Transportation Research under One Umbrella…

Transportation research at Illinois has historically spanned multiple disciplines, such as computer and information sciences, engineering, geosciences, and life, physical, and social sciences. Each of those branches of knowledge have accomplished distinctive research advances over the years. However, all such scientific investigation has been done so far under the banner of a singular field of study, which led the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to announce the Smart Transportation Infrastructure Imitative (STII)—to harmonize all transportation research under one umbrella.

STII is envisioned “to improve safety, mobility, security, and connectivity and reduce energy, consumption, and emissions for the next paradigm of transportation systems, including roadway, air, rail, water and intermodal.” Two main focus areas for this initiative are the development of research and policy in support of safe and automated mobility of people and goods and the fulfillment of national and global connectivity needs.

Professor Imad Al-Qadi, director of the Illinois Center for Transportation and the Advanced Transportation Research Engineering Lab, has been appointed director of the Initiative.

“Advances in computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence have enabled revolutionary technologies such as autonomous and connected vehicles to emerge, and these next-generation systems hold the promise to completely change the paradigm of transportation efficiency, sustainability, resilience, and safety,” Al-Qadi said.

On the level of system operations, next-generation transportation systems aim to influence or replace human behavior and to enable coordinated strategies that improve system performance on key multimodal transportation links and intersections. On the other hand, on the infrastructure level, implementation of next-generation transportation technologies will mandate principles and guidelines for the design, maintenance, and rehabilitation of future physical assets such as sustainable infrastructure materials capable of directly communicating and interacting with vehicles and other types of urban infrastructure facilities. As such, the need for all-embracing research in the technology, engineering, planning, regulatory, policy, legal, and social spheres of next-generation transportation systems becomes obvious.

Research is needed on new technologies and innovations that extend beyond the immediate scope of vehicle and transportation infrastructure systems, well into machine-and-human system integration at the microscopic level and network-level control and coordination at the macroscopic level; security and fault tolerance; verification and validation (V&V) of new methodologies; and the flow and infrastructure performance implications of autonomous and connected vehicles.

Even though air, rail, and water transportation have registered major advances in recent years, the challenges that are yet to be overcome are numerous. For instance, the benefits of connected and autonomous vehicles can only be realized if and when technology innovators, vehicle manufactures, and infrastructure planners change current practices and strategically prepare for the next-generation transportation systems. Also, there is the need for government agencies to

adopt new regulatory policies and laws that would enable the assimilation of emerging vehicle technologies and operation concepts into our multimodal transportation network. Connected and autonomous mobility entails multiple levels of intra- and inter-agency coordination and process redesign that pose an additional challenge.

In its first grassroots meeting held December 18, 2017 to kick-off the discussion about a strategic action plan for achieving STII’s vision, more than a hundred department heads, unit directors, and faculty members came together to identify the challenges and opportunities associated with this initiative, major research ideas, and ways to position UIUC as a leader of transportation research.

For a full view of the kick-off STII meeting, please click here.

In his opening remarks, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost Andreas Cangellaris said that this initiative is set not only to bring the entire UIUC campus together but also to strengthen collaboration between three Illinois campuses—UIUC, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and Northwestern, serving as the umbrella through which all transportation research will be coordinated. STII will also unite industry and national laboratories and Chicago’s role as a global hub should help promote the initiative’s mission, according to Cangellaris.

Also at the meeting, Al-Qadi shared recent national transportation statistics, touching on the national impact of the sector on the environment and the main challenges hindering national transportation development. Congestion costs—estimated at an annual $160 billion—inadequate revenues, the nation’s vulnerability to disasters, and the gap between institution’s missions and their preparedness to address those missions were highlighted as some of the key hindrances.

“Having identified our strengths and challenges, we need to focus now on developing a roadmap for addressing our connectivity needs and drafting our policy agenda,” Al-Qadi said. “Only then we’ll be able to facilitate the integration and deployment of new concepts and technologies in areas such as sensing and control systems, internet of things, autonomy and connectivity, and several others.”

Last year, a team of faculty from several schools at UIUC, in collaboration with peers from UIC and Northwestern, put together a vision for the Illinois Automated and Connected Track (I-ACT). Connected and autonomous vehicle technologies are expected to bring users greater convenience, seamless and safer mobility, and connected life in a digitalized world; for cities and operators, the benefits are greater efficiencies and better utilization of resources. In the context of commercial vehicle systems and freight supply chains, driverless vehicles will enable new forms of mobility supply, car sharing, integration between personal transportation and public mobility, and efficient and accessible travel service in high-density cities.

