NCDOT awards $1.4 million in grants to Lee College of Engineering researchers

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has awarded seven new research grants totaling almost $1.4 million to faculty researchers in the Lee College of Engineering’s departments of Engineering Technology and Construction Management (ETCM) and Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE).

Tara Cavalline (ETCM) and Brett Tempest (CEE) were awarded $227,000 to determine concrete material properties and other performance data to be used in design of new concrete pavements.

CEE faculty members Shenen Chen, Rajaram Janardhanam and Miguel Pando received $229,000 to develop guidelines for “Roadway Utility Excavation Practices” in DOT regions.

Janardhanam, Pando and Chen also were awarded $216,000 to develop an improved set of material criteria for highway embankment construction.

CEE faculty member Srinivas Pulugurtha was awarded $115,000 to monetize reliability to evaluate the impact of transportation alternatives.

ETCM faculty members Don Chen, Thomas Nicholas and John Hildreth were awarded $196,000 for their study “Evaluation of Benefit Weight Factors and Decision Trees for Automated Distress Data Models.”

ETCM faculty researchers Nicholas Tymvios, Tara Cavalline and Chung-Suk Cho were awarded $209,000 to provide NCDOT with a benefit-cost model using multi-criteria analysis that would enable the estimation of the costs of disposing and/or reusing concrete residual material.

Hildreth and Tymvios were awarded $257,000 to evaluate the effects of extending oil drain intervals for machines in the maintenance equipment fleet.