Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Ion Exchange For Nutrient Recovery Coupled With Biosolids-Derived Biochar Pretreatment To Remove Micropollutants, Yiran Tong, Lee K. Kimbell, Anna Avila, Patrick J. Mcnamara, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Wastewater, especially anaerobic treatment effluent, contains high ammonia nitrogen (NH₄-N) and inorganic orthophosphate (PO₄-P), which necessitate additional treatment to meet stringent discharge regulations. Ion exchange regeneration is a process that can be adopted for not only removing but also recovering nutrients. However, recovering nutrients by ion exchange from nutrient-rich effluents that also contain micropollutants (which typically pass through anaerobic treatment as well) may result in subsequent problems, since micropollutants could end up in ion exchange effluent, regenerant, or recovered fertilizer products. Micropollutant removal by a nonselective adsorbent, such as biosolids-derived biochar, before nutrient recovery processes would …

Ncer Assistance Agreement Annual Progress Report For Grant #83582401 - Assessment Of Stormwater Harvesting Via Manage Aquifer Recharge (Mar) To Develop New Water Supplies In The Arid West: The Salt Lake Valley Example, Ryan Dupont, Joan E. Mclean, Richard C. Peralta, Sarah E. Null, Douglas B. Jackson-Smith

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The goals of the original proposed project remain the same, that is, to test the hypothesis that Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) for stormwater harvesting is a technically feasible, socially and environmentally acceptable, economically viable, and legally feasible option for developing new water supplies for arid Western urban ecosystems experiencing increasing population, and climate change pressures on existing water resources. The project is being carried out via three distinct but integrated components that include: 1) Monitoring of existing distributed MAR harvesting schemes involving a growing number of demonstration Green Infrastructure (GI) test sites; 2) Integrated stormwater/vadose zone/groundwater/ ecosystem services modeling; and …

Experimental Study On A New Type Of Transverse Connection For Nebraska County Bridge System, Alexander Bleyhl

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

Many county-owned bridges in Nebraska need replacement due to their structural deficiency. Most of the bridges needing replacement are in the 40 to 60 ft range. This span range lacks a standard design that fits Nebraska county practices in terms of speed and simplicity of construction. The current systems being used are (a) Precast 1 by 2 ft planks which can span up to 30 ft, (b) Cast-in-place slab bridges which can span up to 50 ft but require extensive field formwork, concrete placing, and curing, and are best when constructed in three-span units, and (c) Inverted tees which can …

Investigation Of A Tractor-Tank Trailer Roadside Containment Barrier, Dean L. Whitfield

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

The objective of this research project was to develop a new, cost-effective, Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Test Level 6 (TL-6) barrier. A literature review on prior Test Level 5 and Test Level 6 barriers was conducted, and the cost of current TL-5 and TL-6 barriers was established. Existing and modified design procedures for roadside barrier were reviewed as well as current TL-6 design forces. A preliminary TL-6 truck model was developed in LS-DYNA. The minimum barrier height to contain a tractor-tank vehicle was determined to be 62 in. for a rigid, vertical-faced barrier through LS-DYNA computer simulation. New …

Webinar: Segmenting The Market For Transportation Demand Management Campaigns, Philip L. Winters, Amy Lester

TREC Webinar Series

Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good. It is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel behavior change. The purpose of this study was to explore a consumer market segmentation technique successfully used in Europe for its applicability to marketing efforts in the United States. Attitudinal and demographic data were collected from 1900 individuals in Florida, Oregon, and Virginia modeled after the European approach. Clustering analysis was applied to divide the sample into segments so that members of …

Prioritizing Suitable Locations For Green Stormwater Infrastructure Based On Social Factors In Philadelphia, Zachary Christman, Mahbubur Meenar, Lynn Mandarano, Kyle Hearing

