Copyright © 2017 John F. Oyler
May 4, 2017
The Class of 2017
One of my responsibilities with the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh is coordination of
our Senior Design Projects program. In their final semester our Seniors are
required to participate in a semester long team design project. Ideally these
projects are based on real world problems, constraints, and data.
Most semesters we have between forty and fifty students each
semester, subdivided into six multi-discipline teams. The students specialize
in one of six disciplines – Construction Management, Structures, Environmental
Engineering, Transportation, Geotechnical Engineering, and Water Resources.
Matching the requirements of each project to the specialties available on the
assigned team is always a challenge.
On the final day of class we hold a day-long Colloquium in
which each team has the opportunity to spend an hour presenting the results of
their efforts to a large audience of students, faculty, family members, and
visiting engineering practitioners. This year’s Colloquium was particularly
impressive, and I am extremely proud of the students and their accomplishments.
Perhaps the most impressive of this semester’s projects was
implemented by a team of Environmental Engineering students who studied a
problem of great interest to me – the pollution of Chartiers Creek by abandoned
mine drainage. They selected two nearby sources – Scrubgrass Run and Woodville
– and designed a practical, cost effective system to remediate them.
The reddish-orange color in the polluted streams leading
into Chartiers Creek is produced by tiny particles of ferric iron oxyhydroxide,
the same mineral as normal rust. Remediating the pollution requires oxidizing
ferrous iron to ferric, producing the oxyhydroxide, and then allowing the tiny
particles to settle out in large settling basins, and then trapping the even
smaller particles in vegetation in constructed wetlands.
The team proposed to capture the discharge from the two
sources, totaling about 400 gallons per minute, and transport it in a system of
pipelines to a three acre site near the confluence of the old creek channel and
the current one, just south of Heidelberg. Introducing the flow into the
settling ponds over a series of weirs will introduce enough oxygen to convert
the ferrous iron to ferric; several days of retention time in the settling
ponds and wetlands should be sufficient to remove almost all of the solids.
The technology for this process is currently working very
effectively at the Wingfield Pines remediation site between Bridgeville and
Mayview, where over 1500 gallons per minute are successfully processed. The
team estimated that their system could be installed for about $500,000, an
investment that certainly appears to be warranted.
Another team, composed primarily of Geotechnical Engineering
students, did a comprehensive design of the site-work, underground mine
remediation, and foundation design required for a hypothetic commercial/light
industrial complex to be constructed close to the Parkway West. It was based on
an actual project recently completed by an engineering firm which employs three
of our recent alumni as Geotechnical Engineers.
These alumni provided the team with the actual data they
used for their project, including the soil and rock samples from the test
borings they made. They also mentored the team throughout the term, following a
chronological sequence identical to that of the real-world project. The
resulting design included shallow foundations, drilled caissons, removal of
semi-hazardous soil, grout injection into an abandoned mine, design of two MSE
(mechanically stabilized earth) retaining walls, and slope stability analyses.
A team of Structural and Transportation students expressed
an interest in designing a parking garage. They met with the University
Facilities engineers and were advised to investigate a site on O’Hara Street
adjacent to Thaw Hall and the intersection with Parkman Avenue. They then
proceeded to design two alternative garages – a conventional precast concrete
garage housing 530 vehicles and a steel frame structure equipped with an automatic
stacking system that would handle about 1050 vehicles.
Thanks to our contacts with the Massaro Construction
Company, the team was able to tour the new precast concrete garage being erected
near Heinz Field and get a first-hand view of its design details. Their cost
comparison of the two alternatives indicated that the cost per parking spot was
fairly similar independent of the design concept.
A multi-discipline team tackled the challenge of connecting
the popular Duck Hollow hiking/biking trail with Hazlewood and, consequently,
the network of trails throughout the rest of the city. Their solution is a
double switch-back ramp leading from the trail to the deck of the Glenwood
Bridge and then on into Hazlewood or to the new Almono site development.
Coincidentally a day later, approval of the new switch-back
to connect the Eliza Furnace trail with the riverside trail to the Point was
announced. It will be quite interesting to follow its development and compare
its detailed design with the one our students produced. The closer our projects
come to real-world projects, the more rewarding they become.
Another real-world problem locally is congestion on the
Parkway East approaching the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, partly because of conflict
between vehicles trying to exit the Parkway onto Beechwood Boulevard and
vehicles entering the Parkway a few hundred feet before the exit. A
multi-discipline team studied that problem and produced what appears to be a
feasible solution to it.
Their design begins with a round-about at the south end of
the new Greenfield Bridge, feeding an access ramp to the Parkway descending
along the side of hill to a point which significantly increases the weave
distance between the two points of conflict. There has been considerable
discussion regarding the use of the round-about, a concept with which most
local people are unfamiliar. Closer to home, it will be interesting to see how
well this concept works when it is installed at the intersection of Lesnett and
McMillan Roads with McLaughlin Run Road.
The final project was the design of a workable potable water
treatment system for an indigenous village in Panama. It consists of a roughing
filter (primarily layers of crushed stone) and three slow sand filters, with a
daily capacity of 5,000 gallons. The team built a successful pilot plant in our
hydraulics lab to confirm the adequacy of their design.
Our faculty is deservedly proud of the Senior Design program
and the students who pass through it. Every effort is made to motivate the
students to apply the skills they have acquired to real-world problems they
have not previously encountered and to develop innovative solutions to the
problems.
In contrast, I recently received a newsletter from my
(graduate school) alma mater reporting on CMU’s equivalent senior design
project program. Last Fall their seniors “designed and built a dragon
containment system that allowed the tethered dragon to roam freely within a 20
foot radius while not allowing movement of the structure itself”. Included was
a photograph of one of the projects – a piece of pipe sticking out of a pile of
sandbags. I am reminded of my mother’s advice – “If you haven’t anything good
to say about something, it is best that you remain silent”.
My continued optimism about the future is reinforced by my
observation of this group of very special young people (our Pitt students, not
their CMU colleagues). They are
admirably equipped to make a positive contribution to our society and almost
certainly to all the different cultures that make up Planet Earth.
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