Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Automated And Optimized Sensor Deployment Using Building Models And Electromagnetic Simulation, Chunhee Cho, Jeewoong Park, Kyungki Kim

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

With the advent of wireless sensing technology and interest in tracking resources, researchers have developed advanced tracking algorithms by using one or more sensor systems for improved accuracy and reliability of tracking. The objective of this research lies in another aspect−deployment−of tracking that has received only little attention until now. The research explores a method for sensor deployment particularly designed for the building in which the sensors are used. To tailor our solution to a specific building, we integrate a building information model with an electromagnetic energy analysis. By using such a model, the system extracts the properties of building …

Coupled Chemical Pre-Oxidation And Aerobic Bioremediation Of Buried Mc252 Oil Across A Headlands Beach Profile, Olivia Bramlet

LSU Master's Theses

The release of MC252 crude oil following the Deepwater Horizon event has emphasized the need to investigate factors controlling the extent of contamination degradation in coastal environments. Dam structures created on Fourchon Beach, LA established conditions for PAH and n-alkane accumulation and burial along a vertical profile that persists today due to the anaerobic, often anoxic, and hypersaline conditions of the groundwater. The ability to remove the oxygen limitation present on in situ aerobic biodegradation of buried petroleum-based hydrocarbons in this environment was investigated through the coupled process of chemical oxidation and enhanced bioremediation using a proprietary formulation of activated …

Community Resilience Management : Reflections And Strategies From Corporate Sustainability, Jennifer Schneider, John Hummel, Joseph M. Rosenbeck 4756469, Sarah Dobie

Journal of Environmental Sustainability

Creating community resilience is a daunting task, both in scope and application, therefore it is useful to examine related efforts to inform our strategy. Sustainability, specifically corporate sustainability, has developed through similar challenges and provides insight into the possible trajectory of community resilience management. We find that both concepts reflect similar origins, developmental paths and merging goals at a scale that can be systematically managed. Therefore, we describe four strategies from corporate sustainability management that can be applied to community resilience 1) consider the community context while implementing an increasingly broad view of responsibility; 2) integrate and engage across constructs; …

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts With Alternate Signal Control Strategies, Sirisha Kothuri

TREC Webinar Series

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies …

Evaluation Of Synthetic Cpt And Soil Boring Data By Various Spatial Interpolation Techniques, Md Habibur Rahman

LSU Master's Theses

In order to incorporate the influence of collected in-situ data, the spatial correlation between the data and the foundation needs to be explored. However, risk and uncertainty are the characteristics of the soil that cannot be eliminated. Statistical information of the soil property can be estimated from available field data obtained from testing at discrete locations across the site. In this research, several well-established spatial interpolation methods like ordinary kriging (OK), simple kriging (SK), inverse distance weight (IDW), spline, natural neighbor (NaN) and universal kriging (UK) were incorporated to evaluate the best method. Six CPT (Cone penetration test) (Tip Resistance …

Machine Learning Tools For Optimization Of Fuel Consumption At Signalized Intersections In Connected/Automated Vehicles Environment, Saleh Ragab Mousa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers continue to seek numerous techniques for making the transportation sector more sustainable in terms of fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Among the most effective techniques is Eco-driving at signalized intersections. Eco-driving is a complex control problem where drivers approaching the intersections are guided, over a period of time, to optimize fuel consumption. Eco-driving control systems reduce fuel consumption by optimizing vehicle trajectories near signalized intersections based on information of the SpaT (Signal Phase and Timing). Developing Eco-driving applications for semi-actuated signals, unlike pre-timed, is more challenging due to variations in cycle length resulting from fluctuations in traffic demand. …

Crash/Near-Crash: Impact Of Secondary Tasks And Real-Time Detection Of Distracted Driving, Peter Ramzy Zaki Bakhit

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate the problem of distracted driving from two different perspectives. First, the identification of possible sources of distraction and their associated crash/near-crash risk. That can assist government officials toward more informed decision-making process, allowing for optimized allocation of available resources to reduce roadway crashes and improve traffic safety. Second, actively counteracting the distracted driving phenomenon by quantitative evaluation of eye glance patterns.

