Year 5 Semi-Annual Report

Strategic Plans & Reports

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Infrastructure Technology Institute
TEA-21 Year 5
Semi-Annual Report

July 16, 2004

2133 Sheridan Road
Evanston, Illinois 60208
Phone: (847) 491-8165
Fax: (847) 467-2056

dschulz@northwestern.edu
www.iti.northwestern.edu

Contents

Success Stories

Success Story: High School and Lower Elementary Summer Infrastructure Courses
Success Story: Infrastructure Facilities & Systems Course
Success Story: Mobile Infrastructure Classroom

Research

Success Story: Monitoring of Excavation at Ford Engineering Design Center Construction Site
Success Story: Instrumentation of Historic Structure for FHWA-EFLD
Success Story: Safety Concrete – A New Impact-Absorbing Concrete for Protecting Buildings, Structures, and People
Success Story: First-Ever Commercial Instrument for Autonomous Crack Monitoring

Technology Transfer

Success Story: Midwest Bridge Inspection and Maintenance Consortium

Policy and Management

Success Story: Impacting the Regional and National Infrastructure Debate

Part B Research Projects

Part C Financial Status

Exhibit C-1: Budget Status for TEA-21 Year 4 as of 5.31.04
Exhibit C-2: Budget Status for TEA-21 Year 5 as of 5.31.04

Introduction

Founded in 1992, the Infrastructure Technology Institute of Northwestern University is an upper tier university transportation center funded under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). On November 10, 1999, the Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) of the US Department of Transportation approved the Institute's six-year strategic plan and awarded funding for Year 1. Year 2 funding was approved in May 2001, Year 3 funding in September 2001, Year 4 funding in August 2002, and Year 5 funding in August 2003. The Institute understands and appreciates that all funds for all six years of the TEA-21 funding must be expended by September 30, 2005. The Institute is submitting its request for Year 6 funding on July 16, 2004.

The Year 4 annual report submitted and approved in January 2004 covered Institute activities for calendar 2003. Therefore, this document reports on Institute activities for the first six months of 2004, although there may be some overlap with previous reports for the sake of continuity.

Center Theme

The theme of the Infrastructure Technology Institute is improving the technology and expertise available to address the problems of the nation’s transportation infrastructure.

Vision

In its strategic plan, the Institute established an ambitious vision for the six-year period:

• Develop a transportation infrastructure engineering educational program at the Master’s level while enriching the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum at Northwestern and providing significant professional development opportunities to transportation infrastructure practitioners,

• Continue its successful transportation infrastructure research programs in nondestructive testing and evaluation of transportation infrastructure and materials,

• Build on its success in moving the innovative transportation infrastructure technologies it develops into practice,

• Contribute to advances in transportation infrastructure policy and management, particularly the vexing problem of the increasing paralysis of the transportation infrastructure industry in pursuing large complex projects,

• Grow the number of public and private sector transportation infrastructure industry partners with whom it works on technology issues, broaden existing partnerships, and develop new partnerships to include human resource and management and policy dimensions, and

• Generally enhance its position as a recognized center of excellence in transportation infrastructure technology.

The Institute is pleased and proud to report a number of important successes on these goals during the first six months of 2004.

Success Stories: Education

Success Story: High School and Lower Elementary Summer Infrastructure Courses. Building on its successful undergraduate/graduate course in infrastructure facilities and systems, and its success in 2002 offering a weeklong summer workshop on infrastructure for high school students and teachers, during the summer of 2003, the Institute developed and offered a ten-week one-day-a-week course for lower elementary student, ages 6-12.

Figure 1. Elementary Students Enter Davis Street Station and CTA Vice President for Planning Michael Shiffer Speaks to High School Students

The course was taught in conjunction with a summer school session at the Country Meadows Montessori School in Gurnee, Illinois. It consisted of ten once-a-week infrastructure classes, eight of which included field trips to infrastructure facilities. Based on the success of the initial effort, it was decided to fine tune the course and re-offer it in the summer of 2004, and the first class was taught June 9. An early highlight was a trip on a chartered Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit train shared with the summer high school institute (Figure 1).

