Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/23747
The Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which is ranked in the top 10 accredited civil and environmental engineering departments by the US News and World Report survey, is one of the largest programs in the United States. The Department has 46 full-time faculty, 657 undergraduate, and 400 graduate students. Civil engineers are the principal designers, constructors, operators, and caretakers of many of the constructed facilities and systems that contribute to the high quality of life enjoyed in the United States. The Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering offers educational programs in all areas of civil engineering practice.

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Browsing Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering by Content Type "Dataset"

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    3D Hybrid of Layered MoS2/Nitrogen-Doped Graphene Nanosheet Aerogels: An Effective Catalyst for Hydrogen Evolution in Microbial Electrolysis Cells
    Hou, Yang; Zhang, Bo; Wen, Zhenhai; Cui, Shumao; Guo, Xiaoru; He, Zhen; Chen, Junhong (The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014-06-18)
    Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have been conceived and intensively studied as a promising technology to achieve sustainable wastewater treatment. However, doubts and debates arose in recent years regarding the technical and economic viability of this technology on a larger scale and in a real-world applications. Hence, it is time to think about and examine how to recalibrate this technology's role in a future paradigm of sustainable wastewater treatment. In the past years, many good ideas/approaches have been proposed and investigated for MFC application, but information is scattered. Various review papers were published on MFC configuration, substrates, electrode materials, separators and microbiology but there is lack of critical thinking and systematic analysis of MFC application niche in wastewater treatment. To systematically formulate a strategy of (potentially) practical MFC application and provide information to guide MFC development, this perspective has critically examined and discussed the problems and challenges for developing MFC technology, and identified a possible application niche whereby MFCs can be rationally incorporated into the treatment process. We propose integration of MFCs with other treatment technologies to form an MFC-centered treatment scheme based on thoroughly analyzing the challenges and opportunities, and discuss future efforts to be made for realizing sustainable wastewater treatment.
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    Characterization of Particle Emissions and Fate of Nanomaterials During Incineration
    Vejerano, Eric P.; Leon, Elena C.; Holder, Amara L.; Marr, Linsey C. (The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014-01-24)
    As the use of nanotechnology in consumer products continues to grow, it is inevitable that some nanomaterials will end up in the waste stream and will be incinerated. Through laboratory-scale incineration of paper and plastic wastes containing nanomaterials, we assessed their effect on emissions of particulate matter (PM) and the effect of incineration on the nanomaterials themselves. The presence of nanomaterials did not significantly influence the particle number emission factor. The PM size distribution was not affected except at very high mass loadings (10 wt%) of the nanomaterial, in which case the PM shifted toward smaller sizes; such loadings are not expected to be present in many consumer products. Metal oxide nanomaterials reduced emissions of particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Most of the nanomaterials that remained in the bottom ash retained their original size and morphology but formed large aggregates. Only small amounts of the nanomaterials (0.023–180 mg g−1 of nanomaterial) partitioned into PM, and the emission factors of nanomaterials from an incinerator equipped with an electrostatic precipitator are expected to be low. However, a sustainable disposal method for nanomaterials in the bottom ash is needed, as a majority of them partitioned into this fraction and may thus end up in landfills upon disposal of the ash.
  • Elastic Buckling Database for Thin-Walled Metal Columns with Perforation Patterns
    Smith, Frank H. (2013-09-17)
    Presented is the data set used in the development and validation of approximate finite strip methods for use in predicting elastic buckling strength of cold-formed steel columns including perforation patterns. The influence of perforations is accounted by reduced thicknesses related to the plate buckling coefficient and transverse web rotational stiffness in the prediction of local and distortional buckling respectively. Global buckling prediction including the influence of perforations uses critical elastic loads of an unperforated section multiplied by the ratio of weighted to gross cross-sectional moment of inertia for flexural buckling and the ratios of weighted to gross cross-sectional warping torsion constant and weighted to gross St. Venant torsional constant for flexural-torsional buckling. Concern for end-user was given and methods are presented in a way for incorporation into governing design standards in Smith's Master's Thesis entitled "Finite strip elastic buckling solutions for thin-walled metal columns with perforation patterns" available at http://hdl.handle.net/10919/23680.
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    Inventory of Seismic Structural Evaluations, Performance Functions and Taxonomies for Buildings (INSSEPT)
    Zaker Esteghamati, Mohsen; Lee, Jeonghyun; Musetich, Matthew; Flint, Madeleine M.; Sharifi Mood, Mahyar (DesignSafe-CI, 2019-11-25)
    Relational database of published performance-based earthquake engineering and probabilistic seismic demand analysis results for mid-rise buildings. The database schema is organized based on building taxonomy information and prioritizes structural engineering use cases including comparison of alternative structural systems in early building design and regional seismic portfolio risk analysis. Data provenance, use cases, and sample queries are available in the accompanying manual, as well as two interactive Jupyter notebooks. A full description of the data provenance and schema design is provided in a related manuscript: Zaker Esteghamati, M., Lee J., Musetich M., Flint M. M., `INSSEPT: An open-source relational database of seismic performance estimation to aid with early design of buildings.'