Proposed to be housed within the ATREL facilities, the I-ACT test track is aimed to accelerate the development and deployment of automated transportation, while ensuring safe and efficient mobility and operations and capitalizing on public benefits. STII is well positioned to coordinate the work needed to transform this collective vision to reality.

The second meeting of STII is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2018. If you are interested in learning more about the activities of STII, please join the notification list.

Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost Andreas Cangellaris opened the STII kick-off meeting.

Faculty across campus attending the kick-off meeting of the Smart Transportation Initiative.

A discussion of main challenges at one of the breakout sessions moderated by Professor Bill Spencer of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

LCA Tool Developed to Assess Environmental Impact of Pavement Treatments

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing level of awareness toward using recycled materials as an alternative to virgin materials in flexible pavements and, thus, recycling has become an integral part of road maintenance and rehabilitation activities.

Among the most commonly used recycling techniques are hot in-place recycling (HIR), cold in-place recycling (CIR), and full-depth reclamation (FDR). In each of these methods, existing pavement materials are removed and reused, allowing for surface distresses to be corrected in place. The ultimate objectives are to conserve virgin materials; reduce energy use, environmental impacts, construction time, traffic flow disruptions, and number of hauling trucks; and improve pavement conditions.

HIR is based on softening the existing pavement surface using heat, removing the pavement surface and mixing it with asphalt binder—and possible virgin aggregate—and re-placing the recycled material on the pavement. In the CIR technique, the distressed pavement surface is pulverized and the recycled material is then mixed with new materials and compacted back in place; thus, providing an improved base layer with the addition of a wearing hot-mix asphalt overlay. The only difference between the CIR and FDR methods is that in the latter the whole thickness of the existing asphalt concrete layer—plus a predetermined thickness of at least two inches of the underlying unbound granular layer—are pulverized and mixed together into a homogenous mixture before compaction, producing a stabilized layer.

Recently, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT), University of California-Davis, and Rutgers University teamed up to develop a user-friendly life-cycle assessment tool to assess the environmental impacts and energy use of transportation projects that involve maintenance and rehabilitation treatments using the above in-place recycling and conventional paving methods. The study, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration, was conducted by a team of researchers led by ICT Director and Bliss Professor of Engineering Imad Al-Qadi as Principal Investigator.

The developed tool uses data, simulation, and models throughout the in-place recycling stages for pavement life-cycle assessment, including materials, construction, maintenance/rehabilitation, use, and end-of-life stages. “The developed tool is expected to help pavement industry practitioners, consultants, and agencies complement their projects’ economic and social assessment with environmental impacts quantification and allow them to select an optimum rehabilitation alternative technique based on service life performance and environmental impact,” Al-Qadi said.

The study also emphasized the main factors that impact emissions arising and energy consumed at every stage of the pavement life-cycle as a result of in-place recycling techniques. Therefore, the research team gathered detailed information about fuel usage associated with such techniques based on field data. They found that fuel usage is affected by pavement aggregate hardness, pavement width, air temperature, and horsepower of the equipment used.

Mouna Krami Senhaji, one of the graduate students who have assisted with the project, says that it is important that agencies understanding of maintenance and rehabilitation alternatives be enhanced for sound decision making when selecting and prioritizing projects. “The newly developed tool provides the opportunity to analyze the environmental impacts and performance of a wide range of treatments applicable to flexible pavements, so stakeholders around the nation will be able to accurately evaluate the benefits of in-place recycling versus conventional methods.”

Rutgers Civil and Environmental Engineering associate professor Hao Wang considers the study particularly significant for east coast where high volumes of freight traffic on highways is a daily occurrence. “In-place recycling techniques significantly reduce traffic delays because they result in shorter periods of lane closures.”

Keeping It Together: An In-Depth Examination of Various Tack Coats

Similar to frosting in a layered cake, which holds the multiple layers together, interface bonding in road pavement structures ensures that the asphalt layers remain in place for longer periods of time.

The current interface bonding procedure includes the use of tack coats. According to the Asphalt Institute, a tack coat is a light application of bituminous materials to an existing surface using a distributor to provide sufficient bonding between pavement layers. The most common tack coats on the market are hot asphalt products and emulsified asphalts. Hot asphalt products are a blend of petroleum-based asphalt binder and sometimes a modifier. Emulsified asphalts (emulsions) are products made of asphalt cement, an emulsifying agent, and water.

