Critical Infrastructures (CIs) such as energy, water supply, telecommunications, and transportation are highly vulnerable to cascading failures due to their interdependent operations. A resilient network is crucial to withstand the impact of functionality loss in disruptive events. This research evaluates network expansion as a proactive resilience strategy in which new...
Modern supply chains have grown to be far more complex than their predecessors, as global trade and accessibility have opened avenues of trade that were previously impossible. As such, the inherent risk of internal and/or external disruptions impacting the performance of a supply chain has also grown due to the...
Managing agricultural diversity ensures a range of public services, such as genetic resource diversity, food security for subsistence-based economies, and landscape resilience in the context of climate change, among others. These agrobiodiversity conservation services are positive externalities from agrobiodiversity conservation. Whereas their value is not captured in market transactions, management...
Society derives many critical and irreplaceable values from forests. With a growing global human population and rates of consumption, forests are under increasing pressure to provide all these values simultaneously. To meet societal demands for wood products, tree plantations are becoming increasingly common and are replacing native forests. Yet, forests...
Vertical datum is a reference system used for specifying the elevation of specific points on or near the Earth. Precise and accurate definition and realization of vertical references are, therefore, crucial to ensure consistency between height measurements. The vertical datums can be divided into two categories: 1) vertical geodetic datums...
The variability introduced into measurements by a measuring instrument is referred to as measurement instrument precision. Experimental procedures and analysis methods exist when measurements are repeatable and can be repeated on the same item. However, when the measurements are destructive and repeated measurements are not possible, estimating measuring instrument precision...
Timber-concrete composite (TCC) floors have improved strength and stiffness when compared to timber-only floors, allowing for longer spans in buildings and improved life safety. However, North America does not have codes and standards that recognize TCC floors, particularly the improved life safety performance of these floors in fire. Therefore, alternate...
Teamwork has become a popular operational strategy applied as part of workforce management plans in manufacturing and service industries. Teamwork has been commonly used in organizations to pursue different goals such as increase business operations agility, boost company productivity, improve quality in operations, increase company flexibility, promote collaborative learning, hasten...
Roadway departure crashes accounted for 18,275 fatal crashes in 2017 across the United States (Jones et al. 2017). Rumble strips (RS) provide audible and haptic interior alert when a vehicle is departing the roadway reducing run-off-the road crashes. Although inexpensive to install, and easy to maintain, RS are not installed...
Resilient water, food, and energy management strategies for an ever-growing population and changing environment depends on our understanding of water and carbon cycles from local to global scales. Fluxes of water and carbon are coupled by photosynthesis and plant transpiration cycles the largest fraction of terrestrial water from the land...
Snow water equivalent (SWE) is a critical measurement in hydrology and water resources management. Microwave remote sensing can estimate snow water equivalent (SWE). However, the algorithms used to estimate SWE require snow grain size information. Thus, determining snow grain size is pertinent to estimate SWE. Currently, there are several models...
The global Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) industry has changed dramatically within the past decade, with expansion outside of its start in Alpine Europe. The societal focus on more sustainable options within the built environment has led to an increased use of mass timber construction and its products including cross-laminated timber. Examining...
Rapid increasing of renewable energies and the knowledge about their environmental effects are very limited. As a result, the renewable energies (e.g. solar or wind energies) will play a vital role in the future because it is well accepted by environmental friendly industries. This dissertation presents the modeling, data analysis...
The corrosion and passivity of iron (and carbon steel) in media with different alkalinity as well as iron depassivation have been studied extensively using electrochemical methods and nano-scale surface characterization studies. The electrochemical techniques provide valuable information about the average electrochemical behavior of relatively large metal surfaces, typically in centimeter-square...
Western juniper is a native species in eastern Oregon that became invasive during the last century since its range increased fivefold from 1936 to 1988. Western juniper’s ability to absorb rainfall and groundwater has deleterious effects on stream flow and sensitive sage grouse habitat in eastern Oregon. New methods of...
A sewer geyser is a series of ejecting air-water mixture eruptions through vertical shafts of drainage systems. In field observed geyser incidents, manhole covers were blown into the air and they were followed by ejecting air-water mixture eruptions that lasted for several seconds at a time. Trapped air in sewer...
