Cut slope design for the access to an underground copper mine

Slope stability analysis is a major area of research in geotechnical engineering. That being said, very little is written in the geotechnical engineering literature on the design of box-cuts. The goal of this thesis will be to investigate the proper design of a boxcuts, and to design a box-cut for access to an underground copper mine. Issues that need to be considered in the box-cut design include, long term dewatering design, slope stability analysis, and erosion control. The soils at the project site were extremely low permeability, as a result a system of ejectors was designed both to improve the stability of the slopes and prevent flooding. Based on the results of limit equilibrium analysis and finite element analysis, a slope design of two horizontal on one vertical was selection, with a rock fill buttress providing reinforcement. Finally, Michigan DOT standards for seeding were used to provide erosion control

Engineers Without Borders El Salvador Project

This is a report on an Engineers Without Borders project located in San Juan El Espino, El Salvador. For this project, EWB Montana Tech is working to mitigate an erosion problem that is making it difficult for children to travel to school.

Study of particle movement in the nearshore region of Lake Superior with radioisotope tracers

Biogeochemical processes in the coastal region, including the coastal area of the Great Lakes, are of great importance due to the complex physical, chemical and biological characteristics that differ from those on either the adjoining land or open water systems. Particle-reactive radioisotopes, both naturally occurring (210Pb, 210Po and 7Be) and man-made (137Cs), have proven to be useful tracers for these processes in many systems. However, a systematic isotope study on the northwest coast of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior has not yet been performed. In this dissertation research, field sampling, laboratory measurements and numerical modeling were conducted to understand the biogeochemistry of the radioisotope tracers and some particulate-related coastal processes. In the first part of the dissertation, radioisotope activities of 210Po and 210Pb in a variability of samples (dissolved, suspended particle, sediment trap materials, surficial sediment) were measured. A completed picture of the distribution and disequilibrium of this pair of isotopes was drawn. The application of a simple box model utilizing these field observations reveals short isotope residence times in the water column and a significant contribution of sediment resuspension (for both particles and isotopes). The results imply a highly dynamic coastal region. In the second part of this dissertation, this conclusion is examined further. Based on intensive sediment coring, the spatial distribution of isotope inventories (mainly 210Pb, 137Cs and 7Be) in the nearshore region was determined. Isotope-based focusing factors categorized most of the sampling sites as non- or temporary depositional zones. A twodimensional steady-state box-in-series model was developed and applied to individual transects with the 210Pb inventories as model input. The modeling framework included both water column and upper sediments down to the depth of unsupported 210Pb penetration. The model was used to predict isotope residence times and cross-margin fluxes of sediments and isotopes at different locations along each transect. The time scale for sediment focusing from the nearshore to offshore regions of the transect was on the order of 10 years. The possibility of sediment longshore movement was indicated by high inventory ratios of 137Cs: 210Pb. Local deposition of fine particles, including fresh organic carbon, may explain the observed distribution of benthic organisms such as Diporeia. In the last part of this dissertation, isotope tracers, 210Pb and 210Po, were coupled into a hydrodynamic model for Lake Superior. The model was modified from an existing 2-D finite difference physical-biological model which has previously been successfully applied on Lake Superior. Using the field results from part one of this dissertation as initial conditions, the model was used to predict the isotope distribution in the water column; reasonable results were achieved. The modeling experiments demonstrated the potential for using a hydrodynamic model to study radioisotope biogeochemistry in the lake, although further refinements are necessary.

Performance evaluation of existing aerated lagoon system at Consolidated Koshkonong Sanitary District, Edgerton, Wisconsin /

Mode of access: Internet.

Evaluation of retroreflective sheetings for use on roadway traffic signs. Final report.

Oklahoma Department of Transportation, Oklahoma City

Reconstruction of hydraulic management of a water distribution system using optimization /

"October 2001."

Evaluation of steady burn lights for traffic control in highway work zones. Phase II. Final report.

Ohio Department of Transportation, Columbus

Comparison of three waste leaching tests /

Mode of access: Internet.

Background study on the development of a standard leaching test /

Mode of access: Internet.

Accelerated aging of concrete : a literature review /

"February 2002."

Design of continuously reinforced concrete pavements using glass fiber reinforced polymer rebars /

"October 2005."

Evaluation of methodology for determining truck vehicle miles traveled in Illinois /

"July 2002."

Developing brownfields ranking models using decision analytic methods

The redevelopment of Brownfields has taken off in the 1990s, supported by federal and state incentives, and largely accomplished by local initiatives. Brownfields redevelopment has several associated benefits. These include the revitalization of inner-city neighborhoods, creation of jobs, stimulation of tax revenues, greater protection of public health and natural resources, the renewal and reuse existing civil infrastructure and Greenfields protection. While these benefits are numerous, the obstacles to Brownfields redevelopment are also very much alive. Redevelopment issues typically embrace a host of financial and legal liability concerns, technical and economic constraints, competing objectives, and uncertainties arising from inadequate site information. Because the resources for Brownfields redevelopment are usually limited, local programs will require creativity in addressing these existing obstacles in a manner that extends their limited resources for returning Brownfields to productive uses. Such programs may benefit from a structured and defensible decision framework to prioritize sites for redevelopment: one that incorporates the desired objectives, corresponding variables and uncertainties associated with Brownfields redevelopment. This thesis demonstrates the use of a decision analytic tool, Bayesian Influence Diagrams, and related decision analytic tools in developing quantitative decision models to evaluate and rank Brownfields sites on the basis of their redevelopment potential.

Variable Speed Limit Strategies to Reduce the Impacts of Traffic Flow Breakdown at Recurrent Freeway Bottlenecks

Variable Speed Limit (VSL) strategies identify and disseminate dynamic speed limits that are determined to be appropriate based on prevailing traffic conditions, road surface conditions, and weather conditions. This dissertation develops and evaluates a shockwave-based VSL system that uses a heuristic switching logic-based controller with specified thresholds of prevailing traffic flow conditions. The system aims to improve operations and mobility at critical bottlenecks. Before traffic breakdown occurrence, the proposed VSL’s goal is to prevent or postpone breakdown by decreasing the inflow and achieving uniform distribution in speed and flow. After breakdown occurrence, the VSL system aims to dampen traffic congestion by reducing the inflow traffic to the congested area and increasing the bottleneck capacity by deactivating the VSL at the head of the congested area. The shockwave-based VSL system pushes the VSL location upstream as the congested area propagates upstream. In addition to testing the system using infrastructure detector-based data, this dissertation investigates the use of Connected Vehicle trajectory data as input to the shockwave-based VSL system performance. Since the field Connected Vehicle data are not available, as part of this research, Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication is modeled in the microscopic simulation to obtain individual vehicle trajectories. In this system, wavelet transform is used to analyze aggregated individual vehicles’ speed data to determine the locations of congestion. The currently recommended calibration procedures of simulation models are generally based on the capacity, volume and system-performance values and do not specifically examine traffic breakdown characteristics. However, since the proposed VSL strategies are countermeasures to the impacts of breakdown conditions, considering breakdown characteristics in the calibration procedure is important to have a reliable assessment. Several enhancements were proposed in this study to account for the breakdown characteristics at bottleneck locations in the calibration process. In this dissertation, performance of shockwave-based VSL is compared to VSL systems with different fixed VSL message sign locations utilizing the calibrated microscopic model. The results show that shockwave-based VSL outperforms fixed-location VSL systems, and it can considerably decrease the maximum back of queue and duration of breakdown while increasing the average speed during breakdown.