Civil Engineering Commons^™

Influence Of Polyethylene Glycol (Peg) In Cmc-Nh4br Based Polymer Electrolytes: Conductivity And Electrical Study, Nur Khalidah Zainuddin, Ahmad Salihin Samsudin

Makara Journal of Technology

The present work was carried with new type and promising polymer electrolytes system by development of carboxyl methylcellulose (CMC) doped NH4Br and plasticized with polyethylene glycol (PEG). The sample was successfully prepared via solution casting with no separation phase and good mechanical properties. The electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity of CMC-NH4Br-PEG based PEs system have been measured by the electrical impedance spectroscopy method in the temperature range of 303–373 K. The highest ionic conductivity gained is 2.48 x 10-3 Scm-1 at ambient temperature for sample contain with 8 wt. % PEG. It can be concluded that the plasticized is accountable …

Purification Simulation With Vapor Permeation And Distillation-Adsorption In Bioethanol Plant, Misri Gozan, Mia Sari Setiawan, Kenny Lischer

Makara Journal of Technology

High purity of Bioethanol is required in biofuel mixing with gasoline (EXX). In bioethanol production line, the azeotropic property of ethanol-water becomes the barrier for purification process. This study examined two bioethanol separation processes by support of simulation tools, Superpro Designer 9.0 software. Ethanol purity and a low costeconomical process were the major considerations. Purification method of vapor permeation membrane technology was compared with distillation-adsorption method. Data from previous lab experiments and some literatures were used. The results showed that distillation-adsorption method is more economical compared to vapor permeation technology. Payback period of the simulation is 3.9 years and 4.3 …

Influence Of Skew And Nonlinear Deck On Elastic Versus Inelastic Distribution Behavior And Ultimate Capacity Of Steel Girder Bridges, Fayaz Sofi, Joshua Steelman

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

Research Objectives

• Assessment of alternative load distribution methodologies for potential discrepancies that arise when evaluating distribution behavior of skewed steel girder bridges.

• Investigate the influence of skew and material nonlinearities (concrete cracking and steel yielding) on

• Load distribution behavior (elastic versus inelastic).

• System capacities (yielding and ultimate).

Summary and Conclusions • Influence of skew was examined on load distribution behavior, and nonlinear system-based capacities (yielding and ultimate) of composite steel girder bridges in presence of full material nonlinearities. In addition, assessment of two general definitions (beam-line and response fraction approaches) for quantifying load distribution behavior was …

Behavior And Strength Of Rc Spandrel Members Under Unsymmetrical Bending And Torsion Including Cfrp Retrofitting, Muhammad Fahim

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation presents the outcome of an experimental and theoretical investigation of the behavior and strength of reinforced concrete spandrel members both with and without carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) retrofitting. Both isolated spandrel members with L-shaped cross section as well as those integrated with reinforced concrete slabs are studied. A series of isolated spandrel members were tested under separate and combined actions of unsymmetrical bending and torsion. Six of these specimens were retrofitted externally with high-strength CFRP strips. Materially nonlinear analysis procedures are also formulated and programmed for the spandrel members with and without CFRP retrofitting. Furthermore, ultimate bending-torsion …

Correlating Strength And Stiffness Data Of The Pencel Pressuremeter And Triaxial Compression Tests In Florida Sands, Jacob William Jansen

Theses and Dissertations

The poorly graded sands found throughout Florida provide geotechnical engineers with a difficult challenge when performing testing samples in laboratory tests. These challenges have caused lab tests such as the triaxial compression test to be overlooked. Since geotechnical engineers estimate strength and stiffness parameters from basic field tests, they often produce overly conservative designs. Understanding how the automated in-situ PENCEL Pressuremeter (PPMT) test correlates with the triaxial compression test can reduce the time and costs associated with laboratory triaxial testing. Results from triaxial tests yield a Young’s Elastic Modulus, shear strength, and internal friction angle. Results from a PPMT test …

Implementing Online Updating To Complex Hysteresis Models In Real- Time Hybrid Simulation Using Constrained Unscented Kalman Filter, Bilal Ahmed Mohammed

Masters Theses

Although conventional experimental methods, such as quasi-static testing, shake table testing, etc., perform well to evaluate structural seismic performance necessary for modern seismic design, the quasi-static loading and/or reduced scale specimen used in shake table testing may not provide true dynamic responses of structural systems. To overcome these limitations, real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) was developed, which is a combination of physical testing of the experimental substructure and analytical simulation of the numerical substructure. With the advancement of hybrid simulation, it is now possible to economically test large to full-scale specimens in laboratories at the real earthquake rate. Online model updating …