Organizations are constantly looking for innovative strategies to face more stringent competitive environments and the ever increasing market globalization. An alternative these organizations can pursue to respond to these challenges is to optimize their supply chain network (SCN). Important considerations when optimizing a SCN involve determining locations for plants and...
Increased energy costs have prompted the rural village of Galena, Alaska to explore viable alternatives for heat and power generation. Continued dependency on petroleum products will cause the community’s economic driving force, the Galena Interior Learning Academy (GILA), to face uncertain operability. A wood-fired boiler is scheduled to be installed,...
A helicopter operations problem was studied for a private forest landowner testing an
experimental application of minerals on Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesil) in the Coast Range
of Oregon to offset growth reductions from Swiss needle cast disease. A planning approach was
needed to minimize costs for transportation and aerial application of...
Physical experimentation in various scientific and engineering areas continues to be a useful and often necessary approach that is applied in research, development, and for general problem solving. The experimental design process however, is iterative and often involves trial and error. Alternative designs are proposed and evaluated on cost and...
Forest management in the face of fire risk is a challenging problem because fire spreads across a landscape and because its occurrence is unpredictable. Additionally, management must be adjusted over time as unpredictable fire events are realized. Land managers have some control over the vegetation conditions that facilitate fire spread,...
Every year thousands of people are killed or injured in work zone crashes in the US due to excessive speed, distraction, inattentiveness, low visibility, and other factors. Roadway construction and maintenance operations often occur at night when the traffic volume is low, creating less congestion and delay to the traffic....
This study presents the theoretical background necessary to model the bearing capacity of shallow and deep foundations in partially saturated soils. The conventional bearing capacity equations for shallow and deep foundations and the 𝛽-method for deep foundation side resistance have been modified to include the effects of matric suction and...
In this thesis I examine the question: can allowing a wildfire to burn this year result in a net positive economic gain? To answer this question I created 2,500 multiple sets of paired scenarios (called a fire of interest) which consist of ignitions, vegetation growth, and timber harvest over the...
Characterization of a microchannel solar thermal receiver for supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) is presented. The receiver design is based on conjugate computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer simulations as well as thermo-mechanical stress analysis. Two lab scale receivers with a 2x2 cm² absorber area are fabricated and experimentally characterized -...
Small business energy analysts often specialize in one aspect of the business. This specialized focus is done by necessity due to scarcity of resources and to maintain a proprietary market niche. However, this specialized focus results in a growth inhibitor due to their lack of ability to address all the...
A Right-hook (RH) crash is a common type of bicycle-motor vehicle crash that occurs between a right-turning vehicle and through-moving bicycle at an intersection. At signalized intersections, RH crashes can occur at the onset of the green or during the latter portion of the green phase. In spite of the...
Simulated Annealing and Threshold Accepting are two stochastic search algorithms that have been successfully used on a variety of complex and difficult problem sets. Due to their stochastic nature they are not guaranteed to produce the same result for each run. This means that these techniques actually produce a distribution...
State departments of transportation, transportation consultants, and other transportation agencies are always in need of data that can be used to better understand how different modes of transportation use the road and highway systems. A variety of automatic data collection technologies have been used to gather these data including video...
Central Oregon has attracted attention as a potential location for a biomass industry based on a locally fixed source of western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis Hook) feedstock. This study identifies a supply of juniper from private lands to determine how much of the available juniper is economically supplied at alternative prices...
Stock loss and out-of-stocks are outcomes of poorly designed inventory management systems and can lead to significant revenue losses. Inventory management systems (IMS) based on radio frequency identification (RFID) have the potential to minimize these losses if they are properly designed and deployed. However, the placement of RFID readers to...
Failure of a gusset plate that caused the I-35W Bridge collapse in Minneapolis, MN resulted in mandated rating of connections by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Rating connections requires material properties as an input. The material properties are generally reported on the available detailed drawings for bridges. However, some bridges...
The use of fossil fuels and their related impact on the environment and global warming have encouraged societies to pursue more sustainable and renewable alternatives, e.g., forest-based bio-oil. Thus, a vital need to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the tendency of nations to reduce their dependency on...