  • Segmentation and Recognition of Highway Assets using Image-based 3D Point Clouds and Semantic Texton Forests
    Golparvar-Fard, Mani; Balali, Vahid; de la Garza, Jesus M. (2013-02-18)
    Efficient data collection of high-quantity and low-cost highway assets such as road signs, traffic signals, light poles, and guardrails is a critical element to the operation, maintenance, and preservation of transportation infrastructure systems. Despite the importance, current practice of highway asset data collection is time-consuming, subjective, and potentially unsafe. The high volume of the data that needs to be collected can also negatively impact the quality of the analysis. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a new algorithm for semantic segmentation and recognition of highway assets using video frames collected from a car-mounted camera. The proposed set of algorithms (1) takes the captured frames and using a pipeline of Structure from Motion and Multi View Stereo reconstructs a 3D point cloud model of the highway and surrounding assets; (2) using a Semantic Texton Forest classifier, each geo-registered 2D video frame at the pixel-level is segmented based on shape, texture, and color of the highway assets; and finally (3) based on the results of the 2D segmentation and a new voting scheme, each reconstructed 3D point in the cloud is also categorized for one type of asset and is color coded accordingly. The resulting augmented reality environment which integrates the color coded point clouds with the geo-registered video frames enables a user to conduct visual walk through and query different categories of assets. Experiments were performed on a challenging video dataset containing sequences filmed from a moving car on a 2.2-mile-long, two-lane highway research facility. Experimental results with an average accuracy of 76.50% and 86.75% in segmentation and pixel-level recognition of 12 types of asset categories reflect the promise of the applicability of this approach for segmentation and recognition of highway assets from image-based 3D point clouds. It also enables future algorithmic developments for 3D localization of traffic signs and other assets that are detected using the state-of-the-art vision-based methods.
  • Test Videos - Compression-Tension Hysteretic Response of Cold-Formed Steel C-Section Framing Members
    Padilla-Llano, David A.; Moen, Cristopher D.; Eatherton, Matthew R. (2012-06-19)
    This paper summarizes results from an experimental program designed to evaluate the tension-compression cyclic axial response of cold-formed steel Csection structural framing members. A new cyclic loading protocol for coldformed steel members is presented that defines the target axial displacement based on elastic buckling parameters. The protocol is used to explore the cyclic response of members experiencing local buckling, distortional buckling, and global buckling deformation. In the experiments, post-bucking energy dissipation was observed along with tension stretching and softening. The quantity of dissipated energy per cycle increased as cross-section and global slenderness decreased. Specimens experiencing local and distortional buckling dissipated more energy per half-wavelength than those experiencing global buckling.
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    Toxicity of Particulate Matter from Incineration of Nanowaste
    Vejerano, Eric P.; Ma, Yanjun; Holder, Amara L.; Pruden, Amy; Elankumaran, Subbiah; Marr, Linsey C. (The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015-01-13)
    Disposal of some nanomaterial-containing waste by incineration and the subsequent formation of particulate matter (PM) along with hazardous combustion by-products are inevitable. The effect of nanomaterials on the toxicity of the PM is unknown. We assessed the oxidative potential (OP) and toxicity of PM resulting from the incineration of pure nanomaterials and of paper and plastic wastes containing Ag, NiO, TiO2, ceria, C60, Fe2O3, or CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (CdSe QD) at mass loadings ranging from 0.1 wt% to 10 wt%. We measured reactive oxygen species (ROS) using the dichlorofluorescein assay, and we also measured consumption of ascorbic acid, dithiothreitol (DTT), glutathione (GSH), or uric acid antioxidants from raw and solvent-extracted PM, denoted “cleaned PM”. We determined cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of PM to A549 human lung epithelial cells with the WST-1 cell viability and histone immunofluorescence assays, respectively. In most cases, the presence of nanomaterials in the waste did not significantly affect the OP of PM; however, PM derived from waste containing Ag, TiO2, and C60 had elevated ROS response in the GSH and DTT assays. The ratio of reduced to oxidized glutathione was significantly higher for cleaned PM compared to raw PM for almost all nanomaterials at almost all concentrations, indicating that combustion by-products adsorbed on raw PM play an important role in determining OP. The presence of nanomaterials did not significantly modify the cytotoxicity or genotoxicity of the PM. Different antioxidants used to assess OP had varying sensitivity towards organic compounds v. metals in PM. The presence of these seven nanomaterials at low concentrations in the waste stream is not expected to exacerbate the hazard posed by PM that is produced by incineration.