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

Municipalities across the United States are prioritizing green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) projects due to their potential to concurrently optimize the social, economic, and environmental benefits of the “triple bottom line”. While placement of these features is often based on biophysical variables regarding the natural and built environments, highly urbanized areas often exhibit either limited data or minimal variability in these characteristics. Using a case study of Philadelphia and building on previous work to prioritize GSI features in disadvantaged communities, this study addresses the dual concerns of the inequitable benefits of distribution and suitable site placement of GSI using a model …

Estimating Actual Evapotranspiration From Stony-Soils In Montane Ecosystems, Kshitij Parajuli, Scott B. Jones, David G. Tarboton, Gerald N. Flerchinger, Lawrence E. Hipps, L. Niel Allen, Mark S. Seyfried

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Quantification of evapotranspiration (ET) is crucial for understanding the water balance and for efficient water resources planning. Agricultural settings have received most attention regarding ET measurements while less knowledge is available for actual ET (ET_A) in natural ecosystems, many of which have soils containing significant amounts of stones. This study is focused on modelling ET_A from stony soil, particularly in montane ecosystems where we estimate the contribution of stone content on water retention properties in soil. We employed a numerical model (HYDRUS-1D) to simulate ET_A in natural settings in northern Utah and southern Idaho during the …

Effect Of Meter Orientation Downstream Of A Short Radius Elbow On Electromagnetic Flow Meters, Jared C. Justensen, Steven L. Barfuss, Michael C. Johnson, Thomas E. Meacham

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Electromagnetic flow meters (known as magnetic flow meters) are a widely used type of flow meter. This study examines the performance of magnetic flow meters when the electrodes in the meter are positioned at two different orientations: electrodes parallel with the plane of an upstream 90° short radius elbow and electrodes perpendicular to the plane of an upstream 90° short radius elbow. Four different meters from four different manufacturers were included in the study in which a baseline straight pipe test was first performed using more than 50 diameters of straight pipe upstream of each meter. The four meters were …

Electroósmosis: Un Método Para Mejorar El Suelo, Yenni Mariana Ramírez Mazo, Juan Pablo Osorio, Sergio Agudelo Florez

Articles

El suelo, ese que pisamos, recorremos, sobre el que construimos nuestras casas, escuelas, calles… ese en el que nos dicen que pongamos los pies cuando estamos algo distraídos, es más que simplemente tierra.

Crash Severity Analysis Of Rear-End Crashes In California Using Statistical And Machine Learning Classification Methods, Alidad Ahmadi, Arash Jahangiri, Vincent Berardi, Sahar Ghanipoor Machiani

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Investigating drivers’ injury level and detecting contributing factors that aggravate the damage level imposed on drivers and vehicles is a critical subject in the field of crash analysis. In this study, a comprehensive vehicle-by-vehicle crash data set is developed by integrating 5 years of data from California crash, vehicles involved, and road databases. The data set is used to model the severity of rear-end crashes for comparing three analytic techniques: multinomial logit, mixed multinomial logit, and support vector machine (SVM). The results of the crash severity models and the role of contributing factors to the severity outcome of rear-end crashes …

The Feasibility Of High Strength Stainless Steel In Prestressing Applications For Pile Design, Cara Morton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Approximately 50% of the Nation’s infrastructure was built over 40 years ago for a 50 year service life according to the National Association of Corrosion Engineers [72]. To mitigate the cost of major repair or replacement at 50 years, AASHTO now requires all new bridge construction to have a 100 year service life. One of the main challenges in achieving this goal is avoiding corrosion, especially in warm, saltwater environments like those found in the Southeastern United States. Elements that cross the waterline (piles) are a weak link the infrastructure. Good quality concrete easily maintains a service life of 75+ …

Big Data And Sensor Network For Construction Material Testing, Yao Shi

Theses and Dissertations

Engineers and contractors need to have a precise understanding of the development progress of concrete strength in the natural environment, which helps to save project time and cost. However, current practice of concrete construction depends on published data, charts and curves from laboratory tests. The data would not show frequently changing environmental conditions in the real world, which can affect concrete quality significantly. The objective of this research is to design a reliable and accurate method to validate test data of the strength developments of concrete specimens in early stages. The approach includes the following tasks: (1) arrange sensors to …