In this work, continuous synthesis routes for binary nanoparticles using advantages of microchannel mixing (low diffusion distances and higher mass transfer) and fast heating rates provided by ultrasound induced heating are investigated. In addition, the application of silica nanoparticles in anti-reflective coatings on glass and understanding the structure property-performance correlation...
Productivity Interfirm Comparison (PIC) is a simple
method used to improve productivity at the firm level,
where a number of firms operate in the same product line so
that performance information on the firms can be compiled
and compared. This results in identifying potential areas
for improvement or exploitation. The...
Reflection of an obliquely incident solitary wave at a vertical wall is studied experimentally in the laboratory wave tank. Precision measurements of water-surface variations are achieved with the aid of laser-induced fluorescent (LIF) technique and detailed temporal and spatial features of the
Mach reflection are captured. During the development stage...
A decision support system (DSS) for nurse scheduling in
hospitals is developed and implemented on microcomputer. The
system includes algorithms and databases for developing weekly
work and shift patterns and combining these into working
schedules for nurses for a specified time horizon, and
interface modules for the user to interact...
The nonlinear response of an ocean system subjected to random excitations can exhibit very complex dynamic behaviors including jump phenomena and coexistence of attractors. In this study, the stochastic system response behavior of a simple (Duffing) oscillator under narrow-band random excitations is first examined in the subharmonic resonance region. A...
Occurrence of human error in highly complex systems, such as a cockpit, can be disastrous and/or overwhelmingly costly. Mismanagement of multiple concurrent tasks has been observed by researchers to be a type of repetitive human error in previous studies of accidents and incidents. This error may occur in the form...
Three-dimensional laser scanning has revolutionized spatial data acquisition and can be completed from a variety of platforms including airborne (ALS), mobile (MLS), and static terrestrial (TLS) laser scanning. MLS is a rapidly evolving technology that provides increases in efficiency and safety over static TLS, while still providing similar levels of...
Cellular manufacturing, which is also referred to as group technology among researchers, has primarily been used as a means to increase productivity, efficiency and flexibility. Under group technology, similar jobs, which have similar shape, material, and processing operations are assigned to the same group. Moreover, dissimilar machines are assigned to...
Many of the analytical techniques that are currently available are not capable of
analyzing the offtracking of truck and trailer combinations or the path of load overhangs
through a set of curves that are commonly found on forest roads. Advances in the
processing speed of microcomputers have made it possible...
Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has become a popular remote sensing technology to create digital terrain models and provide forest inventory information. However, little research has been done to investigate the accuracy of using airborne LiDAR to perform measurement tasks common to Forest Engineering. This thesis contains two manuscripts...
Current frameworks for analyzing forest carbon offset projects in disturbance-prone western forests often fail to address the dynamic nature of carbon pathways through time. They do not account for the probability of loss due to wildfire, which can influence the prediction of carbon storage at the end of a planning...
Over the last decade the world has seen three major tsunamis strike the coasts of
Indonesia, Samoa, and Chile. These tsunamis have caused significant losses of life and
property on the coastal cities of these and nearby countries. The NEES (Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation) Housesmash project was created to...
Isolated approaches at signalized intersections with posted speed limits of 45 mph or greater generally experience large numbers of rear-end and angle collisions. A combination of less attentive drivers, high operating speeds, and less than ideal intersection characteristics can result in crash frequencies well above expected rates. A number of...
The importance of accurately identifying inventories of domestic energy, including forest biomass, has increasingly become a priority of the US government and its citizens as the cost of fossil fuels has risen. It is useful to identify which of these resources can be processed and transported at the lowest cost...
This thesis is the consequence of a research effort undertaken by the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University and funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA). The principal objective of the effort was to reduce the life cycle cost...
Micro Energy and Chemical Systems (MECS) devices enable at least two
areas of benefit due to the accelerated heat and mass transfer that can be
accomplished in microchannels. First, MECS devices enable process
intensification; the ability to reduce the volume of space needed to implement
systems of thermal and chemical...
In the field of forest planning, assumptions regarding the appropriate modeling of management behavior, translated through management prescriptions, minimum harvest ages, green-up periods, and other variables are needed if a stand-level optimization process is not used to guide the selection of stand management regimes Forest planners thus generally have a...