Civil and Environmental Engineering
Recent Submissions
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Enhancing Research in Natural Hazards Engineering Through the DesignSafe Cyberinfrastructure
(2020)The DesignSafe cyberinfrastructure (www.designsafe-ci.org) is part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) and provides cloud-based tools to manage, analyze, understand, and publish critical data for research to understand the impacts of natural hazards. The DesignSafe Data Depot provides private and public disk ... -
Selective membranes in water and wastewater treatment: Role of advanced materials
(2021)Membrane separation has enjoyed tremendous advances in relevant material and engineering sciences, making it the fastest growing technology in water treatment. Although membranes as a broad-spectrum physical barrier have great advantages over conventional treatment processes in a myriad of applications, the need for higher selectivity and specificity ... -
Transport-driven aerosol differences above and below the canopy of a mixed deciduous forest
(2021)Exchanges of energy and mass between the surrounding air and plant surfaces occur below, within, and above a forest's vegetative canopy. The canopy also can lead to vertical gradients in light, trace gases, oxidant availability, turbulent mixing, and properties and concentrations of organic aerosol (OA). In this study, a high-resolution time-of-flight ... -
High Concentration Organic Wastewater with High Phosphorus Treatment by Facultative MBR
(2021)Phosphorus is one of the main factors causing water eutrophication, and the traditional phosphorus removal process causes phosphorus-rich sludge pollution. The facultative MBR process uses phosphate-reducing bacteria to convert phosphate into directly recyclable gaseous phosphine to solve this malpractice and make sewage become a new phosphorus ... -
Rapid Metabolism of 1,4-Dioxane to below Health Advisory Levels by Thiamine-Amended Rhodococcus ruber Strain 219
(2021)Bioremediation is a promising treatment technology for 1,4-dioxane-contaminated groundwater. However, metabolic dioxane-degrading bacteria identified to date are limited by their slow kinetics and inability to sustain growth at low dioxane concentrations (<100 μg/L). Furthermore, strains may underperform because of missing growth factors, such as ... -
FORest Canopy Atmosphere Transfer (FORCAsT) 2.0: model updates and evaluation with observations at a mixed forest site
(2021)The FORCAsT (FORest Canopy Atmosphere Transfer) model version 1.0 is updated to FORCAsT 2.0 by implementing five major changes, including (1) a change to the operator splitting, separating chemistry from emission and dry deposition, which reduces the run time of the gas-phase chemistry by 70 % and produces a more realistic in-canopy profile for ... -
JP-8 Desulfurization by CuNa-Y Zeolite at Elevated Temperatures Has Two Distinct Stages: Chemisorption Followed by Surface Reactions
(2021)This study evaluates the performance of continuous-flow adsorbers for adsorptive desulfurization. JP-8 fuel with 2230 ppmw of sulfur was treated in a flow-through adsorber packed with CuNa-Y zeolite pellets and operating at 180 °C and 200 psig with liquid hourly space velocities (LHSV) from 0.13 to 3.24 h–1. Our results showed that a flow-through ... -
Measurement and identification of the nonlinear dynamics of a jointed structure using full-field data; Part II - Nonlinear system identification
(2022)The dynamic responses of assembled structures are greatly affected by the mechanical joints, which are often the cause of nonlinear behavior. To better understand and, in the future, tailor the nonlinearities, accurate methods are needed to characterize the dynamic properties of jointed structures. In this paper, the nonlinear characteristics of a ... -
Measurement and identification of the nonlinear dynamics of a jointed structure using full-field data, Part I: Measurement of nonlinear dynamics
(2022)Jointed structures are ubiquitous constituents of engineering systems; however, their dynamic properties (e.g., natural frequencies and damping ratios) are challenging to identify correctly due to the complex, nonlinear nature of interfaces. This research seeks to extend the efficacy of traditional experimental methods for linear system identification ... -
Standardizing data reporting in the research community to enhance the utility of open data for SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance
(2021)SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in wastewater is being rapidly developed and adopted as a public health monitoring tool worldwide. With wastewater surveillance programs being implemented across many different scales and by many different stakeholders, it is critical that data collected and shared are accompanied by an appropriate minimal amount of ... -