This dissertation research consists of two different parts. The first part provides an in-depth analysis for the increased crash/near-crash risk associated with different secondary task activities using the largest real-world …

Optimal And Objective Placement Of Sensors In Water Distribution Systems Using Information Theory, Mohammad S. Khorshidi, Mohammad Reza Nikoo, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Optimization-based deployment of contamination warning system in water distribution systems has been widely used in the literature, due to their superior performance compared to rule- and opinion-based approaches. However, optimization techniques impose an excessive computational burden, which in turn is compensated for by shrinking the problem’s decision space and/or using faster optimization algorithms with less accuracy. This imposes subjectivity in interpretation of the system and associated risks, and undermines model’s accuracy by not exploring the entire feasible space. We propose a framework that uses information theoretic techniques, including value of information and transinformation entropy, for optimal sensor placement. This can …

Urban Agriculture And Small Farm Water Use: Case Studies And Trends From Cache Valley, Utah, Tyler Pratt, L. Niel Allen, David E. Rosenberg, Andrew A. Keller, Kelly Kopp

Publications

The landscape of water in Utah is changing due to population growth, conversion of agricultural land to urban development, and increasing awareness of water scarcity. At the same time, Utah is experiencing a growing number of urban and small farms, but knowledge of water use in this sector is limited. Better understanding of what occurs at the field level on urban and small farms can aid state water use estimates and conservation efforts, and assist farmers in moving towards wiser water management. For the 2015 growing season, we performed irrigation evaluations for 24 urban and small farms in Cache Valley, …

Civil Engineering And Construction News, Georgia Southern University

Civil Engineering & Construction: News & Publications (2011-2022)

• Professor and Chair – Search # 67642

A Study Of Pipe Co-Flow Into A Channel, Charles Yalung, Moses Karakouzian

AANAPISI Poster Presentations

This poster was presented in the Fall of 2018. It highlighted an ongoing research project into the effects of co-flow from a pipe feeding into an open flow channel. It used both experimental procedures and simulations, but only the experimental procedures were addressed in this poster.

Infrared Thermography For Weld Inspection: Feasibility And Application, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire, William Collins

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Traditional ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques have been widely used to detect surface and sub-surface defects of welds. UT inspection is a contact method which burdens the manufacturer by storing hot specimens for inspection when the material is cool. Additionally, UT is only valid for 5 mm specimens or thicker and requires a highly skilled operator to perform the inspections and interpret the signals. Infrared thermography (IRT) has the potential to be implemented for weld inspections due to its non-contact nature. In this study, the feasibility of using IRT to overcome the limitations of UT inspection is investigated to detect inclusion, …

Unobserved Heterogeneity And Spatial Correlation: Statistical And Econometric Analyses Of Heavy-Vehicle Hard Braking And Crash Frequency, Jason Anderson

PSU Transportation Seminars

In heavy-vehicles (a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of greater than 10,000 pounds), a hard braking event is described as an event that prompts the vehicle’s “black box” to record an abrupt change in speed. More specifically, this occurs when the driver applies excess force to the vehicle’s brake. These hard braking events can then serve as a proxy for several factors, such as economic impacts, environmental impacts, and impacts on safety. In the context of the present study, being that approximately one-third of all heavy-vehicle-caused crashes in 2014 were attributed to faulty brakes, there is a need …

Season-Ahead Forecasting Of Water Storage And Irrigation Requirements – An Application To The Southwest Monsoon In India, Arun Ravindranath, Naresh Devineni, Upmanu Lall, Paulina Concha Larrauri

