Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Hillman Composite Beam (Hcb®), Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The Hillman-Composite Beam (HCB®), is an innovative structural member for use in highway and railroad bridges as well as marine facilities. The HCB is essentially a lightweight reinforced concrete beam strengthened and protected by a corrosion-resistant and resilient Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shell.

The beam is comprised of three main components, a concrete arch (compression reinforcement), an FRP bottom flange encapsulating steel strands tying the ends of the arch together (tension reinforcement) and the FRP shell. Galvanized Rebar “shear connectors” are used to make the beam composite with the concrete deck in the same manner as pre-stressed concrete beams.

The …

Industrial-Grade Monitoring Solution: Hoistcam, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

Safety and productivity are top priorities for contractors and industrial operations. Improving either makes a company more profitable and competitive. Technology advancements that can do both are important for every company to consider. HoistCam^TM industrial-grade video monitoring solutions can improve employees’ productivity and workplace safety in the construction industries. HoistCam also improves efficiency of operations and reduces job site accidents resulting in substantial cost savings to a contractor.

HoistCam™ is an integrated, wireless video system. The use of HoistCam eliminates blind lifts, blind spots and can share the live video with anyone, anywhere with solid security and easy control. …

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 …}

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.

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 …

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 …

Assessment Of Individual Photovoltaic Module Performance After 26 Years Of Field Exposure At The Telonicher Marine Lab In Trinidad, California, Jake Rada

Projects

In 1990, 192 ARCO M75 photovoltaic (PV) modules were installed as a part of the Schatz Solar Hydrogen Project at the Humboldt State University (HSU) Telonicher Marine Lab in Trinidad, California, within 150 m of the Pacific Ocean. This 9.2 kW-rated PV array was used to power the marine laboratory air compressor and an electrolyzer. Individual current-voltage (IV) curve tests were performed on each of the PV modules prior to the array’s construction in 1990 and again in 2001, 2010, and, most recently, in 2016, following decommissioning of the array. After 25.5 years of use, 188 of the original 192 …

Sediment Transport Modelling Using Dynamic (Dis)Connectivity Prediction For A Bedrock Controlled Catchment, David Tyler Mahoney

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

The (dis)connectivity of sediment, defined as the detachment and transport of sediment from source to sink between geomorphic zones, is a major control on sediment transport rates but has seldom taken precedence in sediment transport models that focus on assessment of sediment impacts on water supply. A watershed-scale sediment transport model was formulated that incorporates sediment (dis)connectivity knowledge and subroutines and predicts sediment flux through coupling with an excessive shear stress erosion equation. The intersecting probabilities of sediment supply, detachment, transport, and (dis)connectivity produce the probability of sediment connectivity for a watershed or region of a watershed. The integration of …

An Investigation Of The Hydraulics In A Prototype Pool-And-Chute, Vortex Weir Fishway For Anadromous Fish Passage., Brendan Foster

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis presents the hydraulic characteristics and simulated passage efficiency of a hybrid pool-and-chute, vortex weir fishway designed by Michael Love & Associates. A physical 1:15 scale model was constructed and evaluated at an 8% slope over three prototype flow rates representing high and medium fish passage flows. The highest velocities and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) values were concentrated along the fishway centerline at the high and medium flow rate and the pool sides showed lower velocities and TKE. Large eddies spin laterally and longitudinally throughout each pool. The velocity vector directions at the lowest flow rate measured differed from …

Evaluation Of Woodchip Bioreactor Denitrification Kinetics, Abdoul Aziz Kouanda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Agricultural subsurface drainage is a water management practice used to remove excess water in poorly drained soil. The use of fertilizers combined with subsurface drainage practice affects negatively surface water quality due to nutrient loss. Woodchip bioreactors have previously been used as a technology for removing nitrate from agricultural subsurface drainage. Understanding the mechanism that governs nitrate removal in woodchip bioreactors is crucial for field bioreactor design and application. The objective of this project is to determine woodchip bioreactor denitrification kinetics parameters under different operating conditions including hydraulic retention time, temperature and influent nitrate concentrations. Laboratory column experiments were conducted …

