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Washington State University National Center for Transportation Infrastructure Durability & Life-Extension (TriDurLE)

Licensing deal aims to enable safer winter roads with more sustainable chemicals

An anti-icing technology developed at Washington State University is being licensed by Fusione Corp., a Massachusetts-based snow and ice operations company, with the goal of creating environmentally responsible and sustainable snow and ice road treatments. Read More

“Development and Testing of Autonomous Vehicle Technology for Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance” By Dr. XB Hu

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Development and Testing of Autonomous Vehicle Technology for Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance

Mobile and slow-moving operations, such as striping, sweeping, bridge flushing, and pothole patching, are critical for efficient and safe operation of a highway transportation system. However, reducing hazards for roadway workers and achieving a safer environment for both roadway maintenance operators and the public have been a challenging problem. In 2017 alone, a total of 158,000 total crashes occurred in our nation’s work zones, accounting for 61,000 injuries. The Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) vehicle, sometimes referred to as an Autonomous Impact Protection Vehicle (AIPV), offers a promising solution to eliminate injuries to Department of Transportation (DOT) employees.

In this webinar, we will present how to use Autonomous Vehicle technology for work zone maintenance, for the purpose of protecting DOT maintenance workers from potential crashes. We will also present the evaluation methodology for the ATMA system, as well as the field-testing outcomes in Sedalia, MO. We hope this webinar will be helpful for transportation agencies that are interested in deploying similar technologies, or for academic researchers to assess characteristics of autonomous vehicles and to apply knowledge gained in transportation modeling and simulation practices.

About the Presenter

Dr. XB Hu is currently an Assistant Professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona in 2013 and was a founding team member and the Director of R&D at Metropia Inc. at Tucson AZ. His research focuses on smart transportation systems, transportation big data analytics, and traffic flow and system modeling. He is supporting Missouri DOT, Colorado DOT, and a pool-fund with 12 state DOT members to test and deploy autonomous maintenance technology in the United States.

Invited Speaker Webinar with Dr. Zhongren Wang, Ph.D., California Department of Transportation

 

“Implementing a Pavement Management System in California DOT”

 

About the Speaker:

Dr. Zhongren Wang is Chief, Office of Mobility Programs at Caltrans. He manages multiple statewide mobility programs such as connected corridor, operational improvement analysis and investigation, and project environmental impact analysis.

A registered Civil and Traffic Engineer in California, Dr. Wang has more than 30 years of experiences in transportation project development and management, program administration, and academic teaching and research. Dr. Wang serves on multiple TRB standing Committees including Geometric Design, Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics, and Pavement Management. Dr. Wang published more than 30 journal papers in various refereed journals and is now an associate editor of the International Journal on Transportation Science and Technology.

Dr. Wang graduated from the University of Tennessee, National University of Singapore, and Tongji University, Chin

 View the recording of this webinar

Invited Speaker Webinar Series with M. Saiid Saiidi, PhD, PE., University of Reno Nevada

10:00 a.m. Pacific Time

 

Topic: “Seismic Performance of ABC (accelerated bridge construction) Bridge Systems”

Deployment of accelerated bridge construction (ABC) in high seismic zones has faced resistance due to uncertainties on seismic performance of connections between prefabricated bridge elements.  Research on development and evaluation of earthquake-resistant connections appropriate for ABC began to a limited extent over 15 years ago and intensified over the past decade.  By necessity, studies were mostly focused on component connections (known as ABC connections) such as column-footing, column cap beam, and superstructure cap beam linkage.  While the results of these studies identified appropriate details and led to preliminary design guidelines, questions still remained on the holistic seismic performance of bridges incorporating ABC connections.  Several bridge system studies in recent years have provided answers and have led to increased confidence in ABC in high seismic zones.  The presentation discusses a number of the more promising connections and how they were integrated into three, large-scale two-span bridges tested on shake tables of the University of Nevada, Reno.  The results also shed light on the relative performance of different types of ABC connections for concrete girder and steel girder bridges with a variety of column connections.

About the speaker:

Dr. Saiidi is an emeritus professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of Center for Advanced Technology in Bridges and Infrastructure at the University of Nevada, Reno.  He is also a distinguished research faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a principal at Infrastructure Innovation, LLC, Reno, Nevada.  He has published over 500 papers and reports and given over 400 presentations, many as a keynote speaker in over 30 countries.  Professor Saiidi’s research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, the California, Nevada, and Washington Departments of Transportation, and industries.  Professor Saiidi’s primary research focus has been on experimental and analytical studies of seismic response of reinforced concrete bridges, seismic retrofit, resiliency with novel materials, seismic response and design of precast bridges, and probabilistic design for seismic damage control.  He has received many awards for his research including the Outstanding Researcher Award, Established Innovator Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Distinguished Alumni Award among others.  He is a registered engineer in California and Nevada, and a member of the Mexican National Academy of Engineering.