Geoflood: Large-Scale Flood Inundation Mapping Based On High-Resolution Terrain Analysis, Xing Zheng, David R. Maidment, David G. Tarboton, Yan Y. Liu, Paola Passalacqua

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Recent floods from intense storms in the southern United States and the unusually active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season have highlighted the need for real‐time flood inundation mapping using high‐resolution topography. High‐resolution topographic data derived from lidar technology reveal unprecedented topographic details and are increasingly available, providing extremely valuable information for improving inundation mapping accuracy. The enrichment of terrain details from these data sets, however, also brings challenges to the application of many classic approaches designed for lower‐resolution data. Advanced methods need to be developed to better use lidar‐derived terrain data for inundation mapping. We present a new workflow, GeoFlood, for …

Sdnet2018: An Annotated Image Dataset For Non-Contact Concrete Crack Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

SDNET2018 is an annotated image dataset for training, validation, and benchmarking of artificial intelligence based crack detection algorithms for concrete. SDNET2018 contains over 56,000 images of cracked and non-cracked concrete bridge decks, walls, and pavements. The dataset includes cracks as narrow as 0.06 mm and as wide as 25 mm. The dataset also includes images with a variety of obstructions, including shadows, surface roughness, scaling, edges, holes, and background debris. SDNET2018 will be useful for the continued development of concrete crack detection algorithms based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), which are a subject of continued research in the field …

Laboratory Self-Weight Consolidation Testing Of Dredged Material Analyzed Using A One-Dimensional Finite Strain Consolidation Method, Artine Azimi

Master of Science in Civil Engineering Theses

Research has shown that the properties which govern the consolidation of dredged material are best determined using a one-dimensional finite strain consolidation theory. This method requires a complete relationship between void ratio and effective stress for all expected void ratios in a dredged layer, which can be determined from laboratory testing. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) suggests using a self-weight consolidation test apparatus to obtain void ratio/effective stress conditions for very low effective stresses. In this paper a modified laboratory testing method of a self-weight consolidation test is developed to obtain a range of void ratios and …

Scenarios For Adoption Of Autonomous Vehicle Technologies In Freight, Sabya Mishra

PSU Transportation Seminars

Innovation adoption research has largely ignored organizational adoption, and little work has been done to understand or predict the adoption of innovations by freight organizations. Among the existing innovation adoption theoretical and methodological approaches this seminar will explore which are most appropriate methods for freight organizational adoption. The seminar will present a disaggregate market penetration model for freight transportation organizations adopting connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) technology and demonstrate an application using a case study area in Memphis, TN. The seminar will highlight ongoing and future organizational adoption research for CAVs, and other innovations.

Numerical Modeling Of Concrete Flow In Drilled Shaft, Jesudoss Asirvatham Jeyaraj

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drilled shafts are cylindrical, cast-in-place concrete deep foundation elements. Their construction involves drilled excavation of soil or rock using large diameter augers, and placement of the necessary reinforcing steel in the excavation followed by concreting. Where a high water table is encountered, drilling slurry is used to support the excavation walls and concreting is tremie-placed. Even though the history of drilled shaft construction goes back to the 1950s, the occurrence of anomalies persists in the form of soil inclusions, reduction in shaft cross-sectional area and exposure of reinforcement. One of the main reasons for the anomalies is attributed to the …

Pursuing Resilience Of Coastal Communities Through Sustainable And Integrated Urban Water Management, Pacia Díaz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliability of water supply in the urban setting has become essential for communities to function and thrive. It is needed for more than mere human consumption and well-being. Although modern cities have water treatment and distribution systems, pressures from urbanization, population growth and the anticipated pressures of climate change are affecting the quality of water supply and the reliability of treatment and distribution systems. There is therefore an urgent need to take appropriate measures to improve the resilience of water supply systems before the impacts are irreversible.