Compact Facility For Testing Steady And Transient Thermal Performance Of Building Walls, Aimee Byrne, Gerard Byrne, Anthony Robinson

Articles

Energy efficiency retrofit of buildings represents a key effort in reducing EU energy demand by 20% by 2020. However, predictions tend to overestimate savings by large percentages. The shortfall in savings can be attributed to incorrect predictive techniques, comfort takeback along with other behavioural and workmanship variables. Common predictive techniques related to heat loss tend to be based on the U-value of the building envelope. This paper presents the design of a more straightforward and compact version of the traditional Hot-Box apparatus (measures U-value) which instead determines the thermal resistance of samples of building envelope. U-value includes the need to …

Life Cycle Assessment (Lca) Of Ore Transportation Route Alternatives For Eagle Mine, Soumith Kumar Oduru

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Transportation sector at large is a major consumer of fossil fuels and constitutes more than a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions. When making infrastructure route and mode choice decisions for new freight-oriented projects, it is important that environmental and emissions considerations are included as an integral part of the selection process. Emissions from freight transportation projects related to mining and natural resource industry are especially critical, as they involve high volumes and tonnages often in pristine environments. The most logical time for emissions analysis is during modal and route analysis that are often conducted in the planning stage …

Quantification Of The Impact Of Asphalt Pavement Conditions On Gas Emissions, Oscar Daniel Gonzalez Calvo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research develops a methodology to quantify the impact of asphalt pavement conditions on vehicular gas emissions based on statistical analysis to correlate the relationship between asphalt pavement roughness and gas emissions. ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) hypoThesis tests were used to compare the factors affecting the results. The roughness was measured with the International Roughness Index (IRI) using a profilometer provided by TxDOT and the gas emissions were measured with a Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS).

This research also presents the savings obtained in gas emissions using different maintenance and rehabilitation strategies established by TxDOT (Preventive Maintenance, Light Rehabilitation, Medium …

Geotechnical Laboratory Testing For 2-D Fem Analysis Of Geomorphic And Planar Sloped Caps And Covers For Sustainable Mine Refuse Deposition, Sun Hee Park

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis reports the findings of the application of Geomorphic Landform Design principles to the Royal Scot abandoned coarse coal refuse (CCR) pile located in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The Royal Scot facility has many environmental concerns including severe erosion, acid-mine/rock drainage, and sediment transport. A cap and cover system is proposed to be implemented which incorporates the GLD principles. A two-layer cap and cover system will be used to reclaim the site and return it back to a stable state and reduce the production of acid-mine drainage. The system is composed of a hydraulic barrier composed of compacted CCR, …

Modeling Algae Powered Neighborhood Through Gis And Bim Integration, Florina Dutt, Steven Jige Quan, Erik Woodworth, Daniel Castro-Lacouture, Ben J. Stuart, Perry Pei-Ju Yang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper aims to propose a modeling method for algae powered neighborhoods through GIS-BIM integration. In the first part of the paper, the applicability of different types of algae systems in an urban neighborhood are studied. The various systems of algae provide different strengths and weakness that affect their performance and suitability for given urban scenarios. Through extensive literature review, the variables that affect the performance of the micro-algae in the built environment are identified, with a focus on flat-panel photo bio-reactors and tubular photobioreactors. A previous GIS model for data management, performance analysis and design of the algae systems …

Air Injection As A Scour Countermeasure At Bridge Piers, Ravi Teja Reddy Tippireddy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Local scour is a major cause of concern for the stability of bridge piers and the safety of the public using the bridges. Structural countermeasures and flow-altering devices have been developed to deal with local scour. Many armoring structural countermeasures are very effective and efficient in clear water conditions but are susceptible to moving bed forms and leaching. The flow-altering devices are effective in both clear water conditions and moving bed forms, but are prone to clogging, less efficient in changing flow direction, etc. This study aims to reduce the local scour by injecting air in order to reduce the …

A Validated Tropical-Extratropical Flood Hazard Assessment For New York Harbor, Philip M. Orton, T. M. Hall, Stefan A. Talke, Alan F. Blumberg, Nickitas Georgas, S. Vinogradov