During this second summer, special efforts are being paid to documenting what works and what doesn’t in teaching such young children about infrastructure, with the goal of producing a guide to teachers and practitioners desiring to address these topics in a variety of settings: as part of regular classes, as special "visits" by infrastructure engineers to class, as field trips, as Saturday special programs, as summer school, and others. Meanwhile, the high school institute was successfully offered for the third time June 28-July 2, 2004.

Success Story: Infrastructure Facilities and Systems Course. The Institute has once again cooperated with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to offer the third annual course in infrastructure facilities and systems:

Weekly lectures on the principles of planning and designing infrastructure were geared to a series of field trips to infrastructure facilities including a trip on the Chicago Transit Authority elevated rapid transit system on a charter CTA rapid transit train, tours of various construction projects including newly-reconstructed Midway Airport, Millennium Park, the renewal of the electrical system and track on the CTA Red Line in the median of the Dan Ryan expressway on Chicago’s South Side, and the new Hyatt Corporation headquarters, an inspection of shoreline erosion protection construction on Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline, a tour of the Belt Railway of Chicago’s Clearing Yards, and a boat trip on the Chicago River to view Chicago’s famous movable bridges and the Chicago Locks (Figure 2).

Students are required to participate in student design team projects. Three student design teams examined possible extension of the CTA Yellow Line to the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie, alternatives for providing high-speed rail access to O’Hare International Airport, and ways to protect pedestrians at and in between stations on the Chicago region’s commuter rail carrier, Metra.

Figure 2. Infrastructure Facilities & Systems Class on Chicago River Tour

Success Story: Mobile Infrastructure Classroom. An initial testing phase has been completed in this project. It involved eight engineering undergraduates, split into two teams to evaluate the feasibility of existing technology for developing a mobile PDA-GPS-Phone (PGP) technology. One team investigated a low cost, non GPS system and the other the PDA-GPS system. These students were part of the Engineering Design and Communication class at Northwestern University.

The object of this project is to ultimately develop PDA-GPS-Phone (PGP) technology as a "virtual infrastructure teacher." Such a purpose-built location-specific learning system would allow educational, civic, cultural, and infrastructure organizations to vastly improve their ability to offer multi-level self-selected information on infrastructure to high-end continuing education and K-12 students in the field. Examples include location-specific self-guided architecture tours, and bus or boat tours offering educational experiences on bridges, buildings, and other infrastructure. Eventually, PGP could allow people to ask "what if?" questions, and delve deeper into technology and history questions of interest. The technology allows full immersion in the subject itself: a city or a civil war battle field with access to a wide range of location-specific information.

Use of these two systems was tested on the Northwestern campus in a very preliminary fashion. The campus was chosen for content as the navigation challenges were similar to those that would be encountered in the downtown Chicago, where the large infrastructure would be located. One of the user interfaces is shown in Figure 3. It is planned to continue this project next year in the conjunction with the Engineering Design and Communication classes at Northwestern to both develop the system as well as to interest students in the infrastructure.

Figure 3. Self-Guided Infrastructure Tour Using PDA

Success Stories: Research

Success Story: Monitoring of Excavation at Ford Engineering Design Center Construction Site

ITI engineers assisted Professor Richard Finno on a project to monitor soil movement around the excavation site for the new Ford Engineering Design Center. The assistance consisted of installing sensors in and around the excavation and in the adjacent McCormick Engineering and Applied Science building (Tech). Additionally, ITI engineers installed the instrumentation that allows remote continuous monitoring of the movement. In Figure 4 below a Leica total survey station (left) and a web TV camera (right) are shown mounted on the roof at Tech. The total survey station is automated and it is taking "survey shots" from the roof of Tech and recording the data on a computer. It is shooting a laser beam at various prisms mounted across the construction site and on stable reference points. This instrument will measure any movement of the building (Tech) that occurs during construction. The results of the Leica survey are available in a few seconds in a lab in the Tech building thanks to a wireless connection between the roof top mounted sensor and the laboratory computer. The immediate availability of the data is very important because the contractor has a requirement that total movement of the Tech building must not exceed 1.5 inches. Conventional means of measuring this movement make use of a laser scanner and the report summarizing the data is not available for several days. To the right of the Leica is a web TV camera. This camera allows remote observation of the excavation site by accessing the camera on our web site.