Publications and Research

Water risk management is a ubiquitous challenge faced by stakeholders in the water or agricultural sector. We present a methodological framework for forecasting water storage requirements and present an application of this methodology to risk assessment in India. The application focused on forecasting crop water stress for potatoes grown during the monsoon season in the Satara district of Maharashtra. Pre-season large-scale climate predictors used to forecast water stress were selected based on an exhaustive search method that evaluates for highest ranked probability skill score and lowest root-mean-squared error in a leave-one-out cross-validation mode. Adaptive forecasts were made in the years …

Load Bearing Clip Angle Design -- Phase Ii, Cheng Yu, Zhishan Yan, Wenying Zhang, Lanping Qian

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

The report presents the second phase of a research project aimed at developing design methods for three limit states of CFS clip angles: shear, compression, and pull-over of the screw connections. In the Phase II work, the research focus was on investigating (1) the fastener pattern effects on the behavior and strength of clip angles; (2) the serviceability of clip angles subjected to tension; (3) the strength and behavior of clip angles subjected to combined shear and bending. Based on the research findings, revision to the Phase I method was proposed to account for the impact of the fastener spacing. …

Detection, Occurrence And Fate Of Emerging Contaminants In Agricultural Environments, Daniel D. Snow, David A. Cassada, Saptashati Biswas, Mohammedreza Shafieifini, Xu Li, Matteo D'Alessio, Laura Carter, J. Brett Sallach

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

A total of 75 papers published in 2017 were reviewed ranging from detailed descriptions of analytical methods, to fate and occurrence studies, to ecological effects and sampling techniques for a wide variety of emerging contaminants likely to occur in agricultural environments. New methods and studies on veterinary pharmaceuticals, steroids, antibiotic resistance genes, and engineered nanoparticles agricultural environments continue to expand our knowledge base on the occurrence and potential impacts of these compounds. This review is divided into the following sections: Introduction, Analytical Methods, Fate and Occurrence, Pharmaceutical Metabolites, Anthelmintics, Antibiotic Resistance Genes, and Engineered Nanomaterials.

Monitoring And Evaluating The Influences Of Class V Injection Wells On Urban Karst Hydrology, James Adam Shelley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The response of a karst aquifer to storm events is often faster and more severe than that of a non-karst aquifer. This distinction is often problematic for planners and municipalities, because karst flooding does not typically occur along perennial water courses; thus, traditional flood management strategies are usually ineffective. The City of Bowling Green (CoBG), Kentucky is a representative example of an area plagued by karst flooding. The CoBG, is an urban karst area (UKA), that uses Class V Injection Wells to lessen the severity of flooding. The overall effectiveness, siting, and flooding impact of Injection Wells in UKA’s is …

Hexahydro-1,3,5-Trinitro-1,3,5-Triazine (Rdx) Reduction By Granular Zero-Valent Iron In Continuous Flow Reactor, Amalia Terracciano, Jie Ge, Agamemnon Koutsospyros, Xiaoguang Meng, Benjamin Smolinski, Per Arienti

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Wastewater streams containing hexahydro-1, 3, 5-trinitro-1, 3, 5-triazine (RDX) are subject to regulatory discharge regulations that require processing through industrial waste treatment. Thus, the development of easy-to-apply technologies for the treatment of RDX-laden wastewater streams is imperative. In the present study, the reduction of RDX by granular zero valent iron (GZVI) in batch and column experiments was investigated. Preliminary batch tests conducted under both oxic and anoxic conditions showed that after 3.0 hours of reaction with GZVI, RDX was mainly converted to formaldehyde (CH₂O), nitrate (NO₃ ^- ), and ammonium (NH₄ ⁺ ). Column filtration tests …

Delay Causality Network In Air Transport Systems, Wen-Bo Du, Ming-Yuan Zhang, Yu Zhang, Xian-Bin Cao, Jun Zhang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

To better understand the mechanism of flight delay propagation at the system-level, we built a delay causality network (DCN) based on the Granger causality test. Through topological analysis of DCNs, we found that only about a quarter of airports were involved in delay propagation during the peak travel period and large airports affected by many upstream airports impact fewer downstream airports. Furthermore, temporal analysis of DCNs indicates that the culprits of delay propagation in the air transport system are not a fixed set of airports; instead, they vary daily depending on the operational environment.