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent studies of flood risk at New York Harbor (NYH) have shown disparate results for the 100 year storm tide, providing an uncertain foundation for the flood mitigation response after Hurricane Sandy. Here we present a flood hazard assessment that improves confidence in our understanding of the region's present-day potential for flooding, by separately including the contribution of tropical cyclones (TCs) and extratropical cyclones (ETCs), and validating our modeling study at multiple stages against historical observations. The TC assessment is based on a climatology of 606 synthetic storms developed from a statistical-stochastic model of North Atlantic TCs. The ETC assessment …

Hydraulic And Hydrologic Properties Of The Sabine River, Annie L. Bryant

Civil Engineering Theses

The Sabine River is located in Northeast Texas and is home to many threatened and endangered species as well as a growing human population. It is important to understand channel properties and flow characteristics of rivers in order better manage these important natural resources. The Sabine was monitored for hydraulic and hydrological properties as this is a poorly understood river at this point in time.

Hydraulic modeling was conducted to determine channel velocities and shear stresses during different storm frequencies. It was found that velocity and shear stress had a direct relationship at lower velocities. A comparison of existing Geographic …

Lucidpipe™ Power System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

In most gravity fed water transmission pipelines, it is desired to reduce excess pressure head to prevent undue strain on a pipeline and lower the incidence of leaks. Normally this is done with pressure reducing valves that essentially burn off this excess pressure as heat. The LucidPipe™ system converts it to low cost electricity thereby removing unwanted pressure and generating energy at the same time - energy that can be put used behind the grid or put back on the grid. The LucidPipe™ system extracts a small percentage of pressure head providing nearly invisible operation allowing water operators to fulfill …

Occurrence And Proliferation Of Antibiotics And Antibiotic Resistance In Wastewater Treatment Plants, Majid Neyestani

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Solids retention time (SRT) is one of the most important factors in designing and operating activated sludge systems for biological wastewater treatment. Longer SRTs have been shown to alter the structure and function of microbial communities, thereby leading to improved treatment efficacy with respect to bulk and trace organics, nutrient removal, and membrane fouling. However, research has also shown that longer SRTs lead to increased prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, perhaps due to increased exposure to antibiotics present in influent wastewater. The purpose of this study was to characterize changes in microbial community structure in a laboratory-scale activated sludge system …

Reflecting Societal Values In Designing Flood Risk Management Strategies, Mark Adamson, John O'Sullivan, Zeinab Bedri

Conference papers

In 2006, the Office of Public Works (OPW) began the National Catchment-based Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM) Programme through a series of pilot studies. A Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) Framework was developed through the pilot studies that integrated a number of objectives related to a wide range of potential impacts and benefits into the core of process of appraising and selecting suitable flood risk management measures for a given area or location, and then for prioritising national investments for different schemes and projects. This MCA Framework, that provides a systematic process of developing a non-monetised but numerical indicator of benefit …

Pyrolysis Of Dried Wastewater Biosolids Can Be Energy Positive, Patrick J. Mcnamara, Jon Koch, Zhongzhe Liu, Daniel Zitomer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Pyrolysis is a thermal process that converts biosolids into biochar (a soil amendment), py-oil and py-gas, which can be energy sources. The objectives of this research were to determine the product yield of dried biosolids during pyrolysis and the energy requirements of pyrolysis. Bench-scale experiments revealed that temperature increases up to 500 °C substantially decreased the fraction of biochar and increased the fraction of py-oil. Py-gas yield increased above 500 °C. The energy required for pyrolysis was approximately 5-fold less than the energy required to dry biosolids (depending on biosolids moisture content), indicating that, if a utility already uses energy …

Development And Assessment Of A Groundwater Sustainability Index In Climatically Diverse Groundwater Irrigated Regions In Nebraska, Maria A. Mulet Jalil

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The aim of this research was to evaluate the impact of regional change in ET on groundwater level changes and the assessment and development of a groundwater sustainability index for climatically diverse regions across Nebraska during 2000-2014. Irrigation in the selected regions is predominantly supplied by groundwater. The hypothesis is that groundwater use can become sustainable if the regional evapotranspiration (ET) is managed so that it equals the ET of vegetation that is native to the region. Site locations were Box Butte, Chase, Dundy, Holt LNNRD and York Counties and 3 ecosystems were evaluated: native vegetation, dryland and irrigated cropping …