Mechanism Of Cathodic Prevention Of Carbon Steel In Concrete, Krittin Rattakham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, I aim to clarify the mechanism that allows steel to attain higher chloride threshold as it is cathodically polarized. Specifically, I seek to provide empirical information on whether an intrinsic (predominantly interfacial effects of polarization) or an extrinsic (predominantly concentration changes due to polarization) mechanism may be dominant in the beneficial effect of polarization. I carried out this experiment with 12 identical concrete specimens, each with a cast-in steel plate, constantly exposed them to high-chloride environment. The specimens were divided into 4 triplicates and polarized at 4 different level from OCP, -200, -300 to -400 mV_{SCE …}

Recommended Selective Maintenance And Rehabilitation Treatment Approach For Air Force Primary Rigid Runway Pavement Systems, Christopher M. Twigg

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force is facing the challenge to preserve the current inventory of 154 million square yards of paved airfield assets while at the same time reducing the budget by $36.2 billion between fiscal years 2015-2019. This research sought to determine a selective maintenance and rehabilitation treatment approach that allocates resources efficiently to preserve the degrading pavement assets in the financially constrained environment. Air Force pavement inspection reports from the past five years provided 4289 observed pavement distress data points for this research. The data was inputted into the pavement management software, PAVER, to calculate the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) …

Electrochemical Methods To Characterize Drilled Shaft Deficiencies, Sarah Jo Mobley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years drilled shafts have become the preferred foundation method for marine bridges. Typically, the drilled shaft is selected over traditional driven piles due to soil strata encountered, construction economy, increased lateral stiffness requirements, and/or vibration control considerations. The most critical component in drilled shaft construction is borehole stabilization. Wall sloughing or groundwater inclusion can have devastating effects on the strength of the finished shaft however recent research has shown that the materials, more specifically the slurry, used to accomplish stabilization may be having a negative impact on the durability of the finished product. This thesis investigates the durability …

Design Of A Metadata Framework For The Environmental Models With An Example Hydrologic Application In Hydroshare, Mohamed M. Morsy, Jonathan L. Goodall, Anthony M. Castronova, Pabitra Dash, Venkatesh Merwade, Jeffrey M. Sadler, Mohammad Adnan Rajib, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Environmental modelers rely on a variety of computational models to make predictions, test hypotheses, and address specific problems related to environmental science and natural resource management. Scientists and engineers must devote significant effort to preparing these computational models. While significant attention has been devoted to sharing and reusing environmental data, less attention has been devoted to sharing and reusing environmental models. A first step toward increasing environmental model sharing and reuse is to define a general metadata framework for models that is flexible and, therefore, applicable across the wide variety of models used by environmental modelers. This paper proposes a …

Purdue Ect Report - Fourth Quarter 2016, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Fourth Quarter 2016

This is a quarterly report from the Purdue ECT.

An Analytical System For Determining Disciplinary Vocabulary For Data-Driven Learning: An Example From Civil Engineering, Philippa Jean Otto

Dissertations and Theses

Data-driven learning (DDL), an inductive teaching approach in which students learn through corpus interaction, has gained recent traction as way to teach specialized vocabulary in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. There is little research, however, that addresses how to choose specialized vocabulary for teaching with DDL.

This study addressed this gap in research by exploring the potential of a three-part analytical, corpus-based system for determining vocabulary to teach with DDL for a specific context of language use. This system included (1) identifying words that were significantly more frequent in a specialized expert corpus than in a corpus of general …

Practical Considerations In Determining Timber Pile Depth Using The Sonic Echo Method, Ali F. Jwary

Civil Engineering ETDs

The Federal Highway Administration indicates that about 85,000 bridges in the United States have no original contract documents with information about the type, depth, geometry and material of their foundations (FHWA, 2010). Furthermore, the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) provides information about 86,133 bridges nationwide that are rated as scour critical because of unknown foundation condition. In New Mexico, there are more than 281 bridges with unknown foundations, which are owned by the New Mexico Department of Transportation; 71 of these are timber bridges. These data indicate a serious problem that needs decisive action to assess the unknown bridge foundation characteristics …

Compliant Curb Ramp Solutions, Katherine Smutzer

Purdue Road School

Public Rights of Way Accessibility Guidelines (PROWAG) for Curb Ramps. Answers to frequently asked questions for Curb Ramps and Curb Ramp Designs. Examples of curb ramp designs in restricted conditions and other types of curb ramp examples.

Mash Implementation For Guardrail, Katherine Smutzer

Purdue Road School

A review of the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Implementation for w-beam guardrail. What will change and what designers need to know when moving to MASH.

