Infrastructure and Materials

Infrastructure and Materials

Enhancing and validating models for predicting urban stormwater flooding

Urban stormwater flooding represents a persistent and escalating challenge for transportation networks and the well-being of urban populations, causing significant disruptions, economic losses, and safety hazards. This research project directly addresses this critical issue by advancing the development and validation of empirical models capable of predicting the depth and velocity of floodwaters in urban environments under a range of precipitation scenarios.

Protection Technologies for Bridges Against Overheight Impacts

Impact by overheight trucks on highways bridges has been identified to be a serious problem by numerous studies in the past, including a detailed study by the PI in 2011.  Most of the countermeasures for preventing impact of trucks on bridges utilize monitoring for truck heights to warn truck drivers.  However, despite these systems being installed, bridges are still being impacted and some bridges suffer serious damage, particularly to fascia girders and decks.  

Business Location Data Analysis and Editing Interface Tool Development

One of the most important aspects of transportation planning is understanding employment information of businesses and organizations. Information such as location of employment, size of organization or business in terms of employees, sales, can provide valuable input to understanding travel patterns and human activities. Visualizing this information along with several administrative, transportation and infrastructure facilities provides key contextual information to transportation planning agencies.

Performance Evaluation of Asphalt Mixtures Statewide

Currently, asphalt mixtures are design using volumetric concepts to determine optimum asphalt content levels with no means of verifying mixture performance prior to field production and placement. A new design methodology called Balanced Mixture Design (BMD) promotes the use of evaluating and design asphalt mixture using rutting and fatigue cracking methods and criteria to achieve an optimum asphalt content that will result in an asphalt mixture performing well in rutting and fatigue cracking scenarios – thereby “balancing” the asphalt mixture performance.

Juliette Spertus

Juliette Spertus is an architect, writer and curator. Her work focuses on the relationship between architecture and infrastructure and the possibilities for public space. Fast Trash is her first infrastructure exhibition. She previously worked as a project architect for Michielli Wyetzner Architects in New York and as a designer at Utile, Inc. in Boston. She completed a BA in art history at Williams College and received her professional architecture degree from l’Ecole d’Architecture des Villes et des Térritoires à Marne-la-vallée near Paris, France.

Eliminating Trucks on Roosevelt Island for the Collection of Recyclables and Commercial Waste While Significantly Improving Energy Efficiency and Reducing Land Requirements

The environmental and economic impacts of New York State’s waste-management system could be dramatically reduced by (a) decreasing the number of truck miles required to collect waste and (b) decreasing the demand for long-distance transport to remote disposal facilities.

Determine Viscoelastic Mechanical Properties of Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA)-Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) Mixes under High Stresses in Airfield Flexible Pavements and Its Impact on Design Life.

Warm mix asphalt (WMA) refers to asphalt concrete mixtures that are produced at temperatures approximately 40 to 70 ºF cooler than typically used in the production of hot mix asphalt. The goal with warm mix asphalt is to produce mixtures with similar strength, durability, and performance characteristics as hot mix asphalt but at substantially reduced production temperatures.

Finite Element Simulation of Truck Impacts on Highway Bridge Piers

It has been observed from recent studies that vehicular impacts to highway bridges are the 3rd leading cause of collapse of highway bridges. Recent data from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and other studies show that the bridge overload and lateral impact from trucks, ships and train constitute 20% of the total bridge failures. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that annually 1000 buses or trucks (10,000 pounds gross weight or greater) collide with bridge structures.

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