Advances in ground improvement using waste materials for transportation infrastructure

Novel Materials and Packaging for Thermoelectric Waste-Heat Recovery in Building and Transportation Systems

Thermoelectric recovery is promising for improved efficiency in a broad variety of combustion systems, but thermal interface resistances and the need for scalable and package-compatible thermoelectric materials is a major roadblock. We report progress on six different activities this year, which are all in support of the major goal of novel materials for thermoelectric waste-heat recovery: 1) T...

Encoder-Camera-Ground Penetrating Radar Tri-Sensor Mapping for Surface and Subsurface Transportation Infrastructure Inspection

We report system and algorithmic development for a sensing suite comprising multiple sensors for both surface and subsurface transportation infrastructure inspection where we focus on multi-modal mapping for inspection. The sensing suite contains both inspection sensors, such as a camera and a ground penetrating radar (GPR), and navigational sensors, such as a wheel encoder or a global position...

Biodiesel: A Cost-effective Fuel Using Waste Materials

The main disadvantage of biodiesel is its high price. The price of biodiesel depends on various factors such as the price of oil, methanol, catalyst, and labor. Among dif-ferent economic factors, oil accounts for the largest share of input costs of biodiesel production. In this study, first, suitable heterogeneous catalysts were identified for biodiesel production. Several studies were carried ...

Recent Advances in Microdevices for Transportation Industry

Advances in emerging technologies of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology, especially relating to the applications , constitute one of the most challenging tasks in today's microme-chanics and nanomechanics. In addition to design, analysis, and fabrication capabilities, this task also requires advanced test methodologies for determination of functional characteristics of dev...

High Speed Ground Transportation