Award Data

A Multimodal Acoustic Tool for Inline Pipe Inspection 3/19/2018 The US energy transport pipeline system is a longstanding distribution network with most of its still standing pipes being installed between the 1950s–1970s. Due to degradation mechanisms, such as embrittlement, capable of causing a two-fold reduction in fracture toughness, pipe rupture is a major risk. Current nondestructive ins ...

Proposal title: Broken Rail Detection from Flashing Rear End Device Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortu ...

Demonstration of Image-Based Change Detection using a Prototype Drone-Based Track Safety Inspection 3/16/2018 Today’s prevailing methods of visual track inspection tend to be expensive, disruptive to operations, and have potential to be less thorough than preferred. Machine vision technology emerged in the rail sector over a decade ago to help alleviate these concerns; however, due to the un ...

Through previous grant awards from IES, researchers developed Graspable Math, a tablet-based intervention where middle and high school students create and manipulate complex expressions for basic operations as well as equations and equations systems and inequalities. In this project, the team will develop a prototype of Graspable Math Activities, an app with novel kinds of algebra practice and ass ...

Proposal title: Increasing Awareness About Intelligent Transportation Systems and Connected Vehicle Technologies for High School The goal of this FHWA Phase IIB SBIR program is to convert an existing board game that teaches students about Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and Connected Vehicle (CV) technologies into a mobile game app that can be sold online as a commercial product. The boa ...

Our goal is to create a demonstrable prototype system at the end of Phase I which fuses IntelliDrive (SM) data with data from traditional inductive loop detectors and uses this data in a modified NEMA TS2 traffic signal controller within eTEXAS Model for Intersection Traffic to reduce traffic delay at intersections.  Our work will improve the safety of intersections and improve the mobility of traffic through adaptive traffic control which uses data produced by IntelliFusion, the product of our research.   The process of data fusion involves merging data obtained fr

NON-DESTRUCTIVE COERCIMETRY FRACTURE TOUGHNESS ASSESSMENT FOR STEEL PIPELINES 3/8/2018 COMET’s main objective is to develop the first coercimetry-based fracture toughness assessment solution. Phase I will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a non-destructive testing solution, based on coercivity metering, to assess material fracture toughness of steel pipelines; evaluating t ...

This proposal seeks to produce a unique thermographic coating inspection system that is customized for the inspection of bridge coatings. The system uses active thermography where IR sources are used to provide controlled heating to a coating system. The presence of a defect in a coating system will result in differences in heat flow, which can be imaged with an infrared camera. An off-the-shel ...

Proposal title: Rapid Assessment of Air Void System in Fresh Concrete Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume ...

We accelerate the maturity of IntelliDrive applications and unlock the storehouse of modeling detail in TEXAS to organizations building IntelliDrive applications J2735/Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) signal controllers and on-board IntelliDrive systems. We add four SAE J2735 messages: SPAT MapData Basic Safety Messages and Signal Request Message for emergency vehicle preemption. Mapping ...