Improving the resilience of water supply systems can be a challenge. In the …

Habitat For Humanity: A Student-Led Service Trip To Thailand, Amber Reiff

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Amber Reiff started volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in high school and joined the Purdue Student Chapter as a freshman in 2014. During her sophomore year, she became more involved and held the position of Vice President of Development. While serving in this role, she planned on-campus advocacy events and recruited volunteers for Saturday site builds. In 2017, she traveled to Lampang, Thailand, over spring break with a group of like-minded students striving to make a difference. In this article, she shares her experiences on this trip and explores the impact of her participation. Beyond this trip, she has continued …

Exposure Assessment Of Citizens To Traffic Related Air Pollutants In A Long-Range Transportation Plan, Amir Poorfakhraei

Civil Engineering ETDs

A large body of evidence links fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) exposure with a wide range of negative health outcomes. Research finds that about 30% of individuals’ exposure to particulate matter in urban areas come from mobiles sources. Evaluating regional transportation plans and estimating how they impact air quality and exposure to PM_2.5 in the future is thus of major concern.

There are two major concerns about the current practice of evaluating regional transportation plans also known as long-range transportation plans (LRTPs). First, how LRTPs affect future air quality are at best evaluated by estimating the change in …

Improving Early-Age Cracking Resilience And Durability Of Concrete Elements, Ananya Markandeya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Control of early-age cracking in concrete structures due to restrained deformation, thermal and/or autogenous, presents a major durability challenge for state highway agencies. This study details research conducted on improving the early-age cracking resilience of plain concrete and supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) blended concrete. Three specific areas, within concrete structural elements, with high incidence of early-age cracking are addressed:

• High early-age strength (HES) concrete mixtures used in slab-replacement of Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements (JPCP)
• Use of metakaolin (MK) in bridge deck mixtures
• Use of slag blended concrete, at high cement replacement levels, in massive structural elements

Three cracking mitigation measures …

Water, Energy, And Carbon Footprints Of Bioethanol From The U.S. And Brazil, Mesfin Mekonnen, Thiago L. Romanelli, Chittaranjan Ray, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Adam Liska, Christopher M. U. Neale

Adam Liska Papers

Driven by biofuel policies, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase domestic energy supply, global production and consumption of bioethanol have doubled between 2007 and 2016, with rapid growth in corn-based bioethanol in the U.S. and sugar cane-based bioethanol in Brazil. Advances in crop yields, energy use efficiency in fertilizer production, biomass-to-ethanol conversion rates, and energy efficiency in ethanol production have improved the energy balance and GHG emission reduction potential of bioethanol. In the current study, the water, energy, and carbon footprints of bioethanol from corn in the U.S. and sugar cane in Brazil were assessed. The …

Trend Analysis Of Las Vegas Land Cover And Temperature Using Remote Sensing, Haroon Stephen

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

The Las Vegas urban area expanded rapidly during the last two decades. In order to understand the impacts on the environment, it is imperative that the rate and type of urban expansion is determined. Remote sensing is an efficient and effective way to study spatial change in urban areas and Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) is a valuable technique to retrieve subpixel landcover information from remote sensing images. In this research, urban growth trends in Las Vegas are studied over the 1990 to 2010 period using images from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP). The SMA …

Enhancement Of Rainfall-Triggered Shallow Landslide Hazard Assessment At Regional And Site Scales Using Remote Sensing And Slope Stability Analysis Coupled With Infiltration Modeling, Thilanki Maneesha Dahigamuwa Rajaguru Mudiyanselage

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Landslides cause significant damage to property and human lives throughout the world. Rainfall is the most common triggering factor for the occurrence of landslides. This dissertation presents two novel methodologies for assessment of rainfall-triggered shallow landslide hazard. The first method focuses on using remotely sensed soil moisture and soil surface properties in developing a framework for real-time regional scale landslide hazard assessment while the second method is a deterministic approach to landslide hazard assessment of the specific sites identified during first assessment. In the latter approach, landslide inducing transient seepage in soil during rainfall and its effect on slope stability …

Wastewater In Context: Systems-Based Approaches To Improving Wastewater Infrastructure Transitions, Christine Prouty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal communities and ecosystems around the world are some of those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In particular, the wastewater treatment systems in these areas are on the forefront of the effects of increasing frequency, duration, and intensity associated with extreme weather events. As such, decision making about adopting new wastewater technologies or transitioning to an improved treatment portfolio is an important area of research for coastal communities because they are critically linked to the health of the nearby aquatic ecosystems (i.e. tourism, fishing, cultural heritage, climate protection).