SIBaR: a new method for background quantification and removal from mobile air pollution measurements
(2021)Mobile monitoring is becoming increasingly popular for characterizing air pollution on fine spatial scales. In identifying local source contributions to measured pollutant concentrations, the detection and quantification of background are key steps in many mobile monitoring studies, but the methodology to do so requires further development to improve ... -
Deep Learning Method to Accelerate Discovery of Hybrid Polymer-Graphene Composites
(2021)Interfacial encoded properties of polymer adlayers adsorbed on the graphene (GE) and silicon dioxide (SiO2) have been constituted a scaffold for the creation of new materials. The holistic understanding of nanoscale intermolecular interaction of 1D/2D polymer assemblies on substrate is the key to bottom-up design of molecular devices. We develop an ... -
Prediction Models of Barite Crystallization and Inhibition Kinetics: Applications for Oil and Gas Industry
(2021)Barite is one of the most common mineral scales in the oilfield and its formation can sequester toxic strontium (Sr) and radium (Ra). Various scale inhibitors are widely used to inhibit its formation. The inhibition efficiencies of 18 common inhibitors were tested using an improved kinetic turbidity method over broad oil and gas production conditions. ... -
Utilizing the broad electromagnetic spectrum and unique nanoscale properties for chemical-free water treatment
(2021)Clean water is critical for drinking, industrial processes, and aquatic organisms. Existing water treatment and infrastructure are chemically intensive and based on nearly century-old technologies that fail to meet modern large and decentralized communities. The next-generation of water processes can transition from outdated technologies by utilizing ... -
Urban core-downwind differences and relationships related to ozone production in a major urban area in Texas
(2021)San Antonio, the second-most populous city in Texas and the seventh-most populous city in the United States (US), has been designated a marginal non-attainment area by the US Environmental Protection Agency with respect to the 2015 ozone (O3) National Ambient Air Quality Standard. While stationary air quality monitoring sites are operated in the ... -
Performance-Based Coastal Engineering Framework
(2021)The changing dynamics of coastal regions and climate pose severe challenges to coastal communities around the world. Effective planning of engineering projects and resilience strategies in coastal regions must not only address current conditions but also take into consideration the expected changes in the exposure and multi-hazard risk in these areas. ... -
Electrochemically-active carbon nanotube coatings for biofouling mitigation: Cleaning kinetics and energy consumption for cathodic and anodic regimes
(2021)Biofouling is a major obstacle in engineered systems exposed to aqueous conditions. Many attempts have been made to engineer the surface properties of materials to render them resistant to biofouling. These modifications typically rely on passive antimicrobial or anti-adhesive surface coatings that prevent the deposition of bacteria or inactivate ... -
A Markov chain-based model for structural vulnerability assessmentof corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete bridges
(2021)The deterioration and cracking of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges due to the chloride-induced corrosion of steel reinforcement is an inherently time-dependent stochastic phenomenon. In the current practice of bridge management systems, however, the determination of the condition states of deteriorated bridges is highly dependent on the opinion of ... -
How unprecedented was the February 2021 Texas cold snap?
(2021)Winter storm Uri brought severe cold to the southern United States in February 2021, causing a cascading failure of interdependent systems in Texas where infrastructure was not adequately prepared for such cold. In particular, the failure of interconnected energy systems restricted electricity supply just as demand for heating spiked, leaving millions ... -
Expected seismic performance of gravity dams using machine learning techniques
(2021)Methods for the seismic analysis of dams have improved extensively in the last several decades. Advanced numerical models have become more feasible and constitute the basis of improved procedures for design and assessment. A probabilistic framework is required to manage the various sources of uncertainty that may impact system performance and fragility ...
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