Remediation Investigation And Feasibility Study For “Inplace” Mine Waste Influenced Grove Gulch, Butte, Mt, Westley Lund

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Historical mining activities in Butte, Montana contributed to the deposition of heavy metal contaminated mine waste/tailings along the tributary streams of the Clark Fork River. These tributary streams, Silver Bow Creek (SBC), Blacktail Creek (BTC), and Grove Gulch make up the headwaters of the Clark Fork River, which flows through western Montana. SBC is currently impaired for arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), zinc (Zn), and sedimentation (MTDEQ, 2016). BTC is the headwaters of SBC, while Grove Gulch discharges into BTC. Grove Gulch is an intermittent stream south of Butte, that is approximately 6 miles in …

Evaluation Of Continuous, Low-Intensity Ultraviolet Irradiation For Biofilm Prevention, Stephanie Conrad

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

Biofilms occur when planktonic bacteria attach to a surface, forming a sticky, extracellular matrix that makes them difficult to remove. Biofilms are especially troublesome in water filtration membrane systems due to their strong adhesive properties. Once attached, biofilms cause a decrease in water production (biofouling) and an increase in membrane degradation. Traditional cleaning methods use harsh chemicals and require modules being taken offline, which reduces water production rates. Moreover, despite current cleaning efforts, irreversible biofouling inevitably leads to membrane module replacement. The implementation of low-intensity UV irradiation for biofilm prevention could decrease waste and increase production. However, while much is …

Tncs & Congestion, Joe Castiglione, Drew Cooper, Bhargava Sana, Dan Tischler, Tilly Chang, Gregory D. Erhardt, Sneha Roy, Mei Chen, Alex Mucci

Civil Engineering Reports

From the executive summary:

This document:

• Identifies common measures of roadway congestion;
• Discusses factors that contribute to roadway to congestion; and
• Quantifies the relative contributions of different factors, including population, employment, road network changes and TNCs, to observed changes in congestion in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016, by location and time of day.

The report utilizes a unique TNC trip dataset provided to the Transportation Authority by researchers from Northeastern University in late 2016, as well as INRIX data, a commercial dataset which combines several real-time GPS monitoring sources with data from highway performance monitoring systems. These data are …

Modeling The Impact Of Traffic Conditions And Bicycle Facilities On Cyclists' On-Road Stress Levels, Àlvaro Caviedes, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Past research efforts have shown that cyclists’ safety, stress, and comfort levels greatly affect the routes chosen by cyclists and cycling frequency. Some researchers have tried to categorize cyclists’ levels of traffic stress utilizing data that can be directly measured in the field, such as the number of motorized travel lanes, motorized vehicle travel speeds, and type of bicycle infrastructure. This research effort presents a novel approach: real-world, on-road measurements of physiological stress as cyclists travel across different types of bicycle facilities at peak and off-peak traffic times. By matching videos with stressful events, it was possible to observe the …

Flexural Rigidity Estimation Using Noisy Static Influence Lines, Yasha Hajizeinalibiouki

Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Society depends on critical infrastructure to support everyday activities. Even as critical components of civil infrastructure approach and exceed their design lives, demand on these structures continues to increase. In light of the need for managing aging infrastructure, several opportunities exist for research that can aid infrastructure managers in significant the challenge of detecting, classifying, and mitigating structural impairments. This dissertation presents a novel framework for impairment detection through the capture and utilization of deformation influence lines for flexural rigidity estimation on Euler-Bernoulli beams. In this research study, mechanical theory, a computer-vision algorithm, and multiple numerical methods are integrated to …

