The perception of a long-term cost advantage of synthetic infill turf systems relative to natural grass systems has contributed to a rise in their popularity in the USA. However, few comprehensive cost assessments of natural grass and synthetic infill systems exist. There are also no studies looking at interactions between...
Structurally efficient and cost-effective solutions are needed to extend the service-life of deficient and aging highway infrastructure around the world. One critical need is to increase the flexural strength of older reinforced concrete (RC) structures to carry heavier and more frequent loads. Titanium alloy bars (TiAB) offer a new opportunity...
Large numbers of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges were built in the past that are now considered seismically deficient. The structural members most likely to be considered deficient are the supporting columns. Typical deficient columns contain inadequate transverse reinforcement and poorly detailed lap splice lengths above the foundation. Insufficient lap splice...
Aging and deficient infrastructure has become a major problem throughout the world. This is particularly evident in the case of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. The cost of replacing these bridges is often prohibitive, thus engineers must find ways to strengthen them. Many older RC bridges predate the modern understanding of...
The Pacific Northwest is at risk for significant seismic and tsunami events, which are capable of severely damaging lifeline transportation infrastructure, particularly bridges. As the bridges in the United States age and begin to show signs of fatigue, the risk for severe damage increases. Proper monitoring and inspection of bridges...
This study explores how environmental governance mechanisms affect state management of forest roads to address the chronic delivery of sediment to streams in Oregon, Washington, and California on private and state forestlands. Forest roads can degrade water quality and harm aquatic life when runoff mobilizes fine sediments from the road...
In the past two years, Oregon State University (OSU) Corvallis campus suffered several power outages. The estimated cost of one of those outages was close to a million dollars worth of equipment and impact on research projects. Meanwhile, the campus grid operates with severely aging power assets. The reliability of...
This study evaluates the distributional impacts of an alternative public roads finance method, a road usage charge (RUC) fee, on lower income households and rural households in Oregon. While previous research has relied on the 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), this research will uses the 2011-2013 Oregon...
Streams across the world are highly fragmented due to the presence of in-stream barriers (e.g., dams and stream-road crossings), many of which restrict or block fish passage. Retrofitting or replacing these structures is a high priority for restoring habitat connectivity for native fishes and other aquatic organisms in the Pacific...
Many older reinforced concrete deck girder (RCDG) bridges contain straight bar terminations of flexural reinforcement. Common bridge design practice of the 1950s did not consider the additional demands on the terminated bars from shear and flexure. Moreover, more stringent code specifications and heavier permit trucks contribute to the insufficient ratings...
Large numbers of reinforced concrete deck girder (RCDG) bridges were built during the highway infrastructure boom of the 1950's. The advent of standardized deformed steel reinforcing bars during this time allowed for straight bar terminations in flexural tension regions. Designers of the time terminated reinforcing bars where they were no...
Sewerage infrastructure, including wastewater treatment facilities and conveyance pipes, is reaching the end of its useful life throughout the United States. Aging infrastructure may be more susceptible to fracturing and collapses due to deterioration. Further, sewerage infrastructure is usually designed to discharge untreated wastewater or stormwater into nearby waterways during...
The shoe repair transaction, as it occurs in the 5000 or so remaining shoe repair shops in the United States, is currently unexamined in academic literature for the significance it holds for either shoe repairers or their customers. Making use of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection, this...
The Astoria-Megler Bridge is a 6.6 kilometer (4.1 mile) long bridge, connecting Oregon and Washington on US 101, with a continuous steel truss main span of 376 m (1232 ft). It is the second longest main span bridge of this type in the world. Due to vortex shedding, some of...
The objective of this project was to evaluate methods to remediate a wood I-joist with a single, circular hole in the web while leaving utilities in place. The methods were experimentally evaluated with a full-scale bending test using four equally spaced point loads. There were three depths of joists with...
Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) materials are emerging as an effective means of strengthening and rehabilitating bridges. Near surface mounting (NSM) is a newer technique for application of CFRP for retrofitting of bridge members that provides advantages over conventional strengthening techniques. The technique is still new and uncertainties remain regarding...
Due to age, original design that is deficient by modern standards, inadequate maintenance, environmental conditions, and increasing loads, large numbers of bridges in United States and elsewhere are classified as deficient and in need of rehabilitation or replacement. According to a national bridge inventory established by the Federal Highway Administration,...
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...
Many conventionally reinforced concrete deck girder bridges (RCDG) and their intermediate supporting bent caps were designed during the Eisenhower interstate era of the 1950’s with the AASHO design equations at the time, which subsequently place higher demand on the concrete. The referenced components may exhibit diagonal cracking due to the...
One of the basic questions facing transportation planners and road managers is how to provide and maintain a road system that provides efficient access to the forest while limiting adverse effects roads can have on water and soil resources. The purpose of this study is to develop decision support models...
In recent years there has been concern over the deterioration and lack of adequate
funding for the US road and highway system. The main goals of this study are to
examine how increasing use of general financing methods effects road quality, to
determine if capital outlay and maintenance expenditure impact...
