Recommended Practice for Accepting New Concrete Pavement Surfaces for Tire/Pavement Noise, March 2, 2011

This practice provides guidance and example specification language intended for use by Owner-Agencies in development of specific contract language when requiring the evaluation of tire/pavement noise for new concrete pavement surfaces. The overall sound intensity level is designated as the quality characteristic used for pay adjustment.

Health consultation : Exposure to fluff material from the Shine Brothers and noise concerns -- Spencer, Iowa (2011)

This letter has been prepared as a consultation to determine some potential health concerns raised by a resident of Spencer from exposure to wire shredder fluff material emitted by Shine Brothers metal salvaging facility in Spencer, Iowa on July 10, 2011 and, a concern regarding the health impacts from the level of noise measured by a resident near the metal salvaging facility.

Farm-Level Analysis of Risk Management Proposals, March 2000

This paper presents a detailed report of the representative farm analysis (summarized in FAPRI Policy Working Paper #01-00). At the request of several members of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the U.S. Senate, we have continued to analyze the impacts of the Farmers’ Risk Management Act of 1999 (S. 1666) and the Risk Management for the 21st Century Act (S. 1580). Earlier analysis reported in FAPRI Policy Working Paper #04-99 concentrated on the aggregate net farm income and government outlay impacts. The representative farm analysis is conducted for several types of farms, including both irrigated and non-irrigated cotton farms in Tom Green County, Texas; dryland wheat farms in Morton County, North Dakota and Sumner County, Kansas; and a corn farm in Webster County, Iowa. We consider additional factors that may shed light on the differential impacts of the two plans. 1. Farm-level income impacts under alternative weather scenarios. 2. Additional indirect impacts, such as a change in ability to obtain financing. 3. Implications of within-year price shocks. Our results indicate that farmers who buy crop insurance will increase their coverage levels under S. 1580. Farmers with high yield risk find that the 65 percent coverage level maximizes expected returns, but some who feel that they obtain other benefits from higher coverage will find that the S. 1580 subsidy schedule significantly lowers the cost of obtaining the additional coverage. Farmers with lower yield risk find that the increased indemnities from additional coverage will more than offset the increase in producer premium. In addition, because S. 1580 extends its increased premium subsidy percentages to revenue insurance products, farmers will have an increased incentive to buy revenue insurance. Differences in the ancillary benefits from crop insurance under the baseline and S. 1580 would be driven by the increase in insurance participation and buy-up. Given the same levels of insurance participation and buy-up, the ancillary benefits under the two scenarios would be the same.

Field Experiments of Current Concrete Pavement Surface Characteristics Practices: Iowa Data Collection and Analysis, December 2005

One of the most important issues in portland cement concrete pavement research today is surface characteristics. The issue is one of balancing surface texture construction with the need for durability, skid resistance, and noise reduction. The National Concrete Pavement Technology Center at Iowa State University, in conjunction with the Federal Highway Administration, American Concrete Pavement Association, International Grinding and Grooving Association, Iowa Highway Research Board, and other states, have entered into a three-part National Surface Characteristics Program to resolve the balancing problem. As a portion of Part 2, this report documents the construction of 18 separate pavement surfaces for use in the first level of testing for the national project. It identifies the testing to be done and the limitations observed in the construction process. The results of the actual tests will be included in the subsequent national study reports.

Evaluation of U.S. and European Concrete Pavement Noise Reduction Methods, July 2006

Highway noise is one of the most pressing of the surface characteristics issues facing the concrete paving industry. This is particularly true in urban areas, where not only is there a higher population density near major thoroughfares, but also a greater volume of commuter traffic (Sandberg and Ejsmont 2002; van Keulen 2004). To help address this issue, the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center (CP Tech Center) at Iowa State University (ISU), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA), and other organizations have partnered to conduct a multi-part, seven-year Concrete Pavement Surface Characteristics Project. This document contains the results of Part 1, Task 2, of the ISU-FHWA project, addressing the noise issue by evaluating conventional and innovative concrete pavement noise reduction methods. The first objective of this task was to determine what if any concrete surface textures currently constructed in the United States or Europe were considered quiet, had long-term friction characteristics, could be consistently built, and were cost effective. Any specifications of such concrete textures would be included in this report. The second objective was to determine whether any promising new concrete pavement surfaces to control tire-pavement noise and friction were in the development stage and, if so, what further research was necessary. The final objective was to identify measurement techniques used in the evaluation.

Water Level Changes in Iowa's Aquifers, 2008

This monthly report from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is about the water quality management of Iowa's rivers, streams and lakes.

Water Level Changes in Iowa's Aquifers, 2008

This monthly report from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is about the water quality management of Iowa's rivers, streams and lakes.