Figure 4. Instrumentation on the Roof of NU’s Tech Institute

Figure 5. ITI Research Engineer Dan Hogan welding a vibrating wire strain gage on a diagonal H- brace

A total of 34 vibrating wire gages and about a dozen strain gages were installed in the excavation under typical Chicago February weather conditions (Figure 5). Tech is built on a shallow foundation, about ten feet deep. The adjacent, nearby excavation for the Ford center is being excavated down to forty feet. Tilt and vibration sensors were installed in the basement of the Tech building to monitor potential movement of this building as a result of the excavation activities (Figure 6).

Figure 6. ITI engineers Dave Kosnik and Matt Kotowski installing tilt meters on building piers in the basement of Tech.

This research builds on prior research undertaken by Prof. Finno to predict the movement of soil and underground utilities adjacent to major excavations, with obvious application to highway, transit, railroad, and airport construction.

Success Story: Instrumentation of Historic Structure for FHWA- EFLD

The Institute was asked by the Eastern Federal Land District of FHWA to install an ACM system on an important historic structure to facilitate completion of a critical road reconstruction in Washington DC (Figures 7-8). This installation was necessary to document the impact of construction vibration on the structure. The Kaman sensors were installed on both the interior and exterior of the structure as shown in the photographs. The ability of several agencies to observe results immediately and simultaneously was a key component in the interest in the system.

Figure 7. Installation Plan for Exterior Crack

Figure 8. Kaman Sensor Across Interior Crack

Success Story: Safety Concrete – A New Impact-Absorbing Concrete for Protecting Buildings, Structures, and People

The goal of this project is to continue to develop and commercialize a new type of concrete that will disintegrate into small fragments (rather than fracture into large chunks) when subjected to sudden and severe loading. Because of the emphasis on preventing damage to buildings and people, this material has been dubbed "safety concrete." A standard strategy for increasing the security of sensitive buildings is a concrete perimeter wall intended to keep unauthorized persons and vehicles from approaching too closely. However, an unintended consequence is that a powerful explosion set off just outside the security wall can cause it to break into large pieces that become projectiles and cause considerable damage and loss of life. An unfortunate example of this phenomenon occurred when the U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983. The specific application of safety concrete is thus to form security perimeters or walls around buildings that will fragment into small particles that cause minimal damage in the event of an explosion.

The technical strategy for making safety concrete, developed at Northwestern University by the PIs, is to process a cement-based material to have microcracks distributed throughout its volume and a state of internal tensile stress. Under static loading, the material behaves like a normal (although low-strength) concrete, but under explosive loading the cracks all propagate and connect, causing fragmentation into small particles. To generate this type of microstructure, the binder contains a significant proportion of blast furnace slag, a cementitious material with a strong tendency to form shrinkage cracks when dried at an early age. The process of forming safety concrete includes a controlled drying treatment that generates the internal stress state and the microcracks. This project was motivated by the Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) of the Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, Mississippi. The ERDC is a cost-sharing partner and is conducting blast testing of safety concrete.

Significant progress was made on this project during the first half of 2004:

· Experiments have verified that the combination of a sodium silicate accelerated slag binder and a high sand-to-binder ratio (s/b=5) results in higher strength safety concrete with excellent fragmentation properties.

· Shock tube blast testing by the ERDC has indicated that the pressure capability of the shock tube chamber is not sufficient to provide meaningful comparisons of higher strength specimens. Future testing will be conducted on safety concrete blocks at an ERDC test site that more accurately mimics a real explosion.

· Initial results of safety concrete block production indicated that the water content has to be reduced in the scaled-up mix designs to permit immediate demolding of blocks. Curing conditions and strength and impact testing procedures are being determined for the safety concrete block configuration.

Success Story: First-Ever Commercial Instrument for Autonomous Crack Monitoring

During the fall of 2003, researchers installed and began a two-year test program of the first commercial instrument developed specifically for autonomous crack monitoring. GeoSonics of Warrendale, Pennsylvania, has produced the beta test model (Figure 9) for validation under this project as GeoSonics also pursues additional validation.

Figure 9. First-Ever Commercial Instrument for Autonomous Crack Monitoring, Developed in Partnership with GeoSonics

This parallel deployment scheme was utilized by Prof. Charles Dowding under this project and GeoSonics to enable GeoSonics to maintain clear ownership of any independently developed hardware or software. The system of parallel codeployment has allowed significant synergism as GeoSonics and project researchers can trade experience without GeoSonics fear of issues of ownership of intellectual property.

