NCTSPM is pleased to announce the selection of a Georgia Tech graduate student to receive the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program Scholarship.
Denise Smith is a native of Landover, Maryland, and she received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineeirng from Vanderbilt University in May 2011. In August 2011, she began her career as a graduate student at Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. As a student in the Transportation Systems Engineering Program, Denise has a research focus centered on freight transportation modelling and environmental analysis.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program offers substantial scholarship support to underrepresented minority students who are beingging their doctoral work in engineering, natural science, and mathematics. Since its establishment in 1995, the program has provided support to more than 900 minority students.
It often takes a basket lift, hammers and chisels, and lots of safety equipment when a work crew inspects one of the nation’s 600,000 bridges.
The federal government requires such analyses every two years for each of those spans, a costly and time-consuming endeavor.
But what if we could install sensors that would deliver data wirelessly on a bridge’s condition, allowing transportation engineers to monitor its health all the time?
The technology has the potential to be a game-changer in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Research and Technology.
“In this country, the average age of our bridges is 42 years old. They’re getting older and older, and there’s no budget to fix them all,” said Yang Wang, a CEE associate professor who’s leading the project.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates it will take more than $20 billion a year for 15 years to eliminate the nation’s backlog of deficient bridges. In its 2013 infrastructure report card, ASCE also noted governments are currently spending just $13 billion.
The wireless sensing devices Wang has been developing could help those governments make decisions about the most critical needs.
A Martlet wireless sensing node developed by Wang and Jacobs’ team. Users can fit this base unit with a variety of different circuit boards that connect to various sensors. (Photo Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
“The idea is to have low-cost systems that can be instrumented on the bridge and monitor the bridge’s condition so that we can use the limited resources [we have] on the most dangerous situations,” Wang said.
Wang has been working with CEE professor Laurence Jacobs on the project, along with collaborators from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Wireless sensing nodes in the BWIM/NDE system are placed on the bridge. They transmit data to a local gateway, which sends the data to researchers or transportation engineers via a cell-phone network. (Illustration Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
The sensing nodes cost just a few hundred dollars each, and they eliminate an expensive spider web of cabling and data processing for traditional sensor systems. The wireless nodes instead transmit their data to a small local gateway nearby that sends the data directly to researchers or engineers over cellular networks.
Those legacy systems are most often used now for significant “landmark” structures, Wang said. But his cheaper wireless technology could mean wider deployment.
“It would be impossible to instrument less-significant structures, everyday structures [right now]. That’s the motivation for our research, to develop those low-cost wireless sensing devices so that more and more bridges can be instrumented,” he said.
The project gets at the infrastructure-health problem another way, too, actually weighing the vehicles that traverse the bridge. Their data about the structure’s real-time response to traffic feeds a sophisticated computer model of the bridge, allowing for the calculation of gross vehicle weights and axle loading.
Researchers use a detailed model of the bridge and data from new wireless sensors to calculate gross vehicle weights and axle loading in real time. (Illustration Courtesy of Yang Wang.)
These data are called Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (BWIM), and they allow authorities to track—and police—overweight trucks.
That could help save money for local governments, allowing for fewer of the weigh stations common alongside highways and reducing wear and tear on roads and bridges in the first place.
Even with all the savings, however, Wang’s sensor systems probably won’t eliminate the need for trained eyes judging how the nation’s bridges are faring. They’ll just inform the process—and make it cheaper.
“We’re not trying to say we’re going to replace human evaluation,” Wang said. “I think there’s a certain value to human eyes, [which can see problems] that may be difficult for sensor to detect. But this can provide information so that there’s more data available for us to evaluate the bridge’s health.”
The series is an outreach effort which aims to showcase University Transportation Centers (UTC) researchers and research related to U.S. DOT’s strategic goals of safety, state of good repair, environmental sustainability, livable communities, and economic competitiveness. Both Georgia Tech and NCTSPM are long-time grant recipients of the UTC Program.
The OST-R Transportation Innovation Series is held the third Wednesday of each month and is broadcast live via web cast from U.S. DOT Headquarters.
On Saturday, July 12th, 2014, graduate students from Georgia Tech took part in the first annual Transportation Career Expo Fair at the Garrett A. Morgan Youth Symposium. This symposium was sponsored by the DC-based Committee of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) during their 43rd annual National Meeting and Training Conference in Atlanta, GA. The symposium gave students from underrepresented minorities a chance to engage in and learn about the field of transportation and careers in the field.
Part II of the Symposium, titled Full S.T.E.A.M. Ahead, provided introduction for students considering the transportation field for their career. A number of colleges, technical schools, and local transportation agencies were available to speak with students. Notable organizations such as GDOT, MARTA, and The Atlanta Streetcar Project were present.
Georgia Tech transportation graduate students Stefanie Brodie and Margaret-Avis Akofio-Sowah were in attendance representing Georgia Tech, through the recommendation of Dr. Adjo Amekudzi Kennedy of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. For their presentation, volunteers Brodie and Akofio-Sowah presented the students with five questions relating to Atlanta that transportation research can or is addressing in the city. They also showed the students several approaches towards answering those questions, and potential solutions, as well as coordinating a game of Transportation Jeopardy to further spark student interest in the field.
