Last week was a busy one for the Senior Design Project program at Pitt’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, dominated by final presentations by all the graduating seniors. Senior Design is the capstone event for our students, an opportunity for them to synthesize the course work they have taken for the past four years into one integrated project. This semester we had sixty-two students, subdivided into twelve teams implementing a wide variety of design projects. Each project was based on a real-world example; each team was supported by a faculty mentor for technical guidance and an industry mentor for real-world information.
Three site development projects were based on proposed examples. A site near Monroeville initially planned for commercial development is now being reimagined as high density residential. It will include seven four-story apartment buildings, each designed as conventional timber post and beam structures. Each building will have sixty apartments, with an average construction cost per apartment of $300,000.
Also near Monroeville is the proposed Willow Crest development. It has been laid out to permit the construction of ninety-five individual houses on about twenty-five acres of land. Because this site is underlain by an abandoned mine, it is necessary for several thousand grouted support columns to be installed, at a cost of about seventy thousand dollars per home. These homes are also designed as conventional timber buildings.
The other site development project is a long, narrow brown-field site along the Allegheny River shore in Sharpsburg. About half of its fifty acres will be zoned for commercial/high density residential; the remainder will be green space along the river front. The major challenge this team faced was access; a Norfolk Southern rail line separates the site from the rest of the community. This was resolved by designing a major overpass, close to the Highland Park bridge.
An extremely interesting project was the design of an autonomous shuttle system linking Sutherland Hall and Hillman Library on the University campus. This route circumvents the well-known “Cardiac Hill”. The team recommended a ten-vehicle system with shuttles seating ten passengers arriving at two-minute intervals to navigate the 2.2 miles route.
Redesign of the Campbells Run Interchange on the Parkway West was another major challenge for transportation engineers. Congestion on Campbells Run Road frequently backs up traffic onto the Parkway. The students ran simulation analyses of numerous alternative solutions before deciding on the final recommendations. An integral part of the proposed changes was the design of a new bridge carrying Boyce Road over Campbells Run.
The existing Larimer Avenue bridge over Washington Boulevard is a concrete arch structure that has deteriorated to the point that it must be replaced. It also is the site of excessive speeding; traffic calming is a requirement of any new design. Based on the traffic study, the new bridge will have a slightly different roadway configuration. Its replacement is planned as a steel arch structure with an appearance similar to that of the original bridge.
Geotechnical projects always pose difficult challenges for our students. Several years ago a major landslide destroyed El Paso Street in the Morningside neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Based on data from that project a team was able to independently design a system to remediate the failure. Their solution was a pair of terraces separated by a retaining wall composed of soldier piles and precast concrete lagging.
In the same vein, a team was required to design retaining walls for the new University Recreation and Wellness Center, on O’Hara Street. The team elected to rehabilitate the rear wall of the existing parking garage that was demolished to permit construction on that site by adding five inches of shotcrete on the inner surface, reinforced by wire matting. They also designed a soldier pile/concrete lagging retaining wall on one side of the new facility.
The Fallen Timber Run watershed, shared by Jefferson and West Mifflin Boroughs, has a history of flash-flooding, primarily because of under-designed or badly deteriorated culverts. A team of students developed a hydrologic model of the watershed highlighting potential problem culverts, provided a new design for one of the most highly stressed culverts, recommended a passive remediation system for an abandoned mine drainage source, and produced a dashboard template for identifying problem culverts.
Unlike these nine multi-discipline project teams, the three environmental teams were composed of specialists in environmental engineering. One environmental project was a comprehensive study of reworking the intakes at the city water treatment plant at Aspinwall on the Allegheny River. The water supply for the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is taken from the Allegheny River at Aspinwall, chlorinated, and then pumped to reservoirs for distribution throughout the city. The team recommended a complete redesign of the intakes and replacement of major components to ensure a dependable supply of potable water to city residents in the years to come.
A particularly intriguing environmental challenge was the remediation of a site in Philadelphia that had been occupied by a petroleum refinery, leaving the soil beneath it polluted by hydrocarbons, primarily benzene. After studying numerous alternatives, the team elected to recommend the installation of sixteen injection wells to pump ozone underground and convert the benzene to carbon dioxide which would then be collected by sixteen suction wells and conveyed to the surface.
The Nemacolin Resort is planning to install a new water treatment facility to satisfy its requirements for potable water. Although it will be a modest plant compared to most typical municipalities, its design has all the challenges of a much larger facility. This team did a highly professional job of evaluating alternatives for equipment for each stage of the process and then integrating them into an effective system.
Each term I am impressed with the quality of students the Department produces and with their readiness to function as entry level engineers. This term’s class is particularly well qualified for the next step in their careers.