Issue link: http://uwashington.uberflip.com/i/742071
16 Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium • Project: A Network-Level Decision Making Tool for Pavement Maintenance and User Safety • PI: Erdem Coleri (OSU), erdem.coleri@oregonstate.edu The 2012 Pavement Condition Report released by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) indicated that pavement program funding levels are about 30% less than they were a decade ago while inflation has raised the cost of paving. Resurfacing treatments typically last 10 to 20 years but current pavement funding only allows for resurfacing every 30 years or longer. Thus, higher user costs (mostly related to vehicle maintenance and fuel consumption) are expected to be observed due to the increased pavement roughness. Although performance based pavement design procedures have been implemented by all state DOTs, pavement roughness and vehicle operating costs are not directly considered in the decision making process. This research has three major objectives: i) develop a network-level decision making tool to more efficiently allocate state DOT resources for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation by considering road user safety and user-agency costs from construction and use phase stages; ii) develop distributions of optimum IRI trigger values, the optimum roughness level at which pavement needs to be considered for maintenance or rehabilitation, for different traffic levels and climate regions in the Pacific Northwest; iii) evaluate the network-level impact of pavement roughness and distress on vehicle operating costs and user safety. • Project: Understanding Interdependencies Between Systems Towards Resilient Critical Lifeline Infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest • PI: Haizhong Wang (OSU), Haizhong.Wang@oregonstate.edu Critical lifeline infrastructure refers to the electric power, gas and liquid fuels, water, wastewater, transportation network, and telecommunications systems-sometimes called lifeline systems without which buildings, emergency response systems, dams, and other infrastructure cannot operate as intended. Lifelines are highly intradependent and interdependent systems, not working in isolation, but typically interacting with other systems. Electric power networks, for example, provide energy for pumping stations, storage facilities, and equipment control for transmission and distribution systems for oil and natural gas. This reciprocity can be found among all lifeline systems. Identifying, understanding, and analyzing such interdependencies are significant challenges. These challenges are greatly magnified by the breadth and complexity of our critical infrastructure. The objective of this research is to pursue a fundamental understanding of the interdependencies between systems towards resilient critical lifeline infrastructures in the Pacific Northwest for future smart cities. • Project: Torsional Safety of Highway Traffic Signal and Signage Support • PI: Andre Barbosa (OSU), andre.barbosa@oregonstate.edu State Highway Agencies in the Pacific Northwest, and across the country, have a vested interest in the improvement of the safety of traffic signal and signage support structures, as many thousands of these structures overlie State Highways and their users. Increased loading to traffic structures such as signal and sign poles, combined with longer arm lengths, has increased the ratio of torsional to moment forces, which can result in torsion loads controlling the foundation design for some of these structures. The current AASHTO Standard Specifications for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals requires drilled shafts to resist these torsional forces with a simple single statement: "Drilled shafts shall provide adequate resistance for applied torsional loads". Unlike lateral load design, no specific design guidance is provided for computing torsional resistance or allowable displacements (rotation) and their safety. The goal of this research is to study the load transfer of axially loaded drilled shafts in torsion and to evaluate existing methods used to design drilled shaft under torsional loading. This work will provide necessary data for tuning the design methods as the torsional capacity of these shafts will be evaluated, including torsional load transfer. Existing design procedures will be investigated, as will some of the newer approaches that have been developed but not yet validated. The research results will be compared to existing methods obtained from the literature review.