Back on campus, Brodie is a third year Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering, working with Dr. Amekudzi Kennedy’s Infrastructure Research Group. Her thesis topic is on accessibility. Margaret-Avis Akofio-Sowah is also a third year Ph.D. student working with Dr. Amekudzi Kennedy’s Infrastructure group, and her thesis topic is on the topic of asset management implementation strategies.
GTI is proud to announce the first four Transportation Speaker Series events of the 2014-2015 school year. These events will be held on Thursdays at 11:00 am, in the Mason Building’s room 1133. Topics for the speaker series include:
‘The transit industry is in the midst of a revolution from being data poor to data rich.’ As a result, the need is greater for better management and policies to handle the newfound wealth. As transit agencies continue to address increasing service demands and decreasing budgets, maximizing technology and data investments through open data policies is necessary to retain and attract customers. Webinar participants will be introduced to the opportunities that open data provide and the challenges to overcoming technology and implementation strategies. This session will also focus on the legalities of open data in transit, including copyright laws, licensing, political and legal barriers, customer perceptions, confidentiality, governance, and economic development. Attendees should expect to learn about the benefits of open data policies and how transit agencies have successfully partnered with private entities to produce more real-time schedule information through the use and sharing of data. This informative webinar will serve as a foundation for developing transit agencies’ guidelines to share schedule and real-time data. This session will highlight the experiences of several transit agencies that have had long histories of producing and sharing real-time and scheduled data for customers and private sector third party developers.
The Georgia/Carolinas Precast Concrete Institute’s annual membership meeting was held from June 12-15 of this year, and one of Georgia Tech’s own was among those invited to present at the meeting. At the meeting, which was held in Hilton Head, South Carolina, Dr. Watkins gave a presentation on some of her group’s ongoing research.
This work is in the field of evaluating the use of limestone-blended (Type IL) cements for precast applications. Recently introduced into the market, Type IL cements may potentially help reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions traditionally associated with concrete construction.
Dr. Watkins, along with Dr. Lawrence Kahn and graduate students Ahmad Shalan and Behnaz Zaribaf, has been researching the early age strength development of this type of cement, along with its other properties, and comparing their results to those of traditional cement.
NCTSPM is a proud sponsor of Dr. Watkins’ research.
Atlanta drivers know all too well the giant interchange at Interstates 85 and 285 northeast of the city—it’s called Spaghetti Junction for a reason. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked readers Sunday to imagine a similar tangle of bridges, ramps and access roads at the top end of the city’s Perimeter where it meets heavily traveled Ga. 400.
Associate Professor Michael Hunter reviewed plans for the massive project as part of the AJC’s analysis of the growing scope of the work:
Imagine the artfully contorted whorl of concrete that is Spaghetti Junction, transported nine miles to the west. That should give you some idea of the state’s plans for the revamped Ga. 400/I-285 interchange.
Now imagine three years of construction on one of the busiest stretches of road in Atlanta. That should give you some idea of the traffic nightmares that lie ahead.
The Ga. 400/I-285 rebuild, meant to ease traffic for 416,000 drivers a day, has always been a big undertaking. But in exclusive interviews, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution discovered that the project has morphed far beyond its original scope — to the possible delay of other projects in coming decades.
State leaders have latched on to a truly mammoth version of the concept, one that would add miles of lanes adjacent to both major highways and consume an amount almost equal to the state’s entire annual road construction budget.
At an estimated cost of $950 million, it would be the most expensive road project in state history, paid for by going at least $130 million into debt, not counting interest costs. It would take three years of heavy construction to build. And after it is completed in 2019, the debt payments could eat into the state’s regular construction budget, forcing other road projects to be put on hold.
Nevertheless, state officials believe the expanded version is worth the cost, because the result could transform traffic on the top end of the Perimeter. Both Gov. Nathan Deal and the Georgia Department of Transportation have labeled the congested interchange the state’s highest priority road project.
“It’s a tremendous undertaking,” said Michael Hunter, a professor of civil engineering at Georgia Tech who reviewed the conceptual design at the AJC’s request.
Recently, the Georgia Department of Transportation nominated four projects performed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)’s Research Advisory Committee’s High Value Research Award. Also known as the “Sweet 16”, four projects that showcase transportation excellence through research are selected from each of the four AASHTO regions.
The AASHTO Research Advisory Committee is committed to being a proactive committee, promoting quality and excellence in research and in the application of research findings to improve state transportation systems.
GTI is extremely proud of the authors of these projects.
The Georgia Department of Transportation and the Georgia Transportation Institute jointly hosted a transportation research poster session. It was hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology on September 24, 2013, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. All researchers in the Georgia Transportation Institute (Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Southern University, Southern Polytechnic State University, Mercer University, and Albany State University) were to are invited to displaying active and recently completed GDOT-sponsored research projects. This poster session provided an opportunity for GDOT employees and administration to see the multitude of excellent projects that are underway and the scope of resources available at our universities.
Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Location: Rooms 402-404, One Georgia Center (600 West Peachtree St NW, Atlanta, GA 30308)