Application Of Gis To Prioritize Brownfield Sites For Green Building Construction Based On Leed Criteria, Can B. Aktas, Paul Bartholomew, Sabrina Church

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Although there are many initiatives to create incentives for investors and developers to invest in and redevelop brownfield sites, efficient prioritization of brownfields by taking into account environmental, economic, and social constraints remains a challenge. This study introduces a method to screen numerous brownfields over large geographic areas by using geographic information systems (GIS) and to assess and prioritize such sites for green building suitability based on leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) criteria. A case study was completed for the greater Bridgeport, Connecticut region. With 279 brownfield sites, the city has among the highest number of brownfields in …

Life Cycle Environmental And Economic Performance Of Biochar Compared With Activated Carbon: A Meta-Analysis, Hashim A. Alhashimi, Can B. Aktas

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

As the commercial production and distribution of biochar continues to grow internationally, and its applications diversifying from its early uses as soil amendment, it is important to study the environmental impacts and economic performance of biochar in comparison to activated carbon in order to assess its value. The goal of the study was to assess, through a meta-analysis, the environmental and economic performance of biochar in comparison to activated carbon under an equivalent functional unit to adsorb heavy metals. More than 80 data points on adsorption capacity of biochar and activated carbon were identified through literature, which were statistically analyzed …

Correlating Methane Production To Microbiota In Anaerobic Digesters Fed Synthetic Wastewater, Kaushik Venkiteshwaran, K. Milferstedt, M. Fujimoto, M. Johnson, Daniel Zitomer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) between relative abundance values and digester methane production rate was developed. For this, 50 triplicate anaerobic digester sets (150 total digesters) were each seeded with different methanogenic biomass samples obtained from full-scale, engineered methanogenic systems. Although all digesters were operated identically for at least 5 solids retention times (SRTs), their quasi steady-state function varied significantly, with average daily methane production rates ranging from 0.09 ± 0.004 to 1 ± 0.05 L-CH₄/L_R-day (L_R = Liter of reactor volume) (average ± standard deviation). Digester microbial community structure was analyzed using more …

Irish Bim Study 2017, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Articles

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) recently published its Global BIM Study as part of its BIM Innovation Capability Programme (BICP). The study sought to identify how BIM was being currently addressed in 27 countries across the globe. The study sought to identify the presence of three key ingredients in these countries:

1. Regulatory requirement for BIM

2. Champions driving BIM

3. Noteworthy publications

The report identified a number of recurring themes that would help to shape Ireland’s BIM programme. The report concluded that Ireland should adopt a programme of partnership between industry and the Irish Government in order to affect …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Bicp Global Bim Study - Lessons For Ireland’S Bim Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Reports

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) has been promoting the benefits of digitisation in the construction and engineering industry in Ireland since its formation back in 2002. Whilst the Alliance has always strived to ensure that its members are exposed to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital tools and processes, the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has dominated the focus of its activities over the past five years.

BIM can be described as a digital tool that facilitates everybody to better understand a building or structure through the use of a digital model which draws on a range of data …

Heat And Water Transport In Soils And Across The Soil-Atmosphere Interface: 1. Theory And Different Model Concepts, Jan Vanderborght, Thomas Fetzer, Klaus Mosthaf, Kathleen M. Smits, Rainer Helmig

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications - Archive

Evaporation is an important component of the soil water balance. It is composed of water flow and transport processes in a porous medium that are coupled with heat fluxes and free air flow. This work provides a comprehensive review of model concepts used in different research fields to describe evaporation. Concepts range from nonisothermal two-phase flow, two-component transport in the porous medium that is coupled with one-phase flow, two-component transport in the free air flow to isothermal liquid water flow in the porous medium with upper boundary conditions defined by a potential evaporation flux when available energy and transfer to …

Heat And Water Transport In Soils And Across The Soil-Atmosphere Interface: 2. Numerical Analysis, Jan Vanderborght, Thomas Fetzer, Klaus Mosthaf, Kathleen M. Smits, Rainer Helmig

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications - Archive

In an accompanying paper, we presented an overview of a wide variety of modeling concepts, varying in complexity, used to describe evaporation from soil. Using theoretical analyses, we explained the simplifications and parameterizations in the different approaches. In this paper, we numerically evaluate the consequences of these simplifications and parameterizations. Two sets of simulations were performed. The first set investigates lateral variations in vertical fluxes, which emerge from both homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media, and their importance to capturing evaporation behavior. When evaporation decreases from parts of the heterogeneous soil surface, lateral flow and transport processes in the free flow …