Treatment Of Disperse Blue 14 Wastewater And Sugar Wastewater By Low Cost Adsorbents, Saisantosh Vamshi Harsha Madiraju, Yung-Tse Hung, Howard H. Paul

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Orange peel and Peanut hull are used in this research to treat the combined binary mixture of Disperse Blue 14and sugar wastewater. The combined wastewater is treated with adsorption followed by micro-filtration. The dosages, sizes and concentrations used in this research are based on trail and error method. Whatman-41 is used in the micro-filtration treatment process. This research is mainly based on color removal. The color removal is estimated and compared from the measured transmittance and absorbance values. The same treatment tests are performed on the activated carbon and taken as datum and compared with the low-cost adsorbents. NPOC values …

Prediction And Rehabilitation Of Highway Embankment Slope Failures In Changing Climate, Navid Jafari, Anand Puppala

Publications

Highway slopes constructed with clayey soil are prone to desiccation cracks due to wetting and drying weather cycle, which allows greater moisture infiltration into the embankment from precipitation. Fissures formed due to extended wetting and drying cycles allow water to seep deeper into the soil than surficial wetting and increase the water content. This increases the moisture content in the soil and results in reduction in shear strength to the fully softened strength. On the other hand, development of desiccation cracks and reduction of the soil matric suction ultimately result in higher hydraulic conductivity value which causes development of higher …

Comparison Of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks And Edge Detectors For Image-Based Crack Detection In Concrete, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper compares the performance of common edge detectors and deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) for image-based crack detection in concrete structures. A dataset of 19 high definition images (3420 sub-images, 319 with cracks and 3101 without) of concrete is analyzed using six common edge detection schemes (Roberts, Prewitt, Sobel, Laplacian of Gaussian, Butterworth, and Gaussian) and using the AlexNet DCNN architecture in fully trained, transfer learning, and classifier modes. The relative performance of each crack detection method is compared here for the first time on a single dataset. Edge detection methods accurately detected 53–79% of cracked pixels, but they …

Sh-Mode Seismic-Reflection Imaging Of Earthfill Dams, Edward W. Woolery

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

Assessing subsurface characteristics and imaging geologic features (e.g., faults, cavities, low-velocity layers, etc.) are typical problems in near-surface geophysics. These questions often have adverse geotechnical engineering implications, and can be especially acute when associated with high-hazard structures such as large earthen flood-control dams. Dam-related issues are becoming more frequent in the United States, because a large part of this major infrastructure was designed and constructed in the early- to mid-twentieth century; these dams are thus passing into the latter stages of their design life, where minute flaws that were overlooked or thought to be insignificant in design/construction are now …

Sensor-Enhanced Analysis And Behavior Of Steel Beams In Fire, Genda Chen

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Traditionally, strain data are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain from steel structures in fire due to their harsh environment and temperature measurements are limited to the locations of thermocouples. This paper presents high-temperature measurements using a Brillouin scattering based (distributed) fiber optic sensor and the application of the measured temperatures and material parameters recommended in building codes into the enhanced thermo-mechanical analysis of simply-supported steel beams subjected to combined thermal and loading effects. The distributed temperature sensor captures detailed, non-uniform temperature distributions that are compared locally with thermocouple measurements by less than 5% at a 95% confidence level. The …

Development Of A Uav-Based System To Monitor Air Quality Over An Oil Field, Siwen Liu

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The growth of hydraulic fracturing has pushed the whole petroleum industries forward. As a result, gas (mainly methane [CH4]) emissions have significantly increased over the past decades (Macey et al., 2014). Gas leaks can occur at almost all stages of a petroleum production process, such as drilling, fracking, and refining. For years, ground-based air quality monitoring has been conducted around production sites. An improved understanding of air quality would be enabled by supplementing ground-based with airborne monitoring. The latter would involve the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry a compact, portable air monitoring system. The purpose of this …