In a previous research collaboration between the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT), an interface shear test device (ISTD) was developed to characterize the bonding strength of pavement interlayer in the laboratory under Project R27-100, Best Practices for Implementation of Tack Coat: Part 1 - Laboratory Study.

However, the ISTD was developed for a hydraulic testing frame—something that is customized and not easily accessible. Therefore, there was a need for a simplified design of the shear fixture for local agencies and contractors—many who do not have servo-hydraulic loading devices—to perform routine performance tests on tack coats.

ICT and IDOT teamed up again in Project R27-SP34, “Evaluation of Various Tack Coat Materials Using Interface Shear Device and Recommendations on a Simplified Device,” to evaluate the properties of various tack coat materials, and provide recommendations for a simplified shear testing device that can be integrated into the testing frames at IDOT.

The project was conducted under the direction of a Technical Review Panel (TRP) chaired by James (Jim) Trepanier, HMA Operations Engineer at IDOT’s Central Bureau of Materials. According to Jim, as night paving is becoming more common the need for tack coats with reduced cure time has become a high priority. In addition, there are a number of tack coat options that have little or no cure time that are currently not listed as acceptable tack coats in the Department’s specifications.

“This project was initiated in order to evaluate the effectiveness of these products for possible inclusion in IDOT’s specifications,” Trepanier said. “The addition of these new tack coat products will increase productivity and shorten the time needed for construction, thus minimizing safety concerns and maximizing cost savings to the contractor, IDOT, and ultimately the tax payer.”

Dr. Hasan Ozer served as principle investigator (PI) on this project. Ozer is a research assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

“There are various types of tack coat materials in the market place used in original pavement construction and rehabilitation projects,” Ozer said. “However, it is important to select the right material and use the optimum application rate to maximize bonding between different layers.”

Also assisting with this project was graduate research assistant Jose Rivera-Perez, who is pursuing his master’s degree in civil engineering at UIUC.

In this latest study, the research team evaluated the interface shear strength of seven tack coat materials using the ISTD by testing the composite specimens consisting of concrete and hot-mix asphalt mixture (HMA). Four of the tack coats were hot-applied products and three were emulsion.

“The ISTD has been very useful in making the right choices when it comes to selection and application of tack coat materials,” Ozer said.

Overall, the research showed that, at the same application rate, hot-applied products have significantly higher shear strength than the emulsion products.

The research team also conducted a separate round of preliminary tests on a simplified shear testing device and found that it is important to control normal pressure build-up within the device. Therefore, recommendations were made to modify the simplified shear testing device to conform to the ISTD that has been used in this study and previous studies.

The final report detailing the results of the research project is available here.

Research Looks to Decrease Road Closure Times in Illinois

Imagine you’re in your car sipping coffee and hoping for a smooth commute when you’re greeted by those big, orange signs. Construction. Still? This has been going on for weeks and the traffic is now the source of your daily headache. What is worse is it looks finished. Why can’t they just open the road?

That’s the problem being looked at in Project R27-154, “Effect of Early-Age Concrete Elastic Properties on Fatigue Damage in PCC Pavements Containing Fibers.” It’s a problem that is magnified by an increase in traffic throughout the state. The project was conducted by Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) researchers and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) under the direction of a Technical Review Panel chaired by James Krstulovich, Concrete Technology Engineer at IDOT’s Central Bureau of Materials. Professor Mohsen Issa was the project’s principal investigator (PI).

Researchers have been searching for a way to keep road closure times down while also not compromising the life-span of new concrete pavements. Keeping road closure times down will not only help reduce traffic but save money too.

Currently, the earliest pavement will be opened to traffic is when test specimens have attained a flexural strength of 650 pounds per square inch (psi) or a compressive strength of 3,500 psi. Similar criteria apply to concrete patches. In order to open a patch as quickly as possible, an accelerating chemical admixture could be added to the concrete mix, or the mix could be designed to have a larger volume of cement. However, such methods could ultimately compromise the long-term durability of the concrete.

“Thinking outside the box, industry approached IDOT suggesting that at early ages, concrete is a more elastic material with a relatively low modulus compared with its rigid properties at later ages; thus, the implication being that stresses may be considerably lower in “green” concrete than generally assumed, possibly allowing earlier loading without imparting damage that would reduce the patch’s or pavement’s serviceability,” Krstulovich said.

A thorough experimental program was conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago to evaluate the elastic properties of Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) pavement, or rigid pavement, and patch mixes at early ages. The research included testing “green” concrete samples and then subjecting those samples to various environmental changes.

Krstulovich says there were two main questions researchers were looking to answer; “Can ordinary PCC pavements or patches be opened earlier than currently specified? And does including fibers help?”

Researchers evaluated the potential long-term effects of opening up new concrete roads earlier to traffic by subjecting concrete beams to fatigue loading at early ages and then subjecting the fatigued beam to rapid freezing and thawing cycles to measure deterioration. They determined that adding fibers improved the toughness and structural performance of pavement and patch mixes.

According to PI Issa, the findings of the research can greatly help in determining the plausibility of opening up newly paved sections early to traffic.

“IDOT engineers are provided with a practical tool that can be employed in critical construction situations such as high-traffic volume intersections and during challenging climatic conditions,” Issa said. “IDOT can benefit from the substantial decrease of closure times, which can be potentially reduced to the first three days after paving.”

The research team noted that this decrease in closure time can assist construction budgets by choosing a suitable design thickness of PCC pavements with either fibrous or plain concrete solutions without detrimentally affecting highway serviceability.

The implementation of this new procedure is being recommended for future roadway-construction projects in the State of Illinois.

The complete findings of this research study are available on ICT’s website and can be accessed here.

58th Annual Bituminous Conference Highlighted by Awards

More than 300 technical individuals from all over the country attended the 58th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference on December 11th and 12th, 2017, at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. Every year the event brings together highway engineers, government officials, contractors, consultants, university researchers, and representatives from various agencies, academia, and consulting firms to discuss asphalt concrete improvement and share technical research, but this year there was something different.   

For the first time ever four Bituminous Achievement Awards worth $500 each were presented to student, government, and industry leaders thanks to the generous support of several sponsors.

UIUC Ph.D. student Punit Singhvi was awarded the Marshall Thompson Student Research Award for his research on asphalt and pavement preservation techniques as well as his contributions to the development of I-FIT protocol.

Retired Materials Engineer Robert Bailey received the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association (IAPA) Research Award for his decades of service to the transportation industry and his creation of “The Bailey Method,” a systematic approach to establish aggregate blends for hot-mix asphalt.

IDOT Hot-Mix Asphalt Supervisor Allen Fox won the Barry Dempsey Bituminous Technical Contribution of the Year Award for the Quality Control/Quality Assurance training classes he was the first to teach and the wealth of knowledge and experience he developed in HMA during his 50-plus years with the transportation industry.

National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) Chairman and Gallagher Asphalt Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Dan Gallagher was the recipient of the Imad L. Al-Qadi Leadership in Bituminous Engineering Award. Gallagher was recognized for his leadership efforts that have continually benefited and supported the Illinois flexible pavement industry over the past three decades.

Conference organizers say the awards segment will continue for years to come because of the sponsor commitment.

This year’s conference featured presentations and discussions on various topics, including a national perspective on asphalt pavement performance, pavement preservation, hot-mix asphalt (HMA) design for airport pavements, longitudinal joint sealing, and the best practices of milling and profiling smooth pavements.

Several leaders from government, industry, and academia took the podium to speak including Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) Director Paul Loete, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Division Administrator Catherine Batey, NAPA Chairman Dan Gallagher, Oldcastle Materials Asphalt Performance Manager Shane Buchanan, National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) Assistant Director Buzz Powell, Astec, Inc. Technical Services and Applications Director Richard Shreck, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Program Manager Navneet Garg, Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) Sustainability Implementation Engineer David Lippert, Cargill Global Technology Manager Hassan Tabatabaee, S.T.A.T.E.

Testing, LLC Founder and President Jay Behnke, Wirtgen America Product Specialist Tom Chastain, and Murphy Pavement Technology President Tim Murphy.

The full conference, including most presentations, are available on the conference’s history page.

Congratulations to all who received an award and a special thank you to all of the attendees, organizers, presenters, and sponsors who made this conference a great success!

The 59th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference is tentatively scheduled for December 11th and 12th, 2018 at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, Illinois. Please save the date and sign up to receive email notifications about the next conference.

Mark your Calendars for the 104th Transportation and Highway Engineering Conference

The 104th Transportation and Highway Engineering (THE) Conference will take place February 27–28, 2018, with preconference activities offered on the 26th. The conference will be held at the Illini Union on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This annual conference will offer sessions covering a wide variety of topics relevant to transportation in Illinois including bridges and structures; design, construction, and environment; traffic, operations, and safety; and local roads and streets.

A session focusing on current research at ICT will also be presented.

See THE’s website for additional information.

PI Spotlight: Hadi Meidani

Hadi Meidani is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

He leads the Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) Group at UIUC. The UQ Group focuses on addressing the issue of uncertainty in the optimal management of infrastructure systems and structures by developing advanced machine learning techniques and statistical methods. Meidani’s research has been applied on problems in structural engineering, transportation engineering, materials modeling, and energy systems. He has been published in prestigious journals in civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and computational mechanics.

Meidani is currently studying reliable crowdsourcing for participatory wind damage assessment where he uses advance coding theory methods to build a damage assessment tool that is robust to the unreliability of ordinary citizens. His other active projects include data-driven prediction of rail track geometry defects, optimal infrastructures for autonomous truck traffic, and real-time, data-driven analysis of interdependent infrastructure systems.

Meidani earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering along with a master of science in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2012. He holds a bachelor of science in civil engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Iran, which he earned in 2002, and a master of science in structural engineering, which he earned at Sharif University of Technology in 2005.

Meidani was also a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC from 2012-2013, and a postdoctoral research associate in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah from 2013-2014.

Chair Spotlight: Mark Seppelt

Mark Seppelt is the Electrical and Mechanical Unit Chief in the Bureau of Design and Environment at the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). He has been with IDOT for 20 years and has assisted with several IDOT- sponsored research projects administered by the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT).

Currently, Mark serves as Technical Review Panel (TRP) chair for project R27-172 “Roadway Lighting's Impact on Altering Soybean Growth,” which examined the relationship between roadway lighting and the growth and maturation of soybeans. “Specifically, this project evaluated light spill into soybean fields in situ and then compared those levels of light to the development, growth, and yield of the soybeans planted in the same field,” Seppelt said.

The results of this work are expected to provide satisfactory answers to questions about the impact of light level on soybean growth and maturity; impact of spectral distribution on soybean growth and maturity; and measures that can be adopted to limit the impact of roadway lighting on soybean growth and maturity.

Seppelt also chaired the TRP for projects R27-76, “LED Roadway Lighting Evaluation and Field Testing” and R27-123 “LED Street Lighting Evaluation—Phase II: LED Specification and Life-Cycle Cost Analysis”. This research investigated technological advancements in light emitting diode (LED) roadway lighting to determine applications where IDOT can reduce costs or improve lighting.

“The use of LED as a light source in roadway lighting has potential in saving energy costs and reducing the frequency of maintenance” Seppelt said. “This study helps determine the current state of technology in LED roadway lighting and identifies the best (in terms of reduced costs and improved lighting) commercially available LED roadway luminaires for roadway lighting applications.”

Seppelt earned his engineering degree from the University of Missouri-Rolla and his MBA from Sangamon State University. Prior to IDOT, Seppelt held various engineering positions at Central Illinois Public Service Company and later Ameren.

ICT Student Spotlight: Sushobhan Sen

Sushobhan Sen is a doctoral student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on urban energetics, especially the impact of pavements on Urban Heat Islands (UHI).

“Pavements and buildings make a city warmer by absorbing and storing more heat than natural vegetation,” Sushobhan says. “My research involves understanding how our choice of pavement materials and their placement in a city affect the local microclimate of the city and the well-being of its people.”

Sushobhan has assisted on ICT project “Multi-Functional Concrete Inlays”, where he demonstrated how thin concrete inlays with certain properties could be used to mitigate UHIs and vehicular pollution, while also improving the functional characteristics of existing pavements. He is now working on developing a tool to quantify the sustainability of various pavement preservation techniques, with special focus on UHIs.

The inter-disciplinary nature of Sushobhan’s work, which involves pavement engineering, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, atmospheric science, and computations, has helped him “keep his intellectual horizon as broad as possible.” According to him, the most important thing that he has learned from his research work is to look at a pavement beyond its most basic function, i.e., moving people and things around conveniently, and to consider it as part of a larger system that interacts with its environment.

Jeffrey Roesler, CEE professor and associate head for graduate affairs, is Sushobhan’s advisor. “Sushobhan is a superb PhD student with a passion for learning and discovery especially how engineers can make meaningful changes to the urban climate by studying how materials, building form, and the weather impacts building energy, near surface air temperature, and human health. With Sushobhan’s doctoral work, we will have the first measurement tools and models to assist civil engineers in making choices to positively alter the microscale urban heat island on an individual project level.”

Sushobhan holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, and a master of science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in civil engineering. Outside of his studies and research, he enjoys running and reading about American history.

Illinois Transportation Group Presents at TRB Annual Meeting

A great number of Illinois transportation faculty and students headed to Washington D.C. the first week of the year to attend the 97th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), held January 7–11, 2018, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

The meeting program, featuring the spotlight theme “Transportation: Moving the Economy of the Future,” covered all transportation modes, with more than 5,000 presentations in nearly 800 sessions and workshops. Topics of interest to policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions were the focus of the program’s sessions and workshops.

Similar to previous years, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s research was strongly featured in this year’s program and the contribution of faculty and students to poster sessions, workshops, and committees was very significant:

The following UIUC faculty presided over technical events at the 2018 annual meeting of TRB:

J. Riley Edwards, Understanding and Managing the Complex World of Wheel–Rail Interaction, Part 1 (workshop); Current Research in Railroad Track Structure System Design (poster session); Railroad Track Structure System Design Committee

Nora El-Gohary, Pain Points in the Use of Big Data Analytics for Transportation Project Delivery (workshop); Information Systems in Construction Management, AFH10(1), Joint Subcommittee of AFH10, ABJ50

Erol Tutumluer, Best Practices for Pavement Design Using Geosynthetics (workshop); Geological and Geoenvironmental Engineering Section Executive Board

Tyler Dick, Railway Capacity and Delay Modeling—Hybrid Session (lectern session); Rail Capacity, AR040(1), Joint Subcommittee of AR040, AR030, AP070, AT010, AR010

John Popovics, Non-Destructive Evaluation of Structures Subcommittee, AFF40(1)

Hasan Ozer, Sealants and Fillers for Joints and Cracks Committee

Jeffery Roelser, Advanced Concrete Pavement Modeling Subcommittee, AFD50(1)

Yanfeng Ouyang, Behavioral Route Choice (poster session)

At the meeting, Illinois Center for Transportation-affiliated researchers gave several presentations based on research projects sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation. The full list of presentations based on IDOT-funded research is available here.

Also at this year’s meeting, more than 600 alumni, faculty, staff, and students from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Illinois gathered at the annual Illinois transportation group reception held during TRB, on January 7. Benito Marinas, CEE department head and professor, welcomed attendees and gave an overview of the department’s

current research, programs, and plans for educating future leaders in civil and environmental engineering. The event was a great opportunity for academics and professionals to mingle, network, and discuss the latest advancements in the transportation field.

Register for the Erosion and Sediment Control Training Workshops

Registration is now open for the 2018 series of erosion and sediment control workshops. The three modules offered are designed for Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) contractors, inspectors, designers, and others interested in erosion and sediment control and stormwater management best management practices. Successful completion of the Fundamentals Module is required before taking the Design or Construction Modules.

REGISTER HERE

For course information, dates, and registration, please see the Erosion and Sediment Control Workshop homepage. Also, be sure to sign up for the notification list to receive schedule announcements and changes.

The Kent Seminar Series

The spring series of the Kent Seminars starts February 1st with a presentation of a model to predict creep compliance of asphalt mixtures by Illinois Center for Transportation’s senior sustainability implementation engineer David Lippert.

Later in the semester, the following Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate students will present their latest research findings:

Issam Qamhia: Field Performance Evaluation of Quarry By-products Used in Unbound Aggregate Layers Constructed over Soft Subgrade

Erman Gungor: Development of a Proposed Overweight Vehicle Permit Fee Structure in Illinois

Egemen Okte: Development of Machine Compliance Factor for the Illinois Flexibility Index Test (I-FIT)

Zehui Zhu: Effect of I-FIT Configuration on Test Results of Asphalt Mixtures

All Kent Seminars take place at the Illinois Center for Transportation. For attendees’ convenience, the program offers live-streaming via YouTube.

The first half of the 2017-18 Kent Seminar series wrapped up November 2nd with a presentation by UIUC master’s student Shan Zhao. Zhao lectured on the development of ground-penetration radar (GPR) data analysis algorithms for predicting thin asphalt overlay thickness.

This semester a wide array of transportation topics were explored by a variety of presenters, including:

•Timothy Rushing (chief, Airfields and Pavements Branch of the Geotechnical and Structures Lab, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center) on the past, present, and future of airfields and pavement research at the U.S. Army ERDC•Quang Tran (Ph.D. candidate, CEE at UIUC) on the rapid detection of concrete joint activation from normalized shear wave transmission energy•Silvia Caro Spinel (professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of the Andes in Columbia) on the mechanical properties of asphalt mixtures in partial saturation conditions•Mohammad Nabian (research assistant, UIUC) on the deep learning for accelerated reliability analysis of infrastructure networks

The Kent Seminar series can be viewed on YouTube Live and includes a chat box feature that allows the viewer to participate in the sessions. YouTube Live’s chat feature requires a YouTube login, which is free to sign up for at ict.illinois.edu, the day of the presentation. The Kent Seminar series runs every Thursday during the academic semester at 12:30 p.m. You can also visit the Kent Seminar Series Video Archive to see past presentations.

Recent ICT/IDOT Report Publications

Several reports from recently completed IDOT-sponsored projects are now available on ICT’s website:

R27-SP34: Evaluation of Various Tack Coat Materials Using Interface Shear Device and Recommendations on a Simplified Device. This report provides a written analysis of the properties in various tack coat materials using the Interface Shear Testing Device (ISTD) and provides recommendations for a simplified shear testing device that can be integrated to the testing frames at the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT).

R27-161: Utilizing Lab Tests to Predict Asphalt Concrete Overlay Performance. A series of five experimental projects and three demonstration projects were constructed to better understand the performance of pavement overlays using various levels of asphalt binder replacement (ABR) from reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), recycled asphalt shingles (RAS), and crushed concrete. The study of these projects prior to construction, during construction, and for a short monitoring period after construction is intended to determine the impact of various pre-existing pavement conditions, pavement cross-section, mix design, and material properties on the ultimate performance of the asphalt concrete (AC) overlay. This final report is the third report on this research project. Two interim reports that documented project construction and performance to date have been previously published. This report documents final material testing, performance data collection of distress, and profile surveys after construction. (The first interim report, published in February 2016, is available here. The second interim report, published in February 2017, is available here.)

R27-154: Effect of Early-Age Concrete Elastic Properties on Fatigue Damage in PCC Pavements Containing Fibers. This report documents the testing, construction, and performance of surface AC mixes with a variety with ABR levels, ABR types, and different asphalt binder grades, to allow the evaluation and comparison of the impact of recycled materials on pavement performance. The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) is revising current specifications for opening new PCC (Portland cement concrete) pavements to traffic. These revisions will help keep closure times at a minimum by specifying the required concrete strength for resisting early-age fatigue damage. An extensive experimental program was conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago to determine the elastic properties of IDOT pavement (PV) and patch (PP1, PP2) mixes at early concrete age.

R27-145: Modified Standard Penetration Test-Based Drilled Shaft Design Method for Weak Rocks. This report documents the research of the project titled “Modified Standard Penetration Test–based Drilled Shaft Design Method for Weak Rocks (Phase 2 study).” In this phase of the project, the research team focused on the load-transfer mechanism of axially loaded drilled shafts

socketed into weak, fine-grained rocks (e.g., weak shales). We also enhanced and verified the method of characterization of weak shales and the design procedure developed during Phase 1 of this study (Stark et al. 2013). The new design procedure will improve safety and reduce the Illinois Department of Transportation’s (IDOT’s) deep-foundation costs for future bridge structures.

New ICT/IDOT Projects

The following research projects have recently started:

R27-182: Size and Shape Determination of the Rip Rap and Large Sized Aggregates Using Field Imaging (Started 1/1/18)

R27-189: Evaluation of Data Trends and Variability in the Quality for Performance (QCP) and Pay for Performance (PFP) Programs (Started 1/1/18)

Barbeque, Santa Highlight ICT Lab Open House

Homemade barbeque and a surprise from Santa Claus highlighted the Transportation Group Winter Open House on Monday, December 4th, 2017. Dozens of staff, faculty, and students brought along family members to celebrate the holiday season at the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL).

Santa dazzled the younger ones in the crowd with candy and presented ICT Director Imad Al-Qadi with a check for $100,000 on behalf of UIUC Professor Emeritus Barry Dempsey. This most recent donation brings the contributions of the Barry J. and Pauline G. Dempsey ATREL Endowment Fund to half a million dollars. The money is used to support ATREL.

“I like to see that ATREL can expand its research and operational horizons,” Barry Dempsey said.

ICT Senior Sustainability Implementation Engineer David Lippert is the man behind the barbeque. Mixing up lip-smackin’ sauces is a hobby he enjoys when not working at ICT.

New Staff: Kimberly Howard and Todd Kato

ICT recently welcomed two new employees to its staff.

Kimberly Howard, outreach coordinator, will be assisting with the development and implementation of training initiatives and technical conferences, building and managing ICT’s web content and presence, and executing the center’s social media strategy. Kimberly’s duties also include the development of communications resources and tools highlighting key findings of research projects administered by ICT. She is excited to put her videography and storytelling skills to use! She previously worked as a television news reporter for a number of stations, including CBS6 Albany (WRGB) in New York, GTN News in Florida and, ABC Newschannel 20 (WICS) right here in Illinois. Kimberly holds a bachelor of arts in journalism and communication science from the University of Connecticut.

Todd Kato, technical communications specialist, is in charge of the research report review, approval, and publication process for all projects sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Todd also maintains a database of ICT’s project performance criteria and accomplishments and ensures that the center’s guidelines and procedures fulfill the requirements of the grant agreement and exceed annual objectives. Before joining the staff at ICT, Todd had previously served as a senior course articulation specialist for UIUC. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from William Penn University and a master’s degree in technical communication and information design from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Waad Ayoub Receives CEE Staff Award for Excellence

Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) Senior Communications Coordinator Waad Ayoub was recently honored with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Staff Excellence Award.

The award, which recognizes outstanding performance and demonstrated professional excellence by members of the support staff of the University of Illinois’ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was presented at CEE’s Annual Faculty and Staff Recognition Reception on November 9th.

“It feels great to know that your contribution is making a difference and is noticed by others,” Waad said. “It’s a motivation for me to go above and beyond the call of duty.”

Waad has been with ICT since 2013 and her position is one that allows her to be involved in the center on almost every level. Waad leads the technology transfer team at ICT and manages all media content, including the center’s quarterly newsletter, web content and featured research projects. She also manages conferences, workshops, and the training classes ICT puts on to license engineers across the state.

Waad also assists with research administration. She helps guide all types of projects from beginning to end. This includes reviewing proposals submitted to sponsors, submitting quarterly progress reports, reviewing monthly expenditures, and editing the final reports.

In addition to those roles, Waad has been coordinating several human resource functions such as coordinating search processes for new hires and processing appointments for graduate research assistants.

“Waad was hired as a technical editor and soon after showed signs of multitasking and high commitment and became a Senior Communication Coordinator,” Bliss Professor of Engineering and ICT and ATREL Director Imad Al-Qadi said. “She has exhibited an exceptional level of initiative and dedication and has demonstrated an attitude of excellence, teamwork, and went above the expectations of her job responsibilities. She has proven herself an outstanding asset to our center due to the exemplary work she does. She is a multitasker and a quick learner. We are very pleased that she is a member of the ICT family.”

Waad is bilingual with a bachelor’s degree in translation and foreign languages from the Islamic University of Lebanon. She speaks Arabic and English.

“I worked for ten years as a freelance interpreter and translator for a wide variety of clients, ranging from the Department of State, Michigan Department of Education to Hallmark, Tiffany and Co. and many others,” Waad said.

Just this past December Waad earned her master’s degree in public administration from the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Awards and Honors

The following Illinois Center for Transportation-affiliated researchers have recently been recognized with the following awards and honors:

Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) professor Timothy Stark’s, “Case Study: Vertical Drain and Stability Analyses for a Compacted Embankment on Soft Soils,” was selected as this month’s Editor’s Choice for the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. Another one of his papers, "Progression of Elevated Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills," was also selected as Editor’s Choice for the ASCE SmartBrief promotion to appeal to practitioners in August, 2017.

Stark was also principal investigator on project R27-145: Modified Standard Penetration Test–based Drilled Shaft Design Method for Weak Rocks (Phase 2 Study), which will be featured at the Illinois Transportation and Highway Engineering (THE) Conference on March 1st.

Student Punit Singhvi received the Marshall Thompson Student Research Award at the 58th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference for playing an instrumental role on the ICT/IDOT R27-128 project that led to the development of the I-FIT protocol.

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) Graduate Student Organization won the University of Illinois’ Engineering Council’s Society of the Month Award for December 2017. The society is run by CEE students Mohammed Sawalha (President), Izak Said (Vice President), Punit Singhvi (Treasurer), Arturo Espinoza (Secretary), Fazal Safi (Professional Development Chair), Issam Qamhia (Intra-university Outreach Chair), Jose Rivera-Perez (Social Media Chair), and Egemen Okte (Photographer).

Congratulations to all!