Road Zipper™, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Construction work zones are growing in number around the world. The natural aging of existing roadway infrastructure ensures that more and more maintenance and rehabilitation will be required. Work zones, by their very definition, create two major problems that must be addressed in some way: safety and mobility. In the United States, highway work zones are responsible for almost 25% of all non-recurring congestion and 10% of overall congestion. Vehicle accidents are more common in work zones, and traffic congestion through work zones on urban arterials and freeways is often considered to be “unavoidable." To address these issues, ROAD ZIPPER™ …

Quality Improvement Of Acidic Soils By Biochar Derived From Renewable Materials, Deok Hyun Moon, Inseong Hwang, Yoon-Young Chang, Agamemnon Koutsospyros, Kyung Hoon Cheong, Won Hyun Ji, Jeong Hun Park

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Biochar derived from waste plant materials and agricultural residues was used to improve the quality of an acidic soil. The acidic soil was treated for 1 month with both soy bean stover-derived biochar and oak-derived biochar in the range of 1 to 5 wt% for pH improvement and exchangeable cation enhancement. Following 1 month of treatment, the soil pH was monitored and exchangeable cations were measured. Moreover, a maize growth experiment was performed for 14 days with selected treated soil samples to confirm the effectiveness of the treatment. The results showed that the pH of the treated acidic soil increased …

The Effect Of Plant Water Storage On Water Fluxes Within The Coupled Soil–Plant System, Cheng-Wei Huang, Jean-Christopher Domec, Eric J. Ward, Tomer Duman, Gabriele Manolia, Anthony J. Parolari, Gabriel Katul

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

In addition to buffering plants from water stress during severe droughts, plant water storage (PWS) alters many features of the spatio-temporal dynamics of water movement in the soil–plant system. How PWS impacts water dynamics and drought resilience is explored using a multi-layer porous media model.

Multiscale Mechanistic Characterization Of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavements, A. M. Feroze Rashid

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Superpave test methods are based on unmodified asphalt binders and mixes; researchers have reported limitations of these methods in evaluating modified binders. An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has the potential to determine morphology and nanomechanistic properties of modified and unmodified asphalt binders. In this study, different amounts of binders recovered from four selected reclaimed asphalt pavements (RAP) are blended with a virgin Performance Grade (PG) binder and tested by following Superpave tests and AFM techniques. Binders with high RAP are found to have more rutting resistance than the virgin binder but less cracking resistance due to their brittleness. Toward …

Performance Evaluation Of Polyphosphoric Acid Modified Asphalt Binders, Istiaque Mahmud

Student Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to find out short- and long-term performance of Polyphosphoric Acid (PPA)-modified asphalt binders. To evaluate the binder performance, mechanistic, chemical and moisture susceptibility tests were done on PPA- and Styrene Butadiene Styrene (SBS)-modified asphalt binders. Mechanistic performance was analyzed by Superpave performance grade testing (AASHTO M 320), whereas chemical analysis was done by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses and moisture susceptibility was evaluated by Surface Free Energy (SFE) techniques. Superpave testing results suggest that PPA-modified binders are more rutting and fatigue resistant than PG 64-22 binders, but use of Liquid Anti-Stripping Agents (LAA) …

Bond Between Microwave Cured Repair And Concrete Substrate, Konstantinos Grigoriadis, P. S. Mangat, Shahriar Abubakri

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

The bond strength between a concrete substrate and repair patch is critical to its durability. This paper investigates the effect of microwave curing the freshly applied repair, for 45 min at 132 Watts, on the 28 day bond strength between substrate concrete and different commercial repair materials. The repairs were applied at different ambient temperatures of 20, 10, 2 and −5 °C. Tensile split tests on repaired cube specimens were performed to determine the interfacial bond strength. The ability of microwave curing to prevent the detrimental effects of freezing at early age on the bond and compressive strength of repair …

Design And Implementation Of The Manitoba Constrained-Width Tall Wall Barrier, Harald P. Larsen, Scott K. Rosenbaugh, Andrew Pankratz, Diana Emerson, Jennifer Schmidt, Ronald K. Faller, Elizabeth M. Regier

Mid-America Transportation Center: Final Reports and Technical Briefs

Manitoba Infrastructure (MI) desired a new, tall concrete median barrier capable of satisfying the Test Level 5 (TL-5) safety requirements of the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH). It needed to fit within the footprint of an existing F-shape median barrier located in a narrow median. It also was required to address headlight glare from opposing traffic. The barrier was designed with a height of 1,250 mm, a maximum width of 600 mm and to resist a load of 845 kN applied at the top of the barrier. The Manitoba Constrained-Width, Tall Wall was optimised to withstand the design load …