The decision making process about technology adoption and transitions …

Sensor-Based Safety Performance Assessment Of Individual Construction Workers, Jeewoong Park, Yong K. Cho, Ali Khodabandelu

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Over the last decade, researchers have explored various technologies and methodologies to enhance worker safety at construction sites. The use of advanced sensing technologies mainly has focused on detecting and warning about safety issues by directly relying on the detection capabilities of these technologies. Until now, very little research has explored methods to quantitatively assess individual workers’ safety performance. For this, this study uses a tracking system to collect and use individuals’ location data in the proposed safety framework. A computational and analytical procedure/model was developed to quantify the safety performance of individual workers beyond detection and warning. The framework …

Investigation Of Acetaminophen And Caffeine Removal Using Manganese Oxides And Granular Activated Carbon In Column Experiments, Rachael E. Miera

Civil Engineering ETDs

This study was conducted to investigate the application of manganese dioxide (MnO_x(s)) and granular activated carbon (GAC) media for the removal of the acetaminophen and caffeine. Treatment of emerging micropollutants has become a concern due to their effects on environmental health. Manganese oxides can be a viable alternative for water treatment due to their abundance in the environment. Laboratory scale flow through column experiments were performed using different combinations of commercial MnO_x(s) and GAC to assess the removal of caffeine and acetaminophen, and the release of Mn due to the reductive dissolution of MnO_x(s). Results …

Toward Building Resilient, Sustainable, And Smart Infrastructure In The 21st Century, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

In recent years, as a result of significant climate change, stringent windstorms are becoming more frequent than before. Given the threat that windstorms bring to people and property, wind/structural engineering research is imperative to improve the resilience of existing and new infrastructure, for community safety and assets protection. The Windstorm Impact, Science and Engineering (WISE) research program at Louisiana State University (LSU) focuses on creating new knowledge applicable to the mitigation of existing and new infrastructure, to survive and perform optimally under natural hazards. To achieve our research goals, we address two imperious challenges: (i) characterization of realistic wind forces …

Axial Compressive Behavior Of Square Ice Filled Steel Tubular Stub Columns, Yanlei Wang, Guipeng Chen, Baolin Wan, Hao Lin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Concrete has many limitations in the building construction in cold areas. However, there is abundant ice in those regions. Therefore, using ice as a substitute for concrete has been explored by researchers. Inspired by the idea of square concrete filled steel tube (CFT), a new column form termed square ice filled steel tubular (IFT) column is proposed in this study. It consists of a square outer steel tube with the inner space filled with ice. A total of eighteen stub columns were made and tested under axial compression, including three circular plain ice specimens, nine square IFT specimens and six …

Evaluation Of The Weak Constraint Data Assimilation Approach For Estimating Turbulent Heat Fluxes At Six Sites, Xinlei He, Tongren Xu, Sayed M. Bateni, C.M.U. Neale, Thomas Auligne, Shaomin Liu, Kaicun Wang, Kebiao Mao, Yunjun Yao

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

A number of studies have estimated turbulent heat fluxes by assimilating sequences of land surface temperature (LST) observations into the strong constraint-variational data assimilation (SC-VDA) approaches. The SC-VDA approaches do not account for the structural model errors and uncertainties in the micrometeorological variables. In contrast to the SC-VDA approaches, the WC-VDA approach (the so-called weak constraint-VDA) accounts for the effects of structural and model errors by adding a model error term. In this study, the WC-VDA approach is tested at six study sites with different climatic and vegetative conditions. Its performance is also compared with that of SC-VDA at the …