Maintenance Service Level Map, October 13, 2006

Maintenance Service Level Map

On The Spot Damage Detection Methodology for Highway Bridges, July 2010

Vibration-based damage identification (VBDI) techniques have been developed in part to address the problems associated with an aging civil infrastructure. To assess the potential of VBDI as it applies to highway bridges in Iowa, three applications of VBDI techniques were considered in this study: numerical simulation, laboratory structures, and field structures. VBDI techniques were found to be highly capable of locating and quantifying damage in numerical simulations. These same techniques were found to be accurate in locating various types of damage in a laboratory setting with actual structures. Although there is the potential for these techniques to quantify damage in a laboratory setting, the ability of the methods to quantify low-level damage in the laboratory is not robust. When applying these techniques to an actual bridge, it was found that some traditional applications of VBDI methods are capable of describing the global behavior of the structure but are most likely not suited for the identification of typical damage scenarios found in civil infrastructure. Measurement noise, boundary conditions, complications due to substructures and multiple material types, and transducer sensitivity make it very difficult for present VBDI techniques to identify, much less quantify, highly localized damage (such as small cracks and minor changes in thickness). However, while investigating VBDI techniques in the field, it was found that if the frequency-domain response of the structure can be generated from operating traffic load, the structural response can be animated and used to develop a holistic view of the bridge’s response to various automobile loadings. By animating the response of a field bridge, concrete cracking (in the abutment and deck) was correlated with structural motion and problem frequencies (i.e., those that cause significant torsion or tension-compression at beam ends) were identified. Furthermore, a frequency-domain study of operational traffic was used to identify both common and extreme frequencies for a given structure and loading. Common traffic frequencies can be compared to problem frequencies so that cost-effective, preventative solutions (either structural or usage-based) can be developed for a wide range of IDOT bridges. Further work should (1) perfect the process of collecting high-quality operational frequency response data; (2) expand and simplify the process of correlating frequency response animations with damage; and (3) develop efficient, economical, preemptive solutions to common damage types.

Guide Specification for Highway Construction Texturing Concrete Pavement for Reduced Tire/Pavement Noise using Diamond Grinding, March 1, 2011

This document provides language that can be used by an Owner-Agency to develop materials and construction specifications with the objective of reducing tire/pavement noise. While the practices described herein are largely prescriptive, they have been demonstrated to increase the likelihood of constructing a durable, quieter concrete surface.

Guide Specification for Highway Construction Texturing Concrete Pavement for Reduced Tire/Pavement Noise using Artificial Turf Drag, March 1, 2011

This document provides language that can be used by an Owner-Agency to develop materials and construction specifications with the objective of reducing tire/pavement noise. While the practices described herein are largely prescriptive, they have been demonstrated to increase the likelihood of constructing a durable, quieter concrete surface. Guidance is provided herein for texturing the concrete surface since texture geometry has a paramount effect on tire/pavement noise. Guidance for curing is also provided to improve strength and durability of the surface mortar, and thus to improve texture durability.

Guide Specification for Highway Construction Texturing Concrete Pavement for Reduced Tire/Pavement Noise using Longitudinal Tining, March 1, 2011

This document provides language that can be used by an Owner-Agency to develop materials and construction specifications with the objective of reducing tire/pavement noise. While the practices described herein are largely prescriptive, they have been demonstrated to increase the likelihood of constructing a durable, quieter concrete surface. Guidance is provided herein for texturing the concrete surface since texture geometry has a paramount effect on tire/pavement noise. Guidance for curing is also provided to improve strength and durability of the surface mortar, and thus to improve texture durability.

Effects of Pavement Surface Texture on Noise and Frictional Characteristics HR-281, February 1987

An experimental modification of the transverse groove surface texture of a section of an urban interstate highway was performed by the Iowa Department of Transportation. Transverse groove texturing i s a design feature required by the Federal Highway Administration t o reduce skidding under wet pavement conditions. Adjacent residents claimed the texturing was the cause of especially annoying tonal characteristics within the traffic noise. A research proposal to modify the existing texture pattern by surface grinding and to study the noise and friction effects was approved for funding by the Iowa Highway Research Board. Results i n the form of a comparison between traffic noise before modification and traffic noise immediately after and 15 months after modification indicate that the change in surface texture has lowered overall traffic noise levels by reducing a high frequency component of the traffic noise spectrum. Fraffic testing data show reduced capacity of the roadway to inhibit wet pavement skidding as a result of the surface modification.

Fertilizer Use by Crop at the Country Level (1990–2010)

We compute the fertilizer use in corn, cotton, soybeans, and rapeseed in the period from 1990 to 2010 for a set of selected countries. In each case, we present the consumption of nitrogen, phosphate, and potash by crop and by year, reporting both the fertilizer application rates (in kilograms per hectare) and the fertilizer consumption (in thousand metric tonnes). We allocate a country’s total nutrient consumption in a given year among competing crops based on publicly available statistics. The resulting allocation of fertilizer among crops is a function of the country’s nutrients total use, the country’s cropped areas, crop world prices, and crop- and country-specific fertilizer application rates for some years. In this report we show results on fertilizer consumption by crop for the top fertilizer consuming countries, and a downloadable MS Excel file “FertilizerDemandByCropData.xls” shows the complete set of results.

How to Reduce Tire-Pavement Noise: Better Practices for Constructing and Texturing Concrete Pavement Surfaces, TPF-5(139), 2012

Concrete pavements can be designed and constructed to be as quiet as any other conventional pavement type in use today. This report provides an overview of how this can be done—and done consistently. In order to construct a quieter concrete pavement, the texture must have certain fundamental characteristics. While innovative equipment and techniques have shown promise for constructing quieter pavements in the future, quieter concrete pavements are routinely built today all across the United States using the following standard nominal concrete pavement textures: drag, longitudinal tining, diamond grinding, and even, to limited extent, transverse tining. This document is intended to serve as a guide that describes better practices for designing, constructing, and texturing quieter concrete pavements.