Development of Object-Oriented Design and Specifications for Iowa DOT and Urban Standards: Phase I, TR-487, 2004

Currently, individuals including designers, contractors, and owners learn about the project requirements by studying a combination of paper and electronic copies of the construction documents including the drawings, specifications (standard and supplemental), road and bridge standard drawings, design criteria, contracts, addenda, and change orders. This can be a tedious process since one needs to go back and forth between the various documents (paper or electronic) to obtain information about the entire project. Object-oriented computer-aided design (OO-CAD) is an innovative technology that can bring a change to this process by graphical portrayal of information. OO-CAD allows users to point and click on portions of an object-oriented drawing that are then linked to relevant databases of information (e.g., specifications, procurement status, and shop drawings). The vision of this study is to turn paper-based design standards and construction specifications into an object-oriented design and specification (OODAS) system or a visual electronic reference library (ERL). Individuals can use the system through a handheld wireless book-size laptop that includes all of the necessary software for operating in a 3D environment. All parties involved in transportation projects can access all of the standards and requirements simultaneously using a 3D graphical interface. By using this system, users will have all of the design elements and all of the specifications readily available without concerns of omissions. A prototype object-oriented model was created and demonstrated to potential users representing counties, cities, and the state. Findings suggest that a system like this could improve productivity to find information by as much as 75% and provide a greater sense of confidence that all relevant information had been identified. It was also apparent that this system would be used by more people in construction than in design. There was also concern related to the cost to develop and maintain the complete system. The future direction should focus on a project-based system that can help the contractors and DOT inspectors find information (e.g., road standards, specifications, instructional memorandums) more rapidly as it pertains to a specific project.

Scour Around Bridge Piers and Abutments, HR-30 and Iowa Highway Research Board Bulletin No. 4, 1956

Man’s never-ending search for better materials and construction methods and for techniques of analysis and design has overcome most of the early difficulties of bridge building. Scour of the stream bed, however, has remained a major cause of bridge failures ever since man learned to place piers and abutments in the stream in order to cross wide rivers. Considering the overall complexity of field conditions, it is not surprising that no generally accepted principles (not even rules of thumb) for the prediction of scour around bridge piers and abutments have evolved from field experience alone. The flow of individual streams exhibits a manifold variation, and great disparity exists among different rivers. The alignment, cross section, discharge, and slope of a stream must all be correlated with the scour phenomenon, and this in turn must be correlated with the characteristics of the bed material ranging from clays and fine silts to gravels and boulders. Finally, the effect of the shape of the obstruction itself-the pier or abutment-must be assessed. Since several of these factors are likely to vary with time to some degree, and since the scour phenomenon as well is inherently unsteady, sorting out the influence of each of the various factors is virtually impossible from field evidence alone. The experimental approach was chosen as the investigative method for this study, but with due recognition of the importance of field measurements and with the realization that the results must be interpreted so as to be compatible with the present-day theories of fluid mechanics and sediment transportation. This approach was chosen because, on the one hand, the factors affecting the scour phenomenon can be controlled in the laboratory to an extent that is not possible in the field, and, on the other hand, the model technique can be used to circumvent the present inadequate understanding of the phenomenon of the movement of sediment by flowing water. In order to obtain optimum results from the laboratory study, the program was arranged at the outset to include a related set of variables in each of several phases into which the whole problem was divided. The phases thus selected were : 1. Geometry of piers and abutments, 2. Hydraulics of the stream, 3. Characteristics of the sediment, 4. Geometry of channel shape and alignment.