As the traffic demand increases at a faster rate than the upgrade and maintenance of
transportation facilities through the traditional public financing methods in the United
States, the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is becoming an important supplement to
the public transportation infrastructure investment. There are already several existing
PPP toll road...
The purpose of the study was to provide a method for evaluating the effect, impact or role that (as perceived by automotive, diesel, automotive collision faculty and administrators) the nationally recognized industry training standards developed by Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) and National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) have on the...
Article 1: Behavior of Epoxy Injected Diagonally Cracked Full-Scale CRC Deck-Girders.
Many cast-in place reinforced concrete deck-girder bridges (RCDG) remain in the national inventory and exhibit diagonal cracking. Epoxy injection has been in use for several decades as a method for sealing diagonal cracks, but the effects on girder behavior...
The natural gas industry has become essential in many areas in the United States. Currently there is over 37.5 million miles of natural gas distribution lines. A large majority of these lines are polyethylene pipes. With such a large percentage of polyethylene lines in use gas companies are continually looking...
The behavior of stirrups engaged by diagonal cracks and under service loads is
largely unknown. Full-size laboratory specimens were loaded to induce diagonal
cracks and subjected to high-cycle fatigue loading to represent a service life of 50
years. Tests indicated little change in the average stirrup stress range and mean...
Fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) are becoming more widely used for repair and strengthening of conventionally reinforced concrete (CRC) bridge members. Once installed, the repair may be exposed to millions of load cycles during service life. The anticipated life of FRP repairs for shear strengthening of bridge members under repeated service...
The detection of motor faults at their incipient stage is of prime importance to any industrial plant. The introduction of adjustable speed drives has improved the control and the efficiency of induction motors, however, this has changed the nature of motor faults and how they can be detected.
Current signature...
Preventative motor fault detection is of prime importance for modern plant management. During research into rotor faults, performed at the Motor Systems Resource Facility (MSRF), an optimized rotor fault detection and classification method was proposed. In critical process applications, the suggested method would provide the foundation for continually monitoring a...
Polyethylene has been used extensively for natural gas transport since the mid-1970's. The pipeline system is sound and well-functioning, but there are some aspects of the system that could be improved. One of these is the repair method of leaking pipes. Presently if a natural gas pipe begins to leak,...
Induction motors are considered to be the work horse in all types of today's industries. In all mechanical applications, using an induction motor is considered to be the preferable, if not the optimum selection. Their failures, on the other hand, cause an interruption equal to their volume of dependency in...
The prioritization of road maintenance projects is an important forest engineering
task subject to limited budgets and competing investment needs. Large investments are made each year to maintain and upgrade forest road networks to meet economic and environmental goals. Many models and guidelines are available for single-criterion analysis of forest...
With the dominance of polyethylene as the building material for America's natural gas distribution system and a growing demand for natural gas, there exists and ever increasing need for improved methods of repairing damaged natural gas distribution pipe. This paper serves as the ground work for a multi-part study seeking...
Assessment of an existing bridge is needed when the structure exhibits signs of distress. Assessment practices require refinement in the calculation of loading and resistance while maintaining an acceptable level of risk, to minimize costs associated with repair, replacement and weight restrictions. Previous risk-based assessments evaluated the strength cases for...
We first need to note that the soil nitrogen that makes plants green is primarily in the form of nitrate, and this nitrogen is accessible to plants specifically because it stays dissolved in the soil water. In a typical corn field, where the bulk of the roots are in the...
The decision sequences used for troubleshooting of complex electro-mechanical systems are often ad hoc and less than optimal. This research investigated Decision Analysis and Bayesian Networks for generating an optimal decision sequence for troubleshooting. The model that was used in this research was the bleed air control system of the...
Many Departments of Transportation (DOTs) have done construction and maintenance work at night in order to minimize the disruption of daytime traffic, but nighttime operations produce a new set of concerns such as safety, public relations, productivity, and work quality. In addition, decision-making for using nighttime operations has been subjective...
The Horsetail Creek (HC) bridge is an example of an Oregon bridge that was classified as structurally deficient and was not designed to withstand earthquake (EQ) excitations. A fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) rehabilitation was performed on the HC bridge to increase flexural and shear capacities for traffic loads. However, a seismic...
The systems currently available for forest road design are not capable of making computer-aided design judgments such as: 1) automated generation of alternative grade lines, 2) optimizing vertical alignment, 3) minimizing total cost of construction, maintenance, and transportation costs, and 4) aiming for least environmental impacts. In recent years, advances...
This research addresses the large-scale group fleet replacement problem with multiple vehicle types of multiple units, under budget and demand constraints. Past research in group fleet replacement is limited and has focused on one vehicle type, with multiples units and constraints. Many studies in fleet replacement have also dealt with...
This handbook is is a comprehensive guide to building and maintaining cost-effective, environmentally acceptable logging roads. It is aimed specifically at nonindustrial private woodland owners in western Oregon and Washington, but it draws on basic forest road engineering principles and practices applicable in other forestry settings. The text is written,...
The most common wastewater treatment system used in rural areas is the septic tank-soil absorption system. The septic tank removes settlable and floatable solids from the wastewater, and the soil absorption field filters and treats the clarified septic tank effluent. Removing the solids from the wastewater protects the soil absorption...