimate a diesel engine can run approximately 8,000 hours underway before needing major overhaul, whereas operating 500 hours at anchor produces similar wear and tear on engine pistons. Although renewable energy systems have a high initial capital cost, these systems can provide the vessel’s electrical system …

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2019, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Do Transportation Network Companies Decrease Or Increase Congestion?, Gregory D. Erhardt, Sneha Roy, Drew Cooper, Bhargava Sana, Mei Chen, Joe Castiglione

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

This research examines whether transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, live up to their stated vision of reducing congestion in major cities. Existing research has produced conflicting results and has been hampered by a lack of data. Using data scraped from the application programming interfaces of two TNCs, combined with observed travel time data, we find that contrary to their vision, TNCs are the biggest contributor to growing traffic congestion in San Francisco. Between 2010 and 2016, weekday vehicle hours of delay increased by 62% compared to 22% in a counterfactual 2016 scenario without TNCs. The findings …

Diagnostic Imaging Of Structural Concrete Using Ground Penetrating Radar And Ultrasonic Array, Sina Mehdinia, Thomas Schumacher, Eric Wan, Xubo Song

Student Research Symposium

Structural concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. Many structures critical to a society such as bridges, hospitals, and airports are built with concrete. While this material is well understood from a mechanical design point of view, still no accurate quantitative tools exist to assess it for damage and deterioration. This is of particular concern for an urban area like Portland with a mega-thrust earthquake waiting to occur. Non-destructive evaluation tools that can quickly and accurately give a full picture of the integrity of structural concrete elements will be key to help plan effective and safe …

Management Transition To The Great Lakes Nearshore: Insights From Hydrodynamic Modeling, Chenfu Huang, Anika Kuczynski, Martin T. Auer, David M. O'Donnell, Pengfei Xue

Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering Publications

The emerging shift in Great Lakes management from offshore to nearshore waters will require attention to complexities of coastal hydrodynamics and biogeochemical transformations. Emphasizing hydrodynamics, this work resolves transport processes in quantifying discharge plume and pollutant of concern (POC) footprint dimensions, the latter being the portion of the plume where water quality standards are not met. A generic approach, isolated from pollutant-specific biokinetics, provides first-approximation estimates of the footprint area. A high-resolution, linked hydrodynamic-tracer model is applied at a site in the Greater Toronto Area on Lake Ontario. Model results agree with observed meteorological and hydrodynamic conditions and satisfactorily simulate …

Dry River Watershed Valuation And Management Plan, Julia Hutchens

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Water quality has become a major environmental and human welfare concern in the world today, it’s no longer just for developing countries. There have been many incidences in the US of health problems related to water quality and a shortage of water. The City of Harrisonburg and the surrounding community also have a need for a well-developed watershed management plan. The focus of this study will be the Dry River because that is a main source of the city’s water. The Dry River watershed is threatened by illegal dumping, erosion from primitive roads and future road building sedimentation, a lack …

Capability Of Matterport 3d Camera For Industrial Archaeology Sites Inventory, R. Shults, E. Levin, R. Habibi, S. Shenoy, O. Honcheruk, T. Hart, Z. An

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

This paper provides an overview of state-of-The-Art technology and sensor for the inventory of industrial archaeology. As an object of study, a historical copper shaft the Quincy Mine in Michigan State Upper Peninsula was chosen. This shaft was operated for nearly 100 years from 1846 to 1945 and today, what remains of the shaft is a part of the Keweenaw National Historical Park. The main sensor for data acquisition that was used is a 3D camera Matterport. In given research, the results of the above ground scanning using of Matterport are presented. Before scanning a calibration of Matterport camera was …