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Project Highlights
NDSU Work Will Help Indian Reservation Road Planning
An MPC-funded project at North Dakota State University will give road planners for the nation's Indian reservations tools for assessing and planning their road systems.
Indian reservations in the United States have a road network of about 50,000 miles. About half of those miles are under the jurisdiction of state, federal and local highway agencies. The remaining 25,000 miles are controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and are referred to as the Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) network.
"We are taking the database of the IRR network and converting it into a format that is compatible with the analytical tools used by state and federal agencies to evaluate their roads," notes Doug Benson, the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute researcher leading the effort. "Our goal is to make those analytical tools available to tribal highway planners so they can use them to evaluate and plan their highway networks."
The data used in the effort includes numerous engineering specifications including information on road and shoulder width, road surface and condition as well as strength. Additional data on safety issues and the amount of traffic are also considered.
"Currently we're completing the preliminary analysis of the IRR database and comparing it to the data requirements of HERS-ST (Highway Economic Requirements System – state version), one of the primary analytical tools used by highway planners," Benson says.
That comparison will help the researchers identify the data adequately supplied by the IRR database as well as data that are inadequate for use by HERS-ST. The next step in the project will be to develop software to address those inadequacies and convert the IRR data to data usable by HERS-ST and other tools.
"The asset management capabilities provided by these tools is critical to having a road network that meets needs in a cost-effective manner and allows for growth and planning," Benson says. Road planners use analytical tools to evaluate remaining life of roads, to prioritize repair and reconstruction projects, to assess safety concerns and to develop plans for road and highway investment.
The project was launched last summer and a prototype of the conversion software is expected to be ready in June. The project is being conducted with guidance from the USDOT's Asset Management Division, Federal Lands Highway Division, and Federal Highway Administration.
University of Utah Receives Software Donation
PTV America, a leading multi-disciplinary transportation software and consulting firm and a subsidiary of PTV AG in Karlsruhe, Germany, announced a new partnership with the Utah Traffic Lab which is part of the University of Utah Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
PTV America has donated software with a commercial value of $560,000 for training the next generation of transportation engineers. Peter Martin of the University of Utah is working with PTV America to implement the newest PTV Vision Suite of integrated transportation planning and operations analyses software into the academic curriculum and research efforts at the university. The software is the leading tool in more than 75 countries and allows University of Utah students and faculty to work with some of the most advanced technologies in the world.
CSU Researchers Examine Flexible Guardrails
Colorado State University researchers are exploring whether wood or other biomass materials may be used in crash barriers.
The overall objective of the project is to evaluate, construct and test crash barriers composed of low-diameter wood or biomass elements that are inexpensive, easily replaced, and that yield significantly under external loads.
Most existing crash barriers perform well, providing good overall protection, but often exert large forces on both the vehicle and occupants. The CSU research will examine prototypes of three-dimensional "soft" wood element networks that will provide the necessary impact resistance while undergoing large deformations to soften the impact on vehicles and their occupants.
The project is directed by Paul Heyliger, CSU professor of civil engineering, and C.J. Riley, a Ph.D. student in structural mechanics. Riley earned his M.S. from CSU and spent two years with the Wyoming Department of Transportation developing design software for transportation structures.
Research assistants on the project include two civil engineering undergraduate students: Jordan Jarrett and David Sawahata. Jarrett is a senior who plans to go to graduate school at CSU to study structural and mechanics engineering. Sawahata is also a senior and participated in an internship coordinated by the MPC where he worked with the Wold County Public Works department.
Jordan Jarrett and David Sawahata use an Instron testing machine to test a wood-dowel-based model to failure in compression. The models are a preliminary examination of using wood or biomass materials as flexible bending or compression members.
