Optimum Design of Multilayer Asphalt Surfacing Systems for Orthotropic Steel Deck Bridges

Orthotropic steel decks are widely utilized in long span bridges, movable bridges and shorter span road and rail bridges due to their favourable properties. These properties are low deadweight, large plastic reserves in case of overload and aesthetic advantages. Nowadays, more than 1000 orthotropic steel deck bridges (OSDBs) have been built in...

Terminal Fluvial Systems in a Semi-arid Endorheic Basin, Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia)

Many ancient sedimentary basins are interpreted as endorheic basins, internally drained basins with no direct hydrological connection to the marine environment. Some of these endorheic basins are economically important because of the abundance of hydrocarbon resources. To date, many studies have been conducted on fluvial systems in endorheic...

Characteristics of Chinese Driver Behavior

The high growth rate of vehicle ownership and many novel drivers in China determine the special features of Chinese driver behavior. This thesis introduces a comparative study on driver behavior by the analysis of saturation flow at urban intersections, Driver Behavior Questionnaire surveys, focus group discussion, and in-car tests. The main...

Mathematical modelling of morphological changes and hyperconcentrated floods in the Yellow River

Hyperconcentrated flow/flood is a water-driven sediment transport phenomenon, which is characterized by high sediment concentrations between normal sediment-laden flow and debris/mud flow. In a hyperconcentrated flow, strong interactions exist between water flow, sediment, and river bed, which may not only change the flow rheological properties,...

Probabilistic estimation of dune erosion and coastal zone risk

Coastal erosion has gained global attention and has been studied for many decades. As a soft sea defence structure, coastal sandy dunes protect coastal zones all over the world, which usually are densely populated areas with tremendous economic value. The coastal zone of the Netherlands, one of the most well-known vulnerable areas to coastal...

Asphalt Mixture Fatigue Testing: Influence of Test Type and Specimen Size

Fatigue characterization of an asphalt mixture is commonly estimated by laboratory fatigue tests. Based on the classical fatigue analysis, fatigue lives obtained from different test devices are not comparable even when they are performed at the same test conditions. It is believed that there are two main reasons causing the difference in fatigue...

Tyre - Road Noise, Surface Characteristics and Material Properties

Noise levels due to road traffic have reached intolerable high levels in and around many urban areas all around the world. Because of health reasons and reasons of well- being these noise levels have to be reduced. The noise produced from the interaction between the rolling tyre and road surface is one of the most important contributions in the...

Adaptive Multi-reservoir-based Flood Control and Management for the Yellow River: Towards a Next Generation Software System

The Yellow River is known as the ‘mother river’ of the Chinese people, but is also said to be ‘China's Sorrow’ or the ‘Scourge of the Sons of Han’, because in history multiple major floods have had catastrophic effects on people and land along the 5000 km long river reaching from the Himalaya’s to the Bohai Sea. Three sections can be...

A New Concept of Ultrafiltration Fouling Control: Backwashing with Low Ionic Strength Water

Ultrafiltration (UF) is a proven technology in water treatment nowadays. However, fouling remains a major challenge in the operation of UF, especially in regard to colloidal NOM fouling. In general, a number of colloidal NOM fouling mechanisms may occur, such as adsorption, gel formation. Colloidal NOM fouling is influenced by multivalent...

Spatial pattern dynamics in aquatic ecosystem modelling

In this thesis, several modelling approaches are explored to represent spatial pattern dynamics of aquatic populations in aquatic ecosystems by the combination of models, knowledge and data in different scales. It is shown that including spatially distributed inputs retrieved from Remote Sensing images, a conventional physically-based Harmful...

Reliability-based Dynamic Network Design with Stochastic Networks

Transportation systems are stochastic and dynamic systems. The road capacities and the travel demand are fluctuating from time to time within a day and at the same time from day to day. For road users, the travel time and travel costs experienced over time and space are stochastic, thus desire reliable travel times and low travel costs by...

Robustness Analysis of Road Networks: A Framework with Combined DTA Models

Network robustness is the ability of a road network functioning properly facing unpredictable and exceptional incidents. A systematical framework with combined dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) models is designed for the analysis of road network robustness. With this framework, network performance considering travelers' (route) choice behavior...

Effect of Spatial Variability on Maintenance and Repair Decisions for Concrete Structures

Due to the increasingly number of elder and deteriorating structures, maintenance is becoming a serious and more complex problem in most of the countries. A lot of studies have been carried out in this area for years. However, the fact that a lot of parameters show spatial random variability, which is linked with dependencies on temperature, w/c...