Figure 10. Installation of Beta Test Model of First Commercial Autonomous Monitoring Device New Berlin, Wisconsin

Both systems have been installed in the test house (Figure 10), which has been loaned to the project by Vulcan Materials Company, another co-deployment partner.

Success Stories: Technology Transfer

Success Story: Midwest Bridge Working Group.

An Institute-supported organization of state and local bridge inspection and maintenance engineers, the Working Group includes thirteen states (California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin) and four municipalities (Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee).

The Midwest Bridge Working Group met on May 25 (paint session – Figure 11) and May 26 (regular session) for the Spring 2004 Meeting in downtown Chicago. The paint session was co-sponsored by the SSPC "The Society for Protective Coatings." 50 people attended the paint session and 61 attended the regular session. The formal and informal interaction among participants continues to demonstrate its value through strong attendance in spite of cutbacks by many of the participating states in out-of-state travel.

Figure 11. Attendees at the Midwest Bridge Inspection and Maintenance Working Group, Chicago, May 25, 2004

Success Stories: Management and Policy

Success Story. Impacting the Regional & National Infrastructure Discussion.

Despite his illness during the first half of the year, the Institute Director continued to impact the national infrastructure policy discussion. In addition to addressing a number of events in the Evanston and Chicago area, he was invited to submit a commentary to Newsday on the planned 2^nd Avenue subway in New York City:

GETTING AROUND

Think big and dig: Build the subway

BY DAVID F. SCHULZ
David F. Schulz is the director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University.

May 6, 2004

New Yorkers have always loudly debated how best to provide effective public transportation.

So it is no surprise the long-planned Second Avenue subway project is now being subjected to the seemingly endless second-guessing all too common to contemporary transportation planning. The reasons are obvious enough, considering the 8.5-mile project may cost an estimated $16.8 billion and take almost two decades to complete.

Critics suggest light-rail as a more cost-effective alternative, or possibly buses, perhaps in dedicated bus lanes. Anyone with a sense of history sadly realizes how things have come full circle.

The original Second Avenue elevated train was part of a system intended to deal with the intolerable traffic congestion caused by omnibuses and horse-drawn streetcars, the 19th- century equivalent of light rail. Engineers in the late 1800s understood that no mode of public transportation could be effective if forced to traverse Manhattan's then-as-now jam-packed streets.

But while the "El" solved traffic conflicts, the structures were seen as dirty, noisy and ugly. Plans were quickly drawn for subways to not only replace them, but to go where they couldn't. Debates over how, where and when to build and operate the subways were boisterous and lengthy. But in the end, New York designed and constructed the best public transportation system in the country, which has functioned even better than intended, to enable the city to become the financial, media and entertainment capital of the world.

The Second Avenue subway points up a larger problem with American transportation planning and politics. At the project level, any major proposal is scrutinized ad nauseam. So-called Major Investment Studies, a federal euphemism for "full employment for consultants," together with growing shortages of capital funding have tragically frozen too many transit planners into a mindset of "replace it in kind, if you can." That is why it is so encouraging to see transit planners here daring to dream boldly and imaginatively.

New York recently opened the new light-rail service to Kennedy Airport. It is continuing to rebuild transit infrastructure around the World Trade Center site including the planned Fulton Street Transit Center for an estimated $750 million. The city is also making ambitious plans for the $6.8-billion East Side Access, which would mean bringing LIRR trains to Grand Central; extending the No. 7 line west, which could run into the billions of dollars; and building a new South Ferry Terminal for subway lines at an estimated cost of $400 million.

Undoubtedly these plans will be hotly debated. People - especially those negatively impacted by the proposals - will want to "do less" or "do nothing." But in this case lesser options simply won't do.

Light rail undeniably has an important role to play in economic revitalization and mobility enhancement in medium and even large cities across the country. Of special interest are the two dozen or so "heritage trolleys" stimulating historic redevelopment and tourism from Tampa to Dallas, from San Francisco to Portland. Buses operating in dedicated lanes or separate busways play an important role in providing high-quality transit service in many urban and suburban corridors. But neither streetcars nor buses will work for Second Avenue, given its density of residential and commercial development as well as the opportunity to tie into existing subways in ways that will make them work better, too. It will be difficult, it may take decades, and it may entail the removal of two dozen or so buildings, but the Second Avenue subway deserves to be built as planned.