Fire-Spotting Modelling And Parametrisation For Wild-Land Fires, Inderpreet Kaur, Gianni Pagnini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This article describes a mathematical formulation for simulating the effects of firebrands on the propagation of the wild-land fires. Among the different approaches available in literature, this formulation is defined in a way to provide a versatile approach for application to operational wildfire models. Most of the operational wildfire models like WRF-SFIRE and ForeFire model only the evolution of the fire-line according to the definition of the rate of spread, fuel characterisation and the average fire properties and concurrent atmospheric conditions. But this information is not enough to simulate the effects of turbulence and fire-spotting. The formulation presented here can …

A Generator Of Landuse Application For Complex And Heterogeneous Agricultural Practices, Odile Leccia-Phelpin, Jean-Marie Lescot, Françoise Vernier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Non-point source pollution from agriculture has become a major concern for water managers and institutional stakeholders. To reduce diffuse pollution, agricultural conservation measures are widely used with efficiency. On non-monitored territories environmental modelling enables the assessment of their long term impacts on water and soils and to evaluate land-use change scenarios. We developed an innovative Generator of Landuse (GenLU) application in order to build up multi-year spatial crop successions from identified crop rotations with their related management schedule s. GenLU can be used solely for generating landuse or coupled with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model so as …

Water Supply System Classification For Water Quality Improvement, Bruno Melo Brentan, Gustavo Meirelles Lima, Edevar Luvizotto Junior, Joaquín Izquierdo, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Universal access to drinkable water is a constitutional right guaranteed in Brazil. However, not all cities in this country are able to supply the population with the expected quality. Important actions should be taken to improve the supply of drinkable water. To define a strategic plan for this purpose, classification tools can facilitate the design of plans, by grouping cities with similar quality conditions. During the last decades, neural network approaches have been used in environmental models, allowing more accurate representation of some complex systems. This work proposes the use of self-organizing maps (SOM’s) coupled with the k-means algorithm …

Optimal Land Use?! – A Review On Optimization Techniques Used In Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Andrea Kaim, Anna Cord, Martin Volk

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agriculture, forest management, conservation planning and other related disciplines have specific land use demands, and thus different perspectives on how land should be used in an “optimal way”. One way to solve arising land use conflicts is employing the ecosystem services concept together with methods from the field of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Especially optimization techniques provide the possibility to include socio-economic and ecological aspects as well as the protection of biodiversity. In this study, we give an overview of these methods, focusing especially on their application in agricultural areas. We explore their abilities for the identification of ecosystem service …

The Economics Of Agricultural Water Productivity In The Blue Nile, Imeshi Weerasinghe, James Booker, Wim Bastiaanssen, Lisa-Marie Rebelo, Ann Van Griensven

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural Water Productivity (AWP) is often simplified as the ‘crop per drop’, described as the output in terms of yield or biomass per unit of water input. This purely physical measure of Water Productivity (WP) using only a single factor input (water) does not consider: (1) the level of other inputs used in conjunction with water, (2) the opportunity cost of water as an input, (3) the value of the output and (4) the costs of production for different crops. This study presents a justification and methodology for incorporating these factors into WP indicators. The application of these extensions to …

Atlas: A Tool To Model Spatial-Temporal Dynamics Of Processes Influencing Ecosystem Services, Hugo Thierry, Aude Vialatte, Claude Monteil, Annie Ouin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Biodiversity provides various benefits to humankind throughout what is defined as ecosystem services. Within a specific ecosystem, a wide range of ecosystem services can be identified. During the past decades, human intervention has aimed to increase some services such as food production through agricultural intensification, at the expense of other services such as water regulation. Mapping, evaluating and quantifying each of these ecosystem services provided by biodiversity to crop production could help to increase the multi-functionality of agricultural landscapes. In this context, we developed a spatially-explicit model called ATLAS (AgriculTural LandscApe Simulator). ATLA …