My interests lie in climate change adaptation of urban infrastructure, with a focus on pavements.
| Title |
Description |
Sponsor |
Status |
| OptiSlab: An program for modeling industrial floors |
Development of an efficient Finite Element-based program for modeling stresses in industrial floors with loading relevant to such applications i.e., axle loads, rack loads, and distributed load. The modeling uses plate theory to reduce the size of a problem, with a quasi-elastic approach for modeling creep at an early age. The program includes a pre-processor written in Excel VBA, the analysis kernel in FORTRAN, and a post-processor written in Python. |
PNA Construction Technologies, Inc. |
Completed |
| Efficient linear viscoelastic modeling of asphalt pavements |
Development of an efficient numerical scheme and tool to decompose the linear viscoelastic behavior of asphalt pavements into a series of equivalent linear elastic problems. This allows for quick evaluation of the time-dependent response of flexible pavements, with particular focus on over-sized an slow-moving loads such as Implements of Husbandry (IoH) and Superloads (SLs). |
National Cooperative Highway Research Program Project 1-58, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation |
Completed |
| Faulting model for bonded concrete overlays on asphalt (BCOA) pavements |
Development of a faulting model for BCOA using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and national level calibration. The project includes the development of a user-friendly webtool that implements the model. |
Federal Highway Administration, National Road Research Alliance |
Completed |
| Crack propagation in concrete beams and slabs |
Development of a self-contained FE model to evaluate the propagation of a crack through concrete beams and slab, with a focus on the effect of loading and temperature distributions relevant to rigid pavements. |
Anthony Gill Endowed Chair Funds at the University of Pittsburgh |
Completed |
| Local cool surfaces in urban neighborhoods |
Effectiveness of applying cool surfaces to only a part of the area within an urban neighborhood, and comparing its benefit relative to cost with that of applying cool surfaces to the entire area. The study also compared various spatial configurations that would maximize benefits relative to cost. |
Anthony Gill Endowed Chair Funds at the University of Pittsburgh |
Completed |
| Title |
Description |
Sponsor |
Status |
| Performance of bonded concrete overlays on asphalt (BCOA) pavement |
Evaluation of BCOA cores from around the US to characterize both the concrete and asphalt materials and develop improve performance models for them. |
National Cooperative Highway Research Program Project 1-61 |
Completed |
| Multi-functional concrete inlays for pavement preservation |
Development of thin, fiber-reinforced concrete inlays to improve functional capacity, mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI), and remove near-road air pollutants (NOx, SOx, and VOCs) through a photocatalytic reaction. |
University Transportation Center for Highway Pavement Preservation |
Completed |
| Development of a pavement preservation sustainability assessment tool |
A user-friendly, Excel-based pavement LCA tool for several preservation treatments was developed, with particular emphasis on incorporating use phase components of rolling resistance, texture, and Urban Heat Island (UHI) impact. |
University Transportation Center for Highway Pavement Preservation |
Completed |
| Thermal and optical characterization of pavement materials |
Characterization of asphalt field cores and lab-made concrete specimens for albedo, emissivity, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, and thermal diffusivity. |
University Transportation Center for Highway Pavement Preservation |
Completed |
| Pavement-urban canyon CFD model |
A 1D pavement thermal model and a 3D CFD model were coupled to model wind velocity and air temperature fields in urban areas. The program used C++ and the open-source CFD solver OpenFOAM. |
University Transportation Center for Highway Pavement Preservation
University of Illinois internal funds |
Completed |
| Autonomous vehicles in a class on geometric design |
A course with upper-level undergraduate and graduate students was tasked with using Problem-Based Learning (PBL) to develop new geometic design standards for roads with autonomous vehicles interacting with human bicyclists. |
Widening Implementation & Demonstration of Evidence-Based Reforms (WIDER) project, funded by the National Science Foundation through Grant Number DUE1347722 |
Completed |