For inspiration, New Yorkers need look no further than beneath their feet, where for over 30 years the city has been building Water Tunnel No. 3. When fully completed in 2020 at a cost of $6 billion, this project will have taken a full half century to finish, and will have demonstrated it is still possible to make - and keep - long-term infrastructure commitments to the future needs of vital metropolis.

The Second Avenue subway would be another welcome demonstration that America has not lost the ability to think big and get the job done right.

Conclusion

Having completed its twelfth year of existence during TEA-21 Year 5, the Infrastructure Technology Institute looks forward to continuing to make a major contribution to America’s infrastructure research, technology commercialization, education and management and policy issue.

Part B – Research Projects

(Project numbers shown are Northwestern University CUFS numbers. Funding shown in for Institute TEA-21 Year 5 funding cycle.)

New Projects

A474, Materials Science of Concrete, Prof. Hamlin Jennings and Prof. Jeffrey Thomas, $67,398

A482, Development and Deployment of Micro-Instrumentation for Infrastructure Management, Prof. Charles Dowding, $78,276

A484, Biological Dating of Infrastructure Facility Cracks, Prof. Charles Dowding, $87,878

Continuing Active Projects with New Year 5 Funding

469, Transportation System Incident Management and Traffic Impact Mitigation Techniques, Prof. Joseph Schofer, $4,594

A472 , Development and Validation of a Methodology for Evaluating the Life Cycle Cost of an Infrastructure Project, Prof. Raymond Krizek, $193,624

A473, "Safety Concrete" – A new Impact-Absorbing Concrete for Protecting Bridges, Structures, and Vehicles, Prof. Hamlin Jennings, $146,145

A475, Introducing Size Effect into Design Practice and Codes for Concrete Infrastructure, Prof. Zdenek Bazant, $179,570

A476, Improved Condition Monitoring for Bridge Management, David Prine, $697,050

A477, Nondestructive Determination of Early-Stage Concrete Properties with an Ultrasonic Wave Reflection Method, Prof. Surendra Shah, $228,332

A478, Automated Deformation Monitoring, Prof. Richard Finno, $1,222,984

A479, Improved Condition Monitoring of Bridges: Nondestructive Evaluation of Foundations, Prof. Richard Finno, $1,453,819

A480, Commercialization of Instrument for Micro-Inch Measurement of Crack Width in Support of Thrust in Remote Monitoring for Bridge Management, Prof. Charles Dowding, $288,127

A481, The Infrastructure Construction and Condition Monitoring Laboratory as a Novel Teaching Tool to Improve Undergraduate Education in Civil Engineering, Prof. Roberta Massabo, $119,153

A483, Commercialization of TDR Measurement of Soil Deformation in Support of Thrust in Remote Monitoring for Bridge Management, Prof. Charles Dowding, $67,891

Continuing Active Projects with No New Year 5 Funding

A452, Life Cycle Management of Steel Bridges Based on Nondestructive Testing and Failure Analysis, Prof. Brian Moran and Prof. Jan Achenbach

A461, The Infrastructure Construction and Condition Monitoring Laboratory as a Novel Teaching Tool to Improve Undergraduate Education in Civil Engineering – Use of Remotely-Controllable Webcam as Teaching Tool, Prof. Roberta Massabo & Prof. Charles Dowding

Completed Projects

A428, Analysis of the Performance of the Rehabilitation of the Chicago-State Subway Station and Its Effects on Adjacent Structures, Prof. Richard Finno

A433, Evaluation of Capacity of Micropiles Embedded in Rock, Prof. Richard Finno

A454, Further Commercialization of NUCu Steels, Prof. Morris Fine and Dr. Semyon Vaynman

Part C – Financial Status

The Institute currently has two grant years open, Years 4 and 5.

Exhibit C-1 presents the current status of Year 4 funding. As indicated on the exhibit, 91.2% of the Year 4 funding had been spent as of May 31, 2004, with the virtually all of the remaining 8.8% committed.

Exhibit C-2 presents the current status of Year 5 funding. As indicated on the exhibit, 58.3% of the Year 5 funding had been spent as of May 31, 2004, with all of